Mercurial: Ace Evans Book 5 (Ace Evans Series) by Toby Neighbors

Author:Toby Neighbors [Neighbors, Toby]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Mythic Adventure Publishing, LLC
Published: 2020-08-27T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Loman could feel the stress eating away at him. Four ships from other corporate defense militaries were hovering nearby. Two were close to arriving, but it was a third ship, a Montabon Industries vessel, still ten minutes away, that made him nervous. He couldn’t say why. Once the Drachma had gotten clear of the Zen Tech vessels guarding the space tunnels, Loman had sent word to the leadership of every group. He hoped he could end the fighting before things got really out of hand.

The fighting up to that point had been skirmishes, and it appeared that the only real casualty was the Ahzco flagship, the Collateral. Loman had word that the ship had limped from the sector, fighting off the Zen Tech forces near the space tunnel in the process. And while their scans had picked up no sign of the wreckage, Loman found it hard to believe that Colonel Chastain would run, or that she wouldn’t send him word. He had checked and rechecked his various messaging accounts. There was no word from Colonel Chastain, and no sign of the armada of Ahzco ships.

He had considered just leaving the other military groups to fight things out among themselves. If his ships had left the system, it made sense that he should too. A lone ship, with no backup, was vulnerable. But he didn’t feel he could leave until he shared what he knew about Lynn Faulk’s conspiracy. Any group that lost resources in the Askerria Sector was vulnerable to her growing army under the banner of Sigma Services.

“Commander,” the radar operator announced. “The Montabon ship is slowing down.”

“Is that unusual?” he asked, his stomach tightening.

“They’re still seventy kilometers out,” the radar operator said.

“She’s a big ship,” the navigator said. “But there’s no need for her creep in the last fifty kilometers.”

Loman feared the Montabon ship wasn’t merely being cautious. He turned to the fire control operator.

“What’s the range on their weapons?”

The FC officer swiped through a few screens on his display, then read the information.

“Unless they’ve updated their weapons, sir, they carry ship-to-ship torpedoes with a range of one hundred and fifty kilometers. Their laser batteries are effective at fifty kilometers.”

“Alright, let’s be careful, but I want you to bring our ship between them and the other vessels who have responded to our call for a parley,” Loman said. “And raise the deflector shields on the exposed side of our ship only.”

“They’ll register it,” the FC officer said. “There’s no way to hide those shields. Scanners will get a read on them the moment they go active.”

“We’ve called for a parley,” Loman said. “We aren’t powering up weapons, just protecting ourselves. If raising our deflector screens makes someone nervous, so be it.”

The truth was Loman was nervous. The Drachma and the other ships that had responded to his call were vulnerable. They had moved into close proximity, and while the Montabon ship-to-ship torpedoes had a greater range, they were also susceptible to a ship’s point-defense system. Lasers were not.

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