The light-projected projection of the inner solar system on the Aethelgard’s bridge looked like a shattered glass window. Over forty-five thousand distinct moving contact tracks were burning inward across the empty pocket, each one representing an iron-nickel asteroid between fifty meters and eight miles in width. Drawn by the massive dark-gravity pulses of the Continental Eclipse Sun-Eater, the asteroid swarm was speeding up down the sun’s steep gravity well at over sixty miles per second.
“They’re using the Sun’s own gravity as a catapult,” Chief Szabo cursed, pounding his fist against the tactical plotting table. “Look at the trajectories! The Sun-Eater doesn’t care if half those rocks miss us and plunge into the photosphere. The sheer volume of moving mass entering this sector will disrupt the magnetic walls of our crucible basin! If the basin collapses, the surrounding solar prominence will wash over us in an uncontrolled tidal wave!”
Arthur stood perfectly still, his sight magnifying glass magnifying the leading edge of the asteroid swarm. Through the amber lenses, he could see that these were not ordinary, inert space rocks. Swarming across the pitted surfaces of the largest asteroids were clusters of black, hard-shelled bio-anchors. The Sun-Eater had seeded the swarm with thousands of cold-matter thruster nodules, actively steering the iron mountains to converge directly upon the Aethelgard’s exact sky-high map points.
