“Uh, guys, what?” Jackin asked, not privy to their line of thought.
“Jack, what kinda recoil-dampener system does this thing have?”
“It’s thruster controlled,” Jackin answered. “They automatically counter when ordnance is fired.”
“Perfect,” she said, gladly accepting that bit of good news. With thrusters already off-line, there’d be no need to figure out how to counter the dampener system. One less thing to worry about.
Jackin’s voice creaked with alarm. “Uh, yeah, and that’s perfect how exactly?”
The Synthesis shook with another round of short-lived tremors. The high-pitched vibrations rattled in Adequin’s teeth as the shields incinerated waves of small debris.
“Jack, what’s the armament?” Adequin asked, voice wavering in her chest.
“Uh, one sec…” Jackin said. “Looks like the heavy-hitters are two plasma cannons and four quad laser turrets, all dorsal. There’s a dozen point-defense flaks and six railgun turrets. Here…”
He passed her a diagram of the ship highlighting two banks of flak guns lining the port and starboard beams. She arrowed through to see the rest of the ordnance, then spun the holographic model and took note of four other flak arrays on the dorsal bows and quarters.
“Looks like there’s some aftermarket ship-to-ship missile launchers too,” Jackin added. “They haven’t even been tied into the primary systems. Shit—there’s twelve.”
The vibrations finally ceased and Adequin pushed out a steadying breath. “Tell me there’s payloads.”
“All twelve primed with seeker frags, with a second set in reserves.”
“Fucking hell,” Griffith said. “That’s quite an array for a ship this size.”
Adequin couldn’t disagree, but she didn’t currently have the faculties to fret over the reasons a Drudger ship might be that well-armed.
Pushing aside the unease, she mentally tallied up the firepower. She was certainly no ordnance expert, but she’d fired enough random weaponry from starfighters with busted dampeners to appreciate what kind of impact it could have. Considering their mass, it wouldn’t be enough to offer any appreciable translation, but it should be enough to roll them.
“Okay, Jack, spin up those guns,” she ordered.
“Uh, all of them?”
“All of them.”
He cleared his throat and began to comply. “You have a vector, boss?”
She maximized the navigation screen, which continued to emit a useless mess of static and oscillating numbers. There was still no way to tell which way was which, and no time to troubleshoot.
She closed her eyes for a heartbeat, racing through the Synthesis’s layout in her mind’s eye to orient herself. Then she hastily assembled the variables: a rough idea of the rates of fire, mass of the ballistics, a general notion of the ship’s weight, and where the hell the center of mass might be. It wasn’t something she could truly calculate, certainly not in her head, with a veritable powder keg about to blow next door. But she didn’t have time to ask the computer to run scenarios. Her gut instincts would have to be good enough.
She cleared the hesitation from her throat. “Bearing oh-nine-five, carom three-one-zero.” She clenched her teeth and sucked in a deep breath, trying not to think about how much of a total bullshit guess that was.
Jackin scoffed. “Are you seriously trying to use ordnance as torque right now?”
Adequin’s face burned hot, and she threw a glare at him. “Just do it, Jack!”
“Void,” he cursed, then reported back the bearing, voice wavering.