Fulcrum Gun (Savage Stars Book 4) by Anthony James

Author:Anthony James [James, Anthony]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2020-09-05T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fifteen

On the journey to Diyona, Recker ordered his crew to rest. For once, he allowed himself to go first and slept for six hours, which was enough to return him to a state of readiness.

Recker spent the thirty minutes after he’d risen in the mess area. Vance, Shadar and the others had been told of recent events via the internal comms, but some things were better said face-to-face. As usual, Recker’s words were greeted with stoic acceptance and he figured that the soldiers had faced so much already there was nothing he could tell them that would come as a surprise.

When the time came for him to return to the bridge, Recker stopped briefly at the replicator and had it vend him a tray of Meklon cuisine. After consideration, he asked one of the soldiers to provide instruction on how to obtain a cup of moffee. Just saying the word made him feel dirty.

“Press this and this, sir,” said Private Drawl. “Then, tap this symbol to increase the strength. Pushing this squiggle over here adds cream.”

Recker closed his eyes. “Meklon cream or normal cream?” He pushed the squiggle anyway.

“I’d say it tastes more like yoghurt, sir.”

A sip of the light brown fluid was enough to convince Recker that a collective madness was taking over the warship. He tipped the moffee away in disgust and stalked for the exit, carrying his tray with him. A final look around told him that Corporal Hendrix was elsewhere and he left the mess area.

Ten minutes later, after eating a tray of forgettable proteins, fats and carbohydrates which had been combined in such a way as to vaguely resemble grilled steak in some kind of greenish sauce, Recker spent a short time in discussion with Commander Aston before it was her turn off-shift.

“The Tri-Cannon’s two side guns each have a magazine with a capacity of six slugs,” she said. “The left-hand magazine now contains only five, since we shot one at the Lavorix heavy.”

“Anything else I should know?”

“The propulsion sections for the nukes are huge. They’re designed to lock from long range and an extended boost period will take them to a maximum velocity of about eighty thousand klicks per second.”

Recker was impressed. “That’s damned fast.”

“Yes, but they pay for it in manoeuvrability. The tech sheets indicate the Meklon built in rudimentary sensor deflection capabilities, but I don’t know how much testing they did.”

“A nuke won’t be much use in a dogfight,” said Recker. “There’s no oxygen for an explosion in space, so the only result will be a huge pulse of gamma radiation.”

“Perhaps the Lavorix don’t shield their warships against gamma rays.”

“That’s a flaw the Meklon would have discovered early, Commander.”

“You’d think. Anyway, I’m not sure the nukes will hit anything as agile as a warship. Not without a lot of luck.”

Recker gave the matter some thought. “The Tri-Cannon was originally meant to be deployed on the surface of a planet. If that planet had an oxygen-rich atmosphere, the warheads would explode and the results would be impressive as long as you weren’t in the centre of the blast.

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