The Reality Dysfunction (Night's Dawn, #1)

by Peter F. Hamilton

The second clash of combat wasps took place over a wider front. Sensors and processors on both sides were overloaded and confused by the vivid nebula and its wild energy efflux. New explosions were splattered against the background of destruction. Some of the attacking combat wasps pierced the defensive cordon. A third volley of defenders left the Beezling. Six thousand kilometres away, another nuclear-fuelled nebula burst into existence as the Chengho fought off its solitary hunter’s swarm of combat wasps. The Gombari wasn’t so fortunate. Its antimatter-confinement chambers were shattered by the incoming weapons. Beezling’s sensor filters engaged instantly as an ephemeral star ignited. Kyle Prager lost his datavised visualization across half of the universe. He never saw the blackhawk which attacked the frigate wrenching open a wormhole interstice and vanish within, fleeing the lethal sleet of radiation its attack had liberated. The combat wasp closing on Beezling at forty-six gees analysed the formation of the robot defenders approaching it. Missiles and ECM pods raced away, fighting a fluid battle of evasion and deception for over a tenth of a second. Then the attacker was through, a single defender left between it and the starship, moving to intercept, but slowly, the defender had only just left its launch cradle, accelerating at barely twenty gees. Situation displays flipped into Kyle Prager’s mind. The blackhawks’ positions, their trajectories. Combat wasp performanc...