Chaos Cipher Read Online Free Page B

missile.
     
    Temperature
critical , warned The Cereno’s AI. Stabilise velocity now. Acceleration over-ride engaged.
Manual re-entry incorrect, drop speed and adjust articulation
immediately.

    Rynal kept
the nose down. The AACS alarms began signalling objections, klaxons
bleating into the bridge. It was now a game of chance. If the two
warheads hit they would certainly be dead anyway. Something had to
give. The Cereno’s hull shielding peeled away at the nose, tearing back slowly
like banana skin under the ablation of the thickening
atmosphere.
     
    Suddenly
there was a breakthrough. The warhead overheated in re-entry and
reached critical mass, exploding with enough violence to throw the
sixth missile off-course. The moment it happened, Rynal gasped out
a cry of long held aspiration and cut the acceleration, angling the
starnavis star-ward again and levelling an appropriate escape
velocity. The red hot Cereno returned to a safe altitude then
cruised away from Amora once more like a firefly to the inky night.
Scanners searched assiduously for the seventh warhead but there was
nothing in range.
    ‘ We did it,’
Osmond’s voice spluttered through the bridge, wheezing from the
stress of the gee-forces. ‘By the gods we did it.’
     
    The tactical
computer alerted him to take immediate attention to the radiators,
and quickly he discharged the lethal heat into a conduction
cylinder and purged the white hot element into orbit. He hadn’t
much more of those. The Cereno was in deep trouble without thermal purge units,
the whole core could overheat at this rate.
     
    Guided
projectile identified, The Cereno’s AI once more alerted.

    LOCK. LOCK.
LOCK. LOCK
     
    No!
     
    A single fuel
pellet was released in that moment falling into the focus-fusion
caste. It pulsed into full flux, the pellet’s reaction triggering a
resplendent stream from the aft engines. Yet even with the
starnavis’ reactor jacked fully into the engines The Cereno’s inertial
weight was still too great for a quick getaway, and the warhead
slammed into the fuselage. The impact cleaved through the external
MLI resin shielding and a flash of plasma momentarily shone
inside.
     
    Malla and
Raven jolted forth, the cabin pressure tearing through the hole.
Her ears rang. The breath snatched from her screaming lips on a
gust of air racing into the blackness outside. She felt pinned into
her seat as The Cereno spiralled through space, inertial forces pushing over forty
rpm. And although the moveable seats adjusted to reduce the
inertial strain, Malla, Raven and her child were thrown
unconscious.
    Emergency
sprinklers activated, jettisons of foam racing into the hole
punctured in the ship. The foam started collecting, sticking,
gathering and growing around the wound. It quickly piled there,
travelling on the evacuating air, expanding, sealing everything up
in an instant. But the air was faint. Once the foam petrified the
oxygen tanks stirred, releasing a fresh mix of air into the cabin
again.
     
    The lethal
blow cut the engines and The Cereno powered down, catapulted through space on its own
directionless momentum. The auto-pilot immediately recognised the
crew was unconscious and emergency thrusters worked to counter the
ship’s spin. Radiation and dangerous overheating was the remaining
problem. The whole thing desperately needed to cool, and Rynal had
been too cautious with the conduction elements while he was awake.
The auto-pilot injected a new element into the core, conducting
tons of super-hot exposure into the charge, and dispelled the hot
cartridge into space, a thermal flare that gave away their position
to The Deathwind . The Cereno drifted now through the silence. The damaged starnavis was
easy pickings.
     
    ‘ Target is
neutralised!’ Ripley reported impassively.
     
    The daring of
the pilot intrigued him. His gutsy dive into Amora’s atmosphere
told him he was a risk taker and a born survivor. There was more
going on here than desperation, he