Tenacious

46

The five-hundred-ton bullets were coming in fast. Twelve of them, each made of whatever the aliens had been able to get their hands on. No doubt, they’d make a major hole in whatever they hit.

And what they would hit would very likely be a major city. If not intercepted, every one of them was headed for an impact within one or two kilometers of the center of a major urban area.

The twelve largest cities on the planet.

“Good shooting,” Captain Drago was heard to mutter.

“Too bad we’ll have to spoil their shoot,” Kris said.

She’d ordered the Endeavor to cast off and head out immediately. As she did, Nelly and Kris went over several possible shoot scenarios.

They ordered the simplest one.

The Endeavor did a deorbital burn, dropped down to graze the planet’s atmosphere, then slingshot herself up into an orbit that put her fifty thousand kilometers above the planet, headed for the incoming slugs.

A hundred thousand kilometers below the targets, she hit the first three with a head-on shot, cutting them in half. Endeavor then did a flip ship and deceleration maneuver, while using her aft batteries to filet the next three. She repeated that again, and there were twenty-four half-size bullets headed in, but on slightly different courses than they had been a few minutes before.

Kris could only imagine the rejoicing among the Ostriches as their lasers sliced targets exactly as they intended. No doubt, there would be a lot of chest bumping later, but not now.

Now they sliced and diced what was left of the bullets hurtling toward the cat world. Every fifteen seconds or so, the Endeavor would lash out at the bullets, dicing them into quarters, eighths, sixteenths, and smaller.

Whatever energy wasn’t needed to recharge the lasers went into the engines, braking the Endeavor in orbit and heading her back down.

It wouldn’t do for the little Endeavor to run into the entire enemy fleet all by herself. Captain O’dell reported, however, that the Ostriches were quite willing to do so.

The aliens’ first shots did slam into Sasquan, but not as five-hundred-ton streamlined bullets. Instead, they hit the atmosphere as ragged, jagged chunks of thirty tons or less, rolling and out of control. By the time the atmosphere had its go at eroding them, they hit the ground as meteorites of ten tons or less.

That might be hard on the two or three dwellings that got flattened, but they were no longer city killers.

Whatever doubts the cats might have held about Kris’s true intent vanished with the demise of the slug strike. The airwaves were unanimous in their praise of Kris as their planet’s savior.

“Let’s hope they’re still saying that after the battle,” Kris muttered.

The Endeavor made orbit again and rejoined the squadron. The problem was, she was low on reaction mass. She’d used a lot going against the laws of physics.

The Bulwark launched its pinnace over to refuel her. The Bulwark had come out from the gas giant with more fuel than the other frigates. It was a joke among the skippers that the skipper of the Bulwark was always afraid of running out of fuel and always took on extra.

Now, no one kidded him, and Captain O’dell was grateful for the help.

For the upcoming battle, Kris intended to use a similar orbit to the one Endeavor had used, only she’d sling herself around the moon to get farther out and be on a better-angled orbit. Like her enemy, Kris would be braking.

But with any luck, Kris would be closer to the cat world as she did so. That would put her in the perfect position to cross the T of the alien line, able to shoot up their vulnerable sterns, hit their engines, and rake their reactors with all her ships while few of them could reply.

At least that was the plan.

And like all battle plans, it didn’t survive contact with the enemy.