Kris Longknife 13 - Unrelenting by Mike Shepherd Read Free Book Online Page A

Now, with ten or so lasers piercing the hull at or near the same place, the pace of reactors losing containment went from occasional to frequent.
    The boffins on the Princess Royal had applied Nelly’s map of potential reactor locations and were now running them through their sensors.
    Reactors were quickly located, identified, and targeted.
    The base ship was blasted to hell.
    Kris ordered a volley of antimatter torpedoes. Several almost made it to the base ship.
    It looked desperate for the aliens, and the ships that might give them respite were still four minutes away when desperation gave rise to a new choice.
    The alien moonlet began to pop out tiny pups.
    “Are those survival pods?” Penny asked.
    “Sorry, Penny,” Nelly said. “Those are more of the suicide boats to attack us.”
    “Nelly, warn the fleet. Suiciders coming our way. Engage them with secondary when they come in range.”
    “There are a lot of them, Kris,” Amanda said, speaking for the first time that day. “Do you think we can get them in time?”
    “We’ll see,” Kris said, and kept one eye on the approaching dishes, the other on the blasted and bludgeoned base ship. Maybe it was time to try some more antimatter torpedoes.
    “BatRon 2, will you have a go at the bugger with one torpedo each?”
    “On their way, Admiral,” and another eight ripped away and headed in.
    Two hit.
    “All ships, prepare to launch six torpedoes. Hawkings, have your four ‘R’s’ ready to add a Hellburner to each volley. Skippers, warn your gunners to not hit our missiles. Stand by,” Kris said. “Ripple launch antimatter torpedoes . . . now! Launch Hellburners . . . now!”
    The missiles took off toward the base ship about the same time that the 5-inch secondary batteries took on the approaching suicide craft. Human missiles screamed away at ten gees acceleration; their suicide boats were barely making three gees, though they had had more time to get up to speed.
    One suicider turned abruptly and crashed into a torpedo. That caused a huge explosion.
    Several more small craft tried the twist. None succeeded. A few came apart as the radical turn bent, then broke the hull.
    “They can’t turn,” Nelly reported. “Though those were pretty hard turns,” she added with a sniff.
    Every surviving laser on the base ship came to life as if their very life depended upon it. It did. The antimatter torpedoes did a jig of Nelly’s design, as did the Hellburners. But the antimatter torpedoes were coming in faster and dancingharder. The alien targeting computer must have mistaken the Hellburners for underperforming torpedoes.
    Some torpedoes were hit. No Hellburner was even grazed.
    Torpedoes began to hit, taking great chunks out of the alien base. Lasers hit where the rockets didn’t.
    Then the Hellburners buried themselves in the alien ship and just kept going.
    At the tip of the missile was a small chip off a neutron star. A chip weighing fifteen thousand tons! It hit with all the momentum a rocket powered by the antimatter annihilation of lead grains could impart.
    That momentum carried the chip deep into its target.
    Then the antimatter gun bathed the chip off the neutron star with antihydrogen.
    And the whole thing went to pieces.
    And the ship did, too.
    Four Hellburners slammed deep into the alien planetoid before beginning their final annihilation. All ended up close to reactors.
    The moon-size ship began to explode from the inside out.
    Kris grinned. No doubt, the Enlightened One had located himself somewhere deep inside, safe from everything but a rampaging bit of neutron star.
    The ship split apart as its own twisting and rolling sent one chunk in one direction, another in a different one. Lasers continued to engage late torpedoes as they ripped into the revealed innards of the ship.
    Now laser fire from the frigates hacked huge chunks off the wreck.
    No one’s going to salvage this one, Kris thought.
    The slaughter continued, but Kris chose to