TROUBLE DOG
The Scourers caught the Fleet of Knives in the act of turning their aim away from the Plates and fell among them with wings swept back like diving hawks. Diamond jaws closed over white blade-like hulls. Energy weapons crackled. Torpedoes leapt like fireflies. Even at full clock-speed, it was difficult to apprehend the extent of the battle. I couldn’t be certain of the number of dragons involved, as they kept dipping in and out of the void. They’d appear, wrench a chunk from one of the ships, and vanish again. But the Fleet of Knives moved with inhuman speed. For every casualty it suffered, it inflicted one in return, impaling the creatures on searing lances of ruby-red energy.
Those that appeared inside the protective sphere formed by the Fleet turned their attention to the Plates. I saw one dive at an agricultural installation, its teeth raking a long furrow in the dirt as it ripped away a mouthful of crops and soil. Others zeroed in on inhabited sections, diving to attack the people scrambling for the shelter of buildings and underpasses. One came straight at me, its sinuous body making no attempt to conceal its intention. So I shot it in the mouth with every functioning gun I had, and felt my spirits leap as the back of its neck blew out in ragged fragments of obsidian gristle.
“Ha! You didn’t think I could see you, did you?”
Without the captain’s eye, I would have been blind and at the mercy of these fuckers. Thanks to her sacrifice, I could now do what I’d been built to do, and what I’d been yearning to do since I left the navy: go completely fucking apeshit.
I leapt from cover and let fly a barrage of nuclear-tipped torpedoes aimed at the Scourers terrorising the nearest and most vulnerable Plates. Some dodged back into the higher dimensions, but I managed to fry two without causing anything more than minor collateral blast damage to the surface of the Plates involved.
Another scourer came at me from nowhere, but I rolled to the side and raked its flank with defensive cannon fire.
“Take that, you spooky-looking piece of shit!”
On my bridge, Captain Konstanz moaned as she was jostled one way and then another.
“Take it easy,” she said, but I ignored her. The dampeners and shock absorbers surrounding the inhabited sections of my innards could take the edge of the worst effects of hard acceleration and violent manoeuvres, but they couldn’t soak up everything. If we survived the next few minutes, the crew would be battered and bruised—but I was sure they’d find that infinitely preferable to being dead.
A broken knife ship tumbled past, its hull riven with claw marks, and a gaping wound where its thrusters had once been. I matched rotation with it and attempted to contact the Druff engineer, but there was no reply. It must have been in the affected area when the final blow struck.
We were passing beneath an industrial Plate when a Scourer came over the rim, mouth gaping. I turned to face it, but before I could open fire a spike sprang from the Plate’s rim, skewering it through the chest. It tried to wriggle free, night-black wings beating frantically against a backdrop of stars. Then a second, thinner spike jabbed out, catching it through the base of its skull, and it died.
A transmission came through: a picture of Cordelia Pa sitting cross-legged beside a strange, pulsating pillar. Her gold hoop earring glittered.
“Hey,” she said. “I’ve got your back.”
“You did that?”
“Oh yes.”
“Any other tricks up your sleeve?”
Another wave of Scourers appeared from the hypervoid, swooping low over the Plates, tearing away chunks of anything organic or metallic. Around us, knife ships were dying beneath the relentless assaults of targets that leapt in, attacked, and then leapt away again almost faster than my human eye could follow.
“One or two.” She stretched out her arms, palms downwards, and closed her eyes. “Watch this.”
On my bridge, I heard Captain Konstanz swear. And to be honest, I was tempted to join her. At the end of the Plate formation closest to the Intrusion, a pair of industrial Plates had begun to move. I hadn’t even been aware they could do that. But the surprise I felt was nothing compared to the shock of what came next.
In the space of a few seconds, the two uninhabited Plates shrank to a quarter of their previous size, extruding their mass into invisibly thin monomolecular filaments kilometres in length, and weighted on the ends. Then, as they approached the inner surface of the battle raging around us, they began to spin. The filaments drew taut, and suddenly, the seemingly innocent habitats had become whirling windmills of death. The monomolecular thread sliced through everything it touched. Nothing could protect against it; it was too fine and strong, and able to shred knife ships and Scourers alike. They were diced and sliced, and their remains left to fall away into the darkness as the two spinning Plates cleared a path through the battle—a path the other Plates now began to follow.
The Scourers and remaining Fleet ships were thrown into momentary disarray, but were so intent on killing each other that the movement of the Plate formation proved little more than a passing distraction.
“What are you doing?”
Cordelia’s image smiled. “The Plates can protect themselves, but not against these kinds of odds.”
“So, you’re moving them?”
“I’ll have to. I thought we could fight, but we’re overwhelmed.”
“So, where are you going?”
“I’m taking them through the Intrusion.”
“Are you kidding me?”
She shrugged. “It’s what I was born to do. I realise that now.”
“That doesn’t mean you have to do it.”
“Doesn’t it, though? It’s the only place they can’t follow us.”
She cut the connection, and I watched helplessly as all twenty Plates began to pick up speed, accelerating with smooth majesty through the battle’s punctured shell, spikes whipping out to impale anything that ventured too close to the outer edges of their formation.