The Killing of Worlds by Scott Westerfeld Read Free Book Online

kps—had accelerated less than a pitiful five meters per second. But the change was detectable, the tiny push forward propagating through the energy sinks like a ripple expanding in a pond.
    The flocker squadron pondered: Why would the enemy prime bother with an acceleration of such small size? Had they fired a projectile rearward, resulting in the forward push? Perhaps the Imperials had realized their own imminent death and launched a deadman drone. But after a close reading of the ripples in the blazing energy sinks, the flocker intelligence calculated that the push had been gradual.
    The squadron quickly decided to expand its view again, and a few dozen flockers shot outward at fifteen hundred gees. This burst of acceleration would drive them uselessly into the burning manifold, but in the remaining one second before impact, their sacrifice improved the squadron’s view dramatically.
    The flockers saw it then: The enemy prime had shrunk to a shadow of its former size.
    Even against the blinding glare of the manifold, they could now see that the prime’s characteristic radiation signature was greatly reduced. The easy gravitons were still coming in abundance, but the evidence of charged weapons and drive activity had disappeared. Mass readings were reduced to a hundredth of what they should be.
    A half-second before the first flockers were to reach the position where their target should be, the squadron realized the truth: The energy sink manifold had been disconnected from the enemy prime.
    The target had disappeared.
    This was a problem.
Pilot
    Master Pilot Marx found that his scout was still alive.
    A Rix hunter drone had burned him seconds ago, spraying Marx’s vessel with its very dirty fission drive as it flew past. The canopy had snow-crashed for a few seconds, but he was back inside now, his senses dramatically reduced.
    Marx swore. He was so close to the Rix battlecruiser. This was no time for his machine to fail. Another 150 seconds and he would be able to hit the enemy. With what exactly, he wasn’t sure. His retinue of conscripted drones had been reduced to a few craft. But at this range he could see the reflective expanse of the Rix receiver array spread out before him, fragile and tempting.
    So close.
    He checked his craft’s condition. No active sensors. The drive was out, the reaction process lost and irreparable. The scout’s entangled communications supply was damaged, and with all the error-checking the craft responded sluggishly. But he could still control it, and send light-speed orders to other drones in the vicinity.
    Marx ejected his fusion drive, and jogged a small docking jet, forcing the scout drone into a tumble. His view spun for a moment, then stabilized as expert software compensated for the craft’s rotation. With its active sensors offline, the scout should appear convincingly dead.
    He counted his assets. A trio of expended ramscatter drones, two stealth penetrators with almost no reaction mass left, a decoy that had miraculously survived everything the Rix had thrown at it, and a careening sandcaster whose receiver had failed. The sandcaster drone was tantalizingly useless. It still had its payload, but the last order it had received before going deaf had put it in standby mode. Now it ignored Marx’s pleas to launch its sand or self-destruct. He wondered if repair nanos inside the caster were working to bring it back to life.
    The master pilot waited silently, watching as his tiny fleet converged upon the enemy battlecruiser. Just before shunting him from the bridge, the captain had mentioned sand. True, it was the perfect weapon against the Rix receiver array; it would spread over a wide area, and at high speed would do considerable damage. But the Rix had swept the Imperials’ salvos of sand aside with their host of gravity repeater arrays, protecting the huge receiver. They had anticipated Zai’s attack perfectly.
    Marx and his tiny fleet were within the gravity perimeter,