Judas Unchained

“What the hell is that?” Dervla asked with quiet unease.

“Wilson?” Oscar asked. “Anyone from the Seattle Project got an opinion?” The quantum effect radiating out from the device was now five thousand kilometers in diameter. It began to speed up. The knot it was stirring up in the corona was visible to the Dublin’s heavily filtered optical sensors.

“Not yet,” Wilson replied.

“Captain,” Reuben called, “the Prime missiles are getting close. If we have to ward off some kind of energy strike from the device as well as dealing with them, we’re going to be in serious trouble.”

“Launch a countermissile salvo,” Oscar ordered. “We have to stay here and report on this.” He knew it was critical.

“One minute until it hits the upper corona,” Hywel said. “It’s having a hell of an impact on the solar wind.”

“Are you sure it can’t survive impact?”

“I don’t know. It’s changed so much, the quantum fluctuations at the core are significantly altered. I’m not sure what it is anymore.”

“What do you mean?”

“It might not qualify as pure matter anymore. That distortion is very weird. It seems to be incorporating the force field, and that quantum signature—I’ve never seen anything like it.”

When Oscar consulted the sensor projection, the device’s rotating wings were now close to seven thousand kilometers wide. The operation section’s display superimposed them on the corona as black ellipses. Plasma writhed around them, hurling off dense vortices that leaped up into space, dissipating as they rose. The scale of the effect was unnerving. “If it’s not matter, then what is it?”

“Some kind of energy nexus, I think. I’m not sure. It’s having an unusual effect on the surrounding mass properties.”

The Prime device spun down into the corona. It was like watching a comet striking the atmosphere of an H-congruous planet. The star’s million-degree outer layer ruptured in a crowned plume that rose higher than any of the prominences. Continent-sized cataracts of plasma curved back down only to be warped by the twisted magnetic flux. A secondary plume rose inside the core of the first, the cooler chromosphere matter streaking up to escape from the astonishing deformation produced by the device’s impact.

“Holy shit,” Oscar grunted.

“So what good did that do them?” Dervla complained.

“That quantum effect is still functional, and growing,” Hywel reported. “The device is agitating the corona, probably the photosphere, too. It’s big enough.”

“Holding the wound open,” Oscar muttered. The blemish on the star’s surface was apparent in just about every spectrum: quantum, magnetic, visible. “Radiation,” he said sharply. “Hywel, what’s the radiation emission like?”

“Rising, and fast. Christ. Captain, we’ve got to move, we’re directly above it.”

“I second that,” Reuben said. “One minute until missile engagement.”

“Dervla, take us a quarter of a million kilometers, up and out.”

“Aye, sir.”

The Dublin dropped into FTL for thirty seconds, time mostly taken up by Dervla confirming their relative position before emerging from the wormhole again.

When the ship’s sensors lined up on the strike zone, the turbulence in the corona was a tight-packed cone spewing streamers from its open crest. They could see it growing.

“The device is still active in there,” Hywel said. “Quantum fluctuations are registering at the same level as before. Magnetic activity is increasing. The damn thing is tightening the flux lines like a tourniquet.”

“Oscar,” Wilson called. “Tunde and Natasha believe we’re seeing a flare bomb at work.”

“A what?” he asked, startled. “You mean something like the one used at Far Away?”

“Could be.” Wilson’s voice was perfectly level. “The disturbance in the corona is producing a huge particle discharge, and it’s still building. The radiation is going to saturate Hanko, and we have no idea how long it will go on for. The Far Away flare lasted over a week. Oscar, the biosphere won’t survive that.”

“Oh, shit.” Despite the catastrophe facing the planet he was supposed to be defending, Oscar was trying to think how the Primes had wound up with a flare bomb. Somehow, the Starflyer must have given them the information how to build one. Was that what the Second Chance dish was transmitting?

“They’re going to sterilize each of the new star systems they’re invading,” Wilson said. “We’ll be forced to evacuate forty-eight worlds.”

“And that’s just so far today,” Reuben grunted.

“What do we do?” Oscar asked. “Do Tunde and Natasha think a quantumbuster will work against the flare bomb?”

“We don’t know. But we’re going to have to find out. We want you to take the Dublin as close as you can to the star and fire a quantumbuster into the flare. Switch it to maximum effect radius.”

“Understood.”

“Admiral, if you use a quantumbuster against a star at that rating, you’ll just be adding to the quantity of energy it’s pumping out,” Reuben said. “It’ll make the radiation deluge even worse.”