Another barrage of spectrum laser fire blasted across the Springhawk’s hull, knocking out three more sections of the electrostatic barrier and gouging a couple of fresh grooves in the metal. At least, Samakro thought distantly as he shouted orders, Ar’alani couldn’t claim he hadn’t obeyed his orders.

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?”