All for All (Cast Adrift, #3) by Christopher G. Nuttall

Author:Christopher G. Nuttall
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Nuttall, Space Marines, Space War, Galactic Empires, Interstellar War
Publisher: Christopher G. Nuttall
Published: 2022-10-17T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-Two

ESS Dauntless, P-33 System

Naomi felt as if she’d been punched in the belly. Twice. She hadn’t felt so bad since she’d gotten into a fight as a teenage girl and her assailants had held her down and pounded her chest until the teacher had pulled them off and sent them to be punished. She’d needed weeks to recover ... she swallowed hard, trying to convince her body the feeling was nothing more than her imagination. The transit had been rough, as if the crossroads hadn’t been tuned properly, but it hadn’t done any real damage. They’d made it through the crossroads before it started to collapse back into nothingness.

They must be less vulnerable to transit shock than us, she thought. Her staff looked as if they’d been through the wringer and even Observer Salix looked uncomfortable. Or they haven’t been able to work the bugs out of the system yet.

“Tactical report,” she snapped. “Where are we?”

Olson coughed as he bent over his console. “Roughly ten thousand kilometres from our planned arrival coordinates,” he said. “I’m feeding the data to Crossroads so they can refine their calculations.”

“Later,” Naomi said. Ten thousand kilometres was nothing, on an interplanetary scale. She would be more concerned if they’d appeared right next to the crossroad defences, or within the planet’s atmosphere. “Fleet status?”

“No major damage, some minor,” Olson said. “A handful of officers and crew were rendered comatose by transit shock. They’ve been relieved and dispatched to sickbay.”

Naomi allowed herself a moment of relief. It could have been worse. A lot worse. They’d work on their calculations later, now that they had some hard data to slot in beside the simulations, but right now it wasn’t a problem. She leaned forward as more and more data flowed into the sensors. The Pashtali had to be reeling. They’d towed nearly every battlestation in the system to the crossroads, only to have her fleet drop out of multispace between them and the planet. Her lips twitched. They’d done it to a human fleet – twice. They should have considered the possibility of someone doing the same to them.

“Transit a formal demand for surrender,” she ordered. The Pashtali ships were already bringing their drives online, readying themselves to plunge into the crossroads. They would have to flash past her squadrons, before her ships recovered from the shock and opened fire, but they could probably do it. She wasn’t too concerned. There was no way to keep the Pashtali from signalling for help. “And then prepare to advance on the crossroads.”

She scowled. Ideally, she would have preferred to leave the defenders alone. The battlestations weren’t dangerous unless her fleet ventured into range. Leaving them to die on the vine would have suited her. But she only had one Crossroads and the techs had reminded her, time and time again, that there was no way to know how many times she could use the alien tech before it burnt itself out. The sooner she cleared the crossroads, the sooner

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