Read Kris Longknife 13 - Unrelenting for Free Online

while the reaction mass around a hit bled into space, carrying away heat as well as causing the laser beam to bloom and lose power.
    Damaged frigates took on a halo.
    The Earth frigates were a different story. Now they fairly glowed as they took in the laser hits, slowed the light down, spread it out along the entire length of their armor, and reflected it back into space.
    Earth’s BatRon 12 had led the way through the jump. It was always closest to the enemy. Now the thirteen aliens concentrated on the seven Earth frigates. They made them glow.
    But they did not make them explode.
    Kris watched her board. The Earth frigates’ armor wasn’t even into the red yet.
    “We’ve got to keep our nose to the foe,” Jack whispered.
    “And the Earth squadron out front,” Kris agreed.
    The forward batteries were recharging. The aft batteries in Kris’s fleet were coming up on full as they crossed the hundred-thousand-kilometer range.
    That also put the trailing 20-inch frigates of Hawkings’s BatRon 2 in range.
    “Forward squadrons, prepare to flip ships and fire aft batteries. You will flip back, bow toward the enemy as soon as your aft batteries are empty. BatRon 2, fire your forward batteries at the ships you identify as least damaged, then flip and fire aft lasers. You will also flip back and offer the enemy your bows.”
    Ships’ names blinked acknowledgments as Kris finished.
    “Flip ship. Fire,” Kris ordered.
    The slaughter among the onrushing alien ships was brutal, but they gave as well as they got.
    Thirteen big warships took fire from twenty-nine frigates. Actually, a full thirty-two as the damaged frigates flipped and contributed their recharged forward lasers as well.
    Eight of the five-hundred-thousand-ton alien ships dissolved, wrecked by their own acceleration or eaten by the plasma in their own reactors. One ship actually bent along its middle, then broke in half. Another ship seemed to burn from the inside, gutting itself before the inrush of vacuum could dowse its own fires.
    Most just exploded into gas as reactor containment vessels failed and sun-hot plasma was released to incinerate flesh and steel.
    Eight ships died, but the other five just kept coming, firing whatever lasers they could still bring to bear.
    Hawkings immediately flipped his eight ships and fired their aft batteries at the five survivors. One blew, but the others kept racing at Kris.
    Kris’s ships had to take it. Tests had shown that they couldn’t feed all the power into a single capacitor and get one laser ready ahead of the rest. No, they might give three priority, but only at a ten-percent penalty.
    Kris had weighted the options and established the fleet doctrine. Charge the entire forward battery. Charge the entire aft battery. Only under unusual circumstances charge three guns ahead of the rest.
    Kris considered the present circumstances and shook her head.
    The two fleets rushed at each other. Behind this fight, themonstrous alien base ship fled at 1.14 gees toward the third jump.
    No way you’re going to make that, Kris swore.
    Beyond that, the survivors of the ships that had fought Yi were also bearing off to connect with their mother ship. Yi’s ships had time to mend and make repairs. They were now back to yellow or green on their boards although Kris counted five that were trailing the rest of the fleet. Seven destroyed, five too damaged to pursue. That left Yi with only twenty ships. The ten surviving 22-inch war wagons were closing with the retreating aliens, nipping at their heels, but from an extreme range of 180,000 klicks.
    Admiral Yi’s secondary batteries were also sweeping the space ahead of him for those troublesome mines.
    Admiral Bethea had pulled her two BatRons off a bit, as if to get well ahead of the aliens on their flight to the third jump point. With the speed of her frigates, no doubt Bethea could put herself square in their path and make them come to her as she fired and retreated, fired and