Snippet #2154014

Clyde

As the particle canon charged, Clyde set about his new task of aiming. It was a complicated business- There were hundreds of extremely quickly moving targets, a veritable wall of debris, and the timing involved in causing the most damage in one shot. He had to sit there and plot the motion paths of all of the ships and find the most likely place to deal the most damage. Oh. He also had to make sure he didn't come close to shooting any allies, who were darting in and out of the fray with their fighters.

Great.

To Clyde's mild surprise, the place where the most damage could be done wasn't in the damaging of a larger ship. It was a mass of fighters, swarming around trying to catch the Salient's pilots, and the mass behind that mass, still targeting the old dead pirate frigate. Clyde fired the cannon. Without preamble, the massive recoil rocked the ship once more, and a great beam erupted from the Salient, tearing through all of the shattered debris and enemy ships, leaving an impression from the light burned into the retinas of anyone who had the misfortune of looking into the blast.

Meanwhile, the FTL charge ticked up one more point, its stasis broken by the sudden lack of power being drawn by the cannon. 46%.

Clyde attempted to activate the cannon's charge once more, but he had been locked out of the system. Corporal Stark informed him curtly about cooldown. It would be a while before it was safe to fire the cannon again. And the FTL charge grew ever higher.