Read Online Independent Flight (Aquarius Ascendant) by K.L. Tremaine - Free Book Online
Authors: K.L. Tremaine
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with missiles.”
Veronica chewed her knuckle for a handful of seconds. “I see what you mean, Chief. Sensors, inform Saitova in 204 that she has a rescue op, those coordinates. I don’t think she has the energy curve to meet Arrant Knave before she escapes into deep space anyway.”
Ver onica anxiously watched the vector of her corvette change direction, curving slightly away from the target. But as long as they kept him inside the energy envelope neatly displayed on their HUD, he wouldn’t be able to escape her before she could meet him. Long fingers wrapped and re-wrapped her control stick.
“ Negative, Captain, she doesn’t,” confirmed Natasha.
“ But we do.”
The corvette swept within eight kilometers of the debris field , and Veronica wrenched the stick to the side, smoothly rolling Two-oh-Seven onto her new heading. Yeboah dropped a buoy as they passed.
“ Now give me a hundred and ten percent,” said Veronica, wrenching the corvette back onto its pursuit vector and hoping that the divergence hadn’t cost them too much time. The computer said they had enough acceleration advantage, but they were cutting it awfully close.
Minutes ticked by without a response, as Dog Two-oh-Seven’s net drew tight around the fleeing freighter. Now she wasn’t merely losing ground less quickly, but actually gaining on the ship. As time dragged on, Veronica anxiously shifted sensor modes back and forth, seeing if she could get a clearer view of the other ship’s condition, perhaps if she could see why they were fleeing…
“ Ready to engage, Captain,” reported Leblanc. They were close enough to fire a warning shot without the torpedo expending its entire energy load before it even got to the target. Their oblique approach angle meant that they wouldn’t have to program a missile popup maneuver to get it around the quarry’s drive field.
“ Mister Bowman–one missile across her nose. Detonate at six thousand, repeat, six triple zero kilometers ahead of target, sixteen kilometers to port.”
Bowman thumbed back the shield from his trigger and flattened it into the grip of his joystick. Below and aft, the “bomb bay” of the ship flicked open and her missile rack kicked a single Star Streak missile clear of the hull. Unlike its larger cousins carried on full-sized starships, this was a single warhead with a tiny single-stage warp drive and a sophisticated seek-track-intercept package directly attached. As soon as it crossed the safe threshold, that drive kicked to life, creating an eddy in spacetime that catapulted it ahead at an acceleration that no manned craft could match, compensator or not. The torpedo’s sophisticated tracker sneered at the best effort of Arrant Knave ’s civilian-grade jammer, using it as a beacon to refine its firing solution. In less than a minute, a harsh point of nuclear light bloomed a mere six thousand klicks ahead and just aport of the charging freighter.
The freighter ’s captain must have had a cat’s reflexes. It lurched to starboard in the beginning of an evasive turn, but its inertia carried it through the blast anyway. It heaved as it overran the nuclear explosion at almost sixty thousand kilometers per second. Unlike a warship, the freighter had no point defenses worth speaking of, and its navigational shields and a pair of the thinnest hulls permitted by law were all that protected its contents from the depths of space. A direct hit would have instantly destroyed a vessel so fragile, but this shot had been carefully calculated, detonating far enough away for a mere nav shield to deflect most of it.
“ Acceleration dropping, Ma’am, I think we got her attention as she went through the explosion. Either that or we got a piece of her drive.”
“ Good, Guns.” Veronica toggled the intership again. “ Arrant Knave , this is the Interstellar Navy. You are fleeing from a lawful challenge and we have fired a warning shot across your bow. Our next shot will be into
Veronica chewed her knuckle for a handful of seconds. “I see what you mean, Chief. Sensors, inform Saitova in 204 that she has a rescue op, those coordinates. I don’t think she has the energy curve to meet Arrant Knave before she escapes into deep space anyway.”
Ver onica anxiously watched the vector of her corvette change direction, curving slightly away from the target. But as long as they kept him inside the energy envelope neatly displayed on their HUD, he wouldn’t be able to escape her before she could meet him. Long fingers wrapped and re-wrapped her control stick.
“ Negative, Captain, she doesn’t,” confirmed Natasha.
“ But we do.”
The corvette swept within eight kilometers of the debris field , and Veronica wrenched the stick to the side, smoothly rolling Two-oh-Seven onto her new heading. Yeboah dropped a buoy as they passed.
“ Now give me a hundred and ten percent,” said Veronica, wrenching the corvette back onto its pursuit vector and hoping that the divergence hadn’t cost them too much time. The computer said they had enough acceleration advantage, but they were cutting it awfully close.
Minutes ticked by without a response, as Dog Two-oh-Seven’s net drew tight around the fleeing freighter. Now she wasn’t merely losing ground less quickly, but actually gaining on the ship. As time dragged on, Veronica anxiously shifted sensor modes back and forth, seeing if she could get a clearer view of the other ship’s condition, perhaps if she could see why they were fleeing…
“ Ready to engage, Captain,” reported Leblanc. They were close enough to fire a warning shot without the torpedo expending its entire energy load before it even got to the target. Their oblique approach angle meant that they wouldn’t have to program a missile popup maneuver to get it around the quarry’s drive field.
“ Mister Bowman–one missile across her nose. Detonate at six thousand, repeat, six triple zero kilometers ahead of target, sixteen kilometers to port.”
Bowman thumbed back the shield from his trigger and flattened it into the grip of his joystick. Below and aft, the “bomb bay” of the ship flicked open and her missile rack kicked a single Star Streak missile clear of the hull. Unlike its larger cousins carried on full-sized starships, this was a single warhead with a tiny single-stage warp drive and a sophisticated seek-track-intercept package directly attached. As soon as it crossed the safe threshold, that drive kicked to life, creating an eddy in spacetime that catapulted it ahead at an acceleration that no manned craft could match, compensator or not. The torpedo’s sophisticated tracker sneered at the best effort of Arrant Knave ’s civilian-grade jammer, using it as a beacon to refine its firing solution. In less than a minute, a harsh point of nuclear light bloomed a mere six thousand klicks ahead and just aport of the charging freighter.
The freighter ’s captain must have had a cat’s reflexes. It lurched to starboard in the beginning of an evasive turn, but its inertia carried it through the blast anyway. It heaved as it overran the nuclear explosion at almost sixty thousand kilometers per second. Unlike a warship, the freighter had no point defenses worth speaking of, and its navigational shields and a pair of the thinnest hulls permitted by law were all that protected its contents from the depths of space. A direct hit would have instantly destroyed a vessel so fragile, but this shot had been carefully calculated, detonating far enough away for a mere nav shield to deflect most of it.
“ Acceleration dropping, Ma’am, I think we got her attention as she went through the explosion. Either that or we got a piece of her drive.”
“ Good, Guns.” Veronica toggled the intership again. “ Arrant Knave , this is the Interstellar Navy. You are fleeing from a lawful challenge and we have fired a warning shot across your bow. Our next shot will be into
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