Hostile Spike (Battlegroup Z Book 2) Daniel Gibbs (classic book list txt) 📖

for the expression, but it had seemingly survived for centuries. “I don’t want more dead heroes.”

Her comment sobered Wright. He frowned. “Me either, Colonel.”

The squat little freighter, meanwhile, fired its forward plasma cannons. A stream of purple energy issued from it, and most of the shots hit home against the League frigate. The warship didn’t even bother to maneuver away. It absorbed everything the civilian ship threw at it and kept churning out waves of missiles, red beams, and plasma balls. Impact after impact severely weakened the freighter’s shields, but it pressed on. At the last moment, it assumed a direct intercept vector—the bow of the civilian vessel pointed directly amidships of the enemy frigate.

“What the hell are they doing?” Wright stared at the plot. He spoke into the intercom on his chair. “Get the freighter out of there! They look like they’re going to ram—”

“No,” Tehrani blurted out. “Look.” She pointed at the plot as the sensor scan showed the freighter’s shape morphing. A retractable door opened on the ventral side of the ship, revealing a short barrel. “Is that what I think it is?”

Wright stared. “Son of a… They’ve got a cruiser-sized neutron beam on a spinal mount.”

As he spoke, a giant blue beam shot out of the freighter. It slammed into the League warship’s shields and pierced them like a hot knife through butter. A split second later, the beam exploded out of the other side of the frigate. Explosions blossomed across the frigate’s surface, and the ship blew apart.

“They got lucky and hit the reactor,” Wright said in disbelief. “Okay, I’ve seen it all now.”

“Conn, Communications. A text message from the freighter. They ask if we will refrain from reporting on their weaponry. Apparently, they lack the necessary permits.”

A ripple of nervous laughter swept over the bridge, and Tehrani joined in. “The permits for having military neutron beams on a civilian ship don’t exist. Tell them thanks for the assist, and we won’t be entering their capabilities into our log.”

“Five minutes until the Rand is in range,” Wright said.

His comment instantly deflated the bridge crew. Tehrani could almost feel their morale drop.

“And still forty minutes, give or take, until we can jump safely?”

Wright nodded. “Yes, ma’am.”

“What’s the highest probability of exotic particle release if we jump now?”

“One moment, Colonel.” Wright bent over his screen, pulling up engineering details from several ships, thanks to their interlinked tactical network. “Hmmm. Fifty percent on roughly half the ships in the convoy.” He stared at her. “If we went off pure statistics, we’d lose at least ten ships. More, if they had bad luck.”

Tehrani made a face. The cost was too high for her to justify an emergency jump. “Estimation to when we could make a jump and lose one to two vessels?”

“Uh…” Wright’s expression turned grim. “Twenty-five minutes, give or take, ma’am.”

“Then we hang on for at least twenty-five minutes.”

Before Tehrani could open her mouth to issue new orders, Bryan cut in. “Conn, TAO. Inbound wormhole, League signature.” He scanned a different screen. “Cobra-class destroyer, designated as Master Five. It emerged within firing range, ma’am.” As if to underscore his point, the ship shook from a barrage of weapons fire.

When it rains, it pours. Tehrani set her jaw. “Navigation, intercept course for Master Five. TAO, designate Master Five as the primary target for our battlegroup.”

“Aye, aye, ma’am,” Bryan replied.

Staring at the plot, Tehrani despaired. She was nearly out of tricks, and time was against them. The only thing left to do was fight as long and as hard as possible. And hope for a miracle. The thought of jumping with as many freighters as possible was never far from the front of her mind, but it seemed like the coward’s way out. Still, I may be forced to abandon some of them to save the rest. But she didn’t want to face that eventuality.

9

“This is Beta Three declaring an emergency. Master alarm is lit, reactor fai—”

Justin winced. He glanced at the squadron-readiness view on his HUD and saw a bright-red dot next to Lieutenant Felder’s name. No transponder came from his suit, and the system rated the Sabre as a total loss. Another dead pilot.

Around Justin, the battle raged. Feldstein was engaged in a tail chase with a League fighter, while he’d sent Mateus and Adeoye to screen the bombers from another enemy force. All in all, it was barely controlled chaos.

Red plasma balls streaked by Justin’s cockpit canopy, and he tracked down their source quickly. A single League craft had settled into his six o’clock while he was distracted by the at-large combat picture. Justin yanked his flight stick back, pulling what would’ve amounted to fourteen Gs if his Sabre’s inertial damping systems weren’t functioning at peak capacity. In a matter of seconds, he’d looped around and passed the enemy fighter. Whoever was flying the League craft wasn’t an exceptionally well-trained pilot, because they failed to alter course, and Justin finished the tight loop and ended up on the Leaguer’s tail.

“Alpha One, fox two,” he called while simultaneously launching two heat-seeking missiles.

Both warheads raced away from Justin’s Sabre and accelerated to full attack speed. The League fighter did little to evade, and both hit home, blowing the enemy craft apart in a cloud of super-fine dust.

“Alpha One, splash one.” The “hard kill” call was something Justin had become used to making. His mind flashed back to sixty days ago when he’d never engaged a hostile target, much less snuffed out another human being’s life.

But he had no time to ponder such things, as the next wave of League fighters launched out of Master Four’s launch bay. How many of these damn things do they have, anyway? It seemed to him as if they were facing a never-ending wave of enemies. While the Leaguers lacked quality, they made up for it in sheer quantity.

Justin was close enough to the heavy cruiser that its point-defense systems took long-range potshots at him. He made several juking turns as he checked