Page 84 of Fighting Gravity
“Fire on the nozun,” I commanded my men.
“We’re not going to hail them first?” Veron asked.
I shot her a sharp stare, reaching out my hand to grab her throat.
“No more questions,” I snarled. “Or you’re going out the airlock.” I pulled her in close, baring my teeth at her. “Fire on the nozun.”
Tossing her away from me, I returned my attention to the real issue. The human vessel was small and agile. If the pilot was any good, they’d use that to their advantage considering they didn’t have adequate weapons. Our job was to be the muscle and do as much damage as we could.
“Weapons ready,” Kaar said, taking a position at the controls near the back of the room.
“Fire,” I said, watching the nozun ship slowly pivot to look at us like a giant beast.
While gek and nozun weren’t in open war, we were under no obligation to play nice in free space where no species had territorial lines. We were all free game and everyone knew it. When I noticed the long, narrow energy canons lighting up on the belly of the nozun ship, I braced. They fired two, bright red missiles of light just as we fired our own.
Crex drifted sideways, barely avoiding the beams. When the nozun tried to do the same, they didn’t account for Kaar understanding brutish nozun behavior. They were stupid, in other words. He fired slightly to the side, catching the ship right above the curved window screen on the helm when they moved into it. The shields flashed into view, an otherwise invisible casing that enveloped any ship traversing space. Cracks spread like webbing across the barrier and then disappeared, but Kaar was already firing again. The second beam hit the underbelly of the ship as it tried to maneuver away, but it missed its canons. They buzzed and lit up with lethal amounts of energy aimed right at us, but I trusted Crex to move where he needed to.
The battle continued with exchanges of weapons fire. Our shields had been hit more than once and sat at 76%. Another good hit and they deteriorated to 50%.
But the nozun had been hit more. A bigger target took greater abuse and they’d been caught off guard when their focus was on the human vessel. Finally, the shield was obliterated by another direct hit to the crown of the beastly ship. We watched the barrier rot away in a deceivingly beautiful display of light and electric swirls of energy until the ship was exposed with nothing but its radiation shields remaining.
If it had been me, I’d have made a run for it to keep my crew safe, but the nozun weren’t known for caring about much aside from their own immediate success.
“Our main canon is offline,” Kaar said.
“Then fire with an off-cannon.”
“Brace!” Crex shouted as another round of cannon fire snagged the side of the Shadowbreaker, causing the ship to jolt left hard enough to make me stumble.
Looking at the nozun ship, I could see them aligning with us. Knowing them, they were about to put all they had left into blowing us apart, even if it meant stranding themselves without power. But just as their last remaining weapon was charging for a blast, the small, human vessel whipped around from the rear and fired five shots in quick succession along the side of the ship. They didn’t do much damage overall, but they did enough to disengage the cannon. The thing went limp, the energy dissipating and making the weapon look like a dead limb.
“Gut them,” I said.
Kaar fired everything we had at the ship until its outer shell was breached and the thing began to come apart before our eyes. A couple escape pods shot out from the main vessel just as the warship began to drift, lifeless and dead.
Another ghost ship in the vast ocean of black that was space.
“Should we go after the pods?” Crex asked.
The human shuttle came into view among the debris slowly floating away from the nozun ship, distracting me. I didn’t care about the nozun escape pods. I didn’t care about the obliterated ship. For some reason, my concern was the small shuttle that had somehow stumbled onto the wrong side of the expanse. The one Quinn was screaming for me to spare. I watched them drift in front of the Shadowbreaker and hover there looking at us like a prey animal staring at a predator. They just didn’t know if we were hungry… and neither did I. We could so easily blow them into pieces.
But Quinn’s voice just kept echoing in my head. Her pleading, pained tone was like glass against my brain.
Humans were in bed with the enemy. That ship was full of humans. Logically, they should be destroyed.
But Quinn was a soft spot I didn’t expect and perhaps I didn’t want. I knew my crew was waiting for me to give the command.
“Should we—” Kaar said.
“Our com link is malfunctioning,” Crex said. “We can’t hail them.”
“I don’t need to tell you what I think we should do,” Veron said, her tone small like she was reminding herself how short my temper had become.
“I’d prefer if you stopped telling me what you think altogether,” I said calmly, staring at the shuttle.
“What do you want to do?” Kaar said. “Even our asteroid canon can take that thing out.”
I hesitated a moment, very aware that my decision would put me in a different light for my crew. I was Rhone. I was ruthless and focused. I was not the kind of urok that let enemies go because they weren’t in a position to engage in a fair fight. No fight was fair but that was no fault of mine. The weaker opponents died and that was that.
