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he had the firepower to blast something as lumbering as a freighter to atoms
before it could get close enough to do any damage.
"Yes, sir. Murylium count abnormally high, as would be expected, and a great
deal of inert cargo. No life forms aboard."
He sighed. "What are the instructions?"
"Dock with us and offload using service robots through both cargo bays. It's
all containerized, so it shouldn't take more than a couple of hours. It is
diverted from a deadhead ran back to its normal pickup point and has
instructions to offload and be away as quickly as possible in order to keep to
its normal schedule."
"Very well. Call it in to the colonel's office below and if they have no
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objection, give the ship immediate clearance to dock and dispatch our service
robots to the offloading bays."
"Aye aye, sir."
The colonel himself was not contacted, of course, but the SPF chief of
security drew the same sad conclusions as the duty officer and saw no
objections. The freighter was signaled in and ordered to proceed. It
approached to within forty kilometers of the orbiting command ship and then
slowly eased its way closer, a maneuver that took about seventy minutes.
The command ship itself, like the freighters, was never designed for
planetfall;
the freighters were loaded by transmitter transmission and, for some
specialized times, by barges and tugs from the surface of whichever planet it
happened to be orbiting. Because of this, the command ship was designed to be
supplied by just such ships, and maneuvers like this were routine, with the
pilots of both ships using centuries-old automatic procedures. The timing
involved in the docking and equalization of pressure was precise. With that
equalization, the two large ships were locked together as firmly as if they
were welded, although if necessary they could be separated almost instantly.
The service robots waited for the cargo-bay doors to open, then moved forward
toward the now-gaping holds of the freighter.
In the vacuum of space, the enormous explosion, and the subsequent explosions
that followed took place in deathly silence, but were spectacular to look at.
Pirate One had been packed with all the explosives Star Eagle's transmuters
could crank out and Thunder's robots could pack solidly in. With the
pressurization and open holds, the tremendous force of the explosions was
directed primarily into the command ship, ripping into its very heart. Yet
Star
Eagle had taken no chances; the first explosions were merely a trigger for a
murylium fusion bomb of a size never before seen; in less than three seconds
both ships had been almost totally converted to energy in an explosion so
intense that, from below, it lit up the sky and could be seen easily with the
naked eye even in daylight.
The fighters, stationed in other orbits, immediately came to life and searched
for their mother ship, but found nothing. They were not allowed time to be
confused, however; their response switched immediately to automatic and they
powered up and headed out toward the punch-points their sensors were even new
detecting.
Raven and Warlock punched in in Lightning, followed almost immediately by
Kaotan, Indrus, Chunhoifan, and San Cristobal in a rough V formation.
They had practiced acting as a unit, but they were still basically a
collection of individual ships rather than a tightly coordinated group. The
captains were experienced pilots, but none had really captained a ship going
into a head-to-head battle. They were linked by an interconnection that gave
them almost speed-of-thought broadcast capability at short range.
"Mother of God!" swore Maria Santiago of San Cristobal. "Will you look at
that!
My readings are off the scale!"
"Yeah, we certainly plastered that bastard," Raven agreed, "but let's not get
cocky now. We still have a bunch of bad guys around and who knows what in the
shadows."
"Watch it!" came the steely voice of Captain Chun. "Both fighters just did
short
punches. I "
There was hardly time to calculate the punch before the fighters emerged just
behind the group and fired a series of rapid bursts from their aft systems,
then looped in opposite spirals and came back at the pirate fleet firing. "I'm
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hit!"
called Dura Panoshaka, temporarily captaining Kaotan. "Nothing serious but the
bastards are coming back in at me!"
The V broke apart as each ship went in a different direction in broad loops.
Raven brought Lightning up and around as Warlock was targeting the lead
fighter.
She allowed the automatics to begin beam fire and concentrated on trajectories
for the torpedoes. "Kaotan! Cristobal! Key on the lead fighter with all you've
got!" she instructed. "All others key on trailing fighter with torpedoes."
At that moment the lead fighter launched its own torpedoes, more than a dozen
in a spread pattern, each obviously instructed to key in on the easiest single
target. Chunhoifan and Lightning opened up on them with concentrated beam
fire, but two slipped through, curled around, and went for the stern of
Indrus.
Paschittawal shifted all shielding power to the stem and broke away in a high
arc. Both torpedoes exploded on or near the tail, and the ship shuddered but
still seemed to be operable.
"Kaotan! Cristobal! Keep keying in on the lead fighter!" Warlock instructed,
sounding very calm and very much in control. "Kaotan, take a spread of six at
the stern, Cristobal amidships! Now!"
The fighter noted three spreads coming from three different directions, and
shifted most of its shielding to its stem, which was always the most
vulnerable area of a ship, but it was also forced to shoot from its bow and
side guns at the onrushing torpedoes. No shield operating at anything less
than maximum strength could withstand direct hits by that many torpedoes, but
a ship's weapons system couldn't fire outward if the shield was on full. The
fighter was doing a good job of picking off the incoming missiles, but it
missed seven out of eighteen in the three groups, each of which was now headed
for a different area of the ship.
Kaotan's stem shots were going to hit first, so it shifted more power to its
rear shield, but at the same time, three of Cristobal's shots struck weakened
shields amidships and the fighter shook and trembled. Lightning's two
surviving torpedoes landed on the undefended bow, and the whole forward
quarter of the fighter became a mass of twisted metal. With no bow, the
fighter was defenseless as long as the enemy kept coming dead on, and though
it tried to take evasive action, Kaotan poured six torpedoes straight into the
guts of the ship from the bow angle. The fighter shook and then disappeared
from the pirate's sensors.
The second fighter was bearing down on the shaken Indrus, and Chunhoifan was
in turn bearing down on the fighter.
"All ships key in on the other fighter!" Warlock ordered. "Concentrated fire.
Pour it in! Pour it in!"
"There's something else coming in at high speed," Captain Chun warned. "I
can't make it out."
"Worry about it later!"
There was a limit to a shield's abilities, since shielding had never really
been designed for combat situations but to protect a ship from space debris.
In this case, superior numbers meant inevitable victory. A vast amount of
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