Chapter 1

Around a nondescript star at the far end of a galactic arm a small blue green world serenely floated against the black. The slow orbital sunrise that peeked over its curvature cast gleaming light across the surface of the world. Light that was eight minutes old when it warmed the surface of the planet, but cast a fresh new look to all that it touched.

From that world a lone aircraft accelerated, breaking clear of the hugging embrace of the planet’s atmosphere, and entered a low sweeping orbit. It slowed to a smooth pace and gracefully flipped, inverting so that the lone occupant could take a few moments to admire the view.

God, what a sight! I almost hate to admit it but it really does look nicer from up here. So serene compared to what I’ve seen. Japan, California, Hong Kong… none of them look like the battlefields I’ve fought over from here. Eric Weston smiled sadly to himself as he flipped the small plane ‘upright’ so he could take a long look at his destination now that he had gazed down at his origin.

But that, he thought with a tone of awe and pride tingeing his mental voice, is a sight all its own.

Hanging in the Lagrange Four point like some serene floating Sentinel, his new command stood waiting to receive him. The NAC Odyssey floated in front of him placidly awaiting her Captain as he sailed toward her on a fast intercept vector.

Huh, she really does look like an eighteenth century schooner, though, as he forced himself to admit a few moments later, he probably wouldn’t have seen it if the designers hadn’t kept pointing it out.

The Odyssey’s cylindrical habitats could only be seen as the hull of a sailing vessel if one had the most liberal of imaginations. The rest, though, was easier to understand. A long ‘keel’ that appeared to mark the vessel’s ‘bottom’ was actually an enclosed flight deck, built to house shuttles and fighters. Similarly, mast-like sensor spires dotted her ‘top’. The rear engine compartment looked like the stern of an old frigate and her bow was marked by long antennae that reached dozens of meters out from the ship.

“Odyssey control to Archangel Zero One, please change your approach vector to oh-two-four mark three. You have been cleared for standard approach on deck two,” the voice crackled over his headset induction receiver, sounding clearer than if the person had been in the cockpit with him.

Weston acknowledged the signal and slid his fighter along the new approach path.

It didn’t take long for the Cat Officer to come over his radio, taking over from the Bridge Control Team.

“Archangel Zero One, I have you on approach,” the voice crackled slightly over the radio as the signal began to suffer from the mutual interference of the Counter-Mass, or Cee-Emm, fields that surrounded both the his Fighter and the NAC Odyssey. “Call the Ball, Captain.”

“Roger, Cat.” Weston smiled, “I have the ball.”

“Confirmed. Glide path is clear. The deck is green. Come on in, the air is fine.”

Eric permitted himself a satisfied smile as he guided the sleek fighter toward the Odyssey, vectoring toward her bow and aligning to land on the enclosed carrier deck that was housed in the ship’s massive keel. As the starry depths of space was eclipsed by the cavernous interior of the carrier deck, Weston felt the hairs on his arms and neck stand at attention and knew that the ship’s flight crew had caught him with the ‘trap’, a powerful Counter-gravity field that slowed the fighter down drastically without putting him through the effects of deceleration.

Minutes later his fighter had been completely stopped and control was returned to Weston briefly as he carefully steered it to one of the deck’s lifts. Once he was in one of the eight hangers built into the length of the Odyssey’s keel, Weston powered down his plane’s systems and checked the external atmosphere on reflex. He carefully equalized the pressure in the fighter to that of the outside, and popped the canopy, waiting as it slid gently back. He pulled himself clear of his restraints and with a slight tug, floated free of the cockpit.

As he drifted towards the hangars’ ‘ceiling’, Weston heard the reverberating clang of magnetic boots and looked up, or rather down, toward the ‘floor’.

“Howdy there, Commande… whoops, I mean Captain!” the cheerful voice echoed through the hangar as its originator jumped up, did a neat little flip, and floated up to where Weston was just planting his own pair of Magboots on the metal deck plating.

Steven “Stephanus” Michaels was Weston’s wingman in the Archangel Fighter Group, or had been until Weston officially took command of the Odyssey. At that point the young man took his place as he was Weston’s choice to succeed him as the Flight Leader of the Archangels. Weston knew that Stephanus had been waiting for years to take over the ’Angels and he seemed pretty happy about it today.

“Hello Steph,” Eric smiled, popping his helmet finally as he greeted his friend. “How are you and the others fitting in?”

Stephanus managed a humble sort of shrug that would have looked ridiculous on most anyone else, but just seemed to make him look like some good old boy straight off the farm. “Nothing to complain about.”

Eric laughed, “Right. What that means is you’ve got complaints, but no one gives a damn.”

Stephanus laughed as the two old friends walked side by side to the far end of the hanger, chatting about the ship and the mission, and finally entered one of the small doors that led them to the ship’s internal lift. Inside the capsule-like pod that served to ferry the Odyssey’s crew, Weston signalled the lift to head for the ship’s command centre in the forward habitat cylinder.

Weston used the waiting period to glance at his younger friend, noting the evidence of nerves in the young man’s occasional fidgeting. Weston figured that his wingman had earned the right to be nervous by now though. They had flown alongside each other since the inception of the Archangels, eight years previously, through some of the most vicious air battles in the history of mankind.

All that set aside, Weston could hardly fault the man when he himself was on the verge of shaking. The Odyssey was the first ship constructed that made use of the new Transition Drive System that was supposed to allow faster than light travel, and his rather public position as the flight leader of the Archangels had put him on the short list to captain her.

The pod glided to a stop in the center of the forward habitation cylinder and Weston felt gravity return as the pod slowly matched the cylinder’s rotation before the hatch whirred open and allowed them to leave.

“Urk,” Weston staggered as he stepped off the pod, a slight wave a nausea sweeping over him, as his body adjusted to the cylinder’s rotation.

“It’ll pass, first time you’re on one of these things it takes your inner ear a while to adjust to the motion,” Stephanus commented as his arm snaked out to steady Weston before he had taken another step.

“I know,” Weston straightened himself, fighting off another sweeping wave of sickness and started down the hallway.

The pair made their way through the halls, toward the Odyssey’s command center, a relatively large room with noticeably curving floors and ceilings. It was already bustling with activity as two full maintenance details crowded the room, checking the circuitry for the eleventh time, as they analysed every system on the ship, prior to her maiden voyage. A tall, black man wearing a commander’s uniform approached them as soon as he noticed the two of them standing on the bridge.

“Commander Michaels.” He inclined his head politely toward Stephanus before turning his attention to Weston, “Welcome aboard the Odyssey, Captain. I’m Commander Jason Roberts, your First Officer.”

“Commander,” Weston nodded appreciatively, while glancing around the room.

“Uh, excuse me, Captain? I don’t mean to question you but wouldn’t you prefer to change now?”

Weston startled, looked down at his well-worn flight suit and the helmet cradled under one arm and grinned ruefully, “Don’t much look like the Captain of the fleet’s pride and joy now, do I? Well let’s transfer the command codes now; I’ll come back in full dress whites for the camera ops in an hour.”

“Yes Sir.”

Roberts moved over to a console next to the Captain’s command seat and thumbed a print scanner, motioning Weston to do the same. Twin lights lit up after Weston’s thumb had been scanned and the computer voice broke in.

“Command transfer initiated. Please confirm identities and desire to initiate transfer protocol.”

“Identify Roberts, Jason - Commander - NAC Odyssey,” Roberts waited for the computer to acknowledge and continued, “Transfer all command access rights to Captain Eric Weston.”

“Confirmed. Captain Weston, please identify and confirm.”

“Identify Weston, Eric - Captain - NAC Odyssey. Confirm Access transfer.”

“All command access rights have been transferred. Welcome aboard, Captain.”

Weston removed his thumb from the scanner and glanced over at Stephanus, who by now looked like he was about to float away, rotational gravity be damned.

“Well Commander, the ‘Angels are yours,” Weston smiled for a moment, permitting Stephanus his time in the sun, then dropped the smile and continued, “I’ll be expecting a full report on the squadron. Weapons, flight status and roster by tomorrow.”

Stephanus’ smile dropped several degrees as he realized the paperwork he had just inherited, causing Weston’s smile to break the surface for a few seconds… until he too remembered the paperwork undoubtedly awaiting his attention.

Recovering, Stephanus saluted with a smile that twisted his lips oddly and, turning on his heel, strode off to his new duties.

“I’ll be in my quarters, preparing for the ceremony, Commander. Command is yours.” Weston said, accepting the Commander’s acknowledgment before he too turned to leave.

He headed down two decks to the officers’ quarters, finally finding his after a couple wrong turns. He stripped out of his flight suit, literally having to peel the liner off his skin, and tossed the suit into a hamper that was built into the wall. A few minutes later he was in the shower, washing the last remnants of his fighter off his body and from his hair.

After an all too short shower, Weston dried off and checked his closet. He smiled when he found that all his things had preceded him to the ship, and were all perfectly laid out.

I guess there are some perks to Command after all.

He pulled his dress whites out and laid them on his bed. Forty-five minutes after he had entered his quarters, an entirely new man emerged and headed back to Odyssey Command.

*****

Flight Deck

The Shuttle rolled to a stop, shuddered as it was locked into place by the huge pylons that served to secure the large delta shaped craft in the zero gee of the hanger deck, and finally came to a rest.

A few minutes passed as the craft was secured properly, the lift built into the belly of the space bird was readied as her passengers floated easily over to it, dropped onto the steel plate and activated their magboots. Loud reverberations echoed through the air as they all locked into place on the lift, waiting for it to drop.

Machinery hummed and the lift dropped down until it came into contact with the flight deck of the big mother ship, and those same passengers found themselves staring at a pair of armed sentries. Lieutenant Sean Bermont, former member of the Canadian Joint Task Force 2, was the first to step forward, handing his identification to the Marine Sentry.

“Lieutenant Bermont, to join ship’s company.” He said, passing the traditional sheet with his orders to the Marine.

The Sentry glanced down at it, but his eyes weren’t looking at the formal orders and ID, instead they moved further down to the display in his other hand as he scanned the Lieutenant’s dogtags.

The information came up, along with a counter signed security voucher from the ship’s computer and the Marine nodded. “Very good, Sir. Lift to the habitation decks is twenty meters behind you and you should check in with the XO, as soon as you settle in.”

Bermont nodded, and turned on his heel as well as he could in Zero Gee and moved off toward the lift.

Behind him, he could hear the next man handing over his ID to the Marine.

*****

Odyssey Command

When Commander Roberts met him at the entry to Command, Weston quickly set him at ease with a gesture and nodded around the bridge before addressing his new XO.

“Commander, I think we should finish up the publicity ceremonies as quickly as possible. We do have a mission to begin,” Eric said having decided that he simply wanted to get his new command underway and, though he had to play to the press, he didn’t have to like it.

“Yes Sir. I’ll contact the Admiral and we’ll set up the public transfer.”

Weston nodded and walked around the command chair, lowering himself slowly into it.

Huh, it is more comfortable than my fighter; still…, it just feels off, somehow. He fidgeted a bit in the large chair, familiarizing himself with the displays available at his fingertips, checking and rechecking the emergency restraints. Finally he gave up the attempt to force a level of comfort that he didn’t yet feel, and turned his attention to work.

Weston began glancing through the massive amount of reports from the ship’s stations, noticing that there were remarkable few from the tactical stations concerning the ships’ defensive systems. All the internal diagnostics were available but there were no practical numbers, it was all theoretical. Weston was still examining the defensive systems, when Roberts returned.

“Captain, the Admiral is waiting in the conference room, for the transfer of title.”

“Good,” Weston agreed, “let’s get this over with.”

Roberts and Weston left the bridge, riding an internal lift down to one of the outer decks, to the conference room. The Admiral was surrounded by aides and several members of the National and International presses, all with their whirring cameras focused on Weston’s entrance.

“Ah Captain Weston. Come in, Come in. I understand you’re anxious to begin your new command.” Admiral Gracen was a striking woman, one who knew how well her tall aristocratic bearing allowed her to manipulate a group, as she proved while carefully guiding the press in the direction of the Captain.

“Yes Ma’am,” Eric smiled professionally, standing ramrod straight for the cameras. “I’m eager to put the new systems to the test.”

“Good. Good. Well let’s get this done. Is everybody ready?”

After everybody had voiced their readiness, the Admiral pressed a control on one of the terminals that was built into the conference table and the lights dimmed subtly. Weston knew that the ship’s recorders had just activated to record the transfer for the military archives.

The Admiral leaned down and withdrew a small gold patch from a box by her seat and turned toward Weston.

“Eric Weston, formerly Commander of the Archangel Flight Group, you have been promoted to the level of Captain of the NAC Odyssey, with all the responsibilities and privileges therein.”

The cameras whirred, focusing on the Admiral’s hand as she placed the gold patch on his left shoulder and stepped back. She extended her hand to Weston and shook his firmly.

“Congratulations, Captain.”

“Thank you Admiral, now if I may be excused I’ll…”

The Admiral smiled, “It’s not that easy Captain, you are the guest of honor here and there is protocol to be observed.”

Weston groaned softly as he realized that he wouldn’t be escaping after all. Still, the rest of the evening went by quickly as he was introduced to various dignitaries and members of the press. Besides, the food was good, even if the conversation was lacking. He did have trouble evading one particular reporter however.

“Captain Weston! Excuse me, Captain,”

Weston turned to the voice, knowing already who it was but was still startled when she appeared only inches away, “Miss Lynn, nice to speak with you again.”

A low smirk passed briefly across her face, “I’m sure, Captain, but I still have a couple questions to ask you.”

“Please Miss Lynn; I’ve already answered your questions to the best of my ability. Much of the Odyssey’s mission and crew remain classified, as I’m sure you understand.”

The woman gave Weston a knowing look, her vaguely oriental features expressing her confidence, or lack thereof, in Weston’s answers to her previous questions. The young reporter was a representative of the Asian Block that had lost the last World War. Weston had actually met her previously when he had been forced to scrounge through Beijing in search of materials to repair his downed fighter. She had nearly gotten him killed then, and he had the distinct impression that she was now out to finish the job.

“Captain, what are your thoughts on a military presence being the first thing we, as human beings, send to the stars? Should we really be carrying our problems with us when we break free of the solar system?”

Weston sighed, “Miss Lynn, I can’t comment on matters of philosophy. I’m sorry.” He couldn’t see it but he knew that her microphone and camera were focused on him and he had to select each word carefully.

“But Captain, what about…,” Lynn was interrupted by Commander Roberts sidling between her and Weston.

“Captain, your presence is required by the Admiral.”

Weston bowed out gratefully, “If you’ll excuse me Miss Lynn.” As they left, he whispered aside to Roberts, “thanks for getting me out of that.”

“Don’t thank me, Sir. The Admiral noticed Miss Lynn circling and thought you might need backup.”

Weston smiled. Admiral Gracen always did know how to smell trouble.

“Admiral, I understand I owe you my thanks,” Weston slipped alongside the Admiral as she took a sip of her champagne.

“Nonsense Captain, just doing my duty. The last thing the NAC needs is an Asian Block ‘exclusive’ slicing our highest profile Captain to shreds.”

“They have become better at manipulating public opinion lately, haven’t they?” Weston grimaced.

Admiral Gracen nodded, sighing. “Yes, well…, they tried by force of arms, and very nearly succeeded. I suppose it was natural that they would begin applying alternative pressure.”

Eric nodded, “Yeah, and Lynn is far too good at her job.”

“She ought to be,” Gracen let a small smile grace her stern face. “We trained her, after all.”

“Why is it that the best terrorists, the worst enemies, and the most dangerous people in the world always seem to be schooled in the North American Confederation?” Weston asked plaintively. “Just once can’t they have graduated from some obscure school in Africa or something?”

Gracen smiled again, and shrugged slightly. “Know thine enemy, I suppose. Where better for them to learn to stick it to us?”

“Do we honestly have to keep training the people doing the sticking?”

Gracen shrugged with that same smile, “Ah, but if someone else did it, we wouldn’t have such detailed files on them.”

