The ExO? Didn't she realize that she was jeopardizing the ship?
Bigz brought up his suit's line-of-sight receiver, trying to determine where the transmission had come from. The device gave him a 117 general direction, and he squinted into the blackness, searching for the Lynx.
But his eyes still failed him. The frigate was nowhere to be seen.
He squatted on the slowly spinning shield, hoping that the Rix hadn't heard the transmission. He decided to count while he waited, marking the minutes until they would all be out of danger.
"Enemy pulse fire has ceased," the sensor officer reported. Captain Laurent Zai swallowed. The Rix laser had been firing at a high rate, searching for traces of coldjet reaction mass. But now they had stopped looking.
The enemy had heard Hobbes's message.
"They must be charging up, sir."
"Indeed."
The firing rate of the Rix ranging laser was variable. It could be fired several times a second at low power, or more infrequently with greater effect. If they had given up pulse fire, then the Rix knew where the Lynx was. They were preparing a high-intensity punch, one sufficient to light up the Imperial frigate so that they could track her the rest of the way.
Once the frigate was glowing from a laser hit, the Rix gravity weapons would begin the work of destroying her.
At least ten seconds' charge for the first shot, he guessed.
Zai braced himself.
The big flatscreen flashed, lighting up the bridge as if a flare had bounded into the room.
"A miss, sir. A hundred meters off."
Zai nodded. The Rix were off by ten meters per second squared, roughly the push the Lynx had managed with the drone launcher.
That kick had pushed her hard, enough to throw Zai out of his shipmaster's chair. And perhaps the loss of the cargo bay had resulted in a few more precious meters per second.
"We've got to turn her, sir!" the First Pilot shouted. "We're broadside!"
"Keep us floating, Pilot," he commanded.
If they could turn back to head-on orientation, they'd be a smaller target. But Katherie Hobbes had said another burst from the jets would break the Lynx up. Zai had to believe her. Hobbes wouldn't have given away their position unless she spoke with absolute certainty.
So Zai had been forced into a dire bet--that the Rix warship would miss them just a few more times. They were almost out of range. So close to safety.
According to the bridge chronometer, they only had to survive another ninety seconds and they would drift out of the gravity cannon's perimeter. By their very nature, chaotic gravitons were far less coherent than photons. The Lynx was receding from the battlecruiser at more than 3,000 klicks per second. Under fixed physical laws, the frigate would soon be out of range.
Once they reached safety, Zai could bring internal diagnostics online and find out for himself how hard to push his ship.
Fifteen more seconds passed, enough time for the enemy to charge another burst.
The silent flash came on schedule.
"Another miss, sir! Two hundred meters aft."
"Unbelievable," Zai whispered. It had fallen on the other side of the first miss. They were overshooting!
Luck had smiled on the Lynx again.
Captain Zai leaned back, releasing his white-knuckled grip on his command chair. He sighed with relief.
"We may have made it," he said.
Ten seconds later, a shudder rocked through the bridge, and the high-pitched scream of boiling air filled the ship.
Engineer-Rating
Telmore Bigz could see the Lynx now.
The frigate sparkled against the black of space, the red light of laser fire running up and down its length.
"No!" he cried.
It was at least twenty kilometers away, glowing like an emergency light wand. The frigate's spindly shape seared itself into his vision, like a sun glimpsed with naked eyes. Bigz realized that his vision had finally cleared. Just in time to witness his ship and crewmates dying.
He wished that he were still blind.
Damn!They had almost made it out of range. By Bigz's reckoning, they would be out of the gravity cannon's perimeter in less than a minute.
The engineer-rating looked at the debris around him. It spun alone in the void, the forehull a minor planet with its own satellites, its own hazy atmosphere, even a population of one: Telmore Bigz.
Soon, this lost scrap heap would be all that remained of the Lynx.
A few more sparkles erupted from the frigate over the next seconds. The chaotic gravity beam would be orienting now, marshaling its full power for a final shot, using the laser damage to aim. The Rix might only get one blast before the Imperial warship passed out of range, so they would make sure they had it right.
Bigz squeezed the shockpack on his belt, the last dregs of stimulants giving him a moment of confidence for his decision. There was only one thing to do.
He activated his emergency beacon at full strength, its pulsing light reflecting from the rotating armor plates around him. Then Bigz brought his engineer's torch online, and charged it to hullalloy--cutting temperatures. He aimed it at the armor below him and pulled the trigger.
Light and heat flared from the cutter, and the armor burned a bright white where he swept its flame.
Bigz was now the sun for his tiny system, an unstable star casting hard, flickering shadows on the spinning debris around him.
Glowing bright in the void.
"Keep us dark!" Zai shouted over the din.
"But they have us, sir! We're already lit up like a firewire!"
"Just wait!" Zai yelled. "In another twenty seconds, they can't touch us." The damage control officer was finally silent. The man had wanted to reactivate the ship's internal sensors, to help coordinate repair efforts. True, the Rix already knew exactly where the Lynx was. But emissions from the internals would give the enemy the frigate's orientation, and they'd target the drive; the Lynx would be crippled. Some part of the Lynx was certainly going to fry, but there was no sense giving the Rix their choice as to which.
"Steady. At most they can hit us twice at full power," Zai said.
"Damage reports starting to come in from the aft compoint, sir," someone reported. The epicenter of the laser hit.
"Report."
"No structural damage. The aft processor shaft looks fused. Ten dead and counting."
Damn, Zai thought. More casualties, and more processor capacity lost. All from a range-finding laser. When the burst of chaotic gravity came, it would be hell.