Chapter One Hundred and Thirteen - Rush
The particle cannon fire from the Accord cruiser and frigate might have been overwhelming if it wasn’t for two things.
First, they’d long worked out the finer details of each gun, each targeting system, and had plotted out how the ships fired against previous targets.
It was a lot of data, but after so long chasing the Accord fleet, they had a fantastic picture of the cruiser and frigate’s pattern, and at least for the moment, neither was deviating.
The cruiser’s third starboard gun fired. She knew where it was aiming before the gun had even finished aiming, she knew that that particular turret had a very slight deviation that made it so that its rounds would be off-centre by a fraction of a percentage.
She had moved out of the way a full ten seconds before the shot was fired and was already moving to avoid the next shot before it could be fired.
Some small part of her wondered what the organics on the cruiser were thinking? It should have been nearly impossible for a ship like a cruiser to miss dozens and dozens of shots against a ship that was closing in.
The second major contributing factor in their current ease was the damage the two ships had taken.
It wasn’t spectacular. Most of it was little more than superficial, cosmetic damage, but it was still damage. The ships had been rocked around by a few mines going off too close to them. Both ships had been scoured by laser fire from over-eager and confused civilian ships.
It wasn’t extreme, but it was something and that something had burned out a few sensors. More importantly, at least by Day’s estimation, it had rattled the organic crew.
She didn’t have any concrete proof of that. It wasn’t as if they were in direct communication with the enemy, and they had no way of seeing the captains and whomever was the commanding officer of the fleet, but the organic’s actions painted a certain picture.
Sending two corvettes out to take out Dawn was a reasonable response under certain circumstances. Had they spotted her before they’d flown through that minefield then it would have been a perfectly logical action to take.
Two corvettes were better than Dawn’s single corvette hull. They also didn’t represent a massive loss for the rest of the fleet if they did happen to be destroyed. It was a reasonable amount of force to project, and probably exactly what the Accord’s procedures called for.
And it made no sense to enact those procedures at the moment. The rest of the fleet was bleeding and in disarray. They were fixing things now, regrouping and some early reports from Candle showed smaller craft darting from ship to ship, so it was likely that the fleet was working hard to repair itself.
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Sending out any amount of their limited combat force to chase someone was asking for trouble. It was an aggressive move that Day suspected came more from a position of anger than logic.
Knowing that her enemy was making a mistake was in no way reassuring when she knew that that mistake might still kill her sister.
“Missiles incoming,” Twilight said.
Day refocused.
They’d entered that zone where the far-range missiles the Accord preferred were finally viable. Missiles of the sort were part of the Accord’s primary armament system. They could counteract their own particle cannons, so it only made sense that they’d arm themselves with a potent secondary weapons platform. Their superior point-defence systems acted as a fantastic counter to their own missile system.
The Accord was all about creating an advantage while also making that advantage unusable to any foe. It was a respectable tactic, and it made it hard to use any weapons similar to what the Accord themselves were using.
But that didn’t account for the ERF’s main weapon; they were better at crunching data.
“Firing,” Day said.
Her point defence guns slid out of their casing, spun, then roared out a stream of steel into the void of space. Her Accord-style laser emplacements warmed up, then locked onto the nearest missiles.
The Accord ships both had the ability to launch literally hundreds of missiles, and they were doing just that.
Accord missiles weren’t stupid either. They flew through semi-randomized evasive patterns, some went silent early, others clung close to louder missiles to disguise their presence, their flight speed varied enough that it was hard to instantly pin-point their location.
And still her point defence guns fired, a non-stop barrage ripping the swarm apart.
“I’ve got you covered, Twilight,” Day said. “Cut in closer, get to Dawn first. I’ll watch your back.”
“If you’re sure,” Twilight said.
“I’m sure,” Day replied.
She was sure that she couldn’t hold the swarm back forever. But she could hold it back for long enough that Twilight would make it to Dawn, and that was more than enough.
Twilight’s engines lit up brightly against the endless dark as she guided herself towards their ultimate goal, Dawn, and the two ships rushing after her.
There would come a moment soon when they’d be able to strike at those corvettes directly, and Day couldn’t wait.
The Accord had been cunning adversaries, they were, once, the apex predators, but the ERF was putting an end to that.
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