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the stargate, and could easily be pursued by hunterships. It would take only a
few moments for the hunterships to come to full power and engage their drives.
They would overtake the fleeing enemy ships in seconds, matching vectors.
And then&
But there was no and then. One by one, in-laying stations and nodal
structures had been overtaken by the fast-expanding wave of raw, horrific
light racing out from the central star. Sensors overloaded and burned out.
Radiation soared. Electromagnetic flux burned through circuitry.
The minds of We Who Are once had been organic, but existed now as nested
electromagnetic patterns within the circuitry of their ships, their base
fortresses, their planet-wide cities. As circuitry melted, those minds were
destroyed.
The leaders of the Xul commune, the Lords Who Are, died as the hardware
supporting them overloaded, then melted, then vaporized. As they died, the
metamind of which they all were composite parts, the metamind that gave shape
and purpose to the local will of We Who Are, died. Some individual fragments,
lone hunterships or far-outlying bases and outposts survived& but only for a
short while. Fast on the heels of the dying star s light came the more
massive, deadlier onslaught of high-energy particles.
And not a single Xul huntership saw the danger in time to save itself.
Not a single one of We Who Are within the Starwall node survived& .
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Jonah
Cygni Space/Starwall Space
1835 hrs GMT
This, Garroway thought muzzily, is not good. I still can t see out, and it s
been over six hours. Either I m still going FTL, or the whole damned ship is
dead.
Either way& not good& .
He was just now clawing his way back to consciousness. His internal timepiece
showed how much time had elapsed since his passage through the core of the
star.
He felt& terrible, broken and bruised throughout his body, and he felt like he
was suffering from an excruciating case of sunburn.
His stomach twisted, then heaved. His internal nano was damping down the
nausea, but the treatment so far was only partially successful.
Medical sensors were reporting& no. He couldn t have absorbed that much
radiation& .
Achilles? Achilles, are you there?
I am here.
What the hell is going on? Why haven t we dropped out of Drive?
Evidence suggests that we have, Private Garroway. The radiation sensors in
your combat armor show an extremely high flux.
Shit. Did that leak through from the nova, somehow?&
Nothing leaked, as you put it, while we were within the star. However, we did
encounter some& turbulence during the passage. Many of the ship s systems were
damaged or otherwise incapacitated. The Alcubierre Drive appears to have cut
out only about ten minutes after our passage.
Then& we got caught in the blast?
Affirmative. We were fifty light-minutes from the star by that time, however,
so damage was relatively minimal. At least, we were not vaporized immediately.
Radiation levels were high. We are also continuing to sustain radiation damage
from the stellar background.
Pardon?
The galactic core is an extremely active region, with overall high levels of
particulate radiation.
Lieutenant Lee was badly burned after an exposure of about forty minutes.
Forty minutes. And I ve been out here for&
Five hours, nineteen minutes.
Nausea clawed at him. This time, his internal nano couldn t handle the surge,
and he was achingly, desperately sick inside his armor.
A long time after, he sipped water from the helmet input valve near his mouth.
How& long do I have?
His suit monitors reported hard vacuum around him. Well& of course. He d been
in vacuum when they d shoved him inside. He tried to rub his eyes, and was
frustrated when his gauntlet bumped against the side of his helmet. He wasn t
thinking very well.
Garroway was seriously tempted to open his helmet. Explosive decompression
would kill him pretty quick a rush of air from his lungs, a sharp pain as he
gasped for breath. A moment or two of pain and cold and growing numbness&
The thought of slowly baking to death in hard radiation was not nearly so
pleasant. In his mind s eye, he could imagine the blistering, the sloughing
skin. His internal nano would fight to keep his organ systems
going, though. He might linger& how long?
Achilles had not responded right away. Maybe the AI was balancing the
psychological harm the news
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might impart. Hell, he knew he was going to die& .
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There s no way to be sure, Achilles told him. The dosage you ve received
already is fatal, and you re picking up more rads with each passing moment.
Without intervention, and depending on the efficiency of your medinano at
handling things like organ system shut-down and internal hemorrhage, I
estimate you will survive between twenty-four and thirty-six hours.
A day to a day and a half of agony. He already hurt, and he knew the pain
would get worse.
Better to crack his helmet while he still could, while he still had some
strength.
What did you mean by intervention?
There remains the very real possibility of rescue, Achilles told him. Do
you think your comrades will
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give up on you without even trying to find you?
No, he said. Marines never abandoned their own. No, but what chance is
there of them finding us?
The MIEF flotilla on this side of the stargate was poised to enter Alcubierre
Drive just before the wave-front hit them. If all went according to plan, the
Xul ships would have been overwhelmed and destroyed before they could pursue.
The MIEF ships would have retired to a safe distance, outside of the star s
primary blast radius, then would have begun searching along our projected line
of flight. They would not leave you.
Yeah& but if what you say is right, we lost our drive fifty light-minutes out
from the star. We were supposed to stay under Drive until we were over five
times farther out. This is a very tiny ship. They ll never& never& He stopped,
overwhelmed once again by savage nausea. He began vomiting, and when there was
nothing left to come up he continued retching again and again and again. He
lay there, wondering if that was the end of it, and then he began vomiting
again& this time blood.
His helmet systems drained much of the mess, keeping him from drowning, but he
wore a mask of foul slime, and the pain was nearly unbearable. He was so weak
that each breath was a struggle. The stench& the stench alone made him long for
death.
Even& if they find us& he said at last. I m an irrie.
Not true, Private. What is it you humans like to say& where there s life,
there s hope ? The medical facilities aboard the Samar are quite good. The
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