Anomalous Thrust_Book 4 of the 'Sliding Void' Series of Scifi Books_The Trader Star Ship Wars by Stephen Hunt

Author:Stephen Hunt [Hunt, Stephen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science fiction, science fiction adventure
Goodreads: 27879464
Publisher: Green Nebula
Published: 2015-11-21T00:00:00+00:00

Skrat found it hard to keep his attention off their two pursuers. So far the Gravity Rose was holding steady the distance between her and the pair of destroyers. Every second when Ashten’s icy corpse crept towards them was a second nearer to their slingshot escape. That’s it, old boy, you just keep on feeling superior, driving us towards your blasted minefield. Because boosting back towards the race and the Rattle rather than running out-system is about as insane a manoeuvre as anyone could make. But Skrat wasn’t proud. If acting insane allowed him to escape with his life - and keep the ship intact - well, it wouldn’t be the first time.

His board started redlining and for a terrifying second Skrat thought that they’d run into the minefield earlier than projected. Contact flash trailed in the wake of their simulated passage like fairy dust. Sadly, this also wasn’t the first time that sliding void into a wall of the jolly brown stuff was what happened while Skrat was busy making other plans.

‘By Jove, what was that contact?’ asked Skrat.

Polter inspected his instruments. ‘I believe it was a sensor buoy.’

Skrat briefly considered targeting it with rail-guns, but the Gravity Rose was moving so fast the buoy was already well behind them. And where there’s one sensor buoy, there’s bound to be more. The bally devices worked most effectively strung out in relay lines. ‘Damn! It’s going to be squawking our exact telemetry back to those two destroyers.’

With a specific read on the Rose’s course, there was a distinct danger the two destroyers would work out what Skrat was planning with his little gravity slingshot game.

Polter voiced the question playing at the back of Skrat’s mind. ‘Why place a sensor line out here? The regime already have this side of their system completely walled off with a minefield?’

‘Something of value, then,’ said Skrat. But what? ‘I’m going to realign our main array off the pursuers and take a peek at that icy sphere we’re boosting for. There must be something interesting on Ashten for them to leave a tripwire strung out this far from a jump point.’

There was. Skrat spotted the tell-tale signs of an orbital hook and depot locked geosynchronously above what had to be an automated mining station dirt-side. The sensors gave him an analysis of what was being extracted. ‘It’s a mining operation. Helium-3 frozen below the regolith layer - large concentrations.’

Just the kind of high-value resource scavengers liked to jump into a system and raid. Enough energy to fuel the Ryals’ tokamak reactors for centuries. Unfortunately, the Gravity Rose had run straight into the tripwire left to detect foreign claim-jumping scoundrels. Skrat re-tasked the sensor array back at the two missile ships snapping at their stern. ‘If you permit me to observe, Polter, I think we might be rumbled.’

‘Where is our blessed luck? I count eight missile launches,’ said Polter. ‘Four from each destroyer.’

‘Is that all we’re worth? A measly eight ship killers?’

‘One wicked warhead will be more than adequate to free our souls from our mortal hosts,’ said Polter.

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