Sword of Mars by Glynn Stewart

Author:Glynn Stewart [Stewart, Glynn]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Faolan's Pen Publishing
Published: 2019-06-10T16:00:00+00:00

The first few minutes were the scariest. For about ten minutes, they were still close enough to Starlight that they could be in trouble if Thatch opened fire.

Thankfully, they were almost a full light-second away from the freighter when the deadline ran out. Edward Thatch might not have wanted to shoot down his ex-wife, but he certainly didn’t hesitate once his time limit was hit.

An Andreas-class cruiser carried one hundred missile launchers. Damien probably would only have fired a third of them at most, but he supposed they had an update on the fate of the gunships that had tangled with Starlight in Arsenault.

Thatch launched a full salvo. A hundred missiles blazed into space, closing the distance at ten thousand gravities.

Starlight was running on autopilot, but Maata had turned on the automated defense protocols. RFLAM turrets came to life under computer control as the missiles charged in. Lasers swept space, catching some missiles.

Three. Maybe four. Possibly even five—it was impossible to tell, given the scale of the swarm.

Even five would have been a miracle for the computers, but it wouldn’t have changed anything. Over ninety one-gigaton antimatter warheads detonated as one, and Starlight ceased to exist.

“Stealth spell is holding,” he murmured. “We’re a hole in space and they don’t see us.”

“And the bastard didn’t leave enough behind for it to be worth investigating,” Maata said. “God damn it. I always knew duty came first for him, even more than for me, but still!”

“You don’t expect to see your ex vaporize a ship you’re presumably standing on,” Niska agreed. “On the other hand, I find it interesting that he vaporized Starlight quite so thoroughly.”

“What?” Maata demanded.

“Like you said, there isn’t enough left for it to be worth investigating, and he’s already slowing down to return to orbit,” the spy told her. “By utterly vaporizing Starlight and turning back, he’s making our sneaking away significantly easier.”

“You think he saw us get out?” she snapped.

“I doubt it,” Damien interjected. “But he might have seen something that was enough to make him suspicious…and not enough that he had to do anything about it.”

“So, you’re saying he overkilled on killing me in case I had escaped, so I could keep escaping?” Maata asked. She didn’t sound convinced.

To be fair, neither was Damien.

“I’m saying it’s possible,” he conceded. “You know the man better than any of us, apparently. All I can say is that it looks like we’re clear. Give Ancestor an hour or so to move further away, and I’ll ping LaMonte for a rendezvous point.

“I hate to lose a good ship, Captain Maata, but Starlight served us well. She got us clear.”

Damien wasn’t really one to anthropomorphize ships, but if ships did have souls…well, Starlight had to be happy her crew were safe.

Damien certainly was.

“What happens now that we don’t have Niska’s accesses to get us on-planet?” Romanov asked.

“We’ll have to take a look at what we’ve got in terms of fake shuttle beacons aboard Rhapsody,” Damien said. “We can get her pretty close in, but her usual courier guise isn’t going to cut it here.

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