Chapter 17
Lex led his new ship into battle, its new and improved shield kicking on automatically. A quiet voice in his head felt it was necessary to point out that he’d never once been in a dogfight, nor had he done any training. He silenced it. Flying a ship was all about getting it to go where you want to go and do what you want it to do, and he’d always been able to do that. Besides, he’d had to avoid being shot before. The only difference this time was that he could pull a trigger every now and then. A lifetime of video games had gotten him ready for that.
The drones were everywhere. His computer claimed that there were forty, and he was in no mood to count them personally. The things looked less like spacecraft and more like some sort of mechanical insects, thrusters, sensor nodes, and weapons fused into a spindly, gangly mass. As soon as he was nearby, they stopped assaulting the lab and started targeting him. The in-ship safety systems started their usual litany of warnings, but he tuned them out. After a quick glance at the new options present on the tractor beam menu, he quickly selected “Auto Target: Best Target” and “Auto Fire: Enabled” from the appropriate menus and picked a drone.
Despite the substantial upgrade he’d gotten in terms of hardware, the enemy drones were far more agile. It took all of the reaction time and steering nuance he could muster to get behind one, and by the time he did, three more were heaving shots at him from all sides. He kept at it, sweeping close to the buildings to clear away swarms and nudging his ship out of line of fire until, finally, the modified tractor beam did its thing. The sound was like an angry jackhammer, flipping alternately between attract and repel at a devastating frequency. After a few seconds, the shield of the targeted drone suddenly failed, and a moment later the craft literally rattled to pieces.
“Yeah!” he cheered, but his celebration was cut short when a pair of plasma bolts slapped against his shield, knocking it down to seventy-five percent. If he was going to survive this, he was going to have to be very careful.
A trio of ships swept down in front of him, but he cranked up the speed and twisted the ship’s belly toward them. The beefy shield and extra mass of his vehicle tore through them like tissue paper. From above, there was a volley of shots, but he angled the ship between them, then opened fire on his opponents, taking one of the ships out and clipping another before having to dodge another salvo from above. Racing and freelancing instincts slowly began to find their niches. Reflexes honed to take advantage of passing opportunities started to adapt to firing opportunities. Skills used to identify safe paths through asteroid clusters found use in zipping through ship attack formations. Everything was falling into place. The question was . . . would it be enough?
Bypass Gemini Page 21