the magazine, it effectively tore several of the missiles apart and compacted them inside the beam’s area of effect, causing a large percentage of the missiles’ mass, some of which was energetically active when brought together, to combine in extremely unstable ways. Once the beam passed through, and hundreds of gravities of sheer no longer held the missiles together, the pieces of former fusion-powered missiles once again became separate.
The separation was suitably explosive and the bow of the Shang ship vaporized. The ship slewed violently out of formation, spraying wreckage as it spun away from the battle.
Cowboy squadron spun as one, the cybers in charge acting in unison, and aimed at another cruiser. “Fire,” Johanson ordered and twenty-four grav cannons ripped into another target.
Their second target was prepared, spending the seconds it took for the Cowboys to kill its compatriot to reorient its deflection grid to protect itself from their attack. Twenty of the beams twisted off into space where distance and loss of control made them impotent after a mere few hundred kilometers. One of those slew through a flight of Peloran missiles and they exploded spectacularly in empty space. The other four cannons managed a direct hit and penetrated the grid, doing some damage to the armor, but none of them had enough power and control left to break through the dense armored hull.
The same could not be said about the four much larger grav cannons the Peloran battleship fired a moment later. Mere seconds before, the Shang deflection grid had held, twisting the Peloran weapons away in the most classic of all defenses, not being where the weapons fire arrived. Now a significant percentage of the cruiser’s total reactor load was spent holding the fighters on their flank to “mere” armor damage. All four Peloran beams smashed through the weakened deflection grids and hit the cruiser like the hammers of ancient gods. The Peloran capital weapons were not measured in mere hundreds of gravities, or in centimeters. The second Shang cruiser did not explode. The four beams sucked sections of the ship in, compressing the compartments inside each one, ripping the ship into ever-smaller sections. When the beams faded away, tiny compressed metallic pebbles and larger undamaged but no longer connected pieces of ship fanned away from where a ship of war had fought seconds ago.
“My God,” Jack whispered in awe.
“Yeah,” Betty answered in a low voice.
The displays flashed in warning and Jack’s eyes went wide. It hadn’t taken long for the Shang to send a couple squadrons of fighters their way at all.
“Go HOTAS and bring the fangs out!” Johanson ordered as forty Shang fighters bore down on them.
Jack smiled at the age-old order and placed his hands on the throttle and stick. If the Shang wanted a dogfight, they were going to get one. “Let’s dance,” he said and pulled the stick over.
“I think it’s time for the Tango,” Betty answered as the Cowboy formation exploded, fighters peeling away into flights of two fighters.
“Sounds good to me.” Jack brought the stick hard over again, and felt the fighter buck around him from a near miss. He really wasn’t doing the lion’s share of the work, even now. Betty did most of it, with her near-light-speed reaction time, maneuvering the fighter in a nearly random program of evasive maneuvers. The problem was, that even the best cybers were simply not as random as a genetic human, and with enough experience they could be predicted.
Jack pulled the throttle back hard and the engines flared to life. If asked, he would have said he had no idea why he did it. He just felt like doing it. He was embracing the randomness of life that he was best at. A split second later, a missile passed through where they would have been and went on its merry way.
“Betty, I do think someone’s trying to shoot us. Do you have an
The separation was suitably explosive and the bow of the Shang ship vaporized. The ship slewed violently out of formation, spraying wreckage as it spun away from the battle.
Cowboy squadron spun as one, the cybers in charge acting in unison, and aimed at another cruiser. “Fire,” Johanson ordered and twenty-four grav cannons ripped into another target.
Their second target was prepared, spending the seconds it took for the Cowboys to kill its compatriot to reorient its deflection grid to protect itself from their attack. Twenty of the beams twisted off into space where distance and loss of control made them impotent after a mere few hundred kilometers. One of those slew through a flight of Peloran missiles and they exploded spectacularly in empty space. The other four cannons managed a direct hit and penetrated the grid, doing some damage to the armor, but none of them had enough power and control left to break through the dense armored hull.
The same could not be said about the four much larger grav cannons the Peloran battleship fired a moment later. Mere seconds before, the Shang deflection grid had held, twisting the Peloran weapons away in the most classic of all defenses, not being where the weapons fire arrived. Now a significant percentage of the cruiser’s total reactor load was spent holding the fighters on their flank to “mere” armor damage. All four Peloran beams smashed through the weakened deflection grids and hit the cruiser like the hammers of ancient gods. The Peloran capital weapons were not measured in mere hundreds of gravities, or in centimeters. The second Shang cruiser did not explode. The four beams sucked sections of the ship in, compressing the compartments inside each one, ripping the ship into ever-smaller sections. When the beams faded away, tiny compressed metallic pebbles and larger undamaged but no longer connected pieces of ship fanned away from where a ship of war had fought seconds ago.
“My God,” Jack whispered in awe.
“Yeah,” Betty answered in a low voice.
The displays flashed in warning and Jack’s eyes went wide. It hadn’t taken long for the Shang to send a couple squadrons of fighters their way at all.
“Go HOTAS and bring the fangs out!” Johanson ordered as forty Shang fighters bore down on them.
Jack smiled at the age-old order and placed his hands on the throttle and stick. If the Shang wanted a dogfight, they were going to get one. “Let’s dance,” he said and pulled the stick over.
“I think it’s time for the Tango,” Betty answered as the Cowboy formation exploded, fighters peeling away into flights of two fighters.
“Sounds good to me.” Jack brought the stick hard over again, and felt the fighter buck around him from a near miss. He really wasn’t doing the lion’s share of the work, even now. Betty did most of it, with her near-light-speed reaction time, maneuvering the fighter in a nearly random program of evasive maneuvers. The problem was, that even the best cybers were simply not as random as a genetic human, and with enough experience they could be predicted.
Jack pulled the throttle back hard and the engines flared to life. If asked, he would have said he had no idea why he did it. He just felt like doing it. He was embracing the randomness of life that he was best at. A split second later, a missile passed through where they would have been and went on its merry way.
“Betty, I do think someone’s trying to shoot us. Do you have an
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