A Line in the Sand by Ryk Brown

Author:Ryk Brown [Brown, Ryk]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2020-10-09T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Cameron continued to pace, repeatedly passing between her command chair and the Aurora’s helm. It wasn’t a fast pace, but rather a slow, thoughtful stroll, as if she was contemplating all options.

The funny thing was that she had not always been this way. She had, in fact, paced on occasion, but not as frequently as in recent weeks. It made her wonder if she were losing her edge. She had commanded the Aurora for seven years, but that had been during peacetime. The only stress she experienced back then was either simulated or political.

She had commanded warships in combat before, and in far more stressful situations, but the stakes never seemed to lessen. Today, there were billions of lives at stake, and her one thought was why she didn’t think to bring the Nighthawks with her to begin with. She had been certain that the Aurora could deal with a handful of drones, but she had been wrong, and it was causing her to second-guess herself.

“Thirty minutes to terminal attack leg,” Lieutenant Yuati updated.

Cameron glared at him. She didn’t mean to; it was just a response. She was well aware of how much time they had left to locate and destroy those drones; she glanced at the time display on the view screen with each leg of her pacing. But the lieutenant was just doing his job. He had too little experience in his station to realize how attentive she was to such details.

The lieutenant got the message but chose not to respond, lest he draw additional ire from his superior.

Cameron changed her course, moving up to the communications console at the back of the bridge. “Anything?” she asked.

The young ensign at the comm-station looked up apologetically. “No, sir.”

* * *

“Anything, Les?” Talisha asked her wingman.

“Negative,” he replied over comms. “I don’t know how Teison and his crew do this kind of shit day in and day out.”

“How many jumps have we made so far?” another pilot wondered. “I’ve lost count.”

“It’s only been twenty-seven jumps,” Talisha replied. “Twenty-eight coming up.”

“Jesus,” the pilot of Red Three exclaimed.

“Come on,” Talisha said. “We do three times that many jumps on an average patrol.”

“Yeah, but we’re not actually hoping to find anything, so it’s not disappointment with every negative scan,” Les pointed out from Red Two.

“Less talk, more scanning,” Talisha joked as she prepared to jump again. “Leader to group; jump twenty-eight in five seconds.”

* * *

“Report!” General Pellot barked as he entered SilTek Security’s Defense Command Center.

“All defenses are charged and ready,” the weapons officer reported. “All missile launchers are loaded with two shield busters and two fragmenting interceptors each. Any of them can be launched with split-second notice.”

“Make sure all targeting systems are set to low orbit intercepts by default,” the general ordered his chief weapons officer. “If those drones get through, they’ll come out as close to the planet as possible, so we’re only going to get one shot at them.”

“Yes, sir!” the weapons officer acknowledged. “Recommend all launches start with shield busters, with the frag-interceptors launching five seconds after.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.