Crimson Tempest (Survival Wars Book 1) by Anthony James

Author:Anthony James [James, Anthony]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, azw3
Published: 2017-09-18T06:00:00+00:00

Chapter Seventeen

“Have we got every damned Ghast warship in this sector looking for us?” said Duggan, his voice loud with anger. “Things must be worse than we’ve been told if they can spare a battleship way out here!”

“Double the fun,” said Chainer to himself.

“I think we’re beyond the range of their particle beam now,” said McGlashan.

“Two Ghast warships hunting us in orbit cuts our chances right down,” said Duggan. “It’s only a matter of time.”

“How fast are the Oblivions?” asked Chainer. “I’ve never seen one outside of a holoscreen before.”

“They’re plenty fast,” said Breeze. “One of our scouts pinged one at Light-N a few years ago. There were no complaints about funding cuts in the fission drive engineering division after that. Money can’t buy you time, though. Never could and it’s come far too late for us to catch up anytime soon.”

“Yeah, the story of mankind’s destruction,” said Chainer with a snort.

“I want no more talk of that, Lieutenant!” barked Duggan. “We can’t allow ourselves to give in to fear. We’ll beat these bastards, no matter what it takes!”

“Aye, sir,” said Chainer quietly.

Duggan continued to stare at his HUD. “We need to do something about that Cadaveron,” he said. “It’s the weakest of the two enemy warships.”

“They’ll be out of sensor range in a few seconds, sir,” said Chainer.

“Can you read what the enemy vessel did when it reached the cloud of shock drones?” he asked.

“Yes, sir. They did what they normally do and crashed right through the middle of them. They’ll have picked up a few dents, but they’ll have saved a few seconds by not changing course.”

“And they know they’re shock drones and not hull mines because the drones actively transmit, while the mines do not.”

“Yes, and the mines fly at a known speed. They’re not sophisticated enough to fool the Ghasts’ sensors.”

“Indeed,” said Duggan. He called up his weapon’s panel. “Twelve nukes onboard. Big ones, like you said.”

“Long range and slow.”

“With big old, programmable boosters,” Duggan added. He activated two of the missiles and created a speed and trajectory for them. “We need to keep that Cadaveron on our heels,” he said.

“They’re still following,” said Chainer. “They’ll break off once we get too far ahead.”

Duggan pulled back on the control stick, reducing the Crimson’s speed gradually until it was travelling fractionally slower than the Cadaveron. “Let’s keep them interested,” he said.

“What’s the plan? You’re up to something,” said McGlashan. “I know when you’re up to something.”

Duggan didn’t respond at once. His mind worked feverishly as he calculated a course that would keep the Cadaveron in a straight line behind them. He made a subtle change to their trajectory that would let the enemy close the distance between them. “On my word, I want you to release the drones,” he said.

“Understood,” said McGlashan, staring at him with wide eyes. She’d guessed what was coming.

“Release,” said Duggan. A moment later, he confirmed with the Crimson’s mainframe that he really did want it to fire two additional weapons from the ship’s arsenal.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.