Jormungandr's Venom by Kal Spriggs

Author:Kal Spriggs [Spriggs, Kal]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781941620212
Publisher: Henchman Press
Published: 2019-02-08T05:00:00+00:00

Fenris had understood Mel's plan and he'd even considered it, but it brought too many random factors for him to feel comfortable with suggesting it. He could go along with it, but that weight, the weight of responsibility, was hers.

Because this was a basic move, one that had many counters. The enemy formation that they headed for could shift in those final few seconds. Their apparent disorder could be a ruse. The other enemy formations might anticipate their maneuver and intercept them.

Fenris had come to realize, however, that one thing that Mel did better than anyone on the crew, better, even, than himself, was to come to a decision based upon even limited information. That was why she commanded the ship. There was a term, an ancient human phrase, “Paralysis through Analysis.” It was an attribute in which a commander or staff sought every greater, ever more detailed information to come to a decision, and in the process, they never reached one. Fenris could analyze more information in a few seconds than any dozen of humans could in several hours, yet he was just as vulnerable to that downfall, if not more so. He had already run through dozens, hundreds of simulations of this set of maneuvers, and thousands of other permutations as well. Yet he hadn't been certain which course to take.

Mel had made the decision. She'd made it without the benefit of running through the various simulations. She'd given the order based off of gut instinct and intuition. Fenris trusted her in that. Because sometimes, even a bad order at the right time was better than no orders at all.

They flashed across the distance at relative speeds so fast that even Fenris could barely register the passage. Fenris corkscrewed upwards, vectored to pass the upper side of the enemy formation, even as he opened fire with four warp missiles aimed at the center of the enemy.

At this range, those missiles launched and engaged so fast that the enemy ships didn't have time to engage them or even effectively dodge. If the formation had been conducting an evasive pattern, there was a good chance they would have missed. But they weren't, the ships had come in at almost a straight line.

Three of those four warp missiles struck true, their matter-antimatter warheads detonating against the ship's warp fields, just as the enemy formation devolved into chaos. Ships spun out of the formation, several of them passed dangerously close, their drives flaring.

Fenris flashed past the confusion, the multi-megaton battlecruiser slicing past without the enemy even firing a shot in reply. Had they been better coordinated, they could have reversed course and pursued, extending the engagement time by a few seconds, giving them time to acquire and fire on him, but they didn't.

Fenris accelerated into open space, his pursuers left behind.

***

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