Read War Against the White Knights for Free Online

them until they were reduced to burning debris. He left the towed pods alone to drift onward. He passed one for a closer inspection and noted two features. What he assumed were the noses of the stubby pods ended in a heavily armored dish, the edge of which looked like a ring of Fermi drills. The drilling disks supported the idea that these were boarding pods, but the ring of pods had these nose drills oriented radially out from the center, not aimed at the boarding target.
    As Romulus spun about for another attack run, the reason for the pod configuration became clear. The leading boarding craft came about .
    They didn’t apply delta-vee to gradually change their vector in the manner of conventional spacecraft, nor did they shed their momentum instantly, sweeping it under the rug in the form of Klein-Manifold space as X-Boats did. The boarding craft slowly turned and slowed as if using a fluid medium to deflect its momentum. It came about like an ocean-going ship.
    Romulus had seen that once before, on the day he left his mother behind on Tranquility. Even after they had captured one of the enemy ships, the Legion’s best minds still couldn’t work out how the craft had maneuvered. All Romulus did know was that he had only ever encountered one race that could come about in a vacuum.
    Hardits!
    As the boarding ships turned, the fan of pods rotated. Once up to speed, the pods were released, fired one after the other like slingshots at the target… at Beowulf .
    While he shot up another wave of boarding craft, the first wave was throwing out clouds of defensive munitions, which grew so dense that Romulus could no longer see the boarding ships or even Beowulf herself. The roiling clouds of smoke, reflective strips and decoys lit up constantly with explosions. Romulus could only hope these were the signs of Beowulf’s point defenses extracting a high cost of her attackers.
    The XO wanted him taking out any boarders who made it through that maelstrom to Beowulf’s vulnerable hull, but to fly his Mustang through that sensor-blinding fog filled with defensive fire spat out by Beowulf would be suicide.
    Without looking away from his tac-display, he placed a hand on Janna’s thigh. Though there could be no heat transfer between their heavily insulated pressure suits, he still felt her warmth filling him through his palm.
    It wasn’t just his death warrant he’d be signing if he went in.
    But the XO needed him, and Janna would never respect him if he abandoned their home to its fate because he feared for her safety.
    Romulus opened his mouth to give Janna one of his trademark quips as he entered the defensive fog, but they had deserted him. This was the most insanely dangerous thing he’d ever done, and that was saying something. As he scoured the area with his eyesight – the sensor systems overwhelmed by the chaos – he had to blink back tears. He still traded off his reputation for pulling dangerous stunts, but he wasn’t a kid with something to prove any longer. He had too much to lose that was precious.
    His thumb hovered over the firing stud.
    No. Railguns weren’t an area effect weapon, not in space. But there was something else he could use that was.
    Romulus flew low and parallel to Beowulf’s hull, spinning about and coming to a stop right up against the Hardit Marine unit. His engine exhaust armor actually knocked a Hardit off the hull, sending the dirty monkey spinning into space. So long, pal.
    Then with a waggle of his Mustang’s backside, he applied a little thrust from his main engine, taking maximum care to ensure his engine exhaust was kept just clear of Beowulf’s hull.
    The Mustang’s engine was the same model of zero-point drive unit that powered Beowulf across interstellar distances. It worked by polarizing quantum fluctuations within the area of its effect cone , weaponizing the hidden heartbeat of the universe. To any equipment or personnel caught in the engine effect cone there was no