The Lost Fleet: Into the Darkness: A Slaver Wars Novel by Raymond L. Weil

Author:Raymond L. Weil [Weil, Raymond L.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Publisher: Raymond L. Weil Publications LLC
Published: 2015-08-12T21:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twelve

Jeremy let out a deep breath of frustration. It would take another two months for all the damage to the Distant Horizon to be repaired, requiring the use of two of their four fleet repair ships for the entire time period. The exploration dreadnought had suffered much more damage than originally believed. Looking at one of the main viewscreens on the front wall of the Command Center, Jeremy could see the ship in orbit above Gaia currently docked to the Clan Protector. Two fleet repair ships hovered nearby, and he could see the bright flashes of welding arcs and torches as the damaged parts of the hull were cut away. New hull plates would be built in the shipyard, since the battle armor on the exploration dreadnought was thicker than that of the other warships.

“Clarissa says, for a brief moment, they all expected to die,” Ariel said from Jeremy’s side.

The AI was in her standard dark blue uniform without insignias. Her trim, lithe figure was that of a woman in her early twenties.

Jeremy reached forward on his command console and magnified the view until the Distant Horizon filled the screen. On the hull of the battered ship, dozens of spider robots were busy at work, repairing minor breaches and scorched areas where the hull had been exposed to high temperatures from the Simulins’ energy weapons and antimatter missiles.

“There’s a lot of interior damage to the bow,” Ariel continued, as she examined the full damage report. “Any lesser ship would have been destroyed from the destruction ravaged upon the vessel by the Simulins. All her bow weapons will need repairing or rebuilding. An energy beam hit the stern in the sublight engines’ area. The engines weren’t damaged, but many of the control linkages and power couplings were either smashed or burned away.”

“Eighty-seven dead with another ninety-four injured,” Jeremy said.

He didn’t know what he would have done if either Kelsey or Katie had been hurt. They’d been back for several weeks now, and it still pained him to think about the lives lost and how close they had come to losing the ship.

“They’re going to try to put an ion cannon on the bow of the ship,” Ariel added, as she studied the weapons to be installed.

Jeremy felt horrible about the danger he’d put the exploration dreadnought in. “Some of the Alton scientists and technicians believe they can make it work, after studying the blueprints Andram turned over to them,” Jeremy said. “They just don’t have what we need to create a miniaturized version, like the defense globes the Distant Horizon originally had. I would love to have several hundred of those in the defense grid around Gaia.”

“Those defense globes allowed the exploration dreadnought to survive until we got there,” Commander Kyla Malen commented, stepping closer to Jeremy and Ariel. “The ion beams they generated played havoc with the Simulins’ energy shields.”

“Grayseth and Daelthon want to place some ion cannons upon the Clan Protector as well,” Ariel added. She focused her dark eyes upon Kyla.

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