Despite merely being the actuators for the forward half of the hull, they were still powerful photonic rockets on their own. All twelve fired at beyond full power—their safeties removed—and their radiance punched outward into the atmosphere surrounding the bay enveloping the wrecked forward half of their ship. Just like with their initial launch and that of the Promise, each thruster fired like a continuous stream of nuclear firecrackers. Twelve blowtorches lit with a fire that only existed at the heart of quasars poured energy into nearly every outward direction, and just like the nuclear missiles attacking from outside, their transfer energy propagated outward from the point of application.
Here within the protected inner shell of the Control Ship, where no attack had ever reached, the Patrons had left their hostages one of their most powerfully destructive tools to act as a weapon.
Calvin Henson winced as another laser bit deep into Trenton and more lifesigns flashed red. “Captain Everest, your men have GOT to get those missile cells back online. This little trickle of an attack we’re putting out isn’t doing enough. I need more than one missile at a time and two railguns!”
“Admiral, my men are doing what they can, but the shield plasma fused together too many of the VLS hatches, and hardly any of the missiles in those cells are communicating with the weapon control system. Even if I send someone EVA, the birds won’t work!”
“Captain, if we don’t have any missiles then our only option is to become a missile. I will order this group to ramming spee—”
“Admiral!” a new voice cried out on the battle net. Henson thought he recognized it as his Flag Captain’s Weapons Officer. “The Control Ship is starting to swell! We’re seeing a massive thermal bloom at her core and she’s ceased firing.”
Henson flipped his screen back to the data in question. Sure enough, the smooth, hard core at the center of the crustacean-like ship of overlapping plates, which they had thus far been unable to scratch, swelled and cracked. Molten metal and flame gushed outward from spot after spot.
He did not know what was happening to it, but he dare not let the opportunity get by. “All remaining units: Fire for effect! Everything you have left, overheating or not.”
The shuttle bay of the Sword of Liberty disintegrated around them. Their SSTOS flipped end over end, banging into flaming, flying debris, a leaf in a hurricane of furnace light. Nothing, not even the auxiliary drives themselves, could hold together in this maelstrom. Abruptly the brilliance of the photonic drives cut out and all that could be seen was the burning, collapsing bay where their ship had been held captive.
Weston deftly stabilized the battered SSTOS and spun the shuttle slowly about. All three sets of eyes in the cockpit darted about, each of them trying to find a way out. Nathan soon jabbed a hand forward, pointing past Weston’s shoulder toward a fissure through which debris streamed, beyond which was the deepest, blackest night. “Andrew, can you get us through that crack?”
“Skipper, I damn well will get us through. Can’s got nothing to do with it.” Weston punched up maximum thrust, rocketing the SSTOS forward and turning the shuttle to align their frame with the fissure. The spaceplane crashed through, ripping free their wings and tail, and causing a terrible cacophony of alarms and screaming passengers.
Nathan and Kris screamed too, but for entirely different reasons. “Hell, yes!! Andrew! We’re free! We made it!”
“Admiral! The Control Ship is breaking up and the plasma shield is dissipating. We have chunks of debris ejecting from the core, but we have no way of knowing what’s just damage and what might be a Deltan escape pod.”
Henson thought about the status of the fleet, about all the people they had all lost. “We’re in no shape right now to worry about prisoners or to allow their leadership caste to get free to threaten us again. Take all escaping debris under fire.”
Lydia felt at peace for the very first time since Gordon’s death. She took in the rapidly disintegrating wreck of the Deltan’s most heinous vessel and allowed herself to feel satisfaction, allowed herself to embrace the hatred, to acknowledge it so she could then discard it and move on. The Deltans had deserved everything they had gotten, but they were over now. She could move on from being the mother of the fleet to being what she had last been happy being: a scientist and an observer of all things.
Lydia looked over the tactical display, at the debris now being targeted since that put the most accurate, highest resolution sensors on them. It was a pity all the pieces she looked at would be destroyed. Who knew what sort of technical marvels could be extracted—
What is that, she wondered. No, it can’t be, it doesn’t look right … maybe some technological convergence … no, it is their shuttle! It has their crest, but it looks so damaged …
Lydia rapidly scrolled through menus, until she came to the comms screen and checked incoming transmissions from the area where that one piece of debris flew. Her eyes grew wide.
“Calvin! You have to cease fire!” Lydia cried frantically over the net.
Henson wasted an annoyed expression within his acceleration coffin. “Lydia, why are you on this circuit? Shut down and stop interfering.”
“No, no, you don’t understand. It can’t possibly be a real miracle, but it might as well be. Calvin, they’re alive!”
“Who’s alive, Lydia? What do you mean?” A tactical close-up of one piece of debris appeared in three dimensions before him. This piece appeared to be marked with a navy crest and seemed to be maneuvering slightly, but it also had a comm log attached to it. Henson expanded it, and his eyes grew as big as saucers. He threw the “hold-fire interrupt” for the entire group.
Lydia kept talking, excited. “It’s really them. I don’t know how, but it’s them. The Sword of Liberty’s crew survived!”
EPILOGUE: “UNSHEATHED”
December 30, 2055; USCG Nightingale (SRC-7), Rescue Cutter on detached duty as survey vessel; Patron Quarantine Site; Asteroid Belt
Nathan did not react when Kris pulled herself into the cutter’s now empty wardroom to join him. He remained intent on the view taking up half the tiny common area’s wall, a screen showing the Patron drive star and the lumpy ring of debris that now surrounded it. The drive star was finally quiescent—the last of the angry red and purple coils of energy that had constrained and controlled it had faded away that morning. It now appeared to be a moon-sized dwarf star, an impossibility of nature that nonetheless existed as a new companion in the solar system. In the debris field, teams of Marines in armored vacuum gear supported by dozens of armed SSTOS, went from location to location, identifying tech, isolating and capturing Patrons who had survived the battle, and doing whatever they could to gather and catalog the artifacts and records of all the species the Patrons had “procured.”