Page 128 (1/2)

A little cheer went up, and it took Drummer half a second to see why One of the hardpoints on the Te a et The cloud of PDC fire grew a degree thinner Any ship Drummer knew, any station she’d ever heard of, would have been reduced to slivers ofshe could think of that would withstand that barrage was a planet Even then, cities would have been pounded to dust by what had been launched in the last fifteen minutes Sixteen now It was so fast There should have been hours between launch and response But this wasn’t that kind of battle There was no finesse to it Just brutal, constant violence

The tightness in her throat was the memory of Pallas The harder they pushed the Tenetic beam If the Laconians used it on People’s Ho ripped apart And if the glitch happened again … well, the observatories on Earth and Marsit took the ene

But they hadn’t used it yet Maybe the ti The universe owed her a little slice of luck like that

Another two hits on the Te fro fire Five ht dust, too far away to see The Tempest veered and danced Dark streaks un rounds hit, and while most of the marks faded, not all of them did

“We have expended two-thirds of our rail-gun ammunition,” the weapons tech announced “Shall I maintain fire?”

“Yes,” Dru chairs in the launcher We hit that thing until we’re down to pillows and beer”

“Understood, ma’am,” the weapons tech said She could hear the siddy sense that even if they inning ugly, they were at least winning

On the display, the Teanic curves of its design made it hard not to think of it as an animal An apex predator surprised to find itself out …

“On the aft By that third contact point Is that a gas plume?”

The sensors tech shifted through half a dozen slices of the spectrum in less than a second “That is correct,atmosphere”

“EMC Governor Knight is launching high-yield nuclear torpedoes,” Vaughn said

Druhtness in her throat and her hands The Tempest’s PDCs weren’t all disabled There was still the chance it h to detonate Seconds stretched intotoward the display

The light of the explosion whited out the sensor array A ragged cheer came from all around the control room

“One down,” she said to herself “And fuck you all along with it”

It wasn’t over Laconia would send another ship after this one A fleet, next tiet much more clever But they knew more now—about how the enemy ships functioned, how they maneuvered in battle, and most important of all, how they could be killed