Polity 1 - Prador Moon by Asher Neal Read Free Book Online Page B

vessel's energy supplies. The piezoelectric layers in the exotic metal armour also complemented that charge. The ship's laminar batteries swiftly rose to repletion, and winding up the power to all four particle cannons, Immanence fired on the second ship lying between him and the station. That vessel turned nose-on to reduce its target area and switched over to masers. The four turquoise beams converged on its nose, incidentally punching more holes into the station behind during their transit. Shield generators held out for a few seconds, then the strike gutted the ship from nose to stern. Something inside then detonated to spread clouds of glowing debris and incandescent gas.
    The Prador captain swung his ship around and began accelerating towards the other vessels. More impacts on his hull, and a steady rise in temperature from maser strikes.
    “The more you hit me, the stronger I get,” Immanence sang.
    Now he began launching some of his own missiles, then watched with steadily growing annoyance how they were destroyed. This must to be due to those artificial intelligences the humans used, no Prador vessel could have reacted so fast and decoded the various methods of concealment the missiles used. The Polity possessed an advantage when it came to handling information, but what matter? Brute force always won out in the end.
    Immanence fired his particle beams at the armoured Polity vessel. This spherical ship was obviously of a more modern design, it being larger than the others and its U-space drive evidently inside. The ship absorbed fire and fell back, glowing lines etched across its hull and finally fading. It came on again, and this time when Immanence fired upon it, the particle beams veered and dispersed. The ship had obviously given its hull a huge negative charge to counter the negatively charged ion beams. Immanence ramped up the acceleration towards it, turning his particle cannons towards the other two ships which where firing on him from either side. The armoured Polity ship also accelerated.
    Interesting, thought Immanence, are those aboard prepared to sacrifice themselves to stop me?
    Something else now began to strike his ship. Analysing the data, the captain realised the other vessel had begun firing some form of particle cannon, one that delivered its energy in high-powered pulses. This weapon had obviously been designed to overload the heat dispersal properties of an s-con grid. It did not work, of course, for the exotic armour reacted inversely, converting the excess energy to mechanical movement, realigning its crystalline structure and in fact straightening out some recent dents. Other energy excesses Immanence again discharged through all four particle cannons at once. One of the other ships fell away, fires lighting it internally, and one sliced-off U-space nacelle tumbling in vacuum behind it.
    The armoured vessel drew close and showed no sign of diverting from its course. Scan returns showed its hull still negatively charged for repelling an anion particle beam. Amusing, really. Immanence noted the net charge of his own vessel to be highly positive, enough so that there was a measurable attraction between the two ships. He redirected his particle cannons, but not sure how efficient was the other ship's scanning gear, he waited until the last moment before inverting the cannons' charge output. He fired that four-fold blast, this time the beams consisting of cations. There followed a massive impact, as Immanence's vessel struck burning wreckage, mostly. The impact jolted him down to the floor, but he rose smoothly again as he turned his ship to seek out the remaining Polity vessel. Sensibly it accelerated away and soon dropped itself into U-space. As he returned towards the station, Immanence ran diagnostics to check his own ship for damage. There was some, but not enough to concern him. Clattering his mandibles in Prador laughter he reckoned this war would be an endless source of pleasure for