Intimidation by Aer-ki Jyr

Author:Aer-ki Jyr [Jyr, Aer-ki]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2013-01-01T16:00:00+00:00

7

The lizards didn’t take the bait. After the destroyer pulled them sufficiently far out away from the planet they turned off, leaving the wounded ship be and disappeared from Paul’s view again. The destroyer’s functioning camera saw them returning back down into the atmosphere, shrinking into tiny dots too small to track with the laser rangefinders. The slightly wounded cruiser remained on sensors for a while then it too disappeared as the range increased.

That told Paul a bit more about their battle strategy. Whereas some of their raids might have appeared to be reckless, he was beginning to suspect that they were indeed all calculated attacks. These two lizard cruisers had driven off the orbital bombardment, destroyed one of his cruisers, then retreated back into anonymity. They were sticking to a scripted battle plan, which meant they were more organized than ruthlessly aggressive.

With a whisk of keystrokes he sent out new orders. All those ships within his assembling armada with gravity drives capable of hover mode were directed to resume orbital bombardment position. The others were instructed to rendezvous with the Excalibur in a higher orbit, using the orbital drift to offset their engine limitations while holding position over the surface well in from the geosync point.

Positioning the ships took time, but the lizards didn’t interfere. Wherever their ambushing ships were positioned he didn’t know, but this resumed attack was either going to draw them out again or allow them to dislodge the surface ships, one way or another.

Once all 12 of his ships were aligned appropriately he issued the command to fire, first a ranging shot coordinating with the spotters on the ground, then a full hailstorm of metallic slugs coming down on the three grounded ships. Their shields didn’t hold up long, with multiple hull breaches appearing that tagged the ships on sensors, allowing for even more precise targeting.

Paul waited for the ambushers to arrive, and he wasn’t disappointed. In less than a minute one of the destroyers spotted one on approach and tagged it with a laser. As per his previously issued orders all bombardment ceased and the ships began to gain altitude while holding formation and gaining lateral speed using their ‘forward’ engines so as to keep all rail guns pointed behind them. The movement also forced the pursuing lizard ships to come at them from the same general direction, that being aft, rather than face an assault from multiple sides.

Meanwhile the waiting fleet above began diving down towards the lower orbit that the bombardment fleet was rising up to. In half an hour or so the two would meet up, battleship included after a short delay. Paul knew the lizards could track their approach and he wondered how far they would press the attack before retreating again…in which case he would have his fleet move back in and restart the surface bombardment.

Watching the position of his ships carefully he issued a few additional orders, mostly establishing lines of fire to the approaching ships. Three lizard

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