Throttle Forty-Six

The Bolgians’ trick wasn’t terrible. She still had a heap of missiles to deal with. Every other missile was blasting out enough radiation to light up her sensors like she was flying directly into the sun. She would have been critical of the amount of radiation being tossed out if the thing tossing out said radiation wasn’t specifically designed to kill people.

Those missiles that weren’t burning bright were positioned behind the first row. Her ship’s sensors had to start guessing at their location when their engines shut off and decoupled, and the missiles went ballistic.

Those ejected engines relit a moment later and started to race ahead of the rest.

It was, essentially, a four-pronged attack. Loud missiles to distract, quieter ones coming behind on ballistic trajectories, the engines racing ahead, likely to distract any point-defence, then behind the curtain of missiles, a whole swarm of fighter craft.

Diana was impressed.

“Fire as soon as you have a lock, prioritise those quieter missiles,” she said.

“Understood.”

Diana had an image of the Cerberus hovering nearby, a real-time recreation of the ship that would give her an idea of any damage it might sustain. At the moment, it was entirely intact, shiny and new. That image shifted as a dozen panels across the surface of the ship opened up and guns slid out of the openings.

Personally, Diana liked railguns most of all. For a big chunk of electricity, they’d send a lump of metal hurtling through space at an appreciable percentage of c. Something about that was just immensely satisfying.

They were terrible against anything with shielding, of course, but when a target wasn’t, they were basically the perfect weapon in her opinion. Sure, the payloads were only various amounts of mass, but Newton was worth his weight in depleted uranium when it came to ruining someone’s day with just mass that was moving fast.

The Cerberus had four heavy railguns that delivered two kilogram slugs through the nearest missile and into the distant ship that had sent it in the time it took for jolt of electricity to travel between two of Diana’s neurons.

All she saw was the glow of super-pressurized gas hissing out of the cannons as they tried to cool down.

The missile they’d struck exploded apart, still a minute and a half away from hitting them.

“Nice shot,” Diana said.

She opened a zoomed-in view of the missile ship in the distance. Its shield was bright, with four distinct points on it that were only-just fading away. They’d taken the rail shot head-on without any appreciable damage.

That was too bad, but judging by the intensity of the glow, they’d felt that even with the shield.

“Going to need to take them out faster than that,” she said.

The effective range of their point-defence was actually pretty decent. A dozen gatling guns slid out of compartments across the ship. They were designed to spit as many rounds as possible out in the general direction of whatever was too close in as short an amount of time as possible. Basically, they filled the space between the end of their barrel and whatever was being targeted with a stream of fast-moving metal.

Going all-out was a bit of a waste though. Conventional logic said that most smaller vessels wouldn’t be well armoured, not when mass was such a big concern. That meant that most missiles wouldn’t be armoured either, unless their mass was their main weapon. In those cases, even a small projectile could rip delicate internals apart. Smaller rounds also meant more room for more rounds, which let the point defence system fire with impunity.

The gatling guns opened as soon as the foremost missiles were in range. They’d fire for a split second, sending hundreds of point-five millimetre rounds darting ahead before turning to the next target and firing again.

The louder missiles had some sort of evasion system in place. They started to spin in erratic circles, side-thrusters firing constantly.

The missiles and ships behind them didn’t have the ability, or the reflexes to dodge.

All across Diana’s screens she saw a slew of red Xs appearing over dozens of missiles as they were taken out of commission and were deemed a non-threat.

“The Prober fighter craft have forward-facing shields,” ChaOS said. “Our PD fire won’t be enough to take them out unless it’s concentrated. I suspect that they need to lower their shields for a fraction of a second whenever they fire.”

“Focus on the missiles first,” Diana said. “We’ll see about the fighters once they’re the biggest concern. At the speed they’re going, they’re planning to turn and burn only once they’re past us. I think they’ll be aiming for our rears later.”

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

“That seems likely, yes.”

Diana turned to stare at Abatrath’s ship as the corvette opened fire, mostly lasers that seared red lines into empty space with the occasional sparkle as they melted some stray detritus. The lasers speared into the nearest missiles, but only the loud ones, she noted. A lot of the shots missed outright. The range was still too great.

“How much of the swarm is targeting us?” she asked.

“Initially, thirty-two percent. Now that we’ve thinned it out, twenty-one percent of the remaining missiles are aimed at the Cerberus. Do you want to switch primary focus on the missiles aimed at us?”

“No, it’s fine,” Diana said. Helping her fellow racers wasn’t a bad move in her opinion. Besides, every surviving fighter was one more target for the Bolgian armada to focus on once they got closer.

“Permission to use nets?” ChaOS asked.

“I don’t actually want to be hit,” Diana said.

“I was wondering,” Zil Rossi muttered.

A dozen fist-sized holes opened near the rear of the Cerberus and an equal number of missiles darted out of the ship and flung themselves ahead of the vessel in a blink. They burst apart a moment later, spreading open a massive net of nano-filament wires that formed a spider-web grid across space.

The webs were relatively tough. Graphene and polymer braided together. They flew ahead while spreading wider, and the few missiles that they didn’t swat out of the air ran into them. Two opposing forces, moving in opposite directions, met.

Diana’s sensor feed filled with junk data as missiles exploded within a few kilometres of the Cerberus. She swung the ship around in a wide circle, flying into the path where the majority of the net-missiles had gone.

The ship shook a little, meeting some turbulence as they tore through expanding clouds of particulates and were slammed by enough heat and radiation to fry most organics.

None of that got through the shields.

Diana kept an eye on the other ships in their little group. A few were rattled, and a couple of the missiles they’d missed entirely exploded apart between the formation, but most of the ships were quite small. It would take an exceptionally lucky missile to hit one dead-on, or even to burst close enough to a ship to take it out.

Then the fighters were on them.

Diana narrowed her eyes and turned the ship so that the largest number of PD guns were pointing towards the fighters.

The Probers were nearly all gun, and it showed when they opened fire from a dozen different angles. Kinetic rounds tapped against the Cerberus like heavy rain on a windshield, bouncing off the shield or breaking apart against them with small flashes.

Then the small fighters opened up with their lasers. Each had a small array on its side, set up so that it had a decently wide arc of fire.

In the five or so seconds where the racers and the fighters were in each other’s range, space lit up with enough lasers to put even the most enthusiastic rave to shame.

Diana winced as two of the smaller racers simply exploded.

A few returned fire and the Probers didn’t fare any better. At a glance, it seemed as though their shields were concentrated on their front, leaving their rear and flanks with only nominal defences. A good idea for a ship designed to attack head-on, but not ideal when that same ship was doing a fly-by.

A moment later, the fighters were too far behind them to be an issue. Lasers technically had no maximum range, or at least, their range was so vast as to be inconsequential. The truth was that aiming at a tiny, fast-moving, and erratic target that was trying not to be hit when you were also a tiny, fast-moving, and erratic target that was trying not to be hit made contact nearly impossible.

“Shield status?” Diana asked. She could look, but her eyes were busy elsewhere.

“Ninety-seven percent. We were damaged more than predicted. The Bolgians are putting up a decent defence.”

“That just makes it more fun,” Diana said.

Her target sensors lit up as the navy saw that their first volley hadn’t worked. This time, it seemed, they would be taken a little more seriously. Diana grinned. It was too late though, they were too close already.

“Alright everyone,” she broadcast to the entire group, and likey the navy too. “Our target’s the big ugly one at the back. Warm everything up, we’re going to put on a show for the people back home.”

***