The main watching viewports of the Aethelgard’s command bridge turned from golden light into pitch-black hard shell in less than three seconds.
Tens of thousands of Coronal Leech-Wasps and armored Void Myrmidons, each between two and five meters in length, dropped upon the corvette like a swarm of starving locusts landing upon an exposed crop. Their bodies were armored in matte-black, heat-drawing hard shell that absorbed the blinding solar radiance, their multi-jointed barbed legs clamping onto the ship’s silver-steel hull plating with terrifying clockwork grip. Hundreds of long, serrated drain tube needles began to hammer against the outer seals of the radiator vanes, attempting to puncture the liquid gallium coolant lines and drink the ship’s heat blood.
The sound inside the halls was horrifying. An ear-splitting, metal scratching and screeching that echoed through every inner wall, as if millions of iron claws were tearing at the vessel’s skin.
“They’re swarming the main radiator banks!” Chief Szabo’s voice roared through the intercom, with the clatter of air-powered tools as he desperately heavy the internal emergency valves. “Cooling loop smooth speed is dropping by two percent every ten seconds! The little bastards are chewing through the ablative baked-clay coating! If they sever the gallium pipe hubs, the whole engine room will flash-boil!”
