Distant Horizon (Backyard Starship Book 6) by J.N. Chaney & Terry Maggert

Author:J.N. Chaney & Terry Maggert [Chaney, J.N.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, azw3
Publisher: Variant Publications
Published: 2022-04-09T16:00:00+00:00

It’s much easier to destroy a ship than capture it.

Capturing a ship means a careful approach, intricate maneuvers, precision shooting, patience, and, above all, accepting a whole lot of risk. Destroying one means running it down and pounding the shit out of it.

And that’s what we did. As fast and nimble as the pirate’s ship was, it couldn’t outrun the Fafnir. Zeno and Rolis, and especially Icky—because drive and powerplant were her thing—had tuned the drive to an almost insane degree. It seemed like an awful lot of time and effort for a small performance boost, but we’d benefited from it before, and we really benefited from it now.

Running the Fafnir’s drive at one hundred and fifteen percent drove us forward in a way that must have made the pirates’ guts clench. When it became clear that they weren’t going to outrun us before they could twist away, they started broadcasting their desire to surrender.

I glanced at Perry. “Do we have to honor that?”

“By the strict letter of the relevant laws? Well, we warned them three times, and they disregarded them, clearly stating their intent to flee lawful authority. Now, most Peacemakers are going to want the bounties—”

“Perry, is that a yes or a no?”

“It’s a no.”

I nodded. “Torina, weapons-free.”

That authorized her to fire at anything hostile or not positively identified as neutral. She switched the Fafnir’s arsenal into free-firing mode without a word and opened fire with a quartet of missiles and a laser barrage, then, as the range closed, the mass-driver. The pirates fought back as hard as they could, but they weren’t geared to take on what amounted to a small warship. Their defense was acceleration and subterfuge, not armor and firepower. Their single point-defense battery took out two of our missiles, but the other two detonated in quick succession, boom-boom. And, unlike back at Wolf 424, these missiles weren’t set to detonate far enough away that they’d likely only damage their target. The searing blasts enveloped the pirates, and their acceleration dropped.

I saw the repeated flashes of laser hits, then the successive impact of mass-driver slugs. By the time we were close enough to even think about using the particle cannon, there was nothing left worth shooting at.

She turned to me. “I think I’m done.” Her voice was flat and emotionless. I knew how she felt. It was never pleasant to do something like that, but… thirty people. That’s how many the pirates had almost certainly killed. They wouldn’t get to kill number thirty-one.

I switched the comm to broadcast since we didn’t have a reliable comm-beam lock to Lucky.

“Lucky, how are things going with you?”

“Well, only a few of the pirates’ molecules are still sticking together. The rest are glowing gas. So, where to next?”

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