Weston chuckled, nodding slightly as he conceded the point, “Touché, I suppose, Admiral. Still, in any case, I think I’ll remove myself from the chopping block and retire for the evening. I have a big day tomorrow.”

The Admiral nodded and Weston excused himself from the party, navigating the long corridors to his quarters and collapsing roughly on the bed. Diplomacy. Up until now it hadn’t been that much of a factor in his career(s), leading the Archangels had been mostly a matter of flying and firing, the same as when he was a marine aviator for the United States.

Luckily the Diplomacy would be over once he was out of communication with Earth, and that wouldn’t be much longer, now. A few moments later, the events of the day exacted their toll finally and Weston fell fast asleep.

Chapter 2

“Commander Roberts, has the ship been cleared for departure?” Captain Weston asked.

“Yes Sir, Station Liberty cleared us several minutes ago. We received final clearance from the tower during the night,” The imposing Commander said softly, his voice nonetheless carrying easily. “Commander Harris wishes you luck.”

Weston nodded in satisfaction; tower clearance had been the final official word they needed to begin. “Send him my thanks, Commander. Are we a go for thruster release?”

Roberts tapped out a command on his tablet PDA, and nodded. “Aye Sir.”

“All right then. Helm, clear the moorings and take us out. Dead slow.”

“Dead slow. Aye Sir,” Lieutenant Daniels said, tapping in a series of commands.

Weston shivered, watching him he really didn’t trust the ‘fly by keyboard’ systems much. He’d always prefer the stick and throttle in his hand, but the designers had made that type of flying a last resort backup for the Odyssey.

Daniels hadn’t notice his Captain’s discomfit and continued with his work as he slid his hands along the solid composite surface in front of him. His finger placement and motion was detected by sensors from within the hermetically sealed interface and the integrated display lit up like the proverbial Christmas tree, as he calmly brought the systems online and cleared the mooring.

The Odyssey, now free of the mooring cables that had secured her to the Construction facility, began to drift clear until Daniels opened up the ship’s reactor and sent a low rumble through her. The ship began to slowly accelerate away from the station and from Earth’s orbit, leaving behind the cluttered section of space that had given birth to her.

“Helm, as soon as we’re clear of Earth Space, power up the navigation beams and accelerate to one third of light,” Weston commanded quietly.

“Yes Sir.”

As the Odyssey cleared the section of space arbitrarily claimed by Earth, the forward field generators powered up and began sweeping the ship’s path clear of debris. Then the Odyssey’s massive engines came into play and the big ship began to steam up the huge gravity well generated by Sol.

“Approaching .05c, Captain,” Daniels announced, after a moment. “Request clearance for CM release.”

“Granted,” Weston nodded, taking a deep breath.

The Counter-Mass system was the heart of the Odyssey’s sub-light propulsion systems, a series of generators along the keel of the massive ship that threw up an energy field around the entire vessel. The math involved gave Weston a headache, though he understood it enough to comprehend what was happening, as the fields began to charge.

Around the Odyssey, a bubble began to form as one generator enforced the next, establishing an oval pocket around the ship, that slowly began to segregate the ship and its occupants’ from the ‘real universe’. Within the bubble, the effective mass of the ship began to drop, as far as the rest of the universe was concerned, rendering the massive ship uniquely less massive.

It wasn’t quite a way to cheat Einstein, Weston knew, but it was a way to bend the rules, just a little bit. The big drive reactors that powered the Odyssey, stuck out just to the edge of the field and when the system was in full operation, they threw out Plasma at near light-speed. Plasma that massed exactly what it was supposed to, as it broke the edge of the field, pushing against the ship whose total mass was fooling the laws of physics into thinking it was ten percent of what it was supposed to be.

Without the field, the Odyssey could throw down a sprint mode that made a turtle look like a formula one racer. Its top end was just less than .1c. With the field, there wasn’t a thing built by man that could hope to catch her.

“Navigation,” Weston paused and corrected himself. Use their names, Eric. “Lieutenant Daniels, plot a course to bring us on a close flyby of the Demos Station and the Jovian research platforms.”

Weston heard the young lieutenant at navigation acknowledge the order and a few moments later, felt the shudder run through the ship as it realigned along its new course. The Odyssey was now reaching a quarter the speed of light and was still accelerating as it roared along toward the ship repair facility in the Mars Orbit.

As the ship approached the red planet, an officer behind Weston called out, “Incoming hail, Sir. It’s from Commodore Wolfe at Demos base.”

Weston smiled tightly, “how close are we now?”

“About 2 light minutes, Sir.”

“Acknowledge audio only. Inform them of our ETA and tell the Commodore that we’ll have visual in seven minutes.”

“Yes Sir.”

*****

“Excuse me, Chief…” Lieutenant Bermont said softly as he stepped up close to a squat and solidly built woman wearing the uniform of a Chief Petty Officer.

She glanced up from where she had popped open a conduit panel and was checking diagnostics, eyes falling to the bars on his uniform.

“Corrin, Sir,” she saluted.

Bermont returned the salute, nodding at the sturdy woman, “I’m looking for the RecDeck, Chief… ’Fraid I got turned around.”

She gave him a slightly sour look, but shrugged and jerked her head over her shoulder. “Down the hall you’ll find a tube. Take it back to Hab Two, lower decks.”

“Thanks, Chief.” Bermont nodded and walked off.

Chief Petty Officer Rachel Corrin rolled her eyes at the Lieutenant’s back and let a dry, yet brief, smile cross her weathered features.

“Groundhog,” she snorted, and turned back to her work.

*****

The seven minutes flew by as Weston carefully watched the officers under his command, keeping close watch on their reactions to the multitude of minor crisis that was part of the type of shakedown mission they were on.

“Captain, Commodore Wolfe for you on Visual.”

Weston looked up from the terminal he was working on and smiled at the gruff face looking back at him from the screen. “Hello Jeff, good to see you again.”

“You’re telling me? This is about the last place I expected you to turn up. I should’ve known that it would take something like that heap to pull you away from the ‘Angels.” The Commodore’s gruff words were easily belied by the grin on his face.

“Who said I left the Angels? Got ’em stored tight and secure on our flight deck,” Weston smiled tightly.

The Commodore laughed, “Now how on Earth did you manage that?”

“It wasn’t that hard,” Weston smiled. “It made for pretty good PR, besides its good training for the younger members of the group. Besides since the war ended, the ‘Angels have started to be a pain in the collective ass of the Public Relations department. They aren’t exactly peacekeepers, you know.”

“Well that’s a point that would be hard to deny. Not that I regret it one little bit, Eric. Warriors are never appreciated in peacetime, except by those they saved during the war. Looks like we’ve both come a long way from Japan, my friend,” the Commodore’s smile faded for an instant at the intrusion of old memories.

“We have at that Jeff and I can’t say that I’m sorry,” Weston responded soberly. He smiled softly, thinking about the carnage over Japan, when he’d first met Wolfe.

The Commodore, then Captain Wolfe of the United States Marine Corps, had been a Flight leader in the Battle of Japan. The Chinese Advanced Mantis Fighters had poured over the beleaguered Island state like locusts, faster and more lethal than the aging Corps issued Joint Strike Fighter, Short Take-off Vertical Landing (STVL), models that Wolfe had flown, taking the defence forces by surprise.

The first shots of World War III had been fired less than three miles from where the final moments of World War II had ended for the Pacific Theater.

The Commodore grimaced for a moment, his thoughts matching Weston’s, “I never had a chance to thank you for that, Eric. If you and the Archangels hadn’t shown up…”

Weston waved him off, “It’s history, Commodore. Japan was a whole different world and a completely different time. No need for thanks.”

The sombre moment lasted only a few seconds, “Well, I’ll surely be expecting your thanks when you bring that shiny new toy of yours to my station for repairs.”

The quiet mood broken, Weston laughed out loud and concluded the conversation as the Odyssey had begun arcing away from Mars Orbit, “Looks like we’re starting to pull away from you, Commodore. Is that tanker waiting on us?”

“She’s all yours. Been on high velocity orbit of Saturn for the past several hours. I would imagine her crew is getting impatient.”

“I’ll not keep them waiting much longer, Commodore. Odyssey out.” Weston nodded to the screen and smiled as the Commodore flashed thumbs up, before the screen flickered back to a forward view.

Eric looked back over his displays, watching the numbers flash by as the ship arced away from Mars orbit and hit one third light speed, roughly half her maximum cruise speed. The big reactors grew quiet as the crew watched the red planet dwindle rapidly in the void. Weston glanced away from the screen, his attention turning toward his own terminal.

“Helm, what’s our fuel status?” Weston asked some time later, looking up.

Daniel’s eyes barely flickered at the display, “More than sufficient until we refuel, Sir.”

“That’s not what I asked, Lieutenant,” Weston’s voice grew slightly sharper, his eyes boring into the back of the young man’s head.

“Sorry, Sir.” This time, Daniels looked long and hard at the display, “We’re at about ten percent, Sir. We burned about a third of that so far. Mostly during the initial burn at port speed.”

“Thank you, Daniels. Begin plotting a retro-burn and take us into the Trojan belt.”

Silence answered him and Weston knew that several eyes had swivelled to watch him as Commander Roberts stepped over to him.

“Uh Sir, we have a rendezvous to make, you heard the Commodore,” the Commander reminded him under his breath.

“Yes I did, but it’s going to have to wait,” Eric smiled slightly, gazing at the Commander evenly.

“Yes Sir.”

Roberts retreated and Weston felt the shudder run through the deck plates as the Odyssey’s course altered and her retro-firing sequence was initiated. Ahead of them loomed the huge face of Jupiter, marked as it had been for centuries, by the huge, angry red storm in its southern hemisphere. The Odyssey began arcing slightly off to one side, heading for one of the Trojan Asteroid Belts that hung ominously on either side of the huge planet.

*****

Bermont sighed as he settled back into the relatively comfortable couch that lined one entire wall of the admittedly large, crew lounge.

There was a screen embedded in the upper wall across from him that showed the rather impressive image of Jupiter from where someone had linked it into the exterior cameras. It was nice, he supposed, but definitely not his thing.

He glanced around the room and noticed that a few groups had formed, in their off duty hours, including a couple of tables that seemed reserved for the glory boys of the Archangel Fighter Wing.

Bermont smiled thinly as he watched the flyboys laughing over something he hadn’t heard. They say that the main difference between a Fighter Pilot and God was that God didn’t think he was a fighter pilot.

They also said that the Archangels were slightly more humble than most fighter pilots…

They were willing to settle for being God’s right hand rather than the Big Guy himself.

Bermont didn’t have the pedigree to match up with them, but he didn’t want reporters shoving cameras up his ass while he took a dump, either. He’d served with the Canadian Joint Task Force 2 before the War Act instituted the Confederation between the United States, Canada, and Mexico. After the Confederation, JTF2 remained viable for a few years, while the armed forces spent more time fighting than worrying about who went where, and in what.

Later, when all the old Spec Ops units got re-prioritized after the war, he’d been offered a slot on the Odyssey. He’d been leery of the offer at first, until he was briefed on the types they were calling up for the ‘security’ complement of the Starship.

Actual shipboard security was being managed by the Marines, which was what he’d expected of course, but the majority of the ground-based military presence on the ship was actually drawn from all the old ‘snake eater’ groups. He’d recognized a lot of the names on that list and had signed up without another thought.

His superior, Colonel Jackson Neill had told him that someone had decided that it’d be a bright idea if the military people on the ship, were already trained in hostile environments and survival techniques beyond the norm.

Bermont figured it was a load of crap himself, after all even if they did find themselves an alien world that they could breathe on, what were the odds that the snakes there would be edible?

But what was a special operations trooper to do in a post-war world? Apparently the Powers that were thought there might be some use for a few of them, eating alien snakes, if that’s what it took.

Bermont shrugged and leaned back, smiling to himself.

*****

Sometime later while traveling at impressive speeds, the Odyssey plowed into the Trojan Point, its navigation fields shouldering rocks aside like a line-backer covering his teammate. The ship shuddered to a slow drift, huge mountains of rock floating all around her.

“Tactical, power up the weapon systems. I want a full test before we go any further,” Eric ordered calmly, noting with mild amusement the sudden tension in the room.

“Yes Sir,” the officer behind him sounded a bit uneasy but that didn’t surprise Weston much. No one on board had more than a middling amount of experience with this ship’s defensive systems, since current treaties precluded weapons testing in Earth space.

Well, we’re a long way from Earth Space now. Let’s see how these firecrackers work.

Weston punched up a small HUD on his terminal and selected a series of floating mountains for the test.

“Helm, I’m transferring coordinates to you now. When you receive them, you are to treat them as hostile and maneuver according to combat protocols.”

“Yes Sir,” Daniels swallowed.

“Tactical, make weapons hot and fire when you have a lock.”

“Yes Sir.”

Weston glanced over at the Tactical officer, a rather young Ensign, Waters… I think. The Ensign was nervous but his hands weren’t skipping or stuttering across his console. Good man.

As the coordinates reached the helm and tactical, the ship’s reactor powered back up to full burn status and the Odyssey began pivoting along its center point as the forward weapons were brought to bear on the first target.

“Lasers only on this one,” Weston carefully eyed the weapons status displays.

“Aye Sir.” Tactical was sounding less nervous now.

Good. Weston thought with satisfaction, their training was taking over now.

As the Odyssey swung around towards the massive rock, a strange thing was easily visible on the surface of the asteroid. First a dim, reddish glow became evident and within seconds the glow had switched from red to white, and suddenly the asteroid was no longer visible on the screen, obscured by the sudden cloud of vaporized debris that had been thrown into its admittedly weak orbit.

“Fourteen seconds Sir. The new frequency analyser seems to work well with the auto-focus on the beams. That rock is a donut.”

“Good, bring us around to target number two, increase speed to twenty thousand k. p. h.”

“Roger. Target coming into range now.”

“Tactical, lock on and fire with Pulse Torpedoes.”

“Yes Sir. Firing.”

The ship shook slightly as the blazing white energy charges flew away from the ship. Although they were called torpedoes, they really were nothing of the sort. Their name came from the eerie ability they had to home in on nearby targets. This function made them lethal, in the extreme, to both hostile and friendly targets, if not carefully deployed.

The blazing projectiles slammed into a mountainous asteroid, shattering it along its girth, sending the resulting debris spinning away in opposite directions. The two newly formed asteroids drifted apart and were soon lost in from sight.

“Nice shooting. Prime HVM launchers, one through twelve.” Eric ordered, nodding in approval at both the effect and precision of the tests so far.

The HVM, or High Velocity Missiles, were kinetic kill weapons designed to make use of the Cee-Emm fields and primitive, yet powerful, plasma drives to accelerate a one ton piece of scrap metal to speeds of up to point eight Cee, or eighty percent the speed of light. The resulting kinetic energy was enough that adding explosives to the missiles would be superfluous.

“Primed, Captain.” Waters told him.

“Lock onto the indicated target, and fire when ready.” Eric ordered.

“Aye Sir.” Waters replied, tapping out a staccato rhythm on his console. A moment passed, a series of lights went green, and Eric could hear a faint tone escaping from the single earpiece worn by his tactical officer. “Firing.”

The Odyssey shuddered slightly as the electromagnetic launchers threw the missiles from the bay, their Cee-Emm fields already charged, and into the black that surrounded them. The short endurance, but powerful, plasma jets lit off and the hunks of metal leapt away almost like lasers made physical.

As their minimal on board sensor package detected the proximity of their targets, the Cee-Emm fields instantly dropped, leaving the projectiles traveling almost seventy percent the speed of light while massing in at their full, un-reduced, weight. The twelve one ton missiles slammed into their target just an instant later, raising plumes of dust and debris as they cracked the great rock wide open, and sent it’s component pieces scattering to the solar winds.

Weston nodded in satisfaction, “Outstanding. Helm, take us closer to the grouping at twelve by fourteen.”

“Aye, Sir.”

