"Yes, Hobbes. But surely that tremor wasn't good for the fissured hullalloy in the bow."
"No, Captain. It wasn't good at all for the fissured hullalloy in the bow."
She returned to her tasks, ignoring Zai's look of surprise at her tone. Hobbes had enough to do--coordinating the continuing repair, dispensing zero-gee to crews with heavy objects to move, making sure the Lynx didn't break up--without explaining the obvious to the captain. Another few hours of repair in freefall, and the ship would have accelerated without a hitch.
But orders were orders, and time was limited.
The Rix battlecruiser was accelerating at its maximum. Even assuming the vessel turned over, it would reach the object in just over seven hours. The Lynx couldn't sit around forever. As it was, the wounded frigate would be hard pressed to match velocities with the object before the battlecruiser arrived.
Hobbes wondered why the Rix had placed the object fifteen million klicks behind the battlecruiser, and without an escort. Had they assigned a hundred or so of the blackbody drones to it, the object would be able to defend itself.
She wondered grimly if the thing were already capable of fending off the Lynx. Its powers of alchemy were an unknown quantity. The now-animated object (Did it really contain the Rix mind, or was the captain crazy?) could change itself into practically any substance.
But how would it defend itself? Turn into a working starship? A giant fusion cannon? Or would it clam up, giving itself a carapace of hullalloy? Or even neutronium?
ExO Hobbes shook her head, correcting this last supposition. Neutronium was collapsed matter--a non-elemental substance--and so far all the object's transubstantiations had involved elements. There was no need to exaggerate its powers, Hobbes reminded herself. Data Analysis's current theory was that it could call arrangements of 193 virtual electrons into being, but not protons and neutrons. Therefore the object's substance, despite its chemical properties, would never have the mass, radioactivity, or magnetism of its true-matter analogs. The object's alchemy was a bit like that of an easy graviton generator: The particles it created were amazing at first, but upon closer examination they paled in comparison to the real thing.
Katherie Hobbes pushed these thoughts aside--speculations on the object were DA's concern--and refocused her attention on the Lynx's repair woes. The biggest drain on stores had been the singularity generator. The bigbang mechanism was in fine shape, but to replace the generator's shielding, armor had been stripped relentlessly from the rest of the frigate. The generator's jury-rigged shielding was sufficient to protect the crew, but lacked the necessary countermass to keep the hole in place under heavy gees. It took a lot of matter to keep a pocket universe from breaking free under the inertial stresses of maneuver. With every ton Frick added to the shield, Hobbes got another fraction of a gee in safe acceleration, but that armor had to be pulled from some other part of the ship. The frigate's fissured bow also needed reinforcement. Frick had made do with a patchwork of plates drawn from armored drones, combat stations, and even decompression bulkheads. Half the hardpoints on the ship--gun batteries, the main drive, and critical targets like sickbay--had been stripped of armor. Facing a half-assed volley of flockers or some other kinetic weapon, the Lynx would be swissed.
The executive officer wished fervently that she could call up a hundred tons of hullalloy from an alchemist of her own.
Hobbes simulated their approach to the object under the frigate's current configuration. At four gees for seven hours, they could slow down to make a first pass at a relative velocity of about three hundred kilometers per second, a respectable velocity for an attack. But if she could squeeze out another gee, they would come in neatly matched to the object. It would be invaluable for the Empire if they could study the thing before they destroyed it.
Ideally, Hobbes thought, she could get two more gees out of the wounded Lynx. Then the frigate would be able to match the six-gee maximum of the Rix craft, making an eventual escape at least feasible.
If Frick stripped every hardpoint on the ship, it might just be possible.
Hobbes rubbed her head, which had begun to spin around the combinatorial tree of possible tradeoffs. The mental focus that two hours of hypersleep had bestowed upon her was starting to slip again. She decided to ask the captain for advice.
The shipmaster's chair was empty. She raised Zai in synesthesia. His voice came back without visual, a sure sign that he was in the captain's observation blister. Zai had ordered the blister resurrected as soon as it could be after the battle was over. Over the last few hours, he had returned there again and again, staring into the void as he had before rejecting the blade of error.
Hobbes wondered if he were having second thoughts.
"Yes, Hobbes?"
"I think I can get us up to five gees, sir."
"Only five?"
Hobbes sighed quietly, glad that her expression was hidden from the captain.
"There's not enough heavy metal to keep the hole in place at higher accelerations, sir."
"What have we stripped?"
"Everything, sir. Hardpoints. Sickbay. Drones. As much of the main drive shielding as we can spare without another round of cancers."
There was a pause.
"What about the bridge?"
"Sir?" The battle bridge was the Lynx's hardest point, wrapped in a cocoon of hullalloy and structured neutronium. There was good reason for this precaution; the frigate had no chain-of-command provisions if the captain and all the firsts were killed.
The Empire didn't want ensigns running starships. Especially not this one.
"I believe there are forty tons of matter available in the bridge hardpoint," the captain said.
"Forty tons may be present, sir. But I'm not sure they are available."
The captain chuckled. "Give me six gees, Hobbes. Whatever it takes."
"Sir--"
"The object may devise any number of ways to attack us, Hobbes. But I have a feeling that it would be disinclined to use a kinetic weapon. Think about it."
Hobbes considered the captain's words. "Because it would have to expend its own mass to create a missile?"
"Yes, Hobbes. And true mass is the one thing it lacks. It may be able to create a diamond bullet, but however hard that diamond is, it will still have the density of a sugar cube. However you strip the Lynx, I think she'll be able to withstand a hail of sugar cubes. Even very hard ones."