Free The Lost Fleet: Beyond the Frontier: Guardian by Jack Campbell Page B

wonder . . .”
    “What?” Geary asked.
    “Maybe this isn’t about Boyens’s pride. Maybe he’s trying to tweak us one last time, by staying just barely out of reach and entering the gate just before we can hit him.”
    “It’s still a dangerous game. If he cuts it that fine and misses by a hair, he could take a lot of hits.”
    His display rippled as a string of updates appeared. “What’s this?”
    “Tactical data link from the Midway flotilla,” Desjani said. “I told my systems people not to pass it through in real time but to scrub it and let periodic updates through.”
    You’re letting transmissions from a flotilla of former Syndic warships through at all?
Geary wondered. But he could see that those tactical links provided some useful information on the readiness state of the Midway warships as well as the single heavy cruiser fleeing the Syndics. That lone heavy cruiser was now identified as the
Manticore
.
    The missiles fired at the
Manticore
had shifted their own vectors to maintain intercepts after the
Manticore
accelerated and maneuvered. They were still closing, but the slow relative speed with which they were overtaking
Manticore
made them good targets for the heavy cruiser’s armament. Geary watched as hell-lance shots slammed into the leading Syndic missiles, knocking out four. That left twenty incoming missiles, though.
    Manticore
’s vector altered abruptly as the cruiser’s main propulsion cut out, then her thrusters pitched her up and over, facing back the way she had come. Hell lances from
Manticore
’s forward batteries fired on the still-pursuing missiles as the heavy cruiser’s bow pointed toward them, but the ship’s movement continued away from the missiles.
    I know this maneuver. The next thing to happen will be . . .
    Manticore
’s main propulsion flared to life at maximum, now braking the heavy cruiser’s velocity. The oncoming missiles could not slow their own speed quickly enough, instead using maneuvering thrusters at maximum to try to claw around fast enough to still manage intercepts as their closing speed grew rapidly, and
Manticore
got closer a lot faster than the missiles had planned for.
    Missile vectors swung wildly, sliding past the oncoming shape of
Manticore
, stresses on the missile structures causing many of the weapons to come apart in mid–vector change. The missiles that survived the radical change in course were burning their remaining fuel off trying to match
Manticore
’s movement, which caused them to come to a near stop relative to
Manticore
. That made them perfect targets.
    The six surviving missiles blew up as hell lances stabbed through them.
    “You’re not supposed to try that maneuver with anything bigger than a light cruiser,” Geary commented.
    “That must be prewar doctrine,” Desjani said. “I’ve done it with a battle cruiser. So has Bradamont. She must be showing those former Syndics how to really drive ships.”
    With
Manticore
now slowing, the vectors of all the other forces near the hypernet gate were angling in toward the gate. Boyens, with his sole battleship and four light cruisers, was accelerating toward the gate at the lumbering pace which was the best a battleship could manage. Geary’s much-larger formation was bearing down on Boyens, but the projected intercept point with the Syndic flotilla was just past the gate. If Boyens kept accelerating at his current pace, he would get away just before Geary’s force closed to firing range.
    The six heavy cruisers and ten HuKs that Boyens had detached to chase
Kraken
had come over and about and were now angling back to meet up with the battleship a few minutes prior to the entire flotilla’s reaching the gate.
    And the Midway flotilla was coming in from almost the opposite side as Geary’s formation, aiming to hit the Syndic heavy cruisers before they could join with the rest of Boyens’s flotilla.
    Not the simplest situation, with five different groupings of ships