Way of No Return (Champions of the Crystal Book 8)

Chapter 14.3

Darkene Control was nearly deserted, save for a skeleton crew of maintenance and security personnel. Scotty and Mara called up a display of current ship positions around Praxatillus, mostly for Scotty's benefit, he suspected, since Mara could sense the ships through the Crystal.

"Alert me if ships begin moving in this direction," Mara instructed. "The energy I must use to move the Kyan ships will likely be detectable to them."

"They'll probably throw the Reissians at us as cannon fodder," Scotty said. "I'll check the base shield and see if I can reroute any more power to it."

"Good. This may take a few minutes," Mara replied, taking a deep breath and closing her eyes.

Scotty conferred with the lone tech on duty about the base's shield, keeping an eye on Mara in case she began to show signs of stress. Then he turned to watch the display, encouraged when one of the Kyan ship icons vanished. A second followed a few minutes later.

"Incoming," the tech announced. Scotty wasn't fooled by his calm tone; the techs in Praxatillus Control were also trained to make announcements clearly and evenly, however alarming their content might be. A glance at the readout told Scotty this one was alarming indeed; one of the Reissian battleships had launched its full complement of missiles directly at them.

"Will the shield hold?" he asked, quietly so as not to disturb Mara.

"Maybe. This is above its design tolerance, but we've reinforced it over the years."

"What's your name?" Scotty asked the young man belatedly, as it occurred to him that he didn't want to die beside a nameless stranger.

"Ston Adrine. Technician Specialist."

"Nice to meet you, Adrine," Scotty said. "I'm Major Scotty Devon."

"I know," Adrine said with a brief grin. "It's an honor. If you want to sit at one of the other consoles, feel free."

"Thanks." Scotty took the neighboring seat. "This is only the beginning of what they'll throw at us. What are our options?"

"Besides dying in a massive fireball, I can't think of any," Adrine admitted.

Nice, Scotty thought. "No countermeasures are available?"

"We're a lunar outpost," Adrine said. "We've never had countermeasures. This base was abandoned early in the Xoentrol War, and we didn't play a role in the Reissian invasion last century."

Scotty resisted the urge to say, "I did," and thought that if Mukryilla hadn't already decided to arm the lunar outposts, he needed to recommend doing so. "ETA on those missiles?"

"Two minutes."

Missiles were generally too slow for long-range ship-to-ship combat, but a moon base made a nice relatively stationary target, Scotty thought. The next minute and a half seemed to stretch out impossibly, but just as Scotty was about to interrupt Mara to ask her to intervene, the missiles detonated at the minimum safe distance above the shield, creating a haze that overloaded the sensors and made the displays flicker and go dead.

Mara opened her eyes, breathing hard. "That buys us some time. We must relocate now, while they wait to see if they were successful."

Scotty turned to Adrine. "Full evac," he ordered. "You guys all get off this base, quick as you can. They may blow this place up out of spite once we're gone."

"Yes, sir," Adrine replied. "And good luck."

Scotty opened his mouth to return the wish, but he and Mara were gone before he could speak.