The Synchronicity War Part 2 Read Online Free PDF

theory
prevent the ship from being hit although if it had to dodge 55
laser pulses, then there was still some risk of getting hit by a
lucky shot. They just had to accept that risk and pray.

    While he was still thinking of the probabilities
of random hits with long range laser fire, the timer dropped to 15
minutes and Tanaka initiated the planned course change. Defiant
spun 90 degrees and resumed acceleration in that new direction. The
ship still hadn’t been hit by enemy radar nor did Shiloh expect it
to at this range. Even when they would detect enemy radar beams
hitting the ship, the range would have to drop considerably more in
order for the radar beam to hit the ship and bounce back to the
enemy fleet with enough residual energy to be detected. That was
the drawback to using radar to detect hostile starships. They could
see you long before you could see them. Right now the only thing
the enemy was seeing was the recon drones that were using their
radars to track the fleet’s progress. Three waves of recon drones
had already been destroyed when they got close enough for accurate
laser fire. There were two more waves already on their way and
Defiant would deploy at least two more before the range dropped to
minimum.

    Shiloh queried the tactical computer for time
left before the Strike Force launched their attack drones, based on
data sent back by Iceman. Fourteen minutes. They seemed to take
forever. Enemy radar began hitting Defiant’s hull when the range
had dropped to 2.25 million km. As planned, the ship began evasive
maneuvers and some of them were indeed violent enough to
momentarily overload the inertial dampeners. Shiloh was certain
that by the time the maneuvering was over, there were going to be
at least one or two cases of whiplash among the crew, if not
more.

    When the time to attack drone launch reached
zero, Shiloh looked at the tactical display but saw nothing for a
couple of seconds. Then the display pinged for attention and Shiloh
saw a new cluster of blue dots emerging from the green dots
representing the Strike Force. The blue dots accelerated at almost
800Gs towards the enemy fleet while the Strike Force, having shot
its bolt, now veered off at 400Gs on a new course that was 90
degrees from Defiant’s new vector. From Defiant’s vantage point,
the ship had veered off sideways and Iceman’s fighters had veered
off vertically which would allow both of them to maintain contact
via the relay drones without the enemy fleet intercepting the com
laser pulses.

    With less than a minute now until the attack
drones reached their targets, this was the time that worried Shiloh
the most. If, for whatever reason, the enemy A.I.s decided to use
their radars to look behind them, they would see the attack drones
coming at them with plenty of time to fire at them. Firing at them
didn’t guarantee hitting them. Attack drones were designed to be
difficult to detect accurately and were small enough to make a
direct hit difficult too. With 44 seconds left to impact, Shiloh
heard the Weapons Officer yell out.

    “They’re scanning behind them!” At almost the
same time, roughly a third of the blue dots disappeared. 63 attack
drones were still functional. Now the question was…would the enemy
laser batteries be recharged fast enough to fire again before drone
impact?

    “They’ve stopped scanning!” yelled the Weapons
Officer. Shiloh nodded. No sense in helping the enemy drones more
than was absolutely necessary. He was sure that they would resume
scanning as soon as their lasers were recharged. With 9 seconds
left to impact, the enemy must have fired its lasers again because
51 blue dots vanished leaving 12 attack drones still on track and
now that it was obvious that there wasn’t enough time left for the
enemy to fire again before being intercepted, the attack drones
turned their radars on and headed straight for their targets. Time
to impact hit zero and 12 red dots in the enemy fleet also
disappeared.