Fear God and Dread Naught

by Christopher Nuttall

  Conversely, if he turned his back on the corvette to secure the gas facility and merchantmen, there was nothing to stop it from coasting further and further away until it was outside the Pride’s effective zone of control. And if there was even a half-reasonable possibility that the gas facility had been turned into a bioweapons manufacturing site—

  His eyes snapped open after he had worked his way through the situation, and he knew what he had to do—no matter how much it might cost him personally.

  “Your ‘immunity,’ Captain Raubach,” he began coldly, his fingers tapping the Captain’s fire control code into the console on his chair, “has just been revoked.”

  His finger rammed down on the firing icon, and the look on the pirate Captain’s face was one of shocked incredulity as the Pride’s forward batteries fired in unison. Captain Raubach made to protest, but the connection was severed before any sound passed her lips.

  The viewer shimmered to replace her smug visage with a real-time image of the corvette. Its superstructure buckled from the combined power of eight heavy lasers landing in concert on the drifting vessel’s lightly-armored hull.

  Seconds later there was a series of explosions which cascaded through the corvette’s hull, sending sections of hull plating flying in every direction as the vessel began to topple end over end from the force of the internal ruptures. Debris went spinning off with every rotation, and after less than a minute all power signatures aboard the corvette went dark.

  There was shocked silence on the bridge, into which Middleton smartly ordered, “Helm, best possible speed to the gas collection facility; I don’t want a single ship escaping this system under any circumstances. Comm.,” he continued, bracing himself against the arm of his chair, “transmit on all channels the order for vessels in system to heave to—or, if docked, to remain where they are—and await MSP inspection. Failure to comply will result in…” he cocked a cold grin in spite of the situation’s severity, “further revocations.”