Motherload: Stardrifter Book 01 by David Collins-Rivera

Author:David Collins-Rivera [Collins-Rivera, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781549676932
Amazon: 1549676938
Publisher: Independently published
Published: 2017-09-05T07:00:00+00:00

"How's Sally?" I asked as I worked.

"I don't know. She doesn't look good, Ejoq. I gave her something for shock, but there might be other problems. I need help here."

"We all need help here. Do what you can. Where are those incomings right now, Bayern?"

"Uh...ETA...looks like six minutes. They're moving really fast, and still gaining. Can you shoot them down?"

"I'm gonna try, but our ordinance isn't rated for antimissile defense. That's what the charpacs are for, and they're offline. These may be nukes too, in which case they'll blow when they're within 100 meters. Plus, they'll be going so fast by then, they'll be able to splatter us, with or without a warhead. What's PONTE doing?"

"Looks like they've changed course a little, and are outward bound under full drive power. Their flight path...er..."

"What is it? Don't waste time!"

"Well...if I didn't know better, I'd say PONTE was getting ready for starjump. That doesn't make sense, though – they're still inside the gravity shadow. There's a good chance of a misjump if they go now."

"They want out of here in a big way. This whole thing's a setup!"

"What do you mean?"

"Never mind. How are engines?"

"Looks like...yes! Online! Do we run for it?"

"Negative! The incomings are too fast. Just watch the sensors, and power up. Be ready for evasives on my call!"

I'd been talking as I brought up my tactical boards and fire control interface, and began running them through a quickie diag. The gloves were in the way, so I spent a full minute disconnecting them and sending them off; by this point we had so much unsecured stuff floating around, I didn't care about it. I was acting and reacting, but I had no illusions.

Not anymore.

I tweaked one of our two outgoings towards a point I thought PONTE might want to reach before risking her jump. The other one I throttled back for ten seconds, then brought up it's propellant burn again, along with a tiny course correction. That put the first missile in front of PONTE's projected path, and the other one right on target but delayed just enough to give them time to make a rash decision: if the risk of a misjump was higher further in, then that's exactly where I wanted them to try it.

"Ejoq...I'm reading a graviton discharge from PONTE," Bayern said. "They're jumping. I just don't get it...it's way too early."

"They don't have a choice. What are the odds of a misjump from there?"

"I have no idea but...okay, here's the spike. Good jump or bad, they're gone."

So that was that.

I spared the vindictive space of a heartbeat hoping PONTE and her crew had been torn apart at the molecular level and scattered across years of time and parsecs of space, as was theorized to happen in catastrophic misjumps. Then I had the incomings on a hard lock, and was gratified to see a close formation, even after all that distance. I rotated DAME MINNIE's forward missile packs in both tubes, and fired simultaneously. I held my breath for a count of eleven, then hit the auto destruct.

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