Lady Mac swept past the sunscoop in a shallow curving trajectory, keeping a constant twenty kilometres away from the fusion plume. Her masers fired at the five storage globes, each beam piercing clean through the radiant thermal dissipation material. Fissures of darkness streaked out from the impact points. The beams began to chew round in a tight spiral, widening the holes. Whatever the casing material was, its physical resistance to the microwaves was minimal. Ninety per cent of their energy went directly into the massive reservoir of hydrocarbon fluid stored inside. It started boiling immediately, belching out clouds of hot vapour. Pressure began to build up inside the globes, sending vast jets of blue-grey gas roaring out through the gashes.

“Delta-V change,” Liol reported. “The punctures are creating thrust. Christ, Josh, it works.”

“Thank you. Sarha, keep those lasers centred, I want to heat as much fluid as we can. Stand by, reducing thrust. Let’s try and avoid coming back for a second pass.”

“Captain,” Beaulieu called. “The sunscoop drive is switching off.”

Lady Mac ’s combat sensor clusters tracked the sunscoop, showing Joshua the fusion plume dwindling away. “Shit, did we do that?”

“Negative,” Sarha said. “My shooting’s not that bad. Drive systems are intact.”

“Liol, give me a trajectory update please.”

“They’ve got a smart captain. Without the fusion drive, the gas plumes aren’t enough to kill their velocity. They’re going to hit the knot. Impact in four minutes.”

“Damn it.” Joshua immediately began plotting a new vector, taking Lady Mac round for another pass. The starship began accelerating at four gees. He had to be careful their own plume didn’t wash across the sunside webs.

“Sunscoop gas vents are reducing,” Ashly said. “The fluid must be cooling again. That thermal dissipation mechanism of theirs is bloody good, Joshua. It’s worth giving them the ZTT drive in exchange for that.”

Lady Mac was racing back towards the sunscoop. Sarha fired the masers again, to be rewarded by the sight of the gas jets thickening. The glare of the storage globes fluoresced them a blazing silver-white as they emerged from the holes; then they shaded down along their length until their diffuse tails shimmered cerise.

Two lasers struck Lady Macbeth , fired from somewhere on the diskcity’s sunside. Joshua rolled the ship fast as their thermal protection foam flash-evaporated, scoring long black lines across the fuselage.

“No penetration,” Beaulieu called. “We can handle this energy level for eight minutes. Thermal reservoirs will be saturated after that.”

“Acknowledged.” Joshua accelerated the starship at eight gees, heading back down to the sunside surface. Everyone tensed against the crushing gravity as the sensors showed them the red and gold corrugations hurtling towards them. Lady Mac flattened out, flying parallel to the diskcity, sixty metres from the tops of the web tubes. Her fusion drive cut out, leaving them in freefall.

“Lasers lost us,” Beaulieu said. “They can’t track us at this altitude.”

Behind them the sunscoop continued on its approach towards the knot. The five storage globes were glaring furiously as they tried to throw off the energy imparted by Lady Mac ’s masers during the second pass. Success was measured by the way the gas jets were slowly shrinking.

“It’s going to be close,” Liol said. “But I think we’ve done it.”

Joshua followed the flight computer’s plot. Watching the sunscoop’s relative velocity winding down, comparing the rate against the declining gas vents. Flakes of grey slush had started to clot the ever-reducing gas jets. But it was going to work, he told himself. The figures were tight, but the ship would reach zero relative velocity sixty kilometres above the diskcity.

Datavised alarms suddenly glared across his neuroiconic display. Lady Mac was under attack again. Energy impacts bloomed against the fuselage, ablating patches of foam in spurts of soot.

“Lasers again,” Beaulieu said. “They can’t stay on us for more than two or three seconds at a time, but there’s a lot of them. They’re going for a coordinated saturation. Strikes are almost constant.”

“Quantook-LOU warned us the dominions would try to stop us leaving before we handed over the data,” Samuel said. “They must think that’s what we’re doing.”

Joshua checked their vector. At their current velocity they’d fly over the rim in another hundred seconds. The course was taking them a long way round from Anthi-CL. He datavised the flight computer for a tactical analysis. “The old girl can handle this level of fire. We don’t need to jump clean yet.”

Lady Mac ’s sensors were still tracking the sunscoop ship. It was sixty-five kilometres away from the sunside, with its approach velocity down to ten metres per second. The five jets from its storage globes were still active, though the rents weren’t squirting gas any more. It was mainly liquid and slush pouring out now. At sixty-three kilometres, its velocity was two metres a second.

The vector reversed at sixty-one kilometres. For a moment the sunscoop was stationary, then it began to creep away from the diskcity again at an almost unmeasurable velocity. By now the flow from the storage globes was reduced to a splutter of mushy fluid dribbling away into space.

Its fusion drive ignited.

Joshua groaned in dismay as Lady Mac ’s flight computer translated the sensor image into pure data, providing him with the figures for the plasma’s temperature, luminosity, and flow rate. This time the sunscoop was using its full thrust. The tip of the plume seared its way downwards as the giant ship began to accelerate away. There was never going to be time for the separation distance to increase beyond the range of the plasma spear.

The drive flame hammered against the crown of the knot, instantly vaporizing every tube and foil sheet it touched. A blast wave of superheated gas roared out through the tangle of tubes inside the knot, rupturing web junctions and sending shredded tube fragments whirling deeper into the tangle. Slow structural ripples flexed their way across the sunside, radiating sinuously out from the knot. Tubes cracked open around junctions and reinforcement ribs. Hundreds of fan-shaped fountains of circulation fluid and atmospheric gas howled out into space across an area fifty kilometres across, producing a stormy pellicle of crimson mist which hung over the surface. Its centre was energized to azure blue by the fusion plume from the retreating sunscoop, expanding in a perfectly symmetrical ring, swelling and fading as it raced away across the sunside.

The devastated Mosdva dominions around the knot retaliated. Every laser that remained functional was fired at the sunscoop. Small petals of darkness opened across the glaring storage globes, distending. Sprays of molten metal drifted out from the drive nozzle, followed by boiling globules of fluid. The plasma flame began to waver as it was contaminated by streaks of impurity burning emerald and turquoise.

The thick shadows slithering over the storage globes merged together into funereal blemishes until the light was completely extinguished. They shattered in unison, belching out thick wobbling rivers of hydrocarbon fluid. It began to evaporate under the red giant’s unrelenting radiance, producing a surge of oily fog. A huge patch of shade crept over the sunside, defacing its usual gleaming hue to a dusky claret.

“Christ,” Liol gasped. “Did we do that?”

“No,” Dahybi said. “But they’ll blame us anyway.”

“Ione?” Joshua asked. “Are you all right?” He concentrated on the general communication link. The view through the serjeants’ sensors was shaking badly. The effect of the sunscoop’s plasma strike against Lalarin-MG was the same as an earthquake. Tyrathca breeders were scattered across the plaza, struggling to regain their footing. The soldiers had closed in on the three Mosdva, prodding them with their big maser rifles.