The Odyssey rolled slightly to port as the ship pulled over, heading for a grouping of relatively small rocks that had caught the Captain’s eye.

“Tactical, bring up the defensive armaments. Target the rocks in that grouping and fire at will.”

Outside the ship, small hatches and covers flipped away from the hull, revealing recessed weaponry that had been hidden beneath the heavily shielded flaps. Multi-barrelled EM Rail-Cannons rose from their compartments, swivelling on powerful turrets and locking onto the floating debris. Even as they began spitting their payload through the airless void, similar flaps popped clear to reveal banks of recessed rockets and smaller versions of the Odyssey’s Primary Laser Array.

On the screen, Weston watched as the Odyssey’s close quarter weapons pulverized the floating debris, clearing the way for the large vessel, as it sailed clear of the treacherous Trojan Point and back into open space.

“Excellent work people,” Eric stood up, a slight smile on his face. He reached down, tapping a command on his command console and activated the ‘blower’.

“Captain to all hands, congratulations on a textbook weapons test. Outstanding,” Eric said, then flipped the switch off.

A cheerful murmur went through the bridge personnel. They were glad that the Captain’s impromptu testing of the weapons systems had gone smoothly, and even happier that they had performed up to his expectations. Throughout the ship, a similar sense of confidence had boosted the already high morale of the crew as the word of the test spread through the ranks.

*****

“If you Slackers don’t get off your flat butts and double-time… I’m going to start knocking heads!”

The room full of crewmen scrambled to their feet as the harsh voice of the Chief growled out at them. They snapped to as she marched down the length of the long, slightly curved, room and glared at them.

“Damage Control Drills. Now!” She hissed softly, her tone brooking no argument as the crew quickly snapped into action, grabbing their gear and rushing out the door.

Corrin sighed as she watched them go, letting her mask drop for a second once, she was alone.

This crew needs more than drills, in the worst way; she shook her head, moving along behind the retreating figures.

Whoever had been behind the formation of the Odyssey’s crew had either been complete imbeciles, or hidden geniuses.

Corrin wasn’t sure which, though she had money on the former.

The individual crew members had been drawn from some of the best pools of military talent available and in the post war nation she served, that meant that they had some damned fine people on board.

The problem was that damned few of them had ever served with any of their shipmates.

And that was a recipe for disaster, if Chief PO Corrin ever saw one.

*****

The Odyssey, now back en route to the Saturn refuelling rendezvous, accelerated back to its ‘in-system’ cruise speed of point three of light speed. Ahead of the massive ship its navigation beams roughly shouldered aside any debris unlucky enough to be caught in its path, causing the occasional shudder to run through the ship as a particularly large piece of rock slowed the ship slightly, as it passed.

Shortly thereafter the rings of Saturn became visible, as the vessel roared towards the orbit of the sixth planet. Out of the rings, a black shape became visible, its trajectory altering almost as soon as it was spotted. It rocketed free of the big planets gravity well and slid into a parallel course with the Odyssey.

“Odyssey Command, this is the Indigo. Welcome to Saturn.”

“Indigo, this is the Odyssey. Thanks for the welcome, but I don’t think we’ll have time to sightsee.”

“Pity, we’ve taken in the sights for the past day, while waiting for you. Least you could do is hang around and keep us company, for a while.” Weston could hear the smile that had slid across the face of the Indigo’s Captain.

“’Fraid not, Indigo. We have a mission to start and I understand you have something to help us along?”

“Roger that, Odyssey. Lines are coming across now.”

Snaking out from the Indigo, thick hoses were gliding across the space between the two ships as they continued to slide together, reducing the distance to a few hundred feet before the tanker altered its course and paralleled the Odyssey exactly. Small pods were in place on the ends of the hoses, each containing a two man crew that guided the hoses into place. The five hoses were soon locked into the Odyssey’s rear compartment and the tanker began emptying its cargo.

The fuelling would take the better part of what remained of the night, so Weston retired shortly after the process had begun. When he woke, Eric could tell by the low hum he felt through the deck that the big ship was again under full thrust and moving toward the edge of the Sol system.

On the bridge, everything was running smoothly. They had just crossed the orbit of Pluto and although the planet itself was nowhere in sight, it was a cheerful milestone in itself since they were the first humans to reach that far. Roberts had relieved the night watch a couple hours earlier and was sifting through crew assignments when the Captain stepped onto the bridge.

“Captain on the bridge!”

“Status,” Weston ordered as he stepped over to the command chair.

“We just crossed the orbit of Pluto thirty minutes ago, Sir. Technically we can engage the drive when ready, Sir,” Roberts replied crisply, “Though, the official heliopause is still a few minutes away.”

“Good. Helm, calculate the trajectory… and be precise.” This last was spoken firmly as Lt. Daniels bent over his console and began the calculations.

“Yes, Sir.”

“Mr. Roberts, contact the transition team. Tell them to charge the system.”

Roberts nodded and turned to a console on his left, tapping a series of commands’, he then spoke softly into a recessed microphone.

“Transition team reports ready, Sir. We can engage the drive at any time.”

“Good.”

Weston flipped a switch on his console and activated the ship wide intercom, “Attention, this is Captain Weston speaking. We are preparing to engage the ship’s transition drive system. We have all been briefed on what to expect, and the psychological impact of what we are about to experience. Please brace yourselves and report any problems to the medical labs when we have exited transition. That is all.”

Weston took a deep breath, “Helm, do you have that trajectory for me?”

“Yes Sir, I just fed it into the system. We’re ready on this end.”

“All right. I want a Go / No Go check from all stations.”

“Helm, Go.”

“Transition Control, Go,” The speakers didn’t convey any uncertainty and Weston wished that he shared that sentiment.

“Reactor Control, Go.”

The list ran through all of the ship’s stations, each confirming in turn that their section had prepared for the effects of the jump. The list slowly ran down, until finally Roberts spoke the final phrase.

“Odyssey Command, Go.”

“All systems, we are a go for transition in T-minus…,” Weston glanced down and punched a series of commands, “two minutes.”

Chapter 3

The tension on the bridge continued to mount as the count ticked down, the numbers dropping rapidly, until the crew was confronted with the final ten seconds.

Weston shifted nervously in his seat as the number ten went by, the transition effects had been kept highly classified for a reason. He knew what to expect, as did the entire crew, but in this case that was worse than ignorance.

In the medical, labs Doctor Rame was rapidly running through the procedures that they had drilled into him when he was selected for this assignment, he was already planning a book about the experience.

Commander Roberts had to force his hands to unclench; small blood red marks were left to decorate his palms.

All through the ship people were holding tightly to things, as if preparing for massive acceleration despite what they had been trained to expect. In one room, a particularly nervous crewman had accidently knocked himself out while trying to strap himself to a chair, in retrospect he was considered lucky.

A high-pitched whine began to reverberate through the ship, usually being felt long before heard, the sound continued to rise.

On the bridge, Captain Weston watched the small red light flicker on as the count went past five seconds and noted a slight relaxation that swept through him when it did. They were now past the point of no return. The Odyssey and her crew were about to make history.

The whine had reached painful levels in some areas of the ship, causing people to cover their ears and close their eyes in the vain attempt to shut out the sound. Outside the ship, a strange disturbance was affecting the ship’s forward sensor spires, causing the Odyssey computers to begin insisting that the spires were no longer present.

The disturbance had apparently begun making its way towards the aft of the ship. One by one, key systems appeared to go offline, each system insisting that it simply wasn’t there.

The count hit zero and Weston’s eyes widened as the disturbance intersected the bridge, the entire forward section including the view screen disintegrated into uncountable particles that were swept away into the void of space. Weston soon found himself sitting on the edge of the void, grasping his chair for protection, as the effect encompassed his crew, one by one. When the maelstrom engulfed him and the universe went black, Weston’s last conscious thought echoed through what was left of his universe.

If we survive this, I’m going to have a very serious talk with the techs back home about what constitutes ‘need to know’.

*****

Four and a half lightyears from where the Odyssey vanished, an unusual disturbance began in the Alpha Centauri star system, where a cloud of particles decelerated apparently from nowhere and rapidly reformed themselves. First, the long forward spires of the Odyssey’s primary communications array and soon the rest of the vessel were reconstituted as the tachyon disruption faded and left the massive ship hurtling sunward into the system’s primary.

Odyssey Command recovered before the rest of the ship, the transition shock rippling through them even as they turned their attention back to the status reports that began filtering in. Weston found that he had almost slipped from the command chair after they reentered dimensional space and was quick to correct his posture, a moment later his head stopped screaming long enough for him to begin reacting.

“Report! All stations,” he snapped, hoping his voice was steadier than his vision.

“Ship is undamaged Sir, minor wear evident on the Tachyon reactors, The Tachyon based sensors are out of alignment, however. Two hours to repair,” The technician behind him sounded badly. Weston turned to look at him closer.

Weston stood up and walked over to the shaking tech, “Ensign Waters, you are relieved. Go to the Med-lab and get yourself checked out.”

Waters shook slightly and looked up at Weston in relief before heading for the back of the room. Weston glanced around the room again, looking harder for evidence of trouble. The rest seemed all right, but he would have to keep a closer eye on them until they had a chance for some rest. He returned to his seat and thumbed an intercom switch after tapping in the channel number.

“Med Lab, how bad is it down there?”

Doctor Stevens voice sounded pretty shaky, even over the intercom, “Pretty bad, Captain. Over thirty crewmen have reported in for varying causes…,” the pause in the doctor’s speech seemed ominous, “And we have at least one that we have to confine to the labs… Lt Tearborn snapped, Captain. Security picked her up in engineering. Apparently she witnessed the reactor vaporize and she thought it was a breech.”

Weston’s words were uttered too quietly for anyone to hear him, but his body language transmitted the message to anyone on the bridge unfortunate enough to be watching. It had been hard enough watching the ship, apparently disintegrating into a vacuum, but to watch the reactor fall apart? Too many horror stories had been told about reactor breeches on board ships for that to be easily dismissed.

Eric let out a breath he hadn’t known he was holding, and nodded, “All right, Doctor. Do what you can. Oh, by the way, I just sent Ensign Waters down to you. He should be arriving soon.”

“Yes sir, we’ll clear some space. Med Lab out.”

Weston thumbed the switch back and sank into his seat. Tearborn was a good engineer, not someone he would expect to snap. When I get home, I think I’ll recommend sedatives for nonessential crew members prior to entering transitional space.

He shook his head, compartmentalizing the thoughts and emotions, then quickly straightened and locked an iron grip on his Command Persona. “Helm, plot us a nice long hyperbolic course. Commander, tell the labs to make good use of the time, because we’ll transition out when we clear the gravity well.”

“Aye Sir,” Both Daniels and Roberts chorused as they turned to their tasks.

The Odyssey sailed into the system, sails almost literally unfurling as the ships massive retractable sensor arrays were raised and locked into position, strengthening the impression of an ancient sailing ship.

Inside researchers were rushing from lab to lab and console to console, as they struggled to shake off the transitional effects and complete their work in the shortest time possible. The rear module soon entered a state of barely controlled chaos as the military crew stepped back and watched the civilian scientists, half in awe and half in disgust.

Weston oversaw the initial setup of schedules and sensor times, but soon decided to leave it to his officers and retired to allow himself to recover from the shock he had not allowed his system to work out. In his quarters, Weston felt his control slip away and his hands begin shaking slightly as he collapsed on the bed, finally permitting himself to simply let go. Sleep didn’t come easily but it came.

*****

Chief Corrin growled as she yanked a crewman up by the scruff of his neck, twisting him away from her so he didn’t puke on her polished boots.

“Get to the Med lab!” she growled, shoving him along in front of her.

She stayed with him just long enough to flag down another crewman who looked to be in moderately better shape. “Med lab?”

He nodded.

“Here,” she shoved the still retching crewman into his arms. “Take him.”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

Corrin watched them stumble down the hall, and steeled her stomach once again; heading into Marine Country to see what kind of mess the groundhogs had done to her bulkheads.

The sound of yelling up ahead caused her to quicken her pace, but the tone made her stop before she came into sight. She curiously glanced around the corner into one of the soldier’s lounges and her eyes widened at what she saw.

“Oh YEAH!” The Lieutenant that had asked her for directions earlier was boosting his hands in the air and yelling at the top of his lungs.

“I want to go again!!” He grinned as half the men around him laughed openly, and the other half glared at him with sickly, green faces.

Corrin shook her head and backed out of there.

They couldn’t give us Marines… Noooo… They had to recruit a bunch of Rambo wannabes. Marines are bad enough, but at least I KNOW Marines.

*****

“Captain to the bridge! Captain to the bridge!”

Weston was well clear of the bed and halfway to the door before his senses focused enough to realize that running around the ship in his underwear probably wouldn’t do much for morale. Well…, his morale anyway. So he took his time and in less than five minutes he strode onto the bridge, fastening the last couple buttons on his collar and looking around for the emergency.

“Captain, over here,” Commander Roberts was looking at a display on one of the terminals linked to the research labs below.

“Commander, I hardly think that a research breakthrough necessitated getting me out of bed. It could have waited until morning.”

“No sir, at least not according to the techs in the tachyon lab.”

Weston’s eyes narrowed, trouble with the tachyon reactors would be bad news, the transition drive was all that kept them from having to limp home at slightly under two thirds light speed. “Is it trouble with the reactors?”

“No Sir. Our tachyon-based sensing arrays started picking up a tachyon signal about an hour ago, Sir. It took us this long to figure out, even part of it.”

“Figure out? We pick up stray signals all the time; tachyons are generated by at least a dozen special events.” Weston wasn’t sure, but he felt like his mind hadn’t full woken up.

“This isn’t a stray, Captain. It’s modulated.”

Weston was silent for a moment. Modulated tachyon signals were considered impossible back home. It was a classic chicken and egg scenario…, you couldn’t modulate a superlight signal without a superlight computer, but of course without modulated superlight signals, no one could build a computer that fast. The best anyone had really come up with was a complicated form of Morse code that sufficed for most in-system communications, but required massive directional transmitters.

Transmitters that, unfortunately, didn’t fit on the Odyssey. The best a ship her size could manage was an infinitesimal ‘Ping’ that allowed her to perform short and long range scans, but didn’t allow for any form of communication unless she managed to perfectly hit the intended receiver with the minute burst.

From within a star system, that was just barely possible.

At anything greater, they had a better chance of sailing off the edge of the universe.

More’s the pity, Eric snorted softly as he frowned at the readout. “How the hell did we just happen to walk into this?”

Roberts swallowed, “It appears to be omnidirectional, Sir.”

“What?”

Roberts just shrugged.

Weston blinked in shock. That was unbelievable. An omnidirectional signal from a Tachyon source would require immense power reserves, entire levels of magnitude above and beyond what the Odyssey could possibly hope to pump out. And the Odyssey had one of the most advanced reactors in existence, “my God.”

“Yes, Sir.”

Weston shook his head to clear it, trying to shake off the awe. Finally he made a short laughing noise. “I guess science scores another foul ball, someone must have done the impossible again. Where’s it from? Mars? Earth? One of the outposts?”

“No, Sir. It’s from a White Giant about twenty eight light years from here.” Roberts look Weston straight in the eye as he replied.

For the third time in as many minutes, Weston was floored, “I don’t suppose anybody we know is out there?”

Roberts just shook his head as Eric tried to wrap his mind around the situation. “No, Sir. This is as close to absolute proof as you get. It’s definitely not from Earth, Sir.”

Weston quickly recovered from the surprise, “Ok, it’s alien. Any idea what it says?”

“Not exactly, Sir. But decryption thinks it’s an SOS. They seem fairly confident.”

“Yeah, I remember how confident they were thirteen years ago when they swore that the Block was calling for a retreat. I lost twelve planes before we managed to get our ass out of the middle of the Block’s reinforcements,” Weston muttered darkly.

Still, his dry reply was belied by the look of sudden interest that flared across his face. History was afoot here, and it seemed that the Odyssey was about to plunge right through the center of it. He paused for a moment, eyes staring at the screens without seeing them, considering his options.

