Free Exodus: Empires at War: Book 2 by Doug Dandridge

his
sidearm and by feel set the frequency.  Then in one smooth motion he stood,
drew and pivoted in place, the pistol coming up to point at the back of the
tech’s head.  Hair burst into flame as flesh vaporized and the invisible beam
cut into the skull and through the brain below.  It exited through the forehead
and reflected off of the viewer as it struck.  The reflected energy flash burned
the dead tech’s face before it fell forward.
    The programmed assassin
turned the pistol toward the Commander, who was staring at him with a shocked
expression.  The beam had been set to a frequency that would be absorbed by
flesh and bone, and reflect from the plastics and alloys that made up the bridge. 
He swept the beam into the Commander’s neck, slicing through skin, muscle and
bone.  The man’s head fell from his neck, the cauterized wound showing no
blood.  The body followed an instant later.
    As the pilot tried to
get out of her seat and pull her weapon at the same time, Viper hit her in the
face with his right elbow, sending her back into her seat with a bloody mouth
and broken teeth.  As she tried to clear her head he shot her between the eyes,
driving her into the permanent blackness of death.
    “Chief Ferrel,” he
called over the com link as the pilot’s body slumped in her chair.  “We need
you on the bridge immediately.  Please respond.”
    “On my way,” came the
voice of the engineer from his rear compartment.  Moments later the man came
through the opening hatch to the bridge.  His eyes registered shock for a
moment before the assassin shot him through the head.
    The assassin overlay
that controlled Ensign O’Brien sat the man’s body in his chair.  The Viper
persona looked over the display, noting the other fighter, the flight leader,
ten kilometers to the front and a couple of kilometers to the side.  He noted
the position of the heavy cruiser Heraklion , the mother ship of the
fighters, about twenty thousand kilometers to the stern, and one of the
escorting destroyers thirty thousand kilometers to the bow.  And he made sure
the primary target was where he was supposed to be.
    Fingers flying over the
weapons board, Viper assigned all of his offensive missiles to targets.  The
computer flashed a warning over his screen, reminding him that he was targeting
friendlies.  The assassin persona punched in a series of override codes that he
wasn’t supposed to have access to.  Codes that allowed one man without voice recognition
to override the safety protocols of the system.  The board flashed readiness
and part of the panel started flashing a red commit.  Viper pushed down on the
panel and grabbed the fighter’s control stick.
    The two access hatches
on the bottom of the fighter opened and the four antiship missiles dropped into
space.  It took a millisecond to orient onto targets.  Then the drives kicked
in and sent the missiles toward their targets at five thousand gravities of
acceleration.
    In a little over half a
second the first missile screamed into the small frame of fighter Heraklion
II .  The velocity of the missile itself was enough to blast into the hull
of the fighter, kinetic energy superheating the structure and tearing the small
object apart.  The hundred megaton warhead detonation was almost an
afterthought, vaporizing materials and crew and mixing their gases together. 
Within a millionth of a second after detonation the fighter’s carried warheads
and fusion plant went critical, adding five hundred megatons of energy to the
blast.
    At fifteen kilometers
distance there was enough density of gas coming back to rock Heraklion III . 
And some larger particles, one of which hit the port wing of the craft and tore
a hole in the structure.  Viper already had the fighter turning toward the
primary target.  As the craft shook he kicked in full military power, one
thousand gravities of acceleration, on a vector that would take him under the Donut in a couple of