would reach her in roughly eight milliseconds, a hundredth of a second after the attack had begun.
Racing against this warning were the four structured smartalloy slugs launched from the Lynx's railguns. These projectiles, massing less than a few centigrams, barreled at ten percent lightspeed through the near-vacuum cylinders burned for them by the plasma bolts, flying straight as lasers. They traversed the distance to the palace in far less time than it took for Legis's atmospheric pressure to slam closed their vacuum paths. They reached the plasma-smoothed hemispheres of their entry-points into the palace within seven milliseconds.
The slugs were cylinders no wider than a human hair follicle. They sliced through the ancient palace walls, releasing a carefully calculated fraction of their awesome kinetic energy. The stone around the entry points ribbed with sudden webs of cracks, like safety glass struck with a hammer. The impact altered the slugs, transforming them into their second programmed shape, a larger spheroid that flattened on impact, braking the projectiles as they slammed through the floors and walls of the palace. In the seconds after their passage, the old palace would boom and shake, whole walls exploding into dust. Localized but terrific wind storms would soon rise up as the air inside the palace was set in motion by the slugs' passage.
After the seventh such collision, a number calculated by the Lynx's AI using precise models of the palace's architecture, the slugs ballooned to their largest size. The smartalloy stretched into a mesh of hexagons, expanding outward like a child's paper snowflake, and attaining the surface area of a large coin.
These much-slowed slugs struck their targets, hitting the Rix commandos while the warning squawk from the transponder was just under a meter away, eight thousandths of a second after the attack had begun. The slugs tore through the commandos' chests, leaving tunnels that were momentarily as exact as holes drilled in metal. But then the wake of the slug's passage pulled a pulverized spray of blood, tissue, and biomechanical enhancements through the exit wounds, filling the council chamber with a maelstrom of ichor. The four commandos tumbled to the ground, their bones shattered and implants liquifacted by the blow.
For the moment, the hostages were safe.
DOCTOR
Above, the marines were on their way.
Twenty-five entry vehicles accelerated down launch tubes, riding electromagnetic rails at absurd velocities. Thirty-seven gees hit Dr. Vecher like a brain hemorrhage, shifting the color behind his closed eyes from red, to pink, to the white of the hottest flame. A roar filled his gel-sealed ears, and he felt his body malform, squashed down into the floor of his vehicle under a giant's foot. If not for his yolk of gel and the injected and inhaled smart-polymers that marbled his body tissue, he would have died in several instantaneous and exotic ways.
As it was, it hurt like hell.
The entry vehicles hit the dense air of the mesopause almost instantly, and spun a precise 180 degrees to orient their passengers feet-down, firing retrorockets to begin braking and targeting. They spread out, screaming meteors surging across the daylit sky of Legis XV. Only three were targeted near the council chamber: each vehicle that landed close to the hostages carried the risk of injuring the Child Empress. The marines would be spread out, deployed to sweep for the three remaining Rix commandos and secure the now twice-battered palace.
Dr. Vecher's entry vehicle was fractionally ahead of the others, and was aimed closest to the council chamber. It burst through the palace's three sets of outer walls, the impacts shaking Vecher as if he were trapped inside a ringing churchbell.
But the landing, in which the vehicle expended its last reaction mass to come to a cratering halt outside the chamber, seemed almost soft. There was a final bump, and then Dr. Vecher spilled from the vehicle,
Racing against this warning were the four structured smartalloy slugs launched from the Lynx's railguns. These projectiles, massing less than a few centigrams, barreled at ten percent lightspeed through the near-vacuum cylinders burned for them by the plasma bolts, flying straight as lasers. They traversed the distance to the palace in far less time than it took for Legis's atmospheric pressure to slam closed their vacuum paths. They reached the plasma-smoothed hemispheres of their entry-points into the palace within seven milliseconds.
The slugs were cylinders no wider than a human hair follicle. They sliced through the ancient palace walls, releasing a carefully calculated fraction of their awesome kinetic energy. The stone around the entry points ribbed with sudden webs of cracks, like safety glass struck with a hammer. The impact altered the slugs, transforming them into their second programmed shape, a larger spheroid that flattened on impact, braking the projectiles as they slammed through the floors and walls of the palace. In the seconds after their passage, the old palace would boom and shake, whole walls exploding into dust. Localized but terrific wind storms would soon rise up as the air inside the palace was set in motion by the slugs' passage.
After the seventh such collision, a number calculated by the Lynx's AI using precise models of the palace's architecture, the slugs ballooned to their largest size. The smartalloy stretched into a mesh of hexagons, expanding outward like a child's paper snowflake, and attaining the surface area of a large coin.
These much-slowed slugs struck their targets, hitting the Rix commandos while the warning squawk from the transponder was just under a meter away, eight thousandths of a second after the attack had begun. The slugs tore through the commandos' chests, leaving tunnels that were momentarily as exact as holes drilled in metal. But then the wake of the slug's passage pulled a pulverized spray of blood, tissue, and biomechanical enhancements through the exit wounds, filling the council chamber with a maelstrom of ichor. The four commandos tumbled to the ground, their bones shattered and implants liquifacted by the blow.
For the moment, the hostages were safe.
DOCTOR
Above, the marines were on their way.
Twenty-five entry vehicles accelerated down launch tubes, riding electromagnetic rails at absurd velocities. Thirty-seven gees hit Dr. Vecher like a brain hemorrhage, shifting the color behind his closed eyes from red, to pink, to the white of the hottest flame. A roar filled his gel-sealed ears, and he felt his body malform, squashed down into the floor of his vehicle under a giant's foot. If not for his yolk of gel and the injected and inhaled smart-polymers that marbled his body tissue, he would have died in several instantaneous and exotic ways.
As it was, it hurt like hell.
The entry vehicles hit the dense air of the mesopause almost instantly, and spun a precise 180 degrees to orient their passengers feet-down, firing retrorockets to begin braking and targeting. They spread out, screaming meteors surging across the daylit sky of Legis XV. Only three were targeted near the council chamber: each vehicle that landed close to the hostages carried the risk of injuring the Child Empress. The marines would be spread out, deployed to sweep for the three remaining Rix commandos and secure the now twice-battered palace.
Dr. Vecher's entry vehicle was fractionally ahead of the others, and was aimed closest to the council chamber. It burst through the palace's three sets of outer walls, the impacts shaking Vecher as if he were trapped inside a ringing churchbell.
But the landing, in which the vehicle expended its last reaction mass to come to a cratering halt outside the chamber, seemed almost soft. There was a final bump, and then Dr. Vecher spilled from the vehicle,
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