Disarmament by Aer-ki Jyr

Author:Aer-ki Jyr [Jyr, Aer-ki]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2012-09-22T16:00:00+00:00

It took a long time for the corvettes to match speed with the Chinese carrier, then there was the matter of eating up the distance in between without overshooting themselves. As they patiently pursued, the lighter cutters began to catch up, but they were also a great distance behind, with the navigational calculations suggesting the corvettes would catch up first if the carrier didn’t add any more thrust into the mix.

It didn’t, which was odd to Voss. Either the ship had expended all of its fuel or it didn’t think that it could escape the pursuit…which it couldn’t, but if you were going to be killed wouldn’t you want to stretch out your remaining time left?

The Turok’s captain got his answer just before the first of the corvettes came within weapons range in the form of a text transmission from the carrier, in English, signaling their surrender.

Voss raised an eyebrow. “Reopen the comm line to the Orion.”

A few moments later Captain Minsk’s face appeared on Voss’s communication screen. “Yes, Captain?”

“Is Paul still there? I need a quick answer.”

“I’m here,” the Archon replied, appearing behind Minsk on the screen. The captain moved aside to give him his seat.

“We just received a transmission from the carrier, signaling their surrender,” Voss reported. “What are your orders?”

“Accept. I’ll get a cargo ship with security on an intercept course. Request they slow down with whatever fuel they have left.”

“You’re sending one of our ships to pick them up?” Voss asked. His prior orders had been to have the Chinese civilian fleet pick up their own people.

“I don’t want to wait for them,” Paul said resolutely. “I want that ship disposed of as soon as possible.”

“Define ‘disposed of.’”

Paul chewed on his lower lip as he thought. “No need to make another mess of debris. I think we’ve done enough of that to send the proper message. I’ll send a recovery crew to bring it into one of our shipyards for dismantling.”

“So we just have to babysit and wait for reinforcements?” Voss asked, wanting to clarify.

“Pretty much. Three ships should do it,” he answered, guessing to the Captain’s line of thought. “We’ll give you a reprised target list later, depending on how we plan to proceed. Until then, redeploy what you need for the shipyard and scatter the rest in standard patrol routes.”

“And the Mjolnir?”

“Split deployments. We shouldn’t need a combined force again for some time.”

“Yes, sir,” Voss acknowledged with a satisfied nod. “Then I’m guessing Harper will be wanting his ships back.”

“Take what you need, then reshuffle the rest. You’ve got mission priority,” Paul ordered just before disappearing from the screen.

Voss leaned back in his chair, studying his navigational, ship, and radar screens, getting a feel for the position of everything in orbit. With the Chinese military fleet now out of the picture one might have thought that they had the situation under control, but Voss knew better. The Chinese civilian fleet was still running dark, and with their nuclear arsenal all it would take was one missile launch out of a retrofitted cargo bay to destroy one of their orbital facilities.

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