Outcast (Star Force Series Book 10) by B. V. Larson & David VanDyke

Author:B. V. Larson & David VanDyke [VanDyke, David]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Fireball Press
Published: 2014-04-30T16:00:00+00:00

-23-

I watched four fresh Litho squadrons creep toward us on the display.

“They’re leading us this time,” I said. “Just a bit. Hedging. They haven’t figured out yet that the moon is our goal.”

“Can I pre-plot a firing solution?” Hansen asked.

I stared at the holotank until my eyes stung, and I had to blink. Their squadrons were almost in long range of our heaviest two lasers.

“Do you need much power for maneuvering?” I asked.

“It’s not possible to answer that, really. Flank speed with full repeller assistance will draw down our capacitors quickly, but the plots say we’ll beat them there if we push hard now. One thing to keep in mind is that the faster we go, the harder we’ll have to brake at the end. We can’t hit those oceans unless we’re moving dead slow.”

I wanted to pace back and forth on the deck, but in armor, I’d probably break something. “It all depends on what weapons they employ.” Speaking that thought aloud decided it for me. “Start firing at long range. We need to make them commit to their chosen tactic and reveal their plans to us.”

“Aye, sir. Mains, fire as they range,” Hansen told the beam gunners. Soon, the big lasers thrummed bolts of energy at the nearest fighters, knocking one out right away.

In response, the Litho fighters shot forward and began evading wildly, buying themselves precious minutes. At the longest range, the seconds or even fractions of seconds it took for sensors to see evading targets and the light of lasers to reach them meant a likely miss. The closer they got, however, the more accurate our fire would be.

The nearest squadron took a beating. It wasn’t until we’d destroyed twenty of them that the Lithos sprung their ploy on us. The squadron split into two. A group of the ships continued to evade violently like mad hornets but still headed in our direction. The rest of the ships seemed to tear themselves apart, with one chunk of each ship accelerating at breakneck speed toward us while the other portion stopped nearly dead in space and drifted. The sensors identified these threats as a new type of faster, nuclear missile. Because they were leading us and coming in at an angle, the brainbox calculations said they would intercept us if we let them.

“Target the missiles!” I said. “They’ll hit us first, and if they have nukes, they’ll kill us.”

Our gunners frantically plied their lasers, the two big mains and the twelve secondaries, and then finally the dozens of point-defense turrets. Unlike in previous engagements, these missiles were not slowly approaching us from behind, providing easy targets. Instead, they were on a head-to-head collision course. They corkscrewed and pinwheeled to dodge our beams, coming closer every second.

The group of fighters that had split apart from the missile-firing types had moved directly between us and the moon. Maybe they’d figured out that was our goal, even if they didn’t understand it. These enemy craft burst into a cloud of snowflakes, which formed a cloud between us and our goal.

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