Thrawn Ascendancy Book 3: Lesser Evil
- Автор: Зан Тимоти
- Год: 2021
- Язык: английский
- Год: Random House
- ISBN: 9781473596580
- Жанр: Боевая фантастика
Электронная книга - «Thrawn Ascendancy Book 3: Lesser Evil». Краткое содержание книги:
“Damage?” she called, checking the nav display to confirm Wikivv had them on the correct exit vector.
“Not good,” Ghaloksu warned from the weapons station. “Portside lasers mostly gone, sphere tubes inoperable, breacher tubes empty or warped. Portside aft thrusters also took a hit from the shoulder cluster and are down to forty percent. “
“Acknowledged,” Ziinda said. So in those same five seconds the Grayshrike had gone from a fearsome nighthunter to a wounded growzer pup. The question was, had the Grysks noticed?
They had. Even as the Parala and Bokrea circled back and resumed their attack on the half-crippled BattleChief, the StoneCrusher Emery had shaken off its own patrol cruiser and gunboat harassment and was charging after the Grayshrike, clearly intent on teaching a lethal lesson to the audacious heavy cruiser that had so severely damaged one of its smaller compatriots.
And with the damage to Ziinda’s portside thrusters eating into her acceleration, the Grysk knew it would have no trouble running them down.
Fortunately, Thrawn had anticipated this result of the Grayshrike’s attack.
In fact, he’d counted on it.
Across the battleground, the Chiss warship blasted away from Sunrise, clearly trying to get to the edge of the planet’s gravity well and escape into hyperspace. Behind it, the Emery, one of Jixtus’s three StoneCrusher-class WarMasters, was charging in pursuit, clearly intent on bringing an end to it.
It was going to catch it, too, Qilori saw. Even if the Chiss got to the edge of the well in time, the Emery was close enough to jump right behind it. And with the eerie skills of the Attendant navigators, the Emery’s commander might well be able to stay right on the Chiss’s tail all the way to its final destination.
Shifting in his seat, surrounded by the Whetstone’s all-but-catatonic crew, Qilori settled back to watch the Chiss ship die.
“Stand ready.” Thrawn’s voice came over the Grayshrike’s speaker. “Grayshrike jump on three; activate field on one. Five, four, three—”
There was the usual flicker of stars, and as Ziinda looked in the aft displays she saw Sunrise now in the distance behind them.
But not too far in the distance. Thrawn had specified a very short in-system jump, one that would leave the Grayshrike visible to the Emery and encourage it to continue its attack.
“One-eighty yaw turn,” Ziinda ordered. The visual display showed the Emery was still back there and still coming toward them.
But it was also still in space-normal. And as Ziinda looked at the sensor display, she could see faint and irregular tachyon pulses as the Grysk warship’s hyperdrive tried and failed to activate.
“Now, that’s something you don’t see every day,” Vimsk commented.
“You do today,” Ziinda said, trying to put aside her lingering concerns. It had been only a few days since Thrawn first introduced them to the gravity-well generator he’d taken from the Vagaari pirates after his first clash with them, and which he’d now somehow managed to borrow or steal from the UAG vaults. At the time, and during all their practice runs, he’d continually assured them that the generator would continue to function properly through the entirety of the upcoming battle.
Despite his assurances, Ziinda wasn’t entirely happy about trusting her life to this device. But unless and until it failed, she and the rest of the Chiss battle force might as well make the most of it. “Vimsk, you have the edge of the field marked?”
“Yes, Senior Captain,” Vimsk confirmed. “Tagging it now.”
“Wikivv?”
“Got it, Senior Captain,” the pilot confirmed. “And I must say, it’s nice to get an easy jump calculation for a change.”
“You’re welcome,” Ziinda said. “Just don’t get used to it. Ghaloksu?”
“Weapons ready,” Ghaloksu confirmed. “May I remind the senior captain that our portside is still a mess?”
“Noted. Wikivv?”
“Also noted,” Wikivv assured him. “I didn’t see any serious damage on the Emery before we jumped, so I thought we’d work on its starboard side. We’ll come out starboard-to-starboard, but I can roll us to bring in the dorsals or ventrals anytime you want. Just let me know.”
“I will,” Ghaloksu said. “The starboards should last long enough, but it’s good to have options.”
“Stand ready,” Ziinda said, shifting her gaze to the tactical. The Emery was still coming toward them, still trying to get its inexplicably balky hyperdrive to function. A little farther, right to the edge of the Vagaari gravity field … “Here we go,” she said. “Wikivv: Three, two, one.”
Qilori was still gazing out at the distant drama, wondering why in the Depths the Emery hadn’t jumped—and really, with the Chiss warship having come out of hyperspace so close that even the Whetstone’s sensors could still see it, the Grysk should have charged in right on top of it—when, without warning, the Chiss was suddenly back.
But it didn’t arrive like a normal in-system jump, with the small and fleeting flicker that Pathfinders were able to see that marked the positioning uncertainty that even the most precise jumps never completely eliminated. Here, instead, the Chiss popped in with a precision that Qilori had never seen except on those rare occasions when a ship miscalculated and ran into the critical edge of a planetary gravity well.
But the parameters of Sunrise’s gravity well had been automatically calculated and marked as soon as the Whetstone entered the system. Those limits were routinely laid out on a ship’s nav display, and a single glance was all it took to confirm that neither the Emery nor the Chiss ship were anywhere near it. How could even the most gifted pilot have pulled that off?
And then, as the Chiss warship sped along the Emery’s flank, firing and tearing into its hull exactly the way it had done to the smaller BattleChief a few minutes ago, he suddenly understood.
The Chiss had a gravity-well generator.
Qilori felt his winglets freeze like ice with the sheer impossibility of it. There were stories about such things, secondhand reports from distant regions that had only rarely been visited in person by anyone in the Navigators’ Guild. But none of those stories connected the technology to the Chiss, let alone suggested that the Ascendancy actually had one in their possession.
But the Emery’s pursuit had been stalled where it shouldn’t, the Chiss warship’s return had held a precision it shouldn’t, and the lasers and other weapons tearing into the Emery’s hull were proof that what Qilori had seen wasn’t just an illusion. The Chiss warship reached the Emery’s stern and did a hard yaw swivel, turning its lasers and breachers into a concerted assault on the StoneCrusher’s main thrusters.
And then, as if to underline the impossibility of what had just happened, the Emery exploded.
Qilori felt his breath catch in his throat, his frozen winglets drooping as stunned shock gave way to stunned disbelief. A Chiss heavy cruiser, singlehandedly taking out a Grysk StoneCrusher? Like the presence of the gravity-well generator itself, it was impossible.