Free StarFight 1: Battlestar by T. Jackson King Page A

radio emissions passing among the pods. They are not visual imagery signals. Uh, I would guess there are wasp people inside the pods and that the pods plan on landing on the continent below them.”
    Jacob nodded, thinking hard. “Weapons, can you tell anything about those tubes on the wasp ships from the multi-spectral imagery coming in from the spysat?”
    “Very little,” the man said, his Brazilian accent almost non-existent. “They show warm in infrared. There are ultraviolent glows about them. Energy emissions are localized at the base of each tube. They are—”
    Bright yellow light filled the true space holo that showed the ship nearest the spysat. The crooked light beam came straight at the imager eye of the spysat. Then the image went blank. Other spysats watching from a lower orbit showed an expanding yellow glow where the spysat had once been.
    “Spysat destroyed,” O’Hara said sharply.
    Jacob knew that. The imagery was clear about what had happened. “Tactical, Weapons, do either of you have any idea what kind of weapon that yellow bolt was?”
    “A lightning bolt,” muttered Osashi from his Communications post, surprising Jacob.
    Ignoring the sudden comment from the warrant officer, he looked to O’Hara and Diego y Silva.
    “Sir,” called the Weapons chief, “it does indeed resemble a lightning bolt. My sensors report an extremely powerful electrical emission from the tube that emitted the bolt.”
    “Same data from my spysat sensors,” O’Hara said quickly.
    He looked to the Navigation post. “CPO Slaughter, what was the distance from the spysat to the ship that blasted it?”
    The Navigation chief jumped in her seat at his words, then bent forward to check her control pillar. “My nav sensors compute the distance as being just shy of 4,000 kilometers.”
    “Thank you.”
    Jacob thought that was a hell of a range for a non-coherent beam weapon. Then again, their antimatter beam reached that far out, thanks to magnetic lensing of the emitted antimatter. Maybe a similar electromag lens had controlled the lightning bolt beam.
    “Weapons, share your data with the Weapons stations on our other ships. Tactical, do the same for your sensor feeds with other ship Tactical posts,” he said, racking his mind for what else he should do or say or realize.
    “Captain!” cried Slaughter at Navigation. “The wasp ships are moving!”
    He saw now what the Nav chief reported. His separate holo that depicted the twelve wasp ships now showed yellow-orange flares coming from the rear of each ship. Sensor datafiles said they were fusion pulse exhausts. The same as the normal space drives possessed by every battle group ship. As best he could tell from the spysat imagery, the twelve ships were angling down toward the planet, but aiming for its north pole. His academy courses in astrophysics and orbital mechanics told him what was happening.
    “Melody, activate the All Ship vidcom. And transmit what I say and my image to all other ships.”
    “Activating. Transmitting.”
    “All personnel. The alien wasp ships are leaving geosync orbit,” Jacob said, doing his best to make his tone sound firm, determined and confident. “They are moving to a lower orbit and aiming for the planet’s north pole. Which will give them an increase in speed. That means they will arrive on our side of the world within 40 minutes. Or less if they keep thrusting. Prepare for combat. Melody, change ship status to Alert Hostile Enemy.”
    “Ship status changed to Alert Hostile Enemy,” the AI said, her tone a mix of excitement and worry.
    Jacob reached up and pulled his helmet down over his head. It sealed with a snap-click. The vacsuit’s enviro controls started up with a blast of oxy-nitrogen. Telltale status lights appeared in a chin-up position just below his nose. His seat vibrated as automatic straps moved out and over his chest in an x-pattern. Pairs of straps went over his legs. The straps were a backup to the inertial