“How long until we’re clear of Alpha Centauri?” Eric asked finally, straightening.

“We’ve had to correct to avoid passing though the gravity tides of Beta Centauri, but still we’ll be clear in about an hour.”

“Good. I’m going back to talk with some of the lab techs. Especially those decryption boys…,” Eric smiled nastily. “We’ll see how certain they really are. Inform me when we’re cleared for transition. In the meantime, have a course plotted to intercept the signal’s source.”

“Yes, Sir.”

*****

Eric had taken the first available tube back to the rear habitat, following the smoothly arcing corridors until they led him to the Com-Lab. When the doors cycled open Weston was assaulted by noise coming from at least half dozen stations, as they analysed the signal, the combined blaring almost deafening.

“IS THAT REALLY NECESSARY!?” Weston raised his voice as high as he could, trying to communicate past the ambient sounds, to a man in a white lab coat.

The man glanced up at him, almost ignoring him until a glimmer of recognition flickered across his face and his hand reached out and slapped a bank of switches, mercifully silencing the room. Weston glanced around a realized with a start that only the tech he had talked to was actually listening to the sounds, the rest were wincing beneath heavy ear guards.

Wish I’d known to bring a pair, my ears are going to ring for hours, and Weston winced and rubbed the sides of his head.

“I’m terribly sorry, Captain. I was just seeing if I could decipher the meaning,” The man said apologetically, then almost immediately seemed to forget he was there.

“Ahem,” Weston cleared his throat, startling the man, as he shook his head slightly in an attempt to clear the ringing, “How on earth could you possibly decipher anything from that mess?”

“Mess? Hardly. So far I’ve been able to tell at least three words apart, although I can only be sure of one… ‘escouros’, it seems to mean ‘help’ or perhaps ‘rescue’.”

Weston did a double take and stared at the tech, “I don’t take well to jokes at times like this Mr…”

The man looked startled for a moment then grabbed Weston’s hand and shook it energetically, “I’m so sorry, Captain! I’m Dr. Palin; I see you haven’t had a chance to read my file yet, so I’ll apologize for my apparent levity. I’m the Odyssey’s ‘Token’ linguist,” the man grinned wryly at the word ‘token’. “My previous supervisor recommended me for the position, probably to get rid of me, I suppose, but I really am the best at what I do, Captain.”

Weston was taken aback by the man’s startlingly quick change of tack, his hand limply following Palin’s, “Uh, alright. So you’re the one who thinks it’s a distress call?”

“No. I know it’s a distress call. Unfortunately, I can’t seem to find any specifics in the signal,” Palin suddenly frowned, looking downright depressed at his lack of hard facts.

Weston spent the next few minutes talking with Dr. Palin, occasionally interrupted by one or another of the technicians in the lab, as they attempted to disassociate themselves from Palin, who was clearly considered a heretic.

Eric ignored them as they didn’t have any thoughts of their own to add to the discussion. He didn’t have much patience for people who were only willing to toe the company line. While they were responsible for what they ‘knew’, Eric wanted to hear what people thought as well. Whether he was right or not, Palin was at least willing to step up to the plate, as it were.

“I’m going to take the Odyssey to investigate. If you’re right, it’s our duty to respond…,” Weston decided, then paused a moment, “and besides, even if you’re wrong it’s something we really have to see for ourselves. Oh, and Doc? I think it would be best if you used the headphones for a while, give the others a break.”

“Very well, Captain. I suppose I could restrict myself,” Palin’s voice sounded disappointed, “for a little while, at least.”

Weston retreated hastily from the lab, tapping the signal key to activate the induction microphone on his jaw, “Commander Roberts.”

Roberts came back quickly, “Yes, Sir?”

“I’m heading for my office for a while, contact me when we clear the gravity well.”

“Yes, Sir.”

*****

Weston took the tube back to the forward habitat and quickly navigated through the rolling corridors to his office. Once inside, he quickly called up Doctor Palin’s file on his local terminal, determined to find out what kind of man he was going to trust his ships future to.

This is strange; to say that Palin’s file was nondescript was understatement. There were no particularly impressive achievements, nor were there any notes of discipline problems, something which drew his attention rather quickly after his first meeting with the man. This can’t be his record. A clerical error? Weston began sweeping through dossiers that were stored in the computers fractal core, sweeping through terabytes of information as he had the computer cross reference the good doctors past.

Bingo. The computer flashed a ‘Restricted Information’ block as he tried to call up one of the buried files that the computer had matched with Palin. A few moments later and his override code gave him access to the file he wanted.

Eric leaned back and skimmed through the file, quickly skipping the basic biographical information to get to the meat of the situation.

Jesus Christ, what on Earth is this? Weston scanned through the document, comparing the embedded picture quickly against his memory; yes this is Palin, a lot younger maybe but definitely him. The file was an old CIA document describing Doctor Edward Palin’s contribution to their black ops projects in the early years after the turn of the millennium. Hundreds of experiments and documented evidence revolving around Palin’s reported ‘abilities’.

Dr. Palin was classified as a Linguistic Telepath. Whatever the hell that is, Weston’s mood had grown somewhat darker, and you’d think that whoever assigned him would have thought to inform me about his alleged abilities. Still Weston had to admit that the file was impressive; it documented cases of Palin cracking encrypted algorithms faster than an array of networked supercomputers, as well as his uncanny ability to learn spoken languages literally overnight if he was exposed to other people who were fluent in the language. Weston was still delving into Palin’s rather extensive record, when Robert’s voice came over the ships com.

“Captain, were about to clear the tidal well.”

“On my way, Commander. Send an announcement through the ship; tell them to be ready for another hop through transitional space.”

“Yes Sir,” Weston could hear the distaste in the commander’s voice, even over the comlink.

One more into the abyss, Eric smiled to himself, shoving aside his misgivings and personal dislike of the Transition drive. He couldn’t afford to show the crew that their Captain didn’t trust the very thing that they were depending on.

*****

“All right!” the Former Marine Force Recon Sargent grinned, looking around. “I’ve got thirty bucks that says I can make the all-time standing long-jump record, here and now and NOT toss my cookies, when I land!”

“You’re on!” Bermont grinned, slapping a pair of bills down on the table. “I saw your face after the last one, Rogers…, and you just ate, so I know you’re gonna spatter the deck.”

Loud cries echoed around the room as others got in on the wager, some betting with the Marine, some with the JTF2 Lieutenant. At the far end, Chief Corrin shook her head and tried to pretend that the rank and file weren’t betting on who was going to vomit all over her decks.

*****

Back on the ship’s command deck, Weston gave each officer an appraising look, trying to determine their stress levels. A few minutes later, Weston was satisfied that his command staff was up to the task, even Waters seemed well recovered from his earlier state.

“We are a go in three minutes,” the navigation officer didn’t glance up from his instruments as he configured the course corrections.

“Engage transition drive when ready.”

“Aye Sir.”

Seconds ticked down as the Odyssey pulled itself clear of the stars gravity well, reaching for deep space as its massive reactors charged the tachyon transition system. Captain Weston found himself involuntarily gripping the arms of his chair as the countdown started at one minute; he imagined that the rest of the crew felt pretty much the same. Transitional space was hardly a vacation.

“Engaging transition now,” Lt Daniels said, sounding almost fearful.

Outside, the nightmare replayed across the ship, as the great vessel transitioned out of dimensional space and was flung across time and space by the ship’s huge transition engines. Weston’s thoughts again echoed infinitely through his awareness, locked in time and mind by the big ship’s passage through the universe, I sure hope this gets easier with practice.

Chapter 4

It just wasn’t going to get any easier.

The Odyssey reentered dimensional space and the first thing anybody was conscious of were the automatic alarms blaring.

“Sensors! What’s going on?” Weston barely finished his sentence when the vessel rocked violently, forcing him to hold tightly to the command chair.

“Debris field, Sir! Shouldn’t be here, though!” Waters replacement, Ensign Bremen, muttered fearfully. Apparently the sensors weren’t going to be much help.

“He’s right, Captain.” Daniels replied tensely, “I specifically set our course to keep us safely away from any Lagrange points. Whatever this is, it hasn’t been here very long!”

“Hold on, data coming in,” Bremen spoke up before falling silent with a shocked look on his face.

The long moment of stunned silence forced Weston to prod the young man, “Ensign? What is it?”

“It’s… its wreckage, Sir. Sweet Jesus… it looks like an entire fleet died out here.” Bremen said his voice struck with a kind of awe and horror all at once. “Still reading heat dissipating from some, Sir. They’ve only been here days at most, if they use the same materials we do.”

Silence reined on the bridge for a long moment. One thought passed through the mind of every person on the bridge, what have we gotten ourselves into?

Weston was the first to break the silence, checking a monitor beside his chair and stating, “Breman, I want a complete scan of the system. If whatever did this is still here, I want to know it. Daniels, triangulate and plot a course for the tachyon source.”

Lieutenant Daniels paused a moment before half turning, face downcast, “Lost the signal, Sir. Best I can do is a general area…, about two and a half thousand kilometer diameter.”

Weston sighed, he should have known it wouldn’t be that easy, “All right, take us to the area and initiate a search grid.”

Weston slumped back into the chair, acknowledging multiple reports from the various stations, as they reported negative contacts in each sector they scanned. Reports were still coming in from the labs concerning the tachyon signal and its peculiar modulation, Palin still swore it was an SOS… and judging from the debris they had just seen, that conclusion didn’t take a rocket scientist as the old expression went.

“Captain! We just picked up something along the search pattern. Looks like a ship.”

“Let me see it.”

The large screen focused on a floating hulk, no running lights, no apparent drive activity, no life support…, or life, for that matter. The ship was so dead that the Odyssey’s computers had to enhance the image from the ship’s LIDAR and RADAR-based sensors to allow it to be seen against the black backdrop of space. The screen automatically cut back on magnification as the Odyssey approached the derelict craft, nonetheless increasing in detail as the ships scans picked up more information. The ship was covered with carbon scoring from dozens of weapon strikes. Little of the original exterior appeared intact; although penetrating sensors detected that the interior atmosphere was possibly intact.

“Fascinating. Roberts have the landing shuttle prepped and take a team over there. Full environmental protocol. You’d better assume that it’s a class 6 environment.”

“Yes Sir,” Roberts sent a signal to the shuttle bay and left the bridge.

*****

“Pay up!” Bermont grinned as Rogers curled on the ground, after his more than ten light year standing long jump, emptying his stomach across the deck.

Rogers groaned, but shovelled a ten and twenty into Bermont’s hand just as the alert stations call rang through the deck.

The laughing, joking, retching, and cursing ended abruptly as every man shoved their bitching stomachs back down their throats and stumbled for the door.

*****

It didn’t take long for Commander Roberts to reach the flight deck, and the crews were already prepping the large Prometheus Class Shuttle when he stepped onto the deck, boots echoing against the metal floor.

From another lift he saw a group of soldiers double-time their way across the zero-gee deck, heading toward the shuttle that was prepping. He nodded to himself, approving of their speed, though was a little concerned to note the sickly color of a few of their faces.

One of them, a Sergeant from the Marines… . Rogers he thought, was currently the palest black man that Roberts had ever seen in his life. He shook his head slightly in private sympathy for the man, but didn’t comment as the soldier began fitting himself into armor and grab a rifle from the rack. Instead, all he did was suit himself up in likewise fashion, grab a sidearm and rifle for himself, and follow the men onto the shuttle.

Shortly, Roberts was strapping himself into a troop seat on board one of the Odyssey’s recon shuttles, pulling the harness tightly down across his shoulders. Around him, a small team of Special Forces troops followed suit, some of them strapping weapons above their seats and others breaking their arms down in preparation for the mission.

“All right Jenny, take us out,” Roberts addressed the diminutive woman, Lt. Jenny Samuels, in the pilot’s chair and thought he detected an evil grin playing across her face, “and none of that hot-dogging either. The Archangels already know you’re a good pilot!”

A low chuckle rippled around the flight seat as the shuttle was jarred by the thrusters kicking in. Two of the older soldiers groaned at the sound, making Roberts wonder what they knew that he didn’t. He found out a few moments later, as the shuttle’s retro thrusters fired and he was pressed hard, up into the biting straps that held him to his seat. Outside, the shuttle flew clear of the Odyssey’s flight deck.

“Roger Odyssey Control, Archangel two and three have taken up escort positions. We’re burning to intercept vector now,” another jolt slid him roughly into the waiting embrace of the straps as he listened to the shuttle’s radio chatter over the induction transceiver secured to his jaw.

“Confirmed, Shuttle One. WE don’t read any viable airlocks on board so you’ll have to burn through.”

“Affirmative Odyssey Control, the portable lock is being prepped now. We’ll be ready.”

The chatter died down as the shuttle approached the derelict craft, its huge spotlights playing across the carbon-scored exterior as Lt. Matheson searched for a solid section to attach to. The alien ship seemed remarkably intact considering the appearance of its exterior hull and the lieutenant had little trouble selecting a spot. One last jolt pushed Roberts deep into his seat as the shuttles magnetic grapplers locked on and secured them firmly to the ship. From below them they heard the portable airlock lock onto the ship and then a hatch in the floor spiralled open.

“Everybody, lock up. Full environmental protection. McRaedy get in there and cut through.”

A hissing sound echoed through the shuttles interior as the soldiers and pilots locked up their environmental suits and moved into position. Two soldiers covered McRaedy with their rifles as he began cutting through the metal hull of the derelict vessel, sending showers of sparks flying back into the shuttle.

“Damn tough material, Sir!” McRaedy yelled back as he kept working.

“Can you do it, Soldier!?” Roberts asked over the noise.

“Kin-A, Sir,” the man yelled back. “Just watch me go.”

“Go Soldier, Go.” Roberts permitted himself a slight smirk under his helmet where no one was going to notice it.

Despite the slow nature of the work, McRaedy had managed to cut through after a little less than an hour had passed, moving back as the circular piece of metal fell away and clanged inside the derelict.

Roberts looked at one of the soldiers speculatively, “artificial gravity? Curiouser and curiouser.”

Roberts dropped though the hole, followed instantly by two others who swung their rifles up and down the length of the corridor they found themselves in. A third soldier dropped in between them, sweeping a handheld sensor up and down the hall, tracing hidden circuits and power relays through the ship’s deck, finally settling on a direction and heading toward the ships apparent bow. The rest of the team takes up positions around Roberts and the sensor tech, covering point and guarding the rear.

“This way.” The tech was analysing the power relays and their nodes of intersection, “if we had designed this ship the bridge would be forward another 10 meters or so and up two decks.”

In point of fact, the bridge was up three decks and back 20 meters, but they found it relatively quickly all the same. While the hallways were empty and deserted the bridge was not. Bodies of the crew were slumped over their consoles, barely recognizable as such but definitely the crew.

“My God,” one of the soldiers gagged in his suit, trying fiercely to hold back vomit which would be considerably adverse to his continued good health.

“Help him,” Roberts directed another to help the soldier back to the shuttle, “what in hell happened to them?”

“I don’t know,” the techs voice relayed a grimness that matched the sight before them.

The bodies were completely desiccated, their skin reduced to leather on their bones, their hair waving about in the slightest breeze. Their eyes, or where their eyes should be, were black sunken pits.

“No water or other liquids are present…, but it’s more than that, their cell structure seems to have been ruptured. I’d say the loss of bodily fluids was a side effect sir.” The man said, “If it weren’t for the state of the wreckage I’d say that they’ve been here a long time. Internal heat, air, and other traces say otherwise though.”

Roberts just shook his head, and stepped up beside the second tech, who was trying to interface with the ship’s computer, “any luck, Macklin?”

The tech shook his head. “No, Sir. The computer’s either beyond the tools I’m using or it’s completely scrambled. Given the state of things around here, I wouldn’t be taking any bets on which one it is.”

Roberts was looking over the central seat, apparently the Captain’s position. He marvelled at the similarities to the Odyssey, in its layout and dimensions. Whoever these people were, they certainly seemed to be as close to human as you got.

