Quoted By:
“The NOVEMBER RAIN sang. Her excimer assembly howled out pure, ringing note as it transmuted terajoules of stored electrical energy into a pulsating stream of ultraviolet photons. Through the viewing blister, I watched five beams instantly bridge the path between the RAIN and the corvette, bright enough to leave a ghostly imprint against my dark-adapted retinas.
For the first target, we had opted to hit the crew compartments – a “wing” of the corvette harboring both the densiometric signature of liquid water and the subtle heat of metabolic activity. The impact point glowed bright red. Metal ran like wax before delaminating in glowing arcs. Spectroscopic impact-analysis readouts spiked as the beam first bit into dense metal – then ceramic-polymer honeycomb – before finally sinking its fangs into brackish water.
The compartment flash boiled violently enough to send the corvette into an unpowered spin. As the RAIN’s sensors picked away at the expanding vapor plume, MERRYGATE enthusiastically informed me that the RAIN’s spectroscopic readouts had sniffed out rarer decomposition products. Traces of complex organics. Pyrolyzed hydrocarbons. Fragmented aminos. Our strike plucked out the living core of the corvette in a single, surgical strike, transforming it into a drifting hulk.
I felt a pause – a brief change in perceived gravity – as the RAIN rotated about its long axis to bring its port emitters to bear. Then the process repeated itself.
This time, there was no wreck. Our targeting was flawless: one second of sustained laser fire punctured the containment chamber responsible for caging the second corvette’s fusion torch. For a ship traveling at maximum burn, there could only be one outcome.
A new star bloomed near MIZAR-6’s ice moon, overshadowing the weak light of the primary for a brief moment. Fragments of broken hull pelted against its drifting companion like hail.
The escape route for my vessel was now open. While engaging the corvettes had revealed my approximate location, both the destroyer pair and the patrolling capitol were too far to be an appreciable threat. Their chances of detecting the RAIN were poor; their chances of burning hard and long enough to catch us poorer still.
But I still hesitated for a moment as I plotted a route out of MIZAR-6’s orbital plane. The second corvette was irrecoverable, but its counterpart was mostly intact. Even with its crew vented – and most of its sensors fried – MERRYGATE could feel the touch of low-level electrical activity against the RAIN’s skin. Some of the systems housed in the ship were still active. And active systems meant data…"
