The Springhawk was keeping the Battle Dreadnought busy, all right.
“Watch it, Springhawk, you’ve got two gunboats angling in from ventral portside,” one of the other Chiss ships snapped in warning.
“On it,” Kharill said, and there was a double-thud as a pair of plasma spheres blasted off toward the attacking gunboats.
“Keep us rolling,” Samakro said, looking at the tactical. The two Nikardun were trying to veer out of the paths of the plasma spheres.
But it was too late. Both gunboats flared as the spheres hit them, spraying hot, ionized gas across their sensors and external control lines and sending high-voltage spikes into the deeper parts beneath the hull metal. There were multiple flickers as power systems overloaded or got shunted, and a second later both Nikardun were coasting along, temporarily dead.
“Azmordi, swing us around,” he ordered the helm. “Get us behind them. Use them as shields.”
“For whatever that’ll buy us,” Kharill warned quietly.
Samakro grimaced. It wouldn’t buy them much, unfortunately. He’d tried dodging, running, feinting, and straight-up toe-to-toe slugging, and while he was wearing down the Nikardun Dreadnought the Springhawk was wearing down even faster. Even frequent sniping sorties by some of the other Chiss hadn’t been enough to deflect the Nikardun captain from his single-minded pursuit.
Yiv didn’t just want Thrawn dead. He apparently wanted everything even associated with him to also be destroyed.
Two more salvos skated across the Springhawk’s hull before Azmordi got them into the protected zone behind the two disabled gunboats. “Okay, we’ve got a little breathing space,” Kharill said. “Any thoughts as to what to do with it?”
Samakro considered. They were still a good distance from the Battle Dreadnought, which was why they hadn’t been completely destroyed yet. But the vector they were currently on was taking them closer to their attacker than they’d been so far.
That wouldn’t be a particularly good thing once their Nikardun traveling companions got their systems back online. But for the moment…
He glanced at the tactical, did a quick distance calculation. Marginal, but it might just work. “How many breachers do we have left?” he asked, looking past the edge of the disabled ships at the Dreadnought and its mockingly big bridge viewport.
“Three,” Kharill said.
“Prep them,” Samakro ordered. “We’ll give it a few more seconds, get as close as we dare, then blast all three straight at the Dreadnought’s viewport.”
“Yes, sir,” Kharill said, a little uncertainly. “You do realize we’ve already tried that, right?”
“From considerably farther away,” Samakro reminded him. “If we get close enough, the Dreadnought can blast them whenever it wants to and the acid still won’t have time to dissipate before it reaches the viewport.”
“Worth a try,” Kharill agreed. “Okay; breachers prepped. Call it.”
Samakro counted out the seconds to himself, trying to gauge the right time to fire. Too soon and they’d be wasting their last breachers in a useless attempt; too late, and they would risk the two gunboats beside them waking up and adding their own bit of catastrophe into the Springhawk’s current mix. “Stand by to fire: Three, two, one.”
With a soft triple-jolt, the three breacher missiles blasted away, skimming past the gunboats on their way to the Battle Dreadnought.
They’d barely cleared the gunboats’ hulls when six spectrum lasers lashed out from the Dreadnought, catching the breachers and blowing them to shreds.
Sooner than Samakro had hoped. But with breachers, destruction of the missiles themselves wasn’t the last word. The released masses of acid were still in motion, the tendrils still twisting and spinning as their initial momentum continued to carry them toward their target. Unless the Dreadnought could get out of the way—and the acid was already too close for that—it was going to get hit. Samakro held his breath…
And then, almost at the last moment, one of the Nikardun patrol craft shot in from the side, braking hard to put itself directly in the path of the three incoming acid globs.
“It’s not big enough,” Kharill muttered hopefully. “It can’t block all three of them.” The words were barely out of his mouth when the Dreadnought again opened fire.
Only this time, the target was the Nikardun patrol craft in front of it. Even as Samakro felt his mouth drop open in disbelief the ship exploded, scattering debris in all directions.
And the debris cloud, unfortunately, was big enough to block all three acid globs.
“Curse it,” Kharill bit out. “These guys are crazy.”
“Springhawk, what’s your status?” Ar’alani’s voice came over the speaker.
“We’re still here, Admiral,” Samakro said. “But we wouldn’t turn down any timely aid you wanted to offer.”
“Timely aid it is,” Ar’alani said grimly. “I was hoping we wouldn’t have to go with this, but so be it. Do you remember the maneuver Thrawn used against the Paataatus when he first took command of the Springhawk?”
Samakro looked up at Kharill, found the other staring back with a sour expression. They both remembered, all right. “Yes, ma’am,” Samakro said. “When?”
“Hold behind the gunboats you flickered another few seconds, then come out and angle toward low orbit. I’ll tell you when to go dark.”
“Acknowledged,” Samakro said, wondering what this was supposed to accomplish. The Battle Dreadnought had already shown it was willing to go anywhere and through anyone—including its own people—in order to keep pressure on the Springhawk. “Azmordi, get ready…go.” With a wrenching twist, the Springhawk pitched away from the gunboats and blasted across the battlefield toward the planet below. “Stand by to go dark.” He counted out three seconds—
“Go,” Ar’alani ordered.
“Acknowledged,” Samakro said. Across the bridge, his officers shut off their systems, their boards going dark, dim emergency lighting coming on.
And with that, the Springhawk had become nearly as helpless as it was possible for a warship to be.
Though for the moment, at least, their imminent destruction would be postponed a bit. The firing lines from the Battle Dreadnought were currently blocked by a running battle between two of the Chiss missile boats and a Nikardun destroyer. Another few seconds, though, and the Springhawk’s vector would take it into the clear. “Captain?” Kharill prompted.
“I don’t know,” Samakro said. “Let’s see what the admiral has in mind.”
They didn’t have long to wait. “Vak patrol boat, we have a ship with critical life-support failure,” Ar’alani called. “None of our ships are close enough to offer assistance. Can any of your ships render aid?”
“Chiss warship, we are not combatants,” a Vak voice came back. “We cannot interfere in your war.”
Samakro felt his lip twist. Your war? The Chiss were trying to defend the Vak homeworld, for hell’s sake. How was that your war?
“I know, and I accept that,” Ar’alani said, apparently not wanting to get into the politics of the situation. “But under the circumstances surely you can offer humanitarian aid?”
“We will,” the Vak said reluctantly. “Nikardun warships, two patrol ships are moving to render humanitarian aid. Do not fire upon them. Repeat, do not fire upon them.”
“I confirm that, Nikardun commander,” Ar’alani added. “The Vak ships are not entering combat, but only rendering humanitarian aid. Do not, repeat, do not fire on them.”