Polity Agent

Only in that moment did he discover that one sphere of the ship contained twenty coldsleep containers, fifteen of them now occupied by people severely injured.

‘Very well, you are clear to make orbit.’

As easy as that? Thellant grimaced to himself. The Polity was far too dependent on its damned AIs and in this case that was a mistake. He settled back in the seat, his hand still on the console and with himself still linked into the ship’s systems. As it continued to rise he entertained a sudden suspicion and ran diagnostics on the U-space engine, but it was fine—no problems at all. He put it online, ready to drop the ship into underspace the moment that became possible. An hour of flying later the sun picked out gleaming ships in a blue-black firmament, before it broke over the planet’s curve. He shut off AG and started the fusion drive to finally pull him clear of the well. Then a stuttering flash, and something hammered the Rescue ship, violently tilting his horizon. Then again that flash, which Thellant now identified as a high-powered laser. Through his link into the ship’s systems, he felt the U-space engine not only go offline but completely disconnect, as if it had disappeared. The second hit had taken out the fusion drive plate. As the ship tilted up into starlit darkness, another vessel passed overhead, glittering like oyster shell.

A voice issued from the console. ‘Gotcha.’

11

The development of the laser as a weapon began way back at the start of this millennium and it has been with us ever since. However, for ship-to-ship conflict, improvements in reflective and s-con heat dispersal armours have all but rendered ineffective as weapons lasers in the range of infrared to ultraviolet. Move outside those spectra, however, and you have masers, which can be used to sufficiently penetrate missiles—which will not have the heat-dispersal capacity of a large ship—to destroy them, and at closer range actually can destroy ships. The same rule applies to xasers and grasers, but in all cases the range and destructive potential of these weapons is limited, especially in fields of conflict often lightyears across. And, in reality, we learnt from the Prador how negligible is their effect, in the arena in which they are usually employed, when compared with the numerous other varieties of particle cannon. As you are all aware, the ubiquitous pulse-gun is just a form of particle weapon, the particulate matter ranging from powdered aluminium to a gas—

(audience interruption)

Pardon

(audience response)

I will state again that there is no such thing as an APW! What you are referring to is a proton weapon—highly destructive and tending to spread isotope poisoning wherever used. The APW, the antiphoton weapon, the dark-light gun, is a fucking fictional creation!

(moderator query)

Yes, thank you. I’m fine.

— From her lecture ‘Modern Warfare’ by EBS Heinlein