The Lost Stars: Imperfect Sword by Jack Campbell Read Free Book Online Page B

of combat came and went too fast for human senses to register, automated systems pumping out hell lances and grapeshot at targets whipping past at immense velocities.
    Manticore
jolted heavily several times. The lights flickered, Marphissa’s display wavering in and out before steadying again. She waited for the surge of acceleration as the main propulsion units cut in, but felt nothing.
    “The battleship targeted us. Our shields got knocked down, and we took several hits,” Kapitan Diaz was reporting, his expression grim. “We have only partial thruster capability for maneuvering. All main propulsion is off-line.”
    No main propulsion.
Manticore
was nearly motionless in space and unable to change that.
    Marphissa stared at her display. The firing run had done damage to the Syndicate forces. One of the Syndicate light cruisers was drifting out of formation, powerless and heavily damaged. A spreading ball of gas and debris marked where the second targeted Syndicate light cruiser had been. In addition, one of the small Syndicate Hunter-Killers had broken in half under the impacts of several hits.
    But the Midway warships had been close enough to the Syndicate battleship for its firepower to be felt, and they had paid a price for that.
    Marphissa’s display showed red damage markers on many of her ships. The Syndicate had not concentrated their fire, so none of Midway’s ships had been knocked out completely or destroyed. But few had come through the encounter unscathed. And, in addition to
Manticore
, the light cruiser
Harrier
had lost main propulsion and was also hanging helplessly in space not far distant. The other warships were accelerating away, only just realizing that their stricken comrades had been left behind.
    The Syndicate formation had seen the same things. It was beginning to bend upward in as tight a turn as the battleship could manage, a vast curve through space that Marphissa knew would come nearly full circle. It would take more than half an hour for the enemy warships to finish that turn, but when they came back,
Manticore
and
Harrier
would be sitting ducks.

“CAN you fix your main propulsion?” Bradamont demanded of both Marphissa and Diaz.
    “The answer is probably not,” Marphissa murmured.
    Diaz was speaking on an internal comm circuit, and now ended the call with a curse. “Leytenant Gavros is dead. Senior Specialists Kalil and Sasaki say the control circuits are shot to hell.”
    “But the main propulsion units themselves are fine? You can’t replace or fix the control circuits?” Bradamont asked again.
    “This is a Syndicate-designed ship!” Diaz erupted in frustration. “It is efficiently designed! Crew size is optimized for efficiency! Significant repairs are to be carried out at leased maintenance facilities!”
    “Can’t your senior specialists—”
    “The senior specialists aren’t trained to make repairs and aren’t supposed to make repairs! The circuits are black boxes! They’re not supposed to be fixed! All you’re supposed to do is take out the broken one and put in a working one. We have a few black box spares aboard, but we don’t have any working black boxes of the exact type we need to replace those broken black boxes.”
    Marphissa glared at Diaz. “Tell them to try! Tell Kalil and Sasaki and the other specialists in engineering that the old Syndicate rules against unauthorized repairs no longer apply. Tell them to break into those boxes and see what they can do. Break into every circuit they need to. Jury-rig, improvise, cross-connect, anything. If we are still sitting here in half an hour, this ship will be blown to hell!”
    Diaz took a deep breath. “Yes. Why not try? What’s the worst that can happen? A big explosion? We’ll die anyway if we don’t try.” He called engineering, passing on the orders. “Kommodor, I want to go down there personally. I will be back within twenty minutes, before any Syndicate ship can get to us.”
    “Permission