TFS Navajo: The Terran Fleet Command Saga – Book 3 Read Online Free PDF Page B

our homeworld, Ditanu, so you know that I must decline your offer. Having said that, Admiral Naftur will also tell you, as he told Commander Takkar earlier, that we are not your enemy. I agree wholeheartedly that additional bloodshed is unnecessary. Let us both stand down here and now, prevent the Resistance attack on Earth, and then address the Pelaran threat together.”
    Yagani stared at Prescott for a long moment, appearing to be giving serious consideration to his proposal. Ultimately, his face seemed to cloud as if he had encountered some unassailable obstacle that prevented further progress along this line of thought.
    “Under different circumstances, I might well be inclined to agree with your proposal, Captain, but today my duty obliges me to take a different path. Know that I take no pleasure in this course of action, but I must insist that you surrender your vessel or be destroyed. Since we were operating under a flag of truce, I will allow you a period of two minutes to reposition your vessel or to withdraw completely if that is your choice.”
    “I am saddened to hear it, Captain. We are acting in self-defense, so a withdrawal is not an option for us. If, at any point during our engagement, you reconsider and decide that you would like to either surrender or cooperate, my offer will remain open.”
    “As will mine, sir. Yagani out.”
    “Tactical, range to the Baldev , please,” Prescott said. With the decision made, his voice had taken on a much harder edge than during his conversation with Captain Yagani.
    “Just over three hundred thousand kilometers, sir,” Lieutenant Lau responded.
    “Helm, you have two minutes to double that distance and put us in a position to either C-Jump clear or attack Charlie 2. Sublight engines only, please.”
    “Aye, sir.”
    In a display intended to give the much less maneuverable Resistance warships pause, Ensign Fisher increased Theseus’ engines to maximum power — heading initially in the direction of the Baldev before gracefully rolling the ship inverted relative to her former flight path and executing a tight Split S turn to head in the opposite direction. Throughout the maneuver, her remaining twelve Hunter RPSVs maintained perfect formation in two groups posted slightly below and to either side of her flight path. The ship accelerated steadily away from the enemy vessels until reaching nearly five percent the speed of light, then reversed thrust — her massive sublight engines providing a smooth deceleration to arrive at her chosen destination well before Captain Yagani’s two-minute warning had expired. The impressive demonstration of the destroyer’s power sent the clearest possible message to the enemy vessels — the Terrans came prepared to fight.

Chapter 3
    TFS Philippine Sea, Earth Orbit
    (Primary Flight Control)
    “Attention on the hangar deck, this is the Air Boss. Stand by for a twenty-four-spacecraft launch event. This will be a rapid-turn, simultaneous launch utilizing all eight elevators — one F-373 per elevator, eight ships per cycle, and three launch cycles. Spacecraft-handling officers report readiness and expect a green deck in zero three minutes.”
    As remarkable as it seemed for a single carrier to be performing at a reasonable level of efficiency during only her second day in space, flight operations were progressing without a hitch on both of TFC’s most recently launched Jutland -class carriers. So far at least, there had been no serious equipment failures, and it also appeared that neither the Philippine Sea nor the Ushant suffered from the same installation problem that had rendered the lead carrier’s two largest spacecraft elevators inoperative.
    With the first cycle of the launch event now imminent, automated warning announcements from Philippine Sea’s AI echoed throughout the hangar deck: “ Attention … launch event commencing. Clear elevators one through four and elevators five through eight for immediate departure.