Kris Longknife 13 - Unrelenting Read Online Free PDF

right. Eight, you have the left one. Nine, take the middle. We will engage them as they come in range with a single shot from each ship’s bow batteries. I want to know how strong their rock armor is. Understood?”
    “Aye, aye,” came back from her squadron commanders.
    “Hawkings, hold fire on your 20-inch frigates. I’m holding you in reserve for the next echelon.”
    “Understood, Admiral, I’m reserve when I come up.” The four “R’s” armed with Hellburners were just catching up with the Lorna Do division, which still trailed the rest of the fleet. Kris was making a virtue of necessity. Only time would tell if it was a true virtue.
    The enemy’s thirty-two ships had lost cohesion in their mad charge for the newly arrived humans. Three were out in front. Six more were in a loose line some ten thousand klicks behind them. Fifteen formed what was left of the dish some twenty thousand kilometers behind them while a trailing eight who had either been out of position or were having engine problems were scattered in twos and threes over the next twenty thousand kilometers.
    That was it. Thirty-two huge, overgunned warships scattered along a fifty-thousand-klick approach charged hell-bent for Kris’s throat.
    So what else is new?
    The first three ships were approaching the maximum range, two hundred thousand kilometers, for the new 22-inch lasers on the frigates.
    “Begin Evasion Pattern 1. Fire one round per ship,” Kris ordered.
    The eight ships in each squadron hit their targeted ship.
    The warships lit up as rock melted away and spewed flaming droplets out into space and down their sides.
    They kept coming.
    “Engage your ship with your full forward battery,” Kris ordered.
    Now five big lasers reached out from each frigate to slash into the racing enemy. Pinned by forty big guns, the alien ships bent, folded, and blew as lasers blasted through rock to slash stressed hull-strength members or pierced into reactors and their containment gear.
    In the blink of an eye, where three ships had been was a long trail of fire, gas, and wreckage.
    But six more were closing fast.
    “Flip ships,” Kris ordered, and her gut did a twist as the Princess Royal , still under way at three gees, did a one-eighty in space.
    “Slow to one gee. Engage hostiles by divisions with aft batteries.”
    Despite the egg’s protection, Kris felt thrown forward as the ship slowed drastically. Still, her boards showed all twenty-four ships emptying their four aft lasers at the six onrushing aliens.
    Those six aliens were taking only about a third as much fire as the first three. Worse, two of the targets managed to put the wreckage of the first ships between them and their antagonists.
    Three aliens blew up. While one staggered forward, the other two were coming on fast and eager.
    But Kris’s ships had shot themselves empty. They neededtime to recharge their lasers. Seconds ticked past as the aliens closed.
    Kris could have accelerated away from the onrushing aliens. But that would have put herself farther from the huge base ship. If she took too long to reach it, the other ships would be back.
    Kris accepted the risk and held to one-gee deceleration while the aliens rushed at her with all the energy their reactors could generate.
    Previously, the aliens had demonstrated that their lasers were good out to 120,000 klicks.
    Today, they opened fire at 160,000 klicks.
    Their lasers were weak. Their power attenuated. Still, the engines on the Mandela and Saber took hits. Their course went wild, and jink patterns failed for a full two seconds.
    They took more hits.
    Per Kris’s standing orders, both ships went to three gees and pulled away from their tormentors.
    “Flip ship,” Kris ordered. “Engage the closest targets with three lasers per ship by divisions.”
    The division commanders called “Right,” “Left,” “Middle,” and in a moment, the three ships died.
    That left Kris counting the seconds as the largest alien group