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“You have ten seconds to change trajectory away fro or ill open fire”

The fear felt like victory He was doing it He was on target for the Ring and it was freaking the up the reactor At this point, he wasn’t even lying anymore The full suite of sensors started their boot sequence

“Don’t fire,” he said, as he -offdown as fast as I can”

“You have five seconds, Y Que”

He had thirty seconds The friend-or-foe screens popped up as soon as the full ship syste to pass close by Maybe seven hundred klicks No wonder they’d seen hiht up the threat boards like it was Christmas Just bad luck, that

“You can shoot if you want, but I’ as fast as I can,” he said

The status alarm sounded T dots appeared on the display Hijo de puta had actually launched torpedoes

Fifteen seconds He was going to make it He started broadcast and the exterior ca was out there somewhere, its thousand-kilometer span still too small and dark to make out with the naked eye There was only the vast spill of stars

“Hold fire!” he shouted at the Martian frigate “Hold fire!”

Three seconds The torpedoes were gaining fast

One second

As one, the stars all blinked out

Neo tapped the ate No torpedoes Nothing

“Now that,” he said to no one and nothing, “is weird”

On the li a few inches closer to the screen would h-g alert took five hundredths of a second to trip The alert, hardwired, took another three hundredths of a second to react, pushing power to the red LED and the eed out with a ninety-nine-g deceleration warning took a glacial half second to excite its light-e diodes But by that time Neo was already a red s hih the screen and into the far bulkhead in less ti seconds, the ship creaked and strained, not just stopping, but being stopped