Free First Principles: Samair in Argos: Book 3 by MICHAEL KOTCHER

ships in a complicated pattern, always shifting, never moving predictably.  It was a maneuver that the Leader had drilled on mercilessly, requiring that his flyers work on it for at least two hours every day, knowing that he wanted to actually use such a maneuver at some point.  He knew that Captain Samair approved of the training, but didn’t much approve of this particular maneuver, but she’d given him full authority to train his zheen and she hadn’t stepped on his toes about it.  They closed on the battlecruiser, which had been zigzagging around, though his Second Flight pilots had been keeping clear of the ship’s engines, peppering the shields on the sides but staying away from the forward section, where the ship’s heaviest concentration of weapons were located.
                  “First flight, pincer attack, port and starboard,” Korqath ordered harshly and his ships wheeled around, pivoted and then raced forward.  Their last remaining missiles streaked out, exploding against the forward shields of the battlecruiser, opening holes in the already depleted screens.
                  The shuttles lumbered forward as quickly as they could, their engines redlining.
     
                  “Damn it!” Gants hissed.  The forward shields were shredded, and his forward armor had taken some minor damage from the wash of energy emitted from the blasts.  It was as though the Leytonstone ’s rusted face had received a pair of jabs from a determined opponent.  She wasn’t down, but she was stunned.  Six fighters had braved the battlecruiser’s forward weapons to attack.  He cursed himself for not having his gunners lay down a blistering level of fire forward, but he’d been focused on the other fighters nipping at his flanks and that thrice-damned corvette which he saw was turning back to engage again.  “Just what the hell does it take to kill that fucking ship?” he demanded.
                  “Sir!  Incoming shuttles on intercept course!” the sensor officer called out urgently.
                  “What?” he quickly pulled up his display.  Indeed, two cargo shuttles had been hiding behind the starfighters and had raced forward as the fighters had performed a pincer attack, which was probably little more than a distraction for some reason.  But why…
                  “Shift fire!” he ordered energetically, turning to face Paxton at tactical.  “Shoot those shuttles down!”  Gants’s bellow echoed over the bridge. 
                  Paxton stabbed frantically at his control, retasking his fire control and he shouted into his mic to the gun deck to get the turbolasers and heavy lasers to blast apart the incoming shuttles. 
                  His actions were too slow.  The guns swung around and opened up, filling the space forward of the battlecruiser with coherent light, illuminating the hull and the two small ships that were coming in on a converging vector.  But they weren’t able to track the two shuttles, were unable to lock on until they were less than five hundred meters from the ship.  One of the shuttles was ten meters ahead of the other and they were spaced about two hundred and fifty meters apart, both moving in at a blistering speed of one hundred eighty.  A heavy laser blast clipped the port side of one of the shuttles, putting it into a flat spin on its x-axis, which rapidly turned into an out of control spiral.  Another shot pumped into the small ship, blowing it apart and detonating the bomb inside. 
                  The explosion hit the underside of the forward hull at a mere one hundred meters.  Damage sparkled at the blast site, scoring the metal and ripping apart one heavy laser emplacement.  It also blinded the gunnery sensors to the other shuttle which had made small adjustments to its course to keep the gunners working hard to catch