Free Federation Reborn 2: Pirate Rage by Chris Hechtl

heavy, one medium, and two light cruisers based on their mass and drive readings. They are ID'd as Zulu one through four. We're still checking for class …”
    “Frack,” Renee murmured, checking the plot.
    “One distraction after another to get us to focus our attention everywhere else but where we should. Well, they aren't stupid,” Simon said darkly. He nodded to the skipper. “You were right, ma’am.”
    “No, not stupid. Definitely not. But we were, or I should say I was very stupid,” Renee said, shaking her head in self-disgust and loathing at the trap she'd walked her ship into. The enemy had used the mass of the moon to deaden her neutrino detection. She'd made a cheery mistake not scouting behind it first, and it was biting her in the ass. He glanced at her. “Never mind, I'll kick myself later.”
    He nodded. If there was a later was left unsaid.
    “Missile spread inbound!”
    “Roll ship! Get our starboard side away from that missile spread! Defense, fire at will, fire plan Baker!”
    “Fire plan Baker, aye, ma’am!” Ensign Drum echoed.
    ---<>))))
    Losses quickly mounted up, faster than she had expected. They'd managed to pop some of the fighters the Feds had gotten off on their port side before they could settle in and fight back; they'd been fools to dump them in ahead of the fighters.
    In theory it would have been a waste to dump them in behind as well, since they could have kept running and no one could win a stern chase unless the prey ran out of fuel. But they hadn't. She was glad the enemy had screwed up again, but there was a limit on how much she should take advantage of it.
    Each fighter her people had blown up had been one of her fighters not taking on the mother ship itself. She cursed at her pilots to focus on the cruiser. “Quit fracking around or I'll shoot you myself!” she snarled when Baker flight tried to line up on a wounded Fed fighter. They sheepishly turned about and reformed for their firing pass.
    She watched with a critical eye as the pair bored in. But the Resolution wasn't one of the Horathian ships; she was fully restored. They might have surprise on their side, but surprise was fading. As she watched, portholes in the shields snapped open and point defense lasers lashed out. Her computers painted them on her HUD. Before she could scream a warning, the lidars locked onto Baker flight and the PDL itself opened up, tearing them into floating gas.
    Charlie flight tried to capitalize on the open shield windows, but just like that the windows snapped shut and new ones elsewhere opened up to fire on them.
    “That's one tough ship!” she said. She sent a signal to the flagship with all of the data she had managed to acquire. She began detailing additional observations verbally as her hands flicked to link in with the surviving fighters to get them to pool their observation data to her fighter.
    “Starboard shields are weakened. She's got fast reaction time with the point defense. So, this is going to get ugly,” she muttered as she looped her people around for another run.
    “Form up on me. Save the last of your missiles for a bombing run. We're going to make a strafing pass, then you'll dump the missiles out like I showed you. Kick them clear with a delay on their timers. The enemy will be focused on us. When I give the order, we pull up.”
    “Oscar maneuver with a twist, ma’am,” Jello said over the net.
    “Quit being a suck-up,” Larry growled making smooching sounds.
    “Can it,” Maya growled.
    “I thought we were done?”
    “Well, you thought wrong, as usual. So form up. Let's do this,” Maya growled, tightening the grip on her stick.
    ---<>))))
    “Commodore” Firefly felt almost helpless since he couldn't attack through any computer networks. He'd tried, but they were insulated against such an assault. The enemy had learned. He did his best, however, and following protocol he captured as much combat chatter as possible, including video. It was