第112页
"Starboard side hit," Will said. "Shields destroyed."
Fred moved his hand over his console and Bloodied Spirit appeared on the viewer. A gaping crater of blue hull armor smoldered white-hot. Crystalline electronics crackled, and severed plasma lines spewed fire. As the ship turned, Fred saw the hole was five decks across and had punched clean through to the port side.
"Main plasma pressure nil," Will reported. "Cycling to fuel cells. Slipspace capacitors holding charge. We have enough power to jump."
Linda looked to Will and then to Fred and nodded.
Fred watched as more alien drones crystallized into triangular lattices. Individually they were no match for even a Covenant single ship. Combined they packed enough punch to atomize Bloodied Spirit.
"We're not leaving," Fred muttered. "We're moving closer. Will, get me a jump solution on coordinates to twenty-seven degrees north latitude, one hundred eighteen east longitude, elevation fifteen thousand meters."
"On it," Will said, and he stared at the Covenant math as it steamed over his console.
"Linda, go evasive!" Fred ordered.
Her hand melted into the holographic controls and Bloodied Spirit pitched forward, accelerating, which made the hull ping with stress.
The tiny alien ships easily tracked their motion, surrounding them.
Covenant ships could perform pinpoint-acurate Slipspace
jumps. But could the weakened hull of Bloodied Spirit survive an instantaneous change of pressure from zero to over one kilogram per square centimeter? And that was just accounting for the atmosphere. Their velocity in air would exert tremendous forces on the ship's leading edges.
"Course plotted," Will announced. "Only a second-order approximation, but the jump system is accepting the numbers. I'll have higher-order terms in a minute."
"Belay that," Fred ordered. "Linda, give me all power to the engines. Slave Will's jump coordinates through the NAV system and give us a thirty-second countdown."
"Done," she said.
"Let's move, Blue Team," Fred told them. "We're abandoning ship."
It was a perfect day on the jungle-swathed peninsula. The sky was crystal cobalt dappled with cotton-ball altocumulus clouds. Insect buzz and bird caw abruptly ceased and a hundred redwing macaws took flight as the world exploded over their heads.
A fifteen-kilometer-long smear of condensed water vapor marred the air, and from it a fireball colored every cloud red— Bloodied Spirit shot forth like a bullet.
Sonic booms rippled off the destroyer's prow. Hexagonal armor plates fluttered and shed, revealing a skeletal frame. Static discharges arced from ship to clouds and back.
Inside Bloodied Spirit fires raged stem to stern and every deck glowed hot, trailing flames and an oily black smoke.
The ship rolled and the nose began to shudder until the entire length of the vessel wobbled.
The once-deadly Covenant ship was no more than a ballistic mass, a meteor, with only one possible trajectory: a parabola that intersected the planet's surface.