Nix crouched instinctively, barely glancing back at his shipmate as the machine-gun fire trailed away over his head. He took in the scene through powered combat goggles, shifting from the cool green of low-light amplification to infrared as he quickly scanned his own ship for damage. Intense heat, streaming in livid waves from the stern of the cruiser, marked the shellfire impact of just a few seconds ago. The mammoth bulk of the enemy ship filled his visual field. The barrels of the big gun turret glowed a dim, satanic red. The battery was tracking for another shot.

Nix quickly stripped out the ceramic rounds he had been issued, substituting a prohibited load of depleted uranium penetrators from a pouch in his black body armor. The sea surface heaved, throwing him to the deck as a twin fifty-cal on the other ship ripped another line of tracers through the space where he had just been standing. Ricochets and small chips of carbon-composite sheeting struck his body armor as he slammed painfully down on his butt. Lines of data from biochip inserts in his neck and torso filled a pop-up window in his combat goggles.

Nix switched off the feed with a tap to a button on the side of the goggles.

As he hefted the G4 to his shoulder and squeezed the grip, another set of schematics and numbers scrolled over his visual field: targeting data. He didn’t need it though. He fixed his sights on the rear turret of the enemy warship and fired off the entire strip of penetrators. The gun’s electronic systems dispatched all eighteen rounds before Nix even felt the recoil. He didn’t hear them strike the steel plating a hundred meters away. But bright flares of impact heat and a shower of sparks from the disintegrating propellant casings marked the point of entry. The depleted uranium spikes carved through the angled plating to tear up the innards of the eight-inch mount.

The big gun froze dead for half a second, then his rounds set off the shells that had been ready to fire. The entire stern of the cruiser shuddered and flames erupted from an entry hatch on the side of the turret. Nix rolled back through the hatchway, grabbing his partner and hauling the deadweight away to relative safety. His goggles recorded the whole event, and now he had to get to Captain Anderson. She wasn’t going to believe what he had just seen.

Peter Evans cursed and ducked back inside the Astoria’s bridge, slipping and falling into an unspeakable pile of offal, bone splinters, and torn cloth. Shuddering and dry heaving with a deep revulsion, he attempted to regain his feet only to slip and fall again and again. He might have given in to despair and just lain there had he not been grabbed from behind and hauled out of the slaughterhouse.