Free Starship's Mage: Episode 5 by Glynn Stewart Page A

I will tolerate no more surprises from him.”
    Wong simply nodded and returned to his station, just behind the Simulacrum at the heart of the bridge.
    Azure settled into his chair, watching the screens gathered around him and the bridge crew beyond them. They weren’t the finely oiled machine of the handful of Protectorate warship’s he’d seen the bridge of, but they were more than good enough for his purposes.
    Sixty minutes passed while the Azure Gauntlet ’s massive engines blazed, propelling her towards her prey at fifteen gravities. Without the gravity runes carved into the floor of every level of the ship, the crew would have been crushed to death long ago at these speeds.
    “Sir, the Blue Jay just dropped a cargo container,” Hu reported from the sensor station. “I’m not detecting anything unusual about it, but its drifting free in space. Seems an odd time to be ejecting their garbage.”
    “The last time the Blue Jay appeared to be disposing of their garbage, a starship hunting them died ,” Wong observed dryly. “Monroe! Target that container with a heavy missile and blow it to hell.”
    The brightly haired gunner didn’t respond aloud, but moments later a single missile blasted out from the Gauntlet’s forward tubes. It blasted forward at thirteen thousand gravities, closing in on the innocent-looking cargo container.
    Four minutes later, with the Syndicate missile still forty seconds out, the cargo container gracefully came apart. With the Azure Gauntlet ’s sensors focused on it, Azure was easily able to spot the pre-placed charges that blew out all six exterior panels.
    Several seconds passed in silence as Azure found himself holding his breath to see what happened next. Then, with their missile still ten seconds out, the neat racking holding the contents together came apart as well.
    The Blue Jay disappeared from their screens, hidden behind hundreds of threat icons.
    “ What the fuck?! ” Azure exclaimed involuntarily.
    “The container was full of missiles,” Hu answered after a long pause. “It looks like they suffered some attrition to the charges and initial launch, but we have three hundred and seventy eight fusion drives missiles inbound.”
    Azure looked at the blinking red icons on his screens. The missiles were blazing back at the Gauntlet at five thousand gravities, nothing compared to their own missiles, but there were so many of them.
    “Talk to me, Wong,” he ordered.
    “Tempests of some variety,” his servant explained calmly. “They’re self-targeting and very smart. Compared to our own missiles, they’re slow, long-burning, and carry pitiful warheads.”
    “And?”
    “And we can stop maybe three-quarters of that salvo,” Wong admitted. “Our armor would probably take thirty or forty hits before it gave way. The remaining fifty or so nukes would gut us and end the Blue Star Syndicate in a blaze of nuclear fire.”
    Azure glared at the missiles as they shot towards him.
    “Surprises,” he said bitterly. “Do what you must, Mister Wong.”
    His captain nodded sharply, and turned back to the Gauntlet’s bridge crew.
    “Jourdaine!” Wong snapped. “Get us the hell out of here!”
     
    #
     
    “Damn.”
    The mild curse word from David was among the worst Damien had ever heard the Captain swear, but it utterly failed to cover the disappointment at watching the pursuing cruiser disappear into a jump flash as the massive salvo of missiles bore down on it.
    “Kelly, activate the self-destructs,” the Captain ordered after a long pause. “No point in leaving a traffic hazard around for the next poor bastard.”
    A moment later, the screens surrounding Damien in the simulacrum chamber darkened automatically, as over three hundred one-hundred-megaton fusion warheads detonated simultaneously.
    “Damien, get us out of here,” David ordered after the fireballs faded. “While they probably can’t jump right back, I’d rather not stick around and find out!”
    The