The Tau Ceti Agenda

'Go, DeathRay!'

'Sir, I just got a communication from Bachelor Party. She's on board the middle battle cruiser and has warned me that it is about to jump to Earth and crash into Luna City.'

'Understood, DeathRay. Can you help her in any way?'

'I could trash and thrash on the ship, sir.'

'Go, DeathRay. We are barely holding our own here, and things just got worse. There's not much we can do to help you otherwise.'

'Understood, sir.'

'Goddamnit! Air Boss!'

'Sir?'

'Pull the Saviors off of the facility to help the Dawgs support the ground forces. Warboys is getting hammered down there.'

'Aye, sir.'

'Missiles away, Captain!' the XO shouted. The ship shook and sang out from enemy cannon fire and DEGs ablating the hull plating. Without the SIFs operational, the enemy fire continued to chew away at the ship. It was already battered and couldn't take much more. 'Detonation in three, two, one.'

'Countermeasures got one of them, sir!'

'The other one got through,' the CO replied and used his DTM to look at the onslaught of enemy fighters pouring from the Seppy hauler. The flash of one of the nukes detonating within the cloud of fighters was a sight for sore eyes. More than thirty of the enemy mecha were vaporized within the fireball, and tens more were spun out of control and damaged.

'Keep firing missiles on the nearest ship, XO!'

'Aye, sir.'

'Captain! The first wave of our displaced fighters are now entering the mix,' the air boss announced.

'About fucking time.' The Sienna Madira shook and rang, and the sound of the hull plating being vaporized and blown into space continued. But if the fighters got into the mix and the Blair could get in it too, all wasn't lost just yet.

The ship lurched upward from an explosion on the underbelly armor. Several lower decks blew out, followed by secondary explosions that dominoed upward through the aft section of the ship. The missile hit in just the right location to rip through the supercarrier all the way to the damaged section on the upper decks, leaving a gaping hole more than ten meters in diameter that passed completely through the ship.

'We're taking fire from the deck,' the XO said. 'Countermeasures!'

'What a typical Navy day,' the CO said through tight lips.

'All hands, all hands, brace for impact in ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one!'

The mass driver round pounded dead on target into the bow of the Blair, shaking the ship like a slinky. There were screeches and groans of metal structural members bending against the force of the massive energy from the railgun impact, but the SIFs held.

'Forward SIFs at seventy percent, ma'am!' the XO shouted.

'Nav! Go now!'

'Aye, Captain! Engaging jaunt, now!'

The ship's hyperdrive system spun up, projecting the conduit just abow of the ship, and it slipped safely into a conduit and out of normal space. Seconds later, the ship popped back into normal space, just above the surface of the moon planetoid and too close to it for the mass driver to get line-of-sight with it.

'STO, find it!'

'There! I've got the barrel, ma'am! Transferring coordinates to Ensign Blake now.'

'Blake, fire!'

Ensign Blake targeted the barrel of the mass driver and opened up the DEGs full power on it. The massive photonic energy of the directed energy weapons focused to a brilliant sun hot spot on the barrel, vaporizing materials instantly. The hole at the mouth of the mass driver glowed white-hot from light, scattering off the dust and gas particles being thrown up into space from the energy transfer of the beam to the target.

'Captain, probably wouldn't hurt to drop a nuke down their throat,' the COB added.

'You heard the COB, XO. Let's nuke the bastards.'

'Roger that, ma'am. Best news I've heard all day.' The XO tapped a command into her console. 'Two missiles away!'

'Nav, get us back down to the fight.'

'Yes, ma'am. Preparing to jaunt.'

'Air Boss! Have the Killers up first and out as soon as we hit the ball!'

'Aye, Captain.'

'Hyperspace in five . . .'

Chapter 18