Abysm by G. S. Jennsen Read Free Book Online Page A

she sneaked up behind the enemy craft.
    Fine, it was weakest at the juncture of its impulse engine and the hull.
    She lined up and fired.
    The target lit up in a silver-white shimmer as her fire washed over its defense shielding. The pilot jerked 23° vertical almost instantly, but she stayed glued to its tail. This far behind enemy lines it had no friends to come to its aid.
    The vessel’s presence was exposed by the bath of her laser, and two of the fighters protecting the Stalwart II now fired on it as well. Confident its shields were weakening considerably, she honed the focus of her fire.
    She imagined she was the laser itself, and she sought her target. The tiniest little seam existed between the adiamene of the hull and the layer protecting the engine, hardly wider than a few atoms.
    But she could see atoms.
    She flung herself—the laser—into the gap.
    The interdictor didn’t explode; the adiamene was far too strong. Instead its engine was severed from its body and flung away on an opposite trajectory. The momentum carried what remained of the vessel forward on its previous course, but the pilot now had no control. It slammed into the hull of the command ship with a tremendous thud , then bounced off and began falling into the void. Eventually two escape pods were jettisoned to drift behind enemy lines.
    She left the cleanup to the support craft and returned her attention to the region surrounding her mother’s ship. Where there had been one, there would be more.

    “Alex? Why aren’t you answering me? Caleb, why isn’t she answering? I seriously am in danger of getting sick, inertial dampeners or no.”
    Caleb rubbed at his temples and tried to ignore the queasiness in his stomach as the least of his concerns. “Alex isn’t here right now.”
    “I don’t understand.”
    “She didn’t get around to telling you about this new trick, did she? We’re all nothing but spectators now.”
    He glanced back to find Kennedy gaping at him wide-eyed and pale. “What new trick? Alex, what didn’t you tell me?”
    “She can’t hear you. Well, maybe a little, but even if she can I doubt she cares. She’s, um…her mind is mostly in the walls of the ship right now. She’s not flying it with the controls so much as with…herself. I don’t know, it’s…existential.”
    He forced a closed-mouth smile. “And very powerful.”
    Kennedy’s brow furrowed, an expressive act on a typically expressive face, but her only verbal response was a soft, “Oh.”
    Noah attempted an awkward chuckle. “She’s not going to crash us through one of the enemy hulls, is she? Cause, we’ve already done that.”
    “We have. I…probably not.” I don’t have the slightest clue. When she’s in this state she’s completely beyond my reach.
    But he conceded her total control of the ship could be the best approach in the current situation, so he didn’t plan on causing a scene. He’d complimented her on her flying skills earlier, but he’d never seen her fly with such skill and finesse as she did now. When she was the ship, perhaps no maneuver was beyond her capabilities.
    His stomach lurched as they pinwheeled through space, the effect on the human body of those maneuvers apparently not being a concern for the pilot.

    Space was, by and large, empty, but Alex still struggled not to get hypnotized by the molecules being knocked around by all the ship hulls as they played their games of cat and mouse. If she didn’t have a larger purpose, she might have become so.
    When she’d tuned out the Noesis chatter, it had the side effect of turning down the Volnosti comm channel as well. But now, as the distance between the two sides narrowed and the formations tightened, she concentrated on listening.
    Admiral Fullerton ( EAS Jefferson ):  “To all vessels not under my command: you are in violation of Assembly Directive 2323-427D and BANIA Regulation AAS 38131.499.885b. These violations can be considered acts of war. Stand down and