Flames of War (Adventures of the Starship Satori Book 13) by Kevin Mclaughlin

Author:Kevin Mclaughlin [Mclaughlin, Kevin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2024-03-12T00:00:00+00:00

TWENTY-FOUR

The Independence didn’t slow down even a single kilometer per hour. Dan knew their best chance of surviving this mess was to accelerate out of it, not slow down. He didn’t know how large the Bug fleet was, but they had to have dumped a significant percentage of it right in this spot.

“DeCosta, how long until we can jump out of here?” Dan called. His tone, at least, was calm. His fingers gripping the arms of his chair put the lie to that, though.

He didn’t blame himself, just as he hadn’t blamed his crew for freezing a couple of seconds when the enemy fleet came into view. There were just that many ships out there. Enough that he didn’t want to look at the precise count, but Dan called up the reading from the ship’s scanners anyway.

Only one of the massive planet-killing dreadnoughts, which was a good thing. One was bad enough! They’d never seen the Bugs attack with more than one of those ships. For all he knew, the Bugs might only have one of them. But it was enough. More than enough.

That ship could destroy entire planets with its main gun. If it got close enough to Earth, they could power up their weapon and obliterate his world.

“Thirty seconds, sir,” DeCosta replied.

That was arguably about ten more seconds than they had. Alongside the big ship were forty smaller escorts of various sizes. Two of those were almost as large as the dreadnought, but were carrier vessels instead, designed as refuel points for smaller vessels to quickly charge up their wormhole drives.

The one thing the enemy didn’t seem to have was fighter craft. Dan had pondered that for a long while. It was possible the Bugs simply couldn’t afford the loss of life inherent in sending out small, lightly armored craft. They had few crew on each of their vessels. The large ship Charline had captured had more robots on board for repair and refit than it did actual living crew.

“Brace for impact,” Dan called. The enemy vessels were lining up to unload all their guns on his ship.

“You want us to launch fighters, sir?” DeCosta asked.

He considered the idea and instantly discarded it. Any fighters they sent out there would be on a suicide mission. TheIndie couldn’t stay in this place. It wouldn’t survive a second round of shots from these foes, even assuming it could survive one. The fighters might indeed take some of the heat off their ship. The Bugs seemed to hate and maybe even fear the small craft. But he wasn’t willing to callously sacrifice his crew like that. Not if he didn’t have to.

“No, not yet. I’ve got another idea. Helm, full emergency thrust. I want the engines burning with everything they’ve got!”

“Sir?” The lieutenant piloting the ship glanced over to make sure he’d heard the order correctly.

“Now, if you please,” Dan said. “Right down their throats!”

He didn’t need to ask a third time. The Indie nimbly jumped forward, flying even faster toward the enemy.

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