The extinction ray flickered, sputtered, and died.
Deprived of its deep-space channels and having exhausted its main cold-matter reserves in the failed bombardment, the Continental Eclipse Sun-Eater began to suffer total internal heat backwash. Across its five-thousand-half-mile back shell, the seven land-wide eye pits began to smoke with dark, acrid vapor as the multi-million-degree sun-fire star-fire began to seep into the fractured cold-matter lenses. The titan thrashed wildly, its forty thousand drain tube roots curling in agony as it prepared to dive deep into the solar heat-rising zone to hide beneath the dense granules of the star.
“It’s retreating!” Kira yelled from the helm, her fingers flying across the sensor console. “The titan is decoupling its outer anchor roots! It’s sinking into the lower chromosphere! In three minutes, it will submerge beneath the heat-rising threshold where our ship’s hull can’t follow!”
Arthur stood at the outside console, his face lit up by the flashing red indicator of the ship’s heat shield monitor:
CRITICAL ALERT: ABLATIVE HULL MARGIN AT 8%. THERMAL CREEP Coming soon.
“Szabo, open the main ventral deployment bay,” Arthur commanded, his voice ringing with total, steady conviction.
“The ventral bay?!” Szabo shouted back through the comms. “Vance, if I open the ventral doors while we’re parked over the chromospheric fault, the heat backwash will burn up the lower cargo hold!”