“Commander Roberts,” his back inadvertently snapped straighter, as he heard the Captain’s voice over the induction set on his jaw, “recall your team, we spotted the source of the transmission and we don’t want to risk leaving you there while we go investigate.”

“Yes Sir,” Roberts thumbed the induction set to wide band broadcast and relayed the Captain’s orders. “Okay, everybody. Pack it up. We’ve got an SOS to answer and the Captain doesn’t want to be late.”

The team made it back to the lock in record time, climbing up out of the derelict vessel and into the shuttle. A signal from the pilot closed the floor hatch and the small ship lifted off, leaving the portable airlock behind still sealed tight.

“Roger, Odyssey control, shuttle one is clear of the alien craft and coming home. Archangels one and two providing escort.”

The Odyssey was already accelerating away from the derelict vessel, as shuttle one and its escort glided in on a docking vector. Looking over the pilots shoulder, Roberts could see the distant glow of four of the Archangels, as they accelerated on maximum burn toward the signal source, mock contrails forming behind them, as the superheated plasma from their twin reactors swirled a few moments before vanishing into the void.

“The Captain’s broken the ’Angels out,” Jenny pointed out the multiple points of light flitting around the big ship.

Roberts glanced at the pilot, “his prerogative, I suppose. Besides, he knows better than anyone, what they’re capable of.”

“You got a point there, Sir. Better strap in now, this one’s gonna be bumpy.”

Roberts hurriedly locked himself back into his seat. When Lt. Samuels said that a flight would be bumpy, even the fighter jocks asked for a transfer. The shuttle closed in on the Odyssey’s stern, slipping in under the massive engines and aligning carefully along the lower deck of the Odyssey’s carrier section. Suddenly, Samuels fired the thrusters and the shuttle drifted along the enclosed deck, its speed suddenly arrested, as the big ship’s fighter ‘trap’ hooked the shuttle. Two loud clangs sounded as the magnetic grappler connected and hauled the shuttle down to the bay floor.

Wincing Roberts unstrapped himself and rubbed his sore shoulders, “Last time I checked, it was a court-martial offence to assault a superior officer, Samuels. I don’t care if you do use the shuttle as a weapon.”

Several soldiers in similar condition laughed ruefully as they disembarked the shuttle, “You’d never get it through the court, Sir, too many of the Brass have identical bruises and they feel that if they had to go through it, so does everybody else.”

Laughter rang in their ears as the team headed for the shuttle pod along the central pylon. Before they got halfway there, Captain Weston stepped out and started toward them.

“Sir!” The team saluted as one, coming to rigorous attention.

“As you were,” Weston told them after snapping a return salute. He turned to the pilot, “Samuels, I need to you take the shuttle out again. We’ve found what looks to be a life pod. She’s dead in the water and is going to need some help coming in from the cold.”

Jennifer turned and began walking alongside the Captain as he headed toward the shuttle, “How big is it sir?”

“About eight meters in diameter. Less than that in length. We’ll have to use the Can-Arms to bring it in though. The whole thing is Para-magnetic, standard grapplers won’t lock on.”

Roberts had caught up to them, “uh Sir? What do you mean by ‘we’? You’re needed on the bridge.”

Weston waved him off, “Not this time, Commander. I’m qualified to run the Can-Arms and you aren’t. Hell, since the magnetic grapplers came into use, we only have a handful of people checked out on those things and they are all busy right now. I’m not.”

Roberts moved to argue, then stopped and thought better of it, finally moving back toward the waiting shuttle. Samuels, her co-pilot, and Captain Weston loaded into the shuttle craft and started the pre-flight. The craft hummed as the twin power plants came online and the magnetic gear deactivated and retracted into the craft. A light burn from the lateral thrusters sent the bird gliding smoothly out of the bay before the main power plants engaged, sending the SAR team solidly en route.

*****

Once outside again, Samuels pivoted the shuttle easily and aimed the big craft towards the bright glow of the Archangels power plants circled an invisible point in space. The arbitrary point in space slowly coalesced into a faint outline against the star field, the drifting escape pod coming into view. Samuels slowly aligned the shuttle with the drifting pod, deftly matching its angle and drift with small puffs from the shuttle’s thrusters.

“I guess I’m up,” Weston headed aft as the co-pilot booted up the shuttles LDS, Life Detection Software, and began running the sensor data through the program.

“Whoa… Sir. It looks like we’ve got a live one here. There’s a heat source in there…” the co-pilot announced. Ensign Ryan stopped dead for a long moment, blinking in shock and surprise. After a long moment, he shook his head slowly and pivoted around to look at his Captain. “Uh Sir… I’m not sure I believe this myself, but the sensors read the pod as having one human occupant. They read the match out as having a ninety-seven percent certainty rating.”

Weston stopped for a moment, staring incredulously. “Ninety-seven? We only get a ninety-three percent reading from our own ships.”

“I know that Sir,” the man shrugged helplessly. “I don’t know how to explain it… . The only thing I can think of is that, it is a human in there and the pod is Para-magnetic, for a reason. The material seems to be designed for easy sensor penetration. We should see if we can’t find out how to make it.”

After a moment’s silence he spoke up again, his tone facetious. “Of course, it could be an alien bogey man, who’s spoofing our sensors.”

“I’ll turn that idea over to the guys in the science division when we get back,” Weston grinned wryly as he extended the Can-Arms toward the drifting pod. “In the meantime, let’s prepare for a guest.”

“Yes Sir,” the co-pilot replied as Eric manipulated the controls.

The long robotic arms extended slowly from the bottom of the shuttle, long pincers on the arms closed over two obtrusions on the pod. As the clamps tightened, the Pod slipped through their mechanical grip as Eric moved to compensate. As he tried to grab it again, the left arm overcompensated and struck the pod lightly, putting it into a tumble.

“Damn it,” Weston cursed under his breath as the pincers slipped free and the pod began drifting away. “Samuels adjust your vertical vector by point three two, the pod’s trying to slip away.”

“Yes sir,” the Lieutenant deftly adjusted the shuttle’s course, following the escaping pod.

“Thanks. Trying again,” Weston’s face was beginning to bead with sweat as he extended the arms again and closed the pincers over the obtrusions, this time tightly. “All right, got him hooked. Time to reel him in.”

The two Can-Arms began to retract, pulling the shuttle to the pod and locking them together firmly. Once the arms were locked in place, Lt. Samuels fired the thrusters and started the shuttle on a return vector to the Odyssey.

“Sir, the contents of the pod read as oxygen/nitrogen, breathable but high on the carbon dioxide levels… . Looks like a purification system on its last legs,” the co-pilot shrugged, “assuming he breathes air and my instruments aren’t all screwed up.”

“Damn. Ok, suit up, both of you. I’m going to open up the spam can and see what we’ve won,” Weston ordered as he grabbed for his own pressure helmet.

After they had sealed their environmental suits, Weston opened the pressure hatch in the floor, accessing the portable airlock that had slid into place from the small storage of them, which were standard on this class of shuttle.

“Ryan, get over here and pass me the laser cutter.”

“Yes sir,” the co-pilot slid from his seat and grabbed the cutter from a locker, amidships.

Weston primed the cutter and focused it on the Pods hull, slicing through the material like a knife through butter. “Hey Ryan, I think I will send a sample of this to the research labs. The material is vaporizing rather than melting, we’re not going to have to worry about slag floating around.”

After a few moments of slicing, Weston had completed a decent size circle and kicked the floating obstruction into the pod. Retrieving a lamp from Ensign Ryan, he peered into the pod looking for the survivor. Strapped into a harness along the curved side of the cylinder was the source of the life readings, a slumped form whose limbs were drifting slightly in the null gravity of the pod, her face obscured by drifting strands of raven black hair. Weston slipped himself through the hole feet first and alighted gently on the relative floor of the pod, unstrapping the survivor took less than a minute and he was passing the unfortunate woman back through the hole to Ensign Ryan. After a brief glance around Weston followed suit, leaving the dark interior of the escape pod behind.

“Take us back to the Odyssey Samuels, we’ll disengage the pod near the port bay and let the tug push it in.”

“Yes Sir, strap your selves in and make sure our passenger is comfortable. We’re going home.”

Chapter 5

Back on the Odyssey, the shuttle was met by an E-Med team in full biohazard gear, who quickly hustled the unconscious survivor from the flight deck. Weston himself, on the other hand, was met by Stephanus as he stepped down the shuttle gangplank.

“You just can’t help yourself, can you?” Stephanus slipped easily into step with Weston as he headed for the ships lift.

“What are you talking about, Steph?” Eric asked, knowing damn well what the younger man was complaining about.

“Do you realize that half the Angels out there went weapons hot when they heard you were taking a shuttle out yourself?” Steph asked half angrily, half resigned. “Christ on a crutch, Cap, I had to hold them back from cleansing the entire sector! Though, frankly, I almost gave the ok. This is a God damned warzone, Eric.”

Weston glanced over at his ex-wingman, “I appreciate the sentiment but I was hardly defenceless out there and the area was pacified.”

Stephanus snorted quietly as they stepped into the lift, “pacified? Hell we just arrived on the scene. We had no way of knowing what types of ordinances were still floating around out there. You know that better than most, hell… You know how many people we lost in the Bering, after the battle was ‘over’… . Remember Clarke? He made it all the way back to base, only to have an unexploded shell take him out on landing approach!”

Weston looked over at Stephanus, a wry smile playing across his mouth, “I was expecting Roberts to bring this up, not you, Steph. It was a calculated risk, besides the ’Angels and the Odyssey were in the area to cover me.”

Stephanus just muttered something under his breath, the words lost as the lifts doors slid open and they stepped out into the forward habitat section. Weston headed straight for the bridge, splitting away from Stephanus, who headed toward the Archangels ‘barracks’.

“You watch yourself, Cap!” The younger pilot said as a parting shot, as they split up, “This isn’t the Angels, and you aren’t flying solo, anymore.”

Eric sighed as he watched Steph turn a corner and vanish from sight. The worst of it was that the younger man was right. He shook his head and continued to the Bridge.

Command sucks.

*****

On the Bridge, Commander Roberts was examining accumulated data on the debris field when Captain Weston stepped onto the bridge. Eric walked over to him, glancing at the data over the Commander’s shoulder for a brief second before speaking.

“How much is there?” Weston was genuinely curious about that. Even before he’d gone outside, it had been obvious that there was quite a lot of debris in the area. Since Samuels had been forced to alter course no less than five times on the comparatively short trip, he knew that the field was extraordinarily dense.

Roberts started, twisting in the chair to look up at Weston, “A lot Captain, between ten and fifteen ships at the very least. The scary part is that they all appear to have been of the same origins, same design, materials, and markings on what’s left of the hulls. Looks either some type of internal conflict, maybe a civil war, or they tangled with one nasty group of Tangos.”

Weston picked up a PDA and scanned through the highlights resulting from the Odysseys’ continual scanning, “Send out shuttles and retrieval probes to get samples of everything of interest, and tell all the labs to be ready to analyse what they bring back. I’m going down to the medical lab to check the status of our guest. Contact Dr. Palin and ask him to meet me there.”

“Yes Sir,” Roberts nodded, tapping out a command on his console.

“And have the Sensor techs see if they can’t backtrack the trajectories,” Weston said over his shoulder, as he walked out. “I’d like to know where they came from.”

“Aye Sir.”

*****

He grabbed the nearest lift, heading straight for the Med lab. The woman they had picked up from the pod would likely be waking up soon if the preliminary scans they had done with the shuttles emergency gear was accurate. She had been suffering from dehydration and lack of oxygen but was otherwise fit.

Eric was willing to bet that this was going to be one hell of a story, one for the history books, even. If, and he had to admit that it was a big ‘if’, they could understand her. Token linguist. Let’s hope he’s half as good as that file implied.

Because, God help them all, it seemed that an awful lot was currently resting in the somewhat eccentric, if not downright mad, hands of Doctor Edward Palin. So Weston was understandably perturbed when he stepped off the pod and nearly ran over the subject of his thoughts, who was apparently kneeling on the floor in front of the lift door.

“Doctor! What are you doing down there?” Weston blinked as he caught himself against the wall, staring down at the not-quite-prostrate man.

“Oh hello, Captain. I was waiting for you, of course,” the Doctor replied, standing up and brushing himself down as casually as if he’d just got up from a mess table.

Weston stopped for a moment, his mouth working as he tried to find words to convey thoughts he wasn’t certain he was having. “Okay… . I can accept that. What you’re doing on the floor in front of the lift, however, is still a mystery.”

Palin paused for a moment, looking confused “the floor? Oh the floor. Ah yes… . the floor…”

Weston waited, obviously expecting Palin to continue but the doctor just began walking toward the med-labs, pausing only to look back at Weston for the briefest of moments before shrugging his shoulders and continuing. Weston looked after him for a while and with a disgusted shake of his head, followed in the doctor’s footsteps.

*****

The medical labs were swarming with people in lab coats. Apparently word of the survivor had slipped out to the other science departments. Weston cut a swath through the assembled scientists, momentarily distracting their attention from the beleaguered doctor standing between them and the object of their fascination.

“That’s it, all of you, out of here, in 2 minutes. If anybody but Doctor Rame, myself, and Doctor Palin are still in this area, I all have them hauled off to the brig.”

The room cleared out in a little under a minute, despite the grumbles of the retreating white coats. Doctor Rame looked at Weston in gratitude, flushed and flustered as he was. Normally he was in full command of his medical facility. To lose control to a mob had flustered him severely.

“Thank you, Captain. I assume you’re here to check up on our guest?” The doctor wrapped his tongue deliberately around the word guest, as if trying it on for size, then shook his head slightly as if the word didn’t quite fit.

“Yes Doctor. How is she?”

“Human,” Rame snorted, the word slipping out before he could stop it. “I mean she’s fine, Captain. Slight case of dehydration and some unusual cellular damage but that seems to be healing relatively quickly. Other than that she’s in extremely good shape.”

“When will she wake up?” Doctor Palin asked.

“I don’t know for sure, probably within a few hours, she’s also shown some signs of extreme fatigue so it’s best to let her rest, at this point. We have an IV drip administering fluids so she can sleep as long as necessary,” the Doctor said, already picking up a large tablet computer and jotting a note down with a Stylus.

Odd habit, Weston thought, and then just shrugged it off. Some people didn’t like dictating to computers, he knew. Stephanus was one of them, though Eric knew that his former wingman had always used a standard keyboard rather than a stylus, claiming that he felt like a complete idiot talking to a computer as if he expected some intelligent response.

Eric was a technophile from way back, and didn’t have that particular problem, let alone understand those who did. So he just shrugged it off and turned his attention back to the situation at hand.

As he considered the doctor’s report, Eric Weston glanced between Rame and the transparency that opened up on the motionless figure laying in the isolation chamber, “All right Doctor, but I want to be informed as soon as she wakes up, and you’d better inform Dr. Palin here as well. He’ll be in charge of all communication attempts with her.”

The CMO looked over at the quiet man in the corner, noting his vacant expression with some puzzlement, but nodded his assent. “Yes Sir. I’ll be sure to call you both.”

Weston nodded as he left, hooking a right out the door and heading for his cabin.

After Dr. Palin had followed the Captain, Dr. Rame looked after them slowly shaking his head. At least he didn’t try to have her interrogated immediately… or give her to those ghouls down in the bio-research lab.

Dr. Rame shuddered. He was a medical doctor and he didn’t want to think what it would do to his career, if he’d had to lock the ship’s Captain out of the Med-Lab.

Even so he couldn’t decide whether he trusted that odd little man. And so, still shaking his head slightly, Rame turned back to his terminal and began to correlate the data that he had gathered while treating his impromptu patient for her injuries.

*****

“Well, well… What have we here?” The softly spoken words barely travelled to the speakers own ears, and were totally lost in the ruckus that had overtaken the adjacent Bridge and Data Management itself.

