Last Man Standing (Rod Quasar Book 1) by Nick Noble

Author:Nick Noble [Noble, Nick]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: anonymous
Published: 2023-04-23T16:00:00+00:00

sixteen

“It’s almost ready!” Mia reported excitedly.

“What is?” I demanded, tearing my hand from the flight stick to wipe away some sweat from my brow as I tried to keep track of all four enemy fighters that were hunting us. That momentary lapse in concentration cost me dearly.

Four blaster cannons, one on each wing of the deadly fighters that suddenly rocketed into position behind us, ripped through our rear shuttle’s shields in seconds. Plasma melted its way through armor plating and punched into the Trident’s hull, causing a bright bloom of heat inside the shuttle’s cockpit.

The shuttle completely stalled its forward acceleration and vanished in a fiery explosion.

With it went a third of the siren gold I’d gone to all that trouble retrieving.

Two fighters sped through the resulting cloud of debris, splashing their ship’s hulls with molten gold as they came screaming in towards our remaining two shuttles.

“Fuckers! That was my sister’s!” Octavia roared, firing three white beams of light back at the pursuing craft. The first shots missed by the slimmest of margins, causing one of the fighters to flinch to the side.

A gargantuan beam of scarlet energy lanced through the fighter; evaporating the nimble craft in the blink of an eye and continuing off into space, drilling into a distant asteroid and leaving behind a gleaming hole all the way through its core.

The other fighter broke off, leaving us with a momentary reprieve.

“What was that?” Octavia asked, her voice a bit panicky.

“That was an industrial-grade mining laser. It works quite similarly to how Rod’s beam-torch does but on a much larger scale. It’s how the MoonKraken extracted resources from moons, asteroids, and comets,” Mia replied cheerfully.

You mean how it murdered Pluto, I thought sourly.

As I wove my way towards the back end of the cursed vessel–flipping it off as I skimmed along its rusted bulk–the three remaining scavenger fighters appeared behind us once more. The one that had been splashed by molten gold was in the lead.

My eyes narrowed. I may not be able to avenge Pluto today, but I could sure as hell get payback for all that siren gold we’d just lost. I began what slight evasive maneuvers I could manage at this speed and Octavia started firing back.

“You controlling those mining lasers, Mia?”

“Yes and no. This old beast has an AI of its own, it’s what’s been straining my processors. I have no ability to aim any of the lasers, but I can trigger a few of them in whatever direction they are already pointing for two-second bursts at a time before the automatic safeties shut down my access. The MoonKraken’s AI is fighting me tooth and nail for every ounce of control though, so I estimate between three and seven chances before it locks me out of the system permanently.”

Three to seven? That’s quite a range, I thought to myself. “Alright. Don’t overclock your servers trying to push for seven. If you can give me four, do it. Overlay the firing solutions for whichever lasers you have access to and label them on my HUD so I can tell you which ones to activate.

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