Homeworld: A Military Science Fiction Novel Read Online Free Page B

he had pulled up the Self Destruct command screen. “Well, that answers what kind of person I am,” thought Sheff before clearing the screen and assessing the minor damage the Driscoll had taken from the few enemy Ceramics that had managed to reach them before they evaded their ballistic path. There were no breaches, yet.
    Sheff returned his vision to the Virtual Array where the satisfying sight of one of the hostile smaller cruisers breaking apart in an eviscerated husk once the kinetic force of the Ceramics smashed into its lightly armored hull.
    The other nice thing about the Republics ceramic projectile is that they were designed to fracture shortly after impact, sending tiny shards in all directions to maximize damage to the hostile. In spite of their small size and weight, the density and hardness of the ceramic combined with the velocity and rate of fire were devastating on even the thickest armor plating.
    The Captain watched with grim satisfaction as the atmosphere that had been on board the hostile craft expanded into a halo-like area surrounding the detritus of the destroyed craft. Sheff knew all too well that this cloud consisted of a mixture of oxygen, nitrogen and bits and pieces of its former crewmembers.
    “Sir, the first Leap Frog is away!” called the Weapons Control officer. The Captain shifted his full attention and ordered the Virtual Array to follow the Pulse Missile Mark I’s progress. Sheff had of course seen remarkably realistic simulations of what the Leap Frog could do but he had never had the opportunity to use one in live combat before.
    The V.A. showed the small blips as the weapon blinked in and out of Null Space, correcting its trajectory in the microseconds it was in Normal Space. Within seconds, it found what it was looking for. A standard Earth Republic Fleet cruiser could fit inside the devastating hole that was created in the Coalition’s craft by the combined kinetic energy and directed explosion at extremely close range. Better still the Coalition’s heavy battle cruiser went dark as the physics of electromagnetic radiation fried the ships on board systems.
    Captain Sheff yelled a silent “Hoorah!” inside his head as his hand tightened their grip on the armrest of his command chair. “One for our side,” he thought.
    “Helmsman, flip us about,” ordered Sheff.
    The E.R.F. Driscoll had another tactical trick up its sleeve that Captain Sheff planned on taking full advantage of. Deep within the bowels of the main hull of the ship, there existed two extremely powerful Control Moment Gyroscopes or C.M.G.s. These allowed the extreme mass of the Driscoll to flip and rotate to any direction desired within moments.
    “Fire Control, give the next one a taste of our aft Leap Frog,” Sheff ordered. This would allow the Weapons Control Technicians the necessary time to ready the fore launcher for its next salvo.
    The Captain quickly checked the Virtual Array for a tactical assessment. Two more of the Coalition’s smaller craft were either destroyed or so badly damaged as to be out of the fight, but the Republic fleet was starting to be outmaneuvered by the much larger Coalition armada and it was getting harder to evade their combined massive firepower.
    As the Captain monitored the tactical display on the Virtual Array, he suddenly saw the Pendragon, one of the two support cruisers at the Driscoll's starboard, explode in a massive burst of violate plasma that lit the blackness of space around them in a dazzling display as dozens of Coalition Ceramics ripped through her hull. The Null Drive must have gone critical as the enemies Ceramics decimated the lightly armored Republic cruiser for there to be such a light show.
    The Pendragon had been broken into two large pieces of debris that were separating and beginning to drift apart.
    Before the second cruiser, the Acomo, could maneuver itself to safety, it collided with what remained of the forward second of the Pendragon. Captain Sheff