Contagion (Ark Ship Book 2) by David Ryker & Sean McLachlan

Author:David Ryker & Sean McLachlan [Ryker, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Ryker's Rogues
Published: 2019-10-21T06:00:00+00:00

18

In battle you quickly learn who your friends are.

In this particular battle, my friends turned out to be Qiang, two Dri’kai I barely knew, and a Subine whose name I couldn’t pronounce.

Their names all showed up on my readout as their four Shadow Fighters moved out of the main battle and headed straight for me. Even reading the Subine name, I still couldn’t pronounce it.

Who cared? He was coming to save me.

As they got into a V formation, I sped toward them, ready to turn at the last second and take my place with them. I sure hoped to hell that they had some missiles left. Autocannon fire didn’t do much to those motherfuckers.

“Qiang, am I glad to see you, I—”

Qiang and his men flew right past me at an angle that took them away from the formation on my tail.

“What the hell?”

To say I felt let down would be an understatement.

That is, until I saw their target.

Another of the red spheres.

It glowed brightly like a beacon in the night, a score of small fighters adhering to its surface.

I banked and followed them, turning my dorsal and ventral turrets to aim behind me and throwing several long bursts at the pursuing formation.

The computer told me I scored several hits. I might as well have been shooting spitballs for all the good they did.

We honed in on the sphere. Several of those clam-shaped fighters detached themselves, ready to sacrifice their lives to protect the power supply. Once again I wondered if there were living, thinking pilots sitting inside those living ships. Were they really ready to die just for the extraterrestrial equivalent of an oil tanker? If they valued their own lives so little, that would explain why they didn’t value our lives at all.

To my upper right I saw more Centaurian fighters shearing off from the main fight to intercept us. We would get there first. Just barely.

A flurry of energy bursts from behind reminded me that one enemy formation was already on the scene. They had finally gotten close enough to me to start firing.

A ball of energy swept by with only a couple of meters to spare. My readouts flickered. A warning light came on, then disappeared.

“It is estimated that a near miss of closer than 50 centimeters would be enough to temporarily disrupt all ship’s systems,” my computer informed me.

“Fucking great,” I said through clenched teeth as I continued to fire my turrets backwards at them. The others in our formation followed suit.

I didn’t bother to ask how long “temporary” would be. Anything more than a second’s paralysis in this melee would be fatal.

A Centaurian fighter spun out, but the others kept on coming. One of the Dri’kai took a direct hit. His ship kept moving, the lack of friction in space keeping it at the same speed as before, but he had stopped firing and either his ship was dead or he was.

Or both.

Then we were on the sphere. Missiles flared from the wings of Qiang’s and the Subine’s ships.

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