Petron by Blaze Ward

Author:Blaze Ward [Ward, Blaze]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781644700860
Publisher: Knotted Road Press
Published: 2020-01-23T00:08:01.164033+00:00

CHAPTER XXXVI

IN THE TWELFTH YEAR OF JESSICA KELLER, QUEEN OF THE PIRATES: JUNE THE NINTH AT PETRON

YAN STOOD in the window bay of the graving lock and watched workmen in suits swarm over the ship docked here for repair and upgrade.

“Kid, I’ll give you points for craziness, but it’s only going to work once,” Pops murmured, standing beside him and speaking with a hint of admiration in his voice, like a proud father.

“Only has to work once, Pops,” Yan replied. “Too damned expensive to use it more than the one time, anyway. Plus, hopefully by winterfall, we’ll have something better in store for those bastards. Sailing time home to get a bigger hammer will factor in heavily, if they decide to come back for more trouble.”

“So what made you decide to go with Primary beams, anyway?” Pops grunted and stared at the work.

In the dock just beyond the window, a heavy freighter, one of the big jobbies that normally carried gigatons of grain between worlds, was being refit as an armed civilian vessel. Even Yan wouldn’t dare call it a warship, but you had to build those monsters tough in order to haul so much mass around. It wasn’t like you had boxes that would support their own weight, so the bulkheads had to make up for it. That made them tough.

And it would only work once, sure, because the next time an enemy fleet saw a ship this size moving to engage, they would shitstorm it with everything they had, mostly out of pure panic.

Or spite.

“Primaries are self-contained, Pops,” Yan finally replied, after the moment stretched. “Aim them and fire. We’ll only get one salvo out of the ship, since I didn’t bother with reloading racks, same as I just welded launch rails around the outside of the hull. Three quarters of the missiles will be offensive, and the rest are for point defense, to supplement the four Type-1-Pulse turrets we are adding.”

“Power, huh?” Pops nodded.

“Always,” Yan agreed. “Filled one of the aft cargo bays with the new generator designs, and that will run the Type-1’s, but I’d have to completely gut the ship and rebuild it if I wanted anything heavier. Easier to scratch-build the successor.”

“Think it will work?” Pops finally got around to the question that had been nagging Yan for weeks.

The physics were there, according to the Bartender. Moirrey’s JumpMines should trap someone in RealSpace for long enough. A freighter sailing up and unleashing sixteen Primary beams into a single target should be pretty much like hitting a turkey fresh from the oven with a powered knife. Even a Heavy Dreadnaught would be hard pressed to not get killed by something like that incoming.

And Yan had added enough escape pods to the freighter for three times the expected crew to be able to jettison, not knowing where people might be at the moment when the survivors cooked this goose in retaliation. And they probably would.

Unsure what to say to Pops on whether it would work. Yan settled for a shrug.

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