The slim blonde who had spoken, smiled softly to herself as she called up three different views of the same scan, reached out and ‘grabbed’ two of the floating displays and slid them together, superimposing them over the third. Her smile only widened as the blue, green, and red lines superimposed to form a single white one.

“I’d say that’s a match,” she smiled to herself, enjoying the sensation of having puzzled out a particularly aggravating riddle.

“Have something, Winger?”

Michelle Winger jumped. She’d missed the sound of the Commander coming up behind her, and she had to half twisted around. “Sir… I…”

“Relax Lieutenant,” Roberts said in a tone that made it an order as much as a suggestion.

Michelle swallowed and nodded, “Yes Sir.”

“Did you find something?”

She nodded, pointing to the floating holographic display in front of her, “I think that’s a wake, Sir.”

“A ‘wake’?” Roberts eyed the fluorescing colors that were superimposed over an image of interstellar space.

“Yes Sir,” Michelle turned away from him, her fingers reaching up to punch the air as she keyed in a series of commands via the floating interface. “These are particles of ionized gas… plasma, Sir. Now, they’ve been disrupted heavily in-system by solar winds, but I’ve had three of our long range scanners probing outside the heliopause for the last couple hours and…”

“Whoa…, couple hours? The Captain only issued the orders twenty minutes ago.” Roberts objected, “Winger, those scanners were needed to keep an eye on the local area! We could still have potentially hostile ships in the area.”

The Lieutenant swallowed, but replied quickly, “I realize that Sir, but we can cover a full global scan with two primary scanners and the secondary… I was worried that something might be coming in… or going out, Sir.”

Roberts frowned, shaking his head but finally nodded. “All right. We’ll let it go, for the moment. But I’ll have a few words with the Captain about this, Lieutenant.”

She nodded, hiding a grimace, “Yes Sir.”

“So…, tell me about this ‘wake’ of yours,” Roberts said seriously, leaning against the desk that Winger rarely used and gazing evenly at her.

*****

Captain Eric Weston was sitting at his desk, filing paperwork in triplicate on the Search and Rescue. It wasn’t quite as bad as it used to be, he supposed, since a single signature was digitally transferred to every document with a simple confirmation from his thumb print, but it was still paperwork, for all the paperless office he worked in.

So, even though he’d only just sat down at the job and was nowhere near being done, the call over the ship’s intercom was something to be thankful for.

“Weston here,” he said, leaning back and smiling.

“Sir, Commander Roberts.”

“Hell Commander… . What’s up?” Weston turned in his chair and tapped a command in the air.

He loved the holographic systems, especially since they let him actually keep a clean desk. That was something he’d never been able to do when he had his keyboard, mouse, monitor, and other requisite office materials to look after.

Now all it took to clean up was a wave of his hand, shutting down the Desk Office Suite and activating the catering service. In the time it took Roberts to start with his report, Weston was already reaching forward for a hot cup of coffee.

“Lieutenant Winger thinks she may have found the entry path of the fleet.” Roberts reported over the intercom.

Weston frowned, turning back to his desk. Another sweep of his hand and a poke in the appropriate place activated the floating screen again and he found himself looking at Roberts. “Oh? How certain?”

The big, black man shrugged, “as certain as anything gets right now, I suppose. It’s not human technology, and it’s sure as hell not one of our wakes, but it looks like someone dumped a lot of energy along a fairly tight trajectory out there.”

Weston nodded, “Have you extrapolated a point of origin?”

Roberts shook his head, “I’m afraid not, Sir… Nothing along that path for a thousand light years.”

“Hell,” Weston frowned, more than a little disappointed. It would have been nice to see an inhabited alien planet, even if they had to sneak a peek from way out past the system heliopause.

“Winger has an idea on that, Sir…,” Roberts said with a twist of his lip; as if it was something he didn’t really want to go on record as endorsing.

“Oh?” Weston smiled slightly, “do tell.”

“There’s one star system… . It’s within ten light years of the path and only twenty light years from here,” Roberts said, tilting his head as he pursed his lips, his expression one of scepticism. “It’s the closest system along the path.”

Weston nodded, considering the information. It could be a long shot, but it was still worth it, he quickly decided. “All right. When the shuttles are finished gathering samples, bring them back into the pen. In the meantime, have Waters plot us an escape trajectory that’ll coincide with this ‘wake’ of Winger’s. We’ll do some tight scans, and then transition out to the Lieutenant’s planet.”

“Yes Sir,” Roberts said, managing to sound elated and disappointed at the same time.

As the display went blank, revealing the synthetic cherry wood grain of his desk once more, Weston smiled to himself and shrugged. He could understand the Commander’s thoughts on the subject. This was turning into a very interesting maiden voyage. So interesting, in fact, that there seemed to be a strong case for going home right now and reporting it.

But Eric wasn’t interested in doing that quite yet. He wanted to see what else was out here and, more importantly, who else.

*****

Dr. Rame was tired. He had been working for several hours straight, his mind utterly refusing to let him take a break from the fascinating case study he had in front of him.

A human patient, who had only not been born on Earth, but who had apparently never been in the Sol system at all. Her body registered as perfectly human on every scan the doctor could imagine, even the brain waves appearing completely normal. Since she’d come on board, hundreds of theories had appeared in Rame’s mind, appeared and been discarded.

Parallel evolution was ridiculous, of course. At least by any modern theory of evolution he’d ever read. Evolution wasn’t a blueprint; it was a series of mistakes that occasionally turned out to be beneficial. And those were few and far between, the doctor knew. Evolutionary mutations were far more likely to result in the death of a species offshoot then anything that might benefit them in the long term, or even short term.

That left the insane, at least in Rame’s opinion. Captured humans actually seemed the most likely, he thought to himself as he waited for a test to run. The conspiracy theories surrounding the last century or two had continued to grow as man reached into the stars and even a scholar, as he considered himself, wasn’t immune to their attraction.

Of course, there was always the off chance that humanity was actually an offshoot of their culture, in some way. It was a long shot in Rame’s opinion, but possible. No one had ever actually found the so called missing link and far too many of the discoveries that supposedly supported it had been proven to be hoaxes.

He was still compiling the data on his new patient when the computer sounded an insistent beeping to notify him of his patient’s movement. Straightening from his task, Rame turned to the one way transparency that separates him and the ships ‘guest’. She was up and moving, examining the room with a certain level of growing agitation as she tested the door and examined the mirror that the doctor was standing behind.

“Rame calling Captain Weston,” he toggled the intercom switch on the wall, he knew that he should wear one of the induction units that the command staff used but he despised the feedback they often send through his jaw.

“This is Commander Roberts, Doctor. The Captain has left the bridge for a moment, how may I help you?”

“Contact the Captain and inform him that my patient has woken up.”

“Understood, Doctor.”

Dr. Rame hesitated a moment before reaching out and toggling the switch again, “Dr. Palin, this is Dr. Rame, She just woke up.”

“Gotcha, I’m heading down now.”

Gotcha ? Rame just kept shaking his head as he let the intercom flip off.

*****

Weston got the call from Roberts while in the gym, his daily workout time interrupted again by ship’s business. It took him several minutes to change back into his uniform and head for the Med Lab, so that by the time he arrived, a heated discussion had erupted between Rame and Palin.

“I don’t care what your qualifications are; she was just pulled out of a life pod that was floating in the middle nowhere. I’m not going to let you break out the ‘thumbscrews’ until I am certain she’ll recover!”

Weston never heard Palin’s retort, since both of them fell silent when they noted his entrance, “Hello again, Doctors. Can I assume that we have a slight difference of opinion?”

Rame turned to Weston, infuriated, “this so called ‘doctor’ wants to interrogate my patient, and I simply will not allow him to drive her into a relapse.”

“I’m hardly planning on breaking out the ‘thumbscrews’, Doctor.” Palin countered, insulted by the implication. “And it’s highly relevant and even vital that we get what information we can out of her as soon as possible. Isn’t that correct, Captain?”

Before he could reply, Weston was cut off by Rame.

“You’ll get nothing out of her if you shock her into a relapse! This patient requires delicate handling…”

Weston listened to the continued bickering of the two doctors as he looked in on the, very active ‘invalid’ that Rame was protecting. She was moving purposely from place to place in the room, examining every detail, her dark eyes flitting across every object in the room. As he watched, Weston noticed her eyes continually flickering in his direction, either examining her reflection or more likely looking for any hint of the faces she must suspect were behind the mirror.

He turned back to the dispute that was again threatening to flare through the medical lab, “Doctor Rame, how is her recovery coming?”

Rame turned to Weston, “She’s recovering remarkably quickly, but that worries me as much as anything, since I can’t figure out why. Anything unpredictable at this point is dangerous.”

“In other words she’s fine as far as you can tell, right Doc?” Weston asked pointedly.

Rame stammered over his words, “Well yes, but that’s the point, Captain! I can’t be sure about my readings; we DID just pick her up over forty five light years from Earth Sir.”

Weston looked at the Doctor for a long moment; finally he spoke again, “all right Doctor, point taken. What if you joined Dr. Palin in the room? You have full authority to pull the plug at any time you feel her health is threatened.”

Palin’s face darkened and he opened his mouth to object, but immediately shut it again at a glance from Weston. Rame on the other hand appeared mollified and slowly mulled the offer over.

“All right, but I’ll hold you to that Captain.”

“Good. Both of you get into class five environmental suits and pay our guest a visit,” Eric ordered crisply.

“Class Five???” Both of them immediately objected.

“Captain, this type of situation only calls for a class two suit.” Rame looked between the isolation room and Captain Weston in obvious confusion.

“I realize that Doctor, but class five units incorporate mirrored visors and full body coverage. And I don’t think I want our guest seeing us just yet.”

“Captain! I object to putting that type of stress onto this woman so soon. It’s despicable,” Rame looked at the Captain in indignation.

“I’m sorry, Doctor. But the fact that we found a human being floating in a life pod forty-eight lightyears from home has been preying on my mind, and I don’t want to give up too much information too soon.” Weston was adamant.

And so, in spite his objections, the Doctor slowly began to fit himself into the one piece garment. He sealed its seams until he looked like he was wearing a lightweight spacesuit with an inordinately large helmet. As Dr. Palin mimicked his actions, Rame’s large bulbous mass turned slightly to take in the mirror image that had engulfed Dr. Palin, and a muffled voice sounded from the suit.

“All right Captain, we’re both prepped, will you be observing or should we call you when we’re done?”

“I’ll watch for a while at least, Doctors.” the Captain said as he waved them on.

Weston imagined for a moment that he saw the suits shrug, before turning away from him and entering the small airlock that separated the main medical lab from the isolation room. He sidestepped slightly to position himself squarely in the center of the transparency and looked in at their visitor.

She swung her whole body around as the airlock’s status lights changed and the slight difference in pressure cause a low hiss to sound throughout the room. He saw her eyes open wide when the two ominous figures shuffled into the room, advancing on her slowly with their hands openly visible.

Weston’s hand flicked out and slapped the switch that activated the room’s internal microphones so he could listen to the three of them.

Chapter 6

Doctor Palin spoke first, his voice somehow coming clear and undistorted from the confines of the hazard suit he wore.

“Hello, my dear. We are here to speak with you for a short while.”

Weston marvelled at the change in his voice, Palin’s normally condescending attitude was no longer in evidence in his voice, in fact the small man’s words rang out clearly with confidence and a strong tone of compassion as he addressed the obviously frightened young woman before him.

“My name is Edward. Edward.” Palin calmly pointed to him, repeating both his words and actions several times. He was sweating in the biohazard suit and mentally kicked himself for not adding the optional thermostat package, when he selected the garment.

Over the induction set attached to his jaw, Palin heard the Captains voice, “Doctor, please remember to activate the computer’s translation algorithms, so we can all benefit from this.”

Mentally kicking himself again, Palin acknowledged and tapped a quick command into the PDA strapped to his wrist.

“Computer translation systems are now activated, please identify subject.”

“Computer, apply translation algorithms to the patient now occupying the medical isolation ward.”

“Confirmed. Translation systems online. Begin when ready.”

Palin looked back at the young woman, her eyes now roaming the room looking for the source of the computers voice.

“It’s all right, my dear, please remain calm.” Palin almost laughed, telling her to remain calm when he was practically shaking.

Dr. Palin repeated his previous actions, pointing to himself and speaking his name, with no results. Finally he pointed to the Doctor, actually thumping him once on the chest, “Rame.”

“Hey!” Dr. Rame tried to object, but Palin was already repeating the entire procedure, pointing first to himself and then again thumping Rame in the chest, carefully stating their names in turn.

Rame would have objected more strenuously, but he was watching the young lady’s eyes and saw a flicker of recognition there, and a slight relaxation of her shoulders. If his getting thumped in the chest would take some of the fear out of the situation for her, he was willing to endure it.

The woman has stepped closer to Palin, tentatively reaching out her own arm and brushing his chest, “Edward?”

Her features were uncertain but she smiled when the silvered blob bobbed up and down slightly, she then reached out and thumped Doctor Rame on the chest and repeated his name.

“Hey! Why do I always get thumped?”

Both Dr. Palin and the young woman ignored the doctor’s plaintive outburst, as she began to speak rather quickly, to the rather ominous form that was Dr. Palin.

From the outside looking in, Weston had to suppress the occasional chuckle, as he watched Doctor Rame slowly becoming invisible to the other two in the room, even though the suits Weston could see the slight exasperation evident in Rame’s stance and the rapt attention that simply flowed from Dr. Palin.

For several minutes he just sat there listening to her speak, allowing the flow of words to wash against him, as his mind began processing the information and looking for correlations to the languages he knew. After about twenty minutes of listening, Dr. Palin spoke.

“Jan mest Dukto Edward Palin.”

The young lady stopped her flow of words and stared at the silvered mask covering Palin’s face with astonishment, “Jan mest Ithan Milla Chans.”

Palin leaned back in his chair and an audible sigh was heard, “lovely to meet you, Milla.”

“Captain, our lovely guest here is Milla Chans, she also has some title but I am not certain what it means yet. It’s actually quite fascinating; her language seems to be evolved from the same core that makes up the so-called romance languages on Earth. French, Italian, and Spanish, although it does appear to be somewhat more complex.”

“How long do you think until we can communicate with her?”

Palin paused a moment, “Between my skills and the ship’s computer I think a few days and we’ll be conversing quite well. That is as long as you don’t intend to start interrogating her about technical matters.”

“I don’t, for now I just want to hear her story,” Weston paused a moment, “and find out where she’s from, so we can bring her home.”

“Not long then, Captain, not long at all.”

Weston acknowledged the report and turn away from the scene in the isolation ward, his head spinning from what he had just observed. Palin had decoded the first levels of a new language in minutes, and planned to be finished within a few days. His file hadn’t been exaggerating his skills in the slightest.

Good. The sooner this is concluded the sooner we can find out what happened out there. And whether or not it may be a threat to us, as well. Captain Eric Weston strode from the medical labs and headed back to his bridge.

*****

Dr. Rame had backed off when it became apparent that his patient wasn’t going to enter a blind panic and had finally decided that his presence wasn’t needed. As the air lock cycled around him, he reflected on what he had just seen. Apparently Dr. Palin wasn’t the oaf, he had taken him for. He treated the young woman with calm compassion and had managed to relax her enough to begin working with her, to translate her language. Palin’s linguistic skills were nothing short of phenomenal, which bothered him because he had never heard Palin mentioned as being impressive in anyway. In his lab, Rame slipped behind his desk and activated his terminal, calling up the personnel files.

Back inside the isolation room, Dr. Palin himself was immersed in the language problem facing him, absorbing the words, phrases and inflections that Milla was uttering. The language seemed more elegant to him with every word he deciphered, but Palin knew he was missing something. There was something about the decidedly one-sided conversation that was troubling him more and more as it went on. The words were coming quickly but try as he might; he couldn’t grasp many of the meanings, as they simply seemed to slip past, as his mind tried to snap down on them. Even so the discourse slowly became a two-sided exchange as Palin’s instinctive comprehension of the alien language was slowly complimented by the computers growing data file.

