‘Drop back from me’, Jack instructed, ‘a hundred miles. I’m going to DIGRAW these bastards. You two follow me in and then hit the moon with the heavy stuff.’

‘Now that,’ said Coriolanus, ‘sounds suspiciously like a plan to me.’

‘Well, ain’t you the comedian?’

Nevertheless, the two other ships did drop back. DIGRAW might stand for ‘Directed Gravity Weapon’ but its effect was about as directional as a leaky flame-thrower. Jack now lay safely within the central area of DIGRAW propagation, so effectively wore an asbestos suit, but the other two ships could easily get burnt if too close.

The swarm of rail-gun missiles now reached the lens-ships. Two of the ships exploded, while the others tried to veer away. Another took numerous hits and just ended up tumbling through vacuum.

One hour later, Haruspex’s missiles found the remaining two lens-ships, but by then they had long ceased to be a problem to the Centurions.

Charging the DIGRAW took Jack all that time and still continued, which meant power remained low to his rail-guns, which launched most of his material weapons. Firing missiles without an initial rail-gun boost would be pointless, since the enemy’s defensive weapons would have plenty of time to react to them. The moon was now the province of the other two Centurions. Jack’s task lay directly ahead.

A million miles out, Jack detected rail-gun missiles heading towards him, and did the only thing possible in the circumstances: he shut down power to the DIGRAW capacitor and projected a hardfield out ahead of his nose. NEJ shuddered as near-c projectiles impacted on the hardfield, turning instantly to pure energy. Three strikes and that hardfield generator burnt out. Jack instantly onlined another generator and took three more hits. The second generator filled the inside of NEJ with smoke. A fourth hit tore it from its housing and hurled it down the length of NEJ inside, spraying molten metal everywhere. Jack surmised that any human passengers aboard would definitely not have survived that.

No more rail-gun projectiles now—instead explosive missiles curved into an intercept course. Jack ignored them, once again feeding power to the DIGRAW. Three hundred miles from the ammonite spiral ships he finally activated the weapon.