Iron Sunrise Read Online Free Page B
"Ship! What's our sequence entry status?"
The robotically smooth voice of the autopilot rolled across the bridge.
"Kerberos unit and final passenger boarding notified two minutes ago and counting. Critical path elements in place. Entry status green, no exceptions raised—"
"Then commence launch cycle immediately."
"Aye. Launch cycle commencing. Station power and utility disconnect proceeding. Station mass transfer disconnect proceeding. Boarding pier disconnect proceeding. Main engine spin-up engaged, station one. Live cargo systems spin-down engaged, station two."
"I hate live cargo," Gertrude muttered. "Live cargo spin-down notification going out." Fingers tapped invisible cells in the air in front of her face. "Hub lift interlocks to safe—"
Mannheim stared at the complex web of dependencies that hovered over the blank wall of the bridge, a meter in front of his nose. Slowly, red nodes blinked to green as the huge starship prepared to cast free of the station. It was supposed to be the last ship ever to sail from this port. From time to time, he prodded a station glyph and spoke quietly to whoever's voice answered from the thin air: loadmasters and supercargo and immigration control officers and civil polizei, Jack in the drive damage control center and Rudi in the crow's nest. Once he even talked to Traffic Control. The station's robot minders plodded on imperturbably, unaware that the end of their labor was in sight, coursing toward them on an expanding shock front of radiation-driven plasma. An hour went by. Someone invisible placed a mug of coffee at his right hand, and he drank, carried on talking and watching and occasionally cursing in a quiet voice, and drank again and it was cold.
Finally, the ship was ready to depart.
IMPACT: T plus 8 minutes—1.5 hours
Moscow system died at the speed of light, death rippling outward on a tsunami of radiation.
First to die were the weather satellites, close in on the star, watching for solar flares and prominences. Buoys built to track breezes were ripped adrift by the tornado blast of the artificially induced nova, not so much disabled as evaporated, adding their stripped nuclei to the boiling fury of the iron sunrise.
Seconds later the radiation pulse melted the huge, flimsy solar collectors that glided in stately orbit half an astronomical unit out, feeding power to antimatter generators a hundred kilometers in diameter. Robot factories unattended by humans passed unmourned and unnoticed. The gamma pulse shed by their tons of stored antihydrogen added a candle glow to the hurricane.
Eight minutes after detonation, the radiation front reached the innermost human habitat in the system: the world called Moscow. The neutrino flux was high enough to deliver a rapidly lethal radiation dose even after traveling right through the planet. The nightside fluoresced, atmosphere glowing dimly against the unbearably bright background. The gamma pulse, close behind it, flashed the dayside atmosphere to plasma and slammed it into the already melting rock. Supersonic tornadoes rippled around the daylight terminator, scouring the surface down to bedrock.
Half an hour into the nova, the process of planetary disintegration was well under way. On the dayside, Moscow's atmospheric pressure dropped drastically, and the primary gaseous constituents were hydrogen and oxygen radicals stripped from the boiling fog that had been the boreal ocean. Cloud top temperatures were already in the thousands of degrees, while Mach waves rippled through the turgid troposphere on the nightside, crushing houses like matchwood kindling to become pyres for the dying bodies of their occupants. The night receded before a ghastly daylight, the sullen glare of an exploding star reflected off the planet's own comet trail of air. To an observer at ground level Moscow Prime would have covered half the sky, a magnesium flare of radiant energy that would still be bright enough to burn out eyeballs tens of
The robotically smooth voice of the autopilot rolled across the bridge.
"Kerberos unit and final passenger boarding notified two minutes ago and counting. Critical path elements in place. Entry status green, no exceptions raised—"
"Then commence launch cycle immediately."
"Aye. Launch cycle commencing. Station power and utility disconnect proceeding. Station mass transfer disconnect proceeding. Boarding pier disconnect proceeding. Main engine spin-up engaged, station one. Live cargo systems spin-down engaged, station two."
"I hate live cargo," Gertrude muttered. "Live cargo spin-down notification going out." Fingers tapped invisible cells in the air in front of her face. "Hub lift interlocks to safe—"
Mannheim stared at the complex web of dependencies that hovered over the blank wall of the bridge, a meter in front of his nose. Slowly, red nodes blinked to green as the huge starship prepared to cast free of the station. It was supposed to be the last ship ever to sail from this port. From time to time, he prodded a station glyph and spoke quietly to whoever's voice answered from the thin air: loadmasters and supercargo and immigration control officers and civil polizei, Jack in the drive damage control center and Rudi in the crow's nest. Once he even talked to Traffic Control. The station's robot minders plodded on imperturbably, unaware that the end of their labor was in sight, coursing toward them on an expanding shock front of radiation-driven plasma. An hour went by. Someone invisible placed a mug of coffee at his right hand, and he drank, carried on talking and watching and occasionally cursing in a quiet voice, and drank again and it was cold.
Finally, the ship was ready to depart.
IMPACT: T plus 8 minutes—1.5 hours
Moscow system died at the speed of light, death rippling outward on a tsunami of radiation.
First to die were the weather satellites, close in on the star, watching for solar flares and prominences. Buoys built to track breezes were ripped adrift by the tornado blast of the artificially induced nova, not so much disabled as evaporated, adding their stripped nuclei to the boiling fury of the iron sunrise.
Seconds later the radiation pulse melted the huge, flimsy solar collectors that glided in stately orbit half an astronomical unit out, feeding power to antimatter generators a hundred kilometers in diameter. Robot factories unattended by humans passed unmourned and unnoticed. The gamma pulse shed by their tons of stored antihydrogen added a candle glow to the hurricane.
Eight minutes after detonation, the radiation front reached the innermost human habitat in the system: the world called Moscow. The neutrino flux was high enough to deliver a rapidly lethal radiation dose even after traveling right through the planet. The nightside fluoresced, atmosphere glowing dimly against the unbearably bright background. The gamma pulse, close behind it, flashed the dayside atmosphere to plasma and slammed it into the already melting rock. Supersonic tornadoes rippled around the daylight terminator, scouring the surface down to bedrock.
Half an hour into the nova, the process of planetary disintegration was well under way. On the dayside, Moscow's atmospheric pressure dropped drastically, and the primary gaseous constituents were hydrogen and oxygen radicals stripped from the boiling fog that had been the boreal ocean. Cloud top temperatures were already in the thousands of degrees, while Mach waves rippled through the turgid troposphere on the nightside, crushing houses like matchwood kindling to become pyres for the dying bodies of their occupants. The night receded before a ghastly daylight, the sullen glare of an exploding star reflected off the planet's own comet trail of air. To an observer at ground level Moscow Prime would have covered half the sky, a magnesium flare of radiant energy that would still be bright enough to burn out eyeballs tens of
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