“Docteur Palin, what is this… shippe?” Milla’s accent certainly bore out his comparing her language to the Terran ‘romance’ equivalents.

“This is the NAC Odyssey, a long range exploration vessel.” Palin suddenly wished the Captain had remained in contact to tell him how much he could tell their ‘guest’.

“Odisee? I do not understand that word?”

“The word odyssey means ‘voyage of destiny’ or something similar it seemed to fit the purpose of the ship.”

Milla’s laugh rang clearly through the room, “It was certainly a ‘voyage of destiny’, from my perspectif.”

Palin smiled beneath the silvered visor, from her point of view it certainly was a fitting name. His smile dropped off instantly, as his mind ran through what she had just said and, he suddenly realized, how she said it. It’s the inflections! Mentally kicking himself, as was his habit when working, he surged up from the table and rushed across the small room to the small terminal, built into the wall.

“Computer, adjust translation matrix to include Asian inflection coding, as well as the European romance languages,” Palin fingers were leaping across the small keypad as he modified small details of the translation program.

“Confirmed. Translation algorithms have been adjusted. Estimated time to adapt current data to new codes: five minutes, twenty-seven seconds.”

Palin turned back to Milla, somewhat surprised to find her almost cowering back from his sudden moves.

“It’s all right my dear, just stay calm.” His calm voice floated out of the suit, soothing Milla’s fear, and bringing her back to the discussion.

Dr. Palin spent the next 5 minutes calming Milla down, getting her back into the same frame of mind, she had before his outburst. When the computer chirped the completion of its task, Palin keyed it into the induction set resting on his jaw.

“Do you understand me properly now?”

Milla’s face lit up with recognition, which was quickly followed by extreme puzzlement. “Yes! I do… but… how?”

“It was quite simple actually, my dear. Your language uses changes in the timber of the voice, to distinguish different meanings in the same basic word. Once I told the computer to add that to its decoding process, it simply went back through everything we said in the past several hours and recompiled its program.” Palin’s voice communicated the slightly superior smile, even though the mirrored visor.

Milla smiled softly at the pride she heard echo through his voice, this man was not one to be humble about his accomplishments. Still she supposed he had a right, translating a new language in just under eight hours was a remarkable accomplishment - even with computer assistance. Although she was still worried about these people, she wasn’t nearly as frightened as she had been a short while ago. They weren’t the Drasin, that had been obvious the moment Palin and his associate Rame entered the room. In spite of their concealing clothes, it was apparent to her that they were as human as she was. For a brief moment, she wondered what colony they were from but she immediately put it out of her mind, since no one in the colonies would feel the need to conceal themselves from her.

One of the others, That thought pleased her, and frightened her, if it was one of the others, her people would have help at last. But which? None are reported within a century of having dimensional technology, and they could not have gotten this far out without it.

“My dear? Are you all right?” Milla was shaken from her thoughts, by the visage of Dr. Palin’s suit looming over her, managing to express concern even through the thick material, somehow.

“I’m fine docteur, just considering my…er… situation.”

“Ahh, well that’s understandable, my dear. I have a report to make to the Captain. I’ll return as soon as I can. In the meantime, do try and get some rest.”

Milla watched the doctor as he stepped into the bulky airlock, “I’ll do that Docteur Palin”

An airlock, incredible. I must be in a medical facility, but why an airlock of all things? Energy fields have replaced airlocks for centuries on all the colonies. Milla stood up and examined the room again, paying close attention to the terminal that Palin had casually uncovered when he wanted to alter his language program. An ancient airlock, but computer systems far and above anything I’ve ever seen. How do they manage a voice interface?

“Computer, where am I?”

“You are in the medical isolation ward of the NAC Starship, Odyssey.”

Well at least it responds to me as well. Milla lightly cleared her throat, “What is the system of origin for this ship?”

“You have not been cleared for navigational data.”

“Where was the Odyssey built?”

“You have not been cleared for historical data.”

“What information have I been cleared for?”

“You have been cleared for limited access to the onboard com-channels, limited access to the on board catering system, and limited access to the ship’s entertainment library.”

That’s an interesting array of selections, “Computer, may I please have a glass of water?”

“One moment.”

She waiting for a short while, uncertain as to what to expect, then a small recessed slot opened up in the wall underneath the huge mirror and a tall glass of water was nestled inside. Well that settles any doubt I may have had about the true nature of that mirror.

“Computer, what is available to me in the entertainment section?”

“You have been cleared to access the following music selections.”

Milla watched the titles flicker past on the small screen, wishing fervently to be able to read the language they were written in, unfortunately the translation program only seemed to operate on a vocal level. Finally selecting one at random she walked back over to the room’s bed and laid down while the music washed over her.

*****

On the bridge, Captain Weston was examining the data they had been gathering on the remnants of the shattered fleet that floated around them, when Dr. Palin strode onto the bridge.

Weston lifted a hand to him, causing the Doctor to frown and back off as he watched the Captain sign off on a report and turn to Commander Roberts, “how long to the Heliopause?”

“Thirteen minutes,” Roberts replied, “We’re already picking up several times the data density on the ‘wake’ scans, and Winger thinks that she’s right about that planetary system she recommended. Of course, she thought that before we got the extra data.”

Weston smiled thinly, “Of course she did. All right, we’ll transition as soon as she’s done with her scans… Have the helm calculate our exit from transitional space carefully; I don’t want to arrive too closely in system. At least three hours out, all right?”

“Aye Captain. Three hours minimum,” Roberts nodded, moving off.

“All right, Doctor,” Weston turned back to Palin, “What is it?”

The academic smiled thinly at his Captain, his expression not quite insubordinate as he responded. “I’m pleased to say I’ve deciphered enough of their language to allow the computer to translate any conversation you might wish to have. That is assuming you don’t want to ask her about technical details.”

Weston looked at Palin in surprise, “You said it would take you several days.”

“On the contrary, I said it might take me a few days. I was wrong.”

“All right. Thank you, Doctor. I’ll want you to be present when I go to speak with her.”

“Of course, I’ll be waiting for the call.”

“Good. Thank you for the report,” Weston said, looking back down to the PDA that had managed to pick up four more forms for him to work on while he was talking to the Commander and the Doctor.

“Yes Sir” Palin replied after a long silence and, finally getting the clue, turned and left the bridge.

As the academic vanished from sight, Weston set down his PDA and turned to his first officer, “His records don’t do him justice, you know.”

“Perhaps Sir, but his attitude needs a lot of work.” Roberts was looking after the retreating doctor with an odd expression on his face, “he’s broken at least two assistants in the Communications labs. They’ve been begging for transfers since Alpha Centauri.”

“You’re kidding,” Eric said in shock.

“I’m afraid not, Sir.” Roberts shrugged, “I shifted them to another shift in the same lab. That’s holding them for now, but Palin has a habit of working odd hours, so I don’t know how long it’ll last. Everyone who knows him says he’s insane.”

“True enough, but genius has a way of tempering people,” Weston shrugged with a laugh, “or, at least, it has a way of excusing eccentric behaviour.”

“I suppose, Sir,” Roberts said in a noncommittal manner, shrugging. As far as he was concerned, if the person wasn’t capable of operating within proper military structure, he didn’t have time for them. Genius or no.

Roberts turned away, returning to the sensor reports that were still flooding in. Weston sighed before toggling another switch on his armrest, “Doctor Rame, are you available?”

The call came back a moment later, “Yes Captain, anything I can do?”

“How’s the patient, Doctor?”

“She’s fine Sir, just requested a glass of water and accessed the entertainment library.”

Weston’s eyebrow rose slightly, “Palin did a very good job, what’s she listening to?”

“Oddly enough, ‘Brahms lullaby’. It seems to be doing her some good, she’s resting comfortably.”

“Good. I’ll want to speak with her, soon, Please see to it that she gets whatever she needs.”

“Of course, Sir,” The doctor’s tone indicated that he considered the order almost insulting.

“And Doctor…,” Weston hesitated slightly.

“Yes Captain?”

“We’re going to Transition to another system shortly,” Weston said with a degree of hesitance.

There was a long pause from the other end of the conversation, until finally the doctor sighed, “I can’t say that I’m overjoyed to hear that, but thank you for the warning… . I’ll have my staff standing by with relaxants.”

“Thank you, Doctor,” Weston nodded. “And make sure you have someone in Engineering, will you?”

“Certainly,” Rame replied crisply, “I’m just thankful that my newest patient is asleep. She doesn’t need that stress added to everything.”

“The thought had crossed my mind, Doctor,” Weston smiled softly. “In fact, if you think it’s wise, I’ll support adding a sedative to her air mix. To be frank, I’m hardly happy with how properly trained and briefed people, react to Transition… . I wouldn’t want to deal with untrained reactions, not if we can avoid it.”

“Agreed,” the doctor said after a moment. “I’ll check her vitals and, if I believe it to be safe, I’ll consider adding something to slip her a little deeper.”

“Excellent, keep me apprized. Captain out.”

*****

“Crossing the heliopause, Sir.”

Weston nodded, taking his command chair, “Thank you, Daniels. Commander?”

“Yes, Captain?”

“Advise Winger that she’d better wrap up her scans. Then, signal a Transition Alert.”

“Aye Captain,” Roberts said, his voice thick with distaste.

Weston just hid his own discomfort behind a wry smile and focused on appearing calm, confident, and relaxed. There was no sense in giving anyone else the silly idea that the Captain didn’t trust the Transition Drive any more than they did.

Especially, if the Captain really didn’t trust it.

So Captain Eric Weston did what he’d always done before a particularly dangerous mission. Whether it had been in the Marines, back when he flew the last of the venerable Harriers into the ground as increased budget cuts made his job more dangerous during peacetime than if someone had actually been shooting at him, or in the Archangels, when people actually were shooting at him and the only thing that saved him was the billions of dollars invested in making sure that his team was at the very top of their game.

So Captain Eric Stanton Weston masked anything resembling nerves with a cool facade of titanium steel, and hoped to God that no one saw through it.

So far he’d been lucky. By the time any of his men, or women, were smart enough to see through it…, they were too busy building facades of their own, to notice.

So he smiled, looking perfectly relaxed and the Bridge crew around him relaxed markedly themselves, even as the blue lights that marked a Transition Alert began to flash.

Ah, the glory of command.

The alert lasted for another twenty minutes, until all sections had checked in as being ready, and then Weston bit back his reluctance and gave the final order.

“Activate Transition Drive.”

Everyone on the bridge winced, as Lieutenant Daniels pressed the final activation command, and slammed his eyes shut. Most everyone on the bridge did the same, except for Captain Weston and Commander Roberts.

Both men had time to privately note this fact, and promise themselves that they’d speak with the bridge crew about the dangers of entering a potentially hostile area with their eyes closed.

The swirling maelstrom of tachyon particles ripped them apart as the Odyssey transitioned out of the White Giant system.

Chapter 7

Twenty light years from where it began, the NAC Odyssey reintegrated into normal space with no external sign that anything untoward had occurred.

Internally, however, was a far different story.

“Commander! All posts, report!” Weston ordered, diplomatically ignoring the retching sound from one side.

Roberts waved a hand to an Ensign who wasn’t busy at that time. And who took the hint and rushed to help the unfortunate Lieutenant, who was losing his spaghetti dinner under the fire control station. As he was helped away, a young woman slid discreetly into his place while being careful to keep her feet out of the mess on the floor.

“Passive sensors are picking up a disturbance on the fourth planet,” Roberts said, calmly.

Weston could understand that, passive sensors were just picking up data from not less than twelve hours earlier. They’d have to wait for the Tachyon generators to regain a useful charge before they’d get anything current. Even so, information from twelve hours ago might well explain some little piece of the puzzle, they were unravelling. “Correlate and send it to my station, Commander.”

“Aye Captain,” Roberts flipped over a manual control panel and typed in a fast command, supplementing the vocal orders that he was snapping quietly over his induction microphone.

Weston sighed, flipping open his own small display screen and wished, not for the first time, which the Holographic displays had been cleared for Bridge use. Unfortunately the displays were deemed potentially unstable and were not approved for use in critical systems. It was a decision that Weston approved of intellectually, but he still felt a mild pang of loss as he stared at the fourteen inch screen he’d pulled in front of him and missed the room sized equivalent projection that his simple desk system provided.

*****

Michelle Winger frowned, pouring over the data stream, and wished that she’d been able to hijack the same three arrays, she had used earlier. The information pouring in from her long range array was interesting, but correlating data across multiple frequencies was her forte.

Whoa, her eyes narrowed as she spotted something, what the hell is this?

Her fingers flew over the old-fashioned keyboard as she cursed the power drain that Transition caused. As the data began to coalesce into something resembling a picture for her, she shot a glance to one side to check the power display.

Bridge systems had full priority, with weapons and navigation following right behind. But her systems were on the list too, and the reactors were pouring out enough power that she would be fully online in a couple minutes, at most. In the meantime, all her scanners were already up and functioning perfectly, so she would simply have to make do with the basic interface for another hundred seconds or so.

“Commander!” She spoke up, a little louder than she’d intended. “I’m sending you over my initial findings!”

*****

“High energy discharges?” Weston questioned as he looked at the data, abruptly he noticed something familiar in the information and looked up with a cocked eyebrow, “Weapons?”

“It seems likely,” Roberts nodded. “Though we could be looking at a storm front on the planet.”

“That powerful?” Weston shook his head sceptically. “No… . It’d have to be the size of Jupiter to flash that high.”

“Probably Sir,” Roberts agreed.

“All right. Helm take us in…, slowly,” Weston said calmly, even as his heart raced. “Commander, Anything on passive tactical scan?”

“Negative. Just some background hisses from the star,” Roberts replied.

Weston nodded, his eyes rising to look at the yellow star that was the system primary. There was always some background hiss from anything the size of a star, the massive gravity made certain of that. “Helm, you are not to cross the Heliopause until we have our Tachyon generators back up to full force. I want a system wide ping before we even think of becoming trapped, however temporarily, in that gravity well.”

“Aye Sir. A full system ping,” Roberts nodded. “Wilco.”

*****

“How’s the patient, Doctor?” Eric Weston asked as he stepped over the knee knocker that separated the medical lab from the hallway.

“She’s sleeping comfortably,” Rame replied, not looking up from his current patient, who had displayed odd symptoms from the Transition. “Something much of the crew would dearly love to be able to do. The transition effects are growing worse, Sir.”

Weston sighed, “How bad?”

“Nothing quite as serious as Lieutenant Tearborn, thankfully,” Rame straightened from his unconscious patient and wiped his brow. “But unless I’m completely off base, I believe that part of the crew is allergic to the process.”

Weston snorted. “Doctor, trust me, all the crew is allergic to it.”

“I didn’t mean psychologically,” Rame snapped. “I mean physical allergies. There has been a series of consistent symptoms in approximately twelve percent of the crew.”

Twelve percent? Weston blinked, “That’s almost forty people!”

“Indeed? I hadn’t counted,” Rame said sarcastically, as he passed his hands under s dissolvent spray to remove the sterile coating he’d applied.

Weston let the sarcasm slide, knowing that the man was tired and stressed, “How serious is it?”

“Nothing permanent or debilitating. Not yet, at any rate,” Rame sighed. “But it has affected the eyesight of twenty-three crew members. Again, not permanent. But disturbing just the same. Thirty crew members have developed a disturbing cellular degradation of the soft tissue of their noses, mouths, and throats. I’m not certain about the internal effects of these, yet. I’ve scheduled a series of tests.”

“Keep me posted,” Weston said tensely, wondering about long term effects of Transition, not for the first time.

Rame nodded, sliding the patient under a large panel and opening the crew member’s hospital gown. He punched a command on his PDA and turned away as the panel began emitting a snapping sound, like a strobe light.

“Infrared treatments seem to work against the degradation,” Rame sighed. “Thankfully. In the long term, however, I just don’t know.”

Weston nodded, “All right. Like I said, keep me posted. And inform me when she wakes up.”

“Of course, Captain.”

*****

“Prepared to initiate tachyon pulse.”

