Chapter 12: Dog Eat Dog

January 13^th, 2279

Longest day so far, eh, Tony?

When the skipper closed in, the panel in the front indeed opened, revealing two unfriendly-looking holes, Korolev unable to gloat that she had been right about everything from the start. Basil speculated as to the nature of the weapon, until the holes started spitting angry bursts of blue energy. It was an interruptor-type weapon, a beam weapon that cut the beam off after a short burst to conserve energy. They were weaker in effect than a sustained beam but had the advantage of charging the capacitors up to full power in-between salvos and a much lower rate of heatsoking the system. It was a good choice for a small skipper, not at all like the often-found pirates who strapped anything they could find to their ships, often blowing holes into their own hulls. Whoever these people were, they were professionals.

The chase was on; the clock was ticking. 4 minutes and 43 seconds till rendezvous with Ton’s freighter. Basil didn’t know the weapons range of Ton’s ship, but likely it was also only short-range. The pathetic beam welder weapon he had fashioned also didn’t have good range, and the skipper had slowed when its weapons came into a suitable range, only closing in on them slowly now, increasing the skipper’s time out of range of the barge’s beam.

Currently, it was a game of numbers. The skipper could fire every 7 seconds, taking down their doubled-up shields by 11%, but the doubled-up shield gens were able to recharge 2% in-between each salvo. That meant he had around 100 seconds until the shields would burst, whatever enemy fire still remaining en route to them would likely either hit the shield generators and prevent any further continuation of the numbers game or – which he disliked even more – damage the D-9 or even the barge.

It was time to rapidly slow down, put all available energy into the construction beam and fire until the beam tip burned out. They were still at their maximum jump velocity, but reducing the energy to the engines would quickly result in narrowing the distance between the ships. He was also gambling on the fact that something had to have been moved in the ship’s bow to make space for weapons, possibly giving the small skipper weaker bow shields. He cut 4% power (a massive numeric change in velocity at such speeds) and the skipper lunged towards them until that ship’s system had caught up with the change. The beam tip aimed and fired a concentrated red beam, hitting the skipper’s shields which became visible as if two magicians were comparing their powers. Second after second, Basil expected the beam to burn through the tip and fry the whole arm, but it held on. He continued to drop speed, but at a slow rate the other ship could easily adjust to, in order not to throw off the aim to much, the beam following the now swaying skipper’s bow. This gave him more and more of the rapidly decreasing energy capacity back he so sorely needed, and it also prepared his next move, as soon as the beam would die. Finally, it did, the tip simply mushrooming and sending out red lightning into the freight cage as the concentrated beam collapsed, singing the D-9 slightly but having likely succeeded in forcing the skipper to divert energy to their own shields, possibly weakening other major consumers such as the weapons or engines.