The Privateer: The Flight Engineer, Volume II by James Doohan & S. M. Stirling

Author:James Doohan & S. M. Stirling [Doohan, James ]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science Fiction
ISBN: 0-671-57832-4
Publisher: Baen Publishing Enterprises
Published: 2000-09-07T04:00:00+00:00

"They're trying to trace with the close-in systems," Knott said quietly. He forced his hand not to close on the armrest of his couch.

Sutton's in charge, he reminded himself—that was the curse of commanding a carrier; you flew the Speeds like a hawk from a falconer's glove, and then it was up to them. If things closed to ship-to-ship engagement ranges, something had gone badly wrong.

He leaned forward, monitoring . . .

Sutton's AI informed him that the Mollie gunners were trying to target him. "Looks like the Mollies have gone to the eyeball Mark 1, people. Look alive out there!"

For himself he directed his AI to follow the pulse of the Mollie that was aiming for him. The mechanical quasi-mind drew markers and parallax across his vision.

Now!

The Speed bucked around him as the massive particle gun fired, atoms stripped to their shells and accelerated to near-light velocity. Light flared in the distance, the system translating invisible energies for his eyes. Particles were bending and warping around the destroyer's shields, sucking the energy from the weapon that could open their ship like a trout under a fisherman's knife . . . but straining their capacities to the limit, and the flare would leave the ship blind for crucial seconds.

"I've got him, I've got him!" a soprano voice carolled.

For an instant a ragged patch of the viewscreen before him went blank as the system protected his eyes from the savage radiation flare. No need to transform that into the visual spectrum. A matter-antimatter reaction on that scale broadcast over the entire range.

"Destroyer target one eliminated," the AI said clinically, unaffected by the mingled horror and exultation of two-hundred-odd lives and thousands of tons of starship snuffed out in less time than a thought.

"Squadron leader, I have a solution on Bogey Three! Say again, I have a confirmed solution!"

"That's negative on Bogey Three!" Sutton snapped reluctantly. "We're supposed to let one go; that's the one who had a secondary in his magazines. He hasn't fired a thing except his close-in defense battery since. Paste him with energy weapons, as if you were out of munitions, harry him to the jump point."

"Yessir." The same reluctance was in the pilot's voice. It went against nature for a Speed to give up a target. . . .

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