Daring

42

Before Kris even had time to think Fire, the alien fired off a barrage of hundreds of lasers. Maybe thousands.

A large chunk of the barrage was aimed at the battleships. Their location apparently had been reported by the ship that returned. Dodging made no difference when the whole sector of the sky was laced with laser fire.

Three battleships exploded in the first few seconds of the battle.

Rockets were going off in rippling salvoes, most of them headed for the battle line as well, but not all. Several volleys were directed aft.

Three smashed into the poor little Hermes and left her shattered, drifting in space. A moment later, the reactor went when its magnetic containment either failed or was deliberately turned off.

In a flash, the plucky little courier and her crew were no more than a bubble of hot gas.

The Wasp had recently had two 5-inchers added for her own defense, and they kept her bit of space clear. One laser did clip the Wasp’s shield, but it held. The other corvettes fared well, except for the luckless Fearless, which took three lasers, one of which got past her shields.

The squadron hurt, but the squadron also dished it out.

The three Hellburners took off at a rapidly increasing acceleration, following the same corkscrew flight path Nelly had worked out for the Wasp’s first set of antimatter torpedoes. Two were aimed at the aft engines of the mother ship. The third would hit about a thousand klicks farther in.

All four corvettes also salvoed their eight antimatter torpedoes. They were smaller, but they were definitely incoming as far as any defensive fire net was concerned. Coming in faster, they also had to be higher up a defensive decision tree for assigning final defensive fire.

At least, that was what Kris devoutly hoped.

To add to the aliens’ complicated fire solution, twelve 24-inch pulse lasers were reaching out for the nodes that held the lasers. One of the corvettes targeted four of the huge rocket motors. They cut past the rocket motors and into the reactors behind them. Even before the torpedoes hit, the fantail of the huge mother ship was exploding.

Twenty-nine antimatter torpedoes hit first, blasting gaping holes in the engines. Several of the reactors began venting to space, adding a slight wiggle to the huge mother ship’s movement and throwing off the aim of the lasers.

Then the first two Hellburners hit.

The entire stern of the huge ship disintegrated. One second it was there, looming over them . . . burning here, exploding there . . . but still very much there.

The next second it was a gigantic ball of gas, bulging with secondary explosions as this or that reactor lost integrity and blew. Jets of hot gases vented in all directions, knocking the ship around and bending the gigantic hull in places that weren’t meant to bend.

Here and there, the smaller ships, double or triple the size of a battleship, were sent hurling off into space like children’s jackstraws.

Many collided. Several exploded.

The third Hellburner seemed to have taken a laser hit. The exact content of the visual record would long be debated. If it was hit, the finely spun-out chip of a neutron star didn’t seem to mind being warmed up before it blew.

The last Hellburner dived into the edge of the glowing cloud and slashed its way deep into the wreckage before it added its own destruction.

By the time it finished, pretty close to half of the mother ship was blown to glowing gas or left as burning and twisted metal.

Which didn’t cause the ship to hesitate one second.

Reduced to a drifting, spinning hulk, the mother ship kept right on firing its huge battery of lasers. Even unaimed, that much firepower could be devastating if it connected with something.

Another battleship blossomed into a ball of glowing gas. A quick glance showed Kris the battle line was gone. Two lonely ships had made it out of range of the aliens’ wild fire.

“We can’t hold here,” Admiral Channing said on net. “We’re running, Commodore. Get your little boys out of here any way you can. We can’t help you.”

“That big mother just launched three of her little monsters,” Chief Beni shouted.

“Dive for the jump point,” Kris ordered.

“The jump point!” Captain Drago yelped.

“You know a faster way out of here?” Kris yelled. “Blast us into the jump point the alien just came out of.”

“Sulwan, jump,” he ordered. “Kris, are there any hostiles left in the other system?”

“We’ll find out. PatRon 10, the rally point is in the system the aliens just left. Follow me through the jump point if you can.”

Sulwan slammed the Wasp into three gees with no warning.

The Wasp’s shields took another hit. This one was not all that well focused; it had bloomed badly as it shot through the cloud from the destroyed aft end of the mother ship.

For a horrible moment, the huge wreck loomed wide in front of the Wasp, ready to fold it into its own destruction.

Then the jump point took them, and the space ahead of them was a void.