PeterWatts_Blindsight

Peter Watts 298 Blindsight
Sarasti's undead eyes stared glassy and uncomprehending. His
fingers jerked on the handpad.
U DISLKE ORDRS FRM MCHNES. HAPPIER THS WAY.
I let it strap me in and close the lid. I lay there in the dark,
feeling my body lurch and sway as the shuttle slid into its launch
slot. I withstood the sudden silence as the docking clamps let go,
the jerk of acceleration that spat me hard into the vacuum, the
ongoing thrust that pushed against my chest like a soft mountain.
Around me the shuttle trembled in the throes of a burn that far
exceeded its normative specs.
My inlays came back online. Suddenly I could see outside if I
wanted. I could see what was happening behind me.
I chose not to, deliberately and fervently, and looked anyway.
Theseus was dwindling by then, even on tactical. She listed
down the well, wobbling toward some enemy rendezvous that must
have been intentional, some last-second maneuver to get her
payload as close to target as possible. Rorschach rose to meet her,
its gnarled spiky arms uncoiling, spreading as if in anticipation of
an embrace. But it was the backdrop, not the players, that stole the
tableau: the face of Big Ben roiling in my rearview, a seething
cyclonic backdrop filling the window. Magnetic contours wound
spring-tight on the overlay; Rorschach was drawing all of Ben's
magnetosphere around itself like a bright swirling cloak, twisting it
into a concentrated knot that grew and brightened and bulged
outward...
Like a torsion flare from an L-class dwarf, my commander had
said once, but we should see anything big enough to generate that
effect and the sky's dark on that bearing. IAU calls it a statistical
artefact.
As, in fact, it had been. An impact splash perhaps, or the bright
brief bellow of some great energy source rebooting after a million
years of dormancy. Much like this one: a solar flare, with no sun
beneath it. A magnetic cannon ten thousand times stronger than
nature gave it any right to be.
Both sides drew their weapons. I don't know which fired first, or
even if it mattered: how many tonnes of antimatter would it take to
match something that could squeeze the power of a sun from a gas