Star Destroyers by Christopher Ruocchio & Tony Daniel

Author:Christopher Ruocchio & Tony Daniel
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, azw3
ISBN: 9781481483094
Publisher: Baen
Published: 2018-03-06T05:00:00+00:00

At Descartes, of course, they had been in a powered synchronous orbit around the largest moon of Homeawayfrom, the system’s innermost gas giant, not in a tight freefall orbit only a few radii away from the star.

They had come in clean, received welcome messages from the capital and from the Uljas, and slipped into an assigned slot. The skipper had sent the standard courtesies and invitations for delegations to join him aboard Tigris to toast Captain Gustafsen and Uljas before they dropped into C-space en route to Salem, their next port in the “Conmarra Circuit” rotation pattern. Captain Gustafsen wanted to delay the Uljas’s departure, because Descartes was a better port of call than Salem. As a joint human-Kellador world, nine parsecs inside the lens-shaped zone of contention, Salem was less a symbol of peace as the name was meant to imply and more a source of friction.

Captain Gustafsen’s launch had barely moored back at Uljas when the ripples of Kellador ships started coming in.

Now Uljas was lost, Descartes was lost—presumably Salem had been lost some time before—and Tigris had barely made it out, crippled, on a run back to warn the rest of the Fleet. Who knew what Uljas might have found at Salem, but their delay and the fight they put up were probably all that allowed Tigris to escape.

The display convulsed in front of Biermann. Was Mbali locked in yet? Giordano should be emerging, but . . .

“That’s not a ripple,” Biermann said, “that’s a wave.” The traces were so numerous that the system now positively identified them as Kellador.

Sullivan whistled, as if she admired what they were seeing. She crossed to the port tank, waiting for the green light to activate the extractor. “What is that, a flotilla?” she asked.

“No,” Biermann said. “It’s an armada.”

He verified that the tracks were converging on Pyrite, and double-checked Tigris’s position against the planet’s. The ship would come out from behind the star in less than five hours now. He pulled up an intercom icon and activated it as several traces broke away, high and low. He held his breath for a moment, wondering if they would come in toward Grendel.

“Engineering, CIC,” he said through the tightness in his chest.

“Engineering, Chief Ollecki.”

Biermann spilled the situation as concisely as he could. “Any chance of getting C-drive back before we come around Grendel?”

The pause might have been diplomatic, or dramatic, but was probably just checking status. “Not completely, sir. We verified good alignment through most of the lattice, but we haven’t applied anything other than token power yet. We have to spin up the singularity set for that. Lieutenant Gaines estimates we’ll have the C-drives at fifty percent in about six hours, and eighty percent in twelve. Ninety percent will take the better part of a day.”

“I don’t like the sound of that, Chief, and I’m damn sure the old man won’t. Pull everyone you have off everything else—and I mean everything else—and push that curve to the left. We’re too exposed here.

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