The Rix craft responded with more sophisticated measures. Marx saw the shimmering flashes that were formations of flocker missiles being launched. Each flocker was no bigger than a human finger, but in phalanxes of a hundred or more they formed a hive entity of enormous versatility. They combined their resources to form a single sensor array, unified electronic defenses, and a hardy, democratic intelligence. And like all Rix military hardware, flockers evolved from battle to battle. In the First Incursion decades before, they had been observed coordinating tactics across huge distances. They grouped themselves in larger or smaller formations as the situation dictated, and individuals sacrificed themselves to protect other flockers of their group. Marx wondered how far they had progressed in the last eighty years. He had a feeling that the Lynx's crew was about to learn quite a bit on the subject.
However smart these new flockers were, though, the captain had made one point with which Marx had to agree. Cruder Imperial technology had an advantage at high velocities. Flockers and piloted drones used up a lot of their mass being clever, and cleverness didn't always pay off when a firefight took place in the blink of an eye. Sand was as dumb as a stone club, but its destructiveness increased with every kilometer per second.
The master pilot's craft told him that the flockers were hitting the first wavefront of sand. At relative rest, a dispersed cloud of sand was barely detectable. But plunging through it at one percent light speed transformed the cloud into a solid wall.
Marx urged his drone closer.
The view cleared quickly as he shot toward the battle's edge. His scout craft had an initial load of two-thirds reaction mass, and could accelerate at six hundred gees at 25 percent efficiency. If he pointed it in one direction and pushed it, the drone would make just under a quarter of the constant in about two hundred minutes, at which point it would be out of fuel. Although the drone lacked the elegance of Marx's beloved small craft, that one fact always amazed him: This machine, no bigger than a coffin, could make relativistic velocities. It had the power to push time.
Even in this train wreck of a battle, the scout's acceleration could make a difference. Marx had taken it out in front of the Imperial drone fleet and then turned it over. Now he was falling back toward the Lynx--almost pacing the incoming Rix drones. He'd burned a sixth of his reaction mass, but Marx was where he wanted to be: in the rolling center of the conflict.
He passed a few decelerating sandcaster drones; their cargoes emptied, they were pulling back.
Marx waited, drumming his fingers. There should be fireworks by now. Where was the wave of explosions showing the disintegration of the first flocker formations? Imperial sand posed little sensor interference--it was designed to be invisible. But no explosions showed in Marx's view, just acceleration and launch flares.
Were the flockers dying quietly, whittled down to nothing by the terrific friction of the sand?
Marx pushed in closer, seeking answers at the risk of his scout. A firefight had started between the larger advanced drones, who'd launched all their satellites and were now attacking each other directly. Rix beam weapons lit the void, igniting ambient sand like searchlights on a misty night. But Marks could see nothing that looked like a host of small craft disintegrating. He cut his craft's acceleration, trying to stay out of the fight.
Then Marx saw the column.
It glinted just for a moment in a radar reflection, four kilometers long. For a moment, he thought it was a single structure. Then the Al calculated its exact diameter and he realized what it was.
A single column of flockers, probably all that the battle cruiser had launched. More than five thousand of them, spaced less than a meter apart. His sensors told of the formation's incredible exactness: The whole four kilometers had the diameter of Marx's thumb.
He could see minute flashes from the front of the column now. Every few seconds the lead drone was being destroyed by sand. Then the next one took its place, and lasted a few more seconds.
But behind these sacrifices, the vast majority of the flockers were protected. They were like army ants crossing a river, the latter arrivals marching on the backs of the foremost after they had drowned. They were punching a very narrow hole into the wall of sand, and slipping through.
Marx had seen flockers spread themselves into a far-flung bestiary f shapes: radiating arms like paper fans or the struts of a parasol, toroids and lazy-eights that undulated with a standing wave, point-clouds buzzing with internal motion. But never had he seen anything so deviously simple. A sraight line.
And they were getting through.
Another image occurred to Marx. On his home planet lived a species of rat that could break down its own bones, funneling itself into a thin sack of jelly to climb through even the narrowest of cracks. He shuddered at the thought.
Marx's surprise cost him a vital moment of attention. He didn't immediately notice the ten flockers that burst from the line, having detected a transient gap in the sand between his scout craft and the column. By the time the master pilot reacted, the flockers were lined up on him at three thousand gees. Although they had less than a second of reaction mass at that acceleration, Marx's twisting evasive pattern came too late, his larger drone twisting like some slow-footed mastodon brought down by a pack of small predators. Synesthesia filled with lightning, sputtered for a moment, then dumped him into the calming cerulean wash of a dead signal.
He cursed. And cursed again.
Gathering himself, Jocim Marx signaled ExO Hobbes.
"I saw," Hobbes said. She'd been watching over his shoulder.
He bit his tongue as a wave of shame struck him. In a Class 7 trans-light drone on a scouting mission, and he'd been beaten by a handful of pilotless drones.
"They're getting through the sand!" he shouted. "The Lynx is--"
"We'll be briefing the captain in forty seconds," Hobbes interrupted. "I want you on the bridge in virtual."
Forty seconds? An eternity in this battle, a dozen opportunities lost to delay.
"And what should I do for forty seconds, Executive Officer?"
A dead pause: his audio muted as Hobbes attended to one of the other dozen conversations she was no doubt juggling. Then she was back.
"I suggest you reflect thankfully upon the fact that you fly remotes, Master Pilot. See you in thirty seconds."
Her voice left him alone in his blue, dead universe.
As he waited, Marx's fingers twitched, aching to fly again. Captain