The first projectile to come at us was launched nearly four hours later. I guess the captain of the Xerxes wanted to see if we were paying attention. There was really no point in closing the whole ship up to their stations, if just one round managed to hit us there’d be no way we could survive it. These weapons were designed to annihilate smaller vessels, and pound large ships to pieces. The only consolation was that if it did come to that, we’d be smashed into so many pieces immediately and we wouldn’t even have time to feel it. Tac alerted us to the weapons release, and the time to intercept had by then been increased to around seventy seven minutes. Zoe was still in the pilot’s seat, and despite her nerves the manoeuvre was well within her capabilities to perform. We merely applied lateral thrust and shunted the ship to port by a few kilometres. No point letting the round get too close, we figured, in case they decided to use proximity fuses in the giant bullets.