“All systems go / no go,” Roberts replied, following the book.

“Tachyon generators… Go.”

“Receptor array… Go.”

“Forward shielding… Go.”

Roberts nodded, “Drive system?”

Waters half turned and smiled, “We see anything spooky, we’re ready to bolt, Sir.”

“We don’t ‘bolt’, Ensign,” Roberts smiled tightly, but without amusement. “We advance cautiously to the front, and quickly to the rear.”

“Aye Sir.”

“Initiate sensor ping.”

Like Submarines using SONAR in the previous century, the Odyssey’s tachyon array was a powerful detection device but it had many of its own drawbacks. Unlike infrared, RADAR, and other telemetry systems, the Tachyon generators could produce real time imaging data from a distance measured effectively in light years or more. However, Tachyons were not cheap to generate, and didn’t last long once they had been generated. In fact, if you wanted to get technical about it, they didn’t last any length of time at all.

Neither Roberts nor Weston were intimately familiar with the mathematics of the subject, though both were aware that, on paper, tachyons didn’t even exist. It was one of those amusing mathematical ‘proofs’ that seemed to be at odds with the real universe. On paper a tachyon didn’t exist because its half-life was literally too short to be measured. However, in that period of nothingness that the particles existed in, they could travel across the rim of the galaxy and back.

So when the Tachyon generator on the Odyssey pulsed, a shotgun like spread of those impossible little particles leapt out through the fabric of space and spread out from the ship, creating interference in the local area of space, as they passed. When they hit something, anything from a single atom to the local star itself, they created a ripple effect that rebounded out from the object and travelled back to the waiting receiver that was on the Odyssey.

*****

“Report.”

“Nothing out there, Sir,” Winger replied as Commander Roberts appeared behind her. She’d barely jumped this time and was feeling fairly proud of herself.

“Nothing?”

“Nothing like a ship, Sir. I’ve compared everything we got to the readings from yesterday,” She shrugged. “We’ve got a debris field around the fourth planet that looks artificial… Alloys, atomic decay, and some configurations match… but they’re dead as doornails, Sir.”

“I’ll inform the Captain that we have nothing to fear from the ‘doornails’,” Roberts replied with a tinge of sarcasm. “Stay with the facts.”

“Uh… Yes sir,” Winger nodded, flushing slightly. “Sorry Sir.”

“Don’t apologize. Just don’t do it again.”

“Yes sir.”

Roberts nodded once, then left Winger’s station and headed back to the Captain. “It looks clear, Sir. There is some debris in system that is in keeping with the debris we found at the battle scene, however.”

“Nothing active?” Weston looked up.

“Nothing that we can see.”

The Captain nodded then spoke up for the benefit of the bridge crew. “Ensign Waters… Take us into the system bring us into orbit of the fourth planet.”

“Orbit. Aye Sir.”

The big ship shook slightly as its massive drives rumbled into action, vibrations reverberating through the entire vessel as it began to move through the depths of interstellar space and cross the invisible line that separated it from the star system. As it crossed the heliopause, the gravity of the yellow star began to act on the ship, pulling it deeper into the system with that inexorable grip of its gravity.

The speed built slowly at first as the Odyssey’s huge engines and integral Counter-Mass fields worked in conjunction to chip away at the inertia of the big ship, increasing quickly as the two were joined by the increasing grip of the star’s gravity. Soon the ship was powering down the well, falling toward the star fast enough that Lieutenant Daniels powered down both the thrusters and the C-M fields until the Odyssey was in an effective free fall.

Lieutenant Daniels watched his trajectories carefully less worried about the path of the Odyssey as he was about the paths of anything the Odyssey might run into. Even with the powerful navigation shields shouldering aside anything in their path, he still kept an almost obsessive eye on the screens. Attention to detail was the bread and butter of his job, especially since certain electrically and magnetically neutral composites could penetrate the navigation fields with little difficulty.

Such things didn’t exist commonly in nature, however as the debris ring around the fourth planet would testify, this system wasn’t precisely pure as the driven snow.

*****

An hour into the ‘drop’, Weston excused himself from the bridge and headed down to the mess deck for something to eat. The course Daniels had plotted to the fourth planet would take them about twenty-four hours, including acceleration and deceleration.

Eric Weston had to admit, an average of fifty percent the speed of light was pretty impressive, even for an Archangel.

“Captain.”

“Crewman,” He nodded back to the young man who had stood aside for him as he passed, then took a right into the Mess.

The Mess was busy, as he’d expected it to be, a large portion of the crew had taken advantage of the projected course to ‘refuel’.

And, Weston smiled as he spotted a group talking idly around a table in the corner, some of them, of course, are just here because they have nothing better to do.

He walked over, wiping the smile from his face as he arrived at the head of the table. “So, I see we’ve got a bunch of laze abouts, huh?”

Everyone at the table jumped, save one.

“Gee Cap,” Stephen ‘Stephanus’ Michaels smiled lazily up at him from where he was seated in the corner, “why don’t you tell us how you really feel?”

Weston resisted the urge to laugh or roll his eyes, since both reactions would have been too much really, and besides he knew that the Archangels would be able to read him without anything that overt. Instead he just sat down, nodding around the table, “so, how do you all enjoy being passengers on this cruise?”

The fighter jocks laughed, relaxing as they recognized their old Flight Leader in the Captain that was sitting with them, and slowly they began to joke back with him.

Weston relaxed back in his seat, ordered some food, and let himself remember the days of glory past for a short while.

*****

The waking world came back slowly to Milla, her mind lost in the sleep for a few brief moments as she forgot where she was or what had transpired.

The transition from that moment of blissful ignorance to the painful reality of her situation was like a physical blow to her chest, and for a moment the petit woman curled up on the stiff hospital bed and didn’t move. It didn’t last though, because as much as she wanted to just lie there and die, she knew that she couldn’t.

Out there, beyond the walls of this unknown vessel lay the Drasin, and they were killing her people. She couldn’t die so far from where she knew that all hands were desperately needed.

So she moved, finally, sliding off the firm bed and onto the floor. She noted curiously, that the floor was cold on her feet. She danced around for a moment until her feet cooled down enough that the difference wasn’t noticeable, and frowned down at the offending material.

Milla knelt down and ran her fingers along the cool surface, feeling it suck the heat from her flesh.

Metal floors. No one builds a starship with metal… it’s just… not done! She sighed to herself and looked around, not caring to think of how much insulation the walls must have to make up for the intolerable properties of construction.

It wasn’t just the metal, though. The entire place was completely off. The lighting was too bright, the spectrum shift was harsh, and now that she thought about it, she felt slightly heavier than normal. It was like a bad copy of a Starship, instead of the real deal.

And what IS that sensation of constant falling anyway?? She shook her head, giving up the tangle for one second before her mind stubbornly grabbed at it again. She knew that the ship had to have certain technologies.

Dimensional shifting was a given, she figured. Otherwise, where had they come from to pick her up? However, what she couldn’t understand was how in the Oath they managed that and still used metal to construct the ship in the first place. The entire situation was like an impossible conundrum to her.

So, finally, she sighed and gave in to the pit in her stomach and walked over to the computer terminal and called it up. It took an annoyingly long time to load for some reason, but finally she was in to the catering services.

After staring at the incomprehensible script for some time, Milla sighed and punched in a few items at random.

*****

The call came just as he was taking the first sip from the steaming cup of tea he’d ordered, and Eric sighed as chuckles rounded the table.

“A Captain’s job…,” he shrugged, reaching for his induction set.

Steph snorted lightly, “They’re probably calling to make sure you haven’t drowned in your sink. Everyone knows that Captains have to be watched all the time.”

Another light round of chuckles sounded among the flyers, though the comment had garnered a shocked look from the yeoman who had dropped off the tea. Weston ignored both as he affixed the induction set to his jawline and waited for the squirming sensation to fade as the unit moulded itself to him.

“Weston here,” he said finally.

“Captain,” Doctor Rame’s voice came crisply over the unit, “you wished to be informed when our patient awoke?”

“Yes Doctor, is she well?”

“She’s well enough to request food,” Rame replied, “though I don’t believe that she quite understands the menu.”

Weston frowned, drawing curious looks from the fighter jocks he was sitting with, “why’s that?”

“Because, frankly, I don’t believe that any sentient being would ever order ice cream with oil packed tuna on purpose,” Rame shuddered.

Weston started chuckling, low at first, but rising until he was genuinely laughing at the comment. Around the table everyone looked at him with puzzlement, but he didn’t bother to enlighten them. Stephanus in particular looked like he was just itching to ask what was so funny.

Tough, Weston smiled widely, and then got up. “I’m afraid I have to go. I’ll see you all, later.”

To a man their faces dropped as they realized that their former CAG had zero intention of sharing, and Eric took exquisite pleasure in the distinct look of painful disappointment on Stephen’s face.

“Doctor, Contact Palin and have him meet me in the medical lab.” Weston ordered over the induction unit, smirking just slightly as he again glanced back at his old squad and their disappointed expression.

Some days it was good to be the Captain.

*****

Eric met Rame and Palin in the medical lab a short while later, walking in on the two men as they snapped at each other while trying to settle on the protocols they would follow while talking with the survivor.

“Doctor Rame, what was her reaction to the hazard suits?” Weston finally stepped in, shutting them both up. It’s amazing how two grown men, two well-educated grown men at that, are capable of this sort of childishness.

“That was strange, at first she was tense but after both of us entered the room and she got a good look at us she relaxed visibly and remained remarkably calm considering the situation she’s found herself in.”

Weston snorted with no small amount of satisfaction. “Good, I think we can dispense with the suits then. That is assuming she isn’t a medical danger?”

Doctor Rame looked at him strangely, “well she has a whole cornucopia of new antibodies, but with the blood samples I’ve taken we can easily develop cures and vaccines for anything she might pass on. But what made you change your mind about the hazard suits?”

“Simple Doctor, if her attackers had been human, or even humanoid, she would have been a lot more concerned about the suits. I’d say we’re looking at an even more interesting story than we thought.” Eric shrugged, “I just wanted to see her reaction.”

Doctor Rame shut up and looked thoughtful for a moment while Palin spoke up, “you realize, Captain, that isn’t the only possible interpretation of her reactions.”

Weston smiled, “Of course I do Doctor, but it is the best I have to go on right now.”

Weston broke from the discussion and walked over to the transparency, “All right Dr. Palin let’s go in.”

*****

Milla was laying back listening to a musical composition the computer had called ’ride of the Valkyries, despite the strict limits the computer had placed on her entertainment selections she had managed to find several pieces that she enjoyed immensely.

“Milla?”

Milla jumped up, opening her eyes wide, she had apparently missed the sound of the airlock cycling because of the music. Her eyes went even wider when she saw the two men step into the room without their rather comically bulky suits. Are these the same two men?

“I suppose I should reintroduce myself, I’m Dr. Palin. This is the Captain of the Odyssey, Eric Weston.”

The Captain, this will be a more serious session than the previous one. Hopefully we can settle the Captain’s concerns so I can get back to my duty. She thought to herself as she looked to the Captain, appraising him as best she could.

He was tall, that was the first thing she noticed. Taller than most people she knew, though not quite the tallest man she’d ever seen. She’d met the Commandant of the Colonial Ground Forces once, and he would actually tower over this Captain Weston. Milla put that aside after a moment and turned her focus on the Captain again, taking in his appearance. His close trimmed black hair hugged to his head, his face was severe, and so she realized that he was, in turn, appraising her. The thought discomforted her for a moment, but she quickly regained her poise.

“Captain Weston,” her head nodded respectfully in greeting.

“Ithan Chans.” Weston imitated her slight nod exactly, returning the greeting.

“I’m honored by your use of my title, Captain. Dr. Palin here never seems to refer to me in any way except as ‘dear’. Which the computer informs me is a quadruped of some type,” Milla smiled with a slightly confused air about her.

Palin stammered a moment, trying to explain himself before Weston stepped in, smiling slightly in return. “Actually the word has several different meanings which are differentiated by spelling in this case it is a term of affection often used by elder people in reference to those younger than themselves.”

“I see. Interesting,” Milla threw a look at Palin, enjoying the red tinge his face had abruptly assumed.

“Milla, could you please tell us what happened to the ship you were traveling on?”

She looked at the Captain, trying to gage him, but found her unable to pierce his outward demeanour. Finally she decided to go with the simple truth.

“I wasn’t ‘traveling’. I was serving aboard the space vessel ‘Carlache’. And we were attacked.”

Weston smiled dryly, “We had gathered that much. If you would be so kind as to tell us by whom and why they decided to reduce a fleet of your vessels to scrap?”

Milla winced at that, she had known that it was unlikely any had survived the massacre but it pained her to think of her comrades floating dead in the inhospitable depths of this radiation seared system.

“They are called ‘Drasin’ and they attack us because it is their way. They are born to kill, they were created to kill, and they do it very well indeed.”

Dr. Palin glanced over at the hard shell that had formed across the Captains face he knew that Weston was contemplating the implications Milla’s story had, if it were true. Palin himself shuddered at the thought a race of born killers stalking the galaxy was the nightmare of a thousand horror stories, since the birth of science fiction. The idea that it may be true would cause havoc at home.

“Created? By whom?” Eric asked after a moment, taking a seat as he gazed evenly at the young woman.

As he watched her consider her response, Eric Weston took the opportunity to evaluate her. Milla Chans was pretty, he decided after a long moment, with a slightly exotic air to her eyes that added flavor to her face. She was petite, both slim and short, and probably didn’t weigh more than a hundred and ten pounds. But she was fit, and obviously strong, or she would still be under Rame’s expert care, so Weston was willing to give her the benefit of the doubt, on that matter. He was still considering her, when Milla finally started to respond.

“I do not think you are ready for that yet. If you were you wouldn’t need ask such a question, Capitaine. May I ask a question of you now?”

Weston hesitated a moment, frowning slightly at the evasion. In the end, though, he decided that it wouldn’t lose him anything to play along for a moment, “Yes if you like, however like you I do not promise to answer.”

Ithan Chans looked at him appraisingly, she had expected no less. “Of course, but I must ask this, anyway. Where are you from? I know it is not one of the Colonies because your ship’s technology is completely wrong, it is not of the colonies.”

“I can’t answer that, other than to say that we are a long range exploration vessel. As for our technology, what do you mean ‘wrong’?” Weston asked, genuine curiosity entering his voice.

Milla’s arms swept around the room, “I mean wrong. You use archaic airlocks, metal to construct your vessel… or the floors and walls here at least. And yet you obviously have dimensional access, and your computer… talks.”

She blinked shaking her head briefly over that last comment before speaking again, “It is painfully obvious even from what little I’ve seen that you must be one of the Others.”

Weston’s eyes narrowed slightly at the way she pronounced the word ‘Others’, like it was almost a curse. “What are the ‘Others’, Ithan?”

Milla’s lips curled, “The others are those who broke with their oath.”

By this point, Weston was completely confused, “oath?”

She looks up at him and looking into his eyes, she realized that he didn’t know what she meant. “There is a history to the universe of which you are completely unaware, one which I am ill equipped to relate.”

“Oh?” Dr. Palin leaned forward, rapt with attention, “Could you tell me more?”

Milla hesitated, shaking her head, “I don’t believe that I should. There are some things in this universe that are better left unknown. Some knowledge changes you… that knowledge exacts a terrible toll.”

Well. Isn’t that melodramatic, Eric thought sceptically, noting with amusement that Palin was utterly fascinated. Weston was about to ask something further when a message chirped through his induction unit.

“Weston here,” he replied.

“Captain, we’re approaching the fourth planet,” Robert’s voice reverberated through his jaw and into his ear. “I thought you might like to be up here for this.”

Weston nodded, standing up, “I’ll be right up.”

He looked over to Milla nodding slightly, “I have to go. Feel free to ask if you need anything, and I believe that we can get someone in here to translate the menu for you.”

Milla looked puzzled as Weston smiled, but he didn’t comment further. Instead he turned to Dr. Palin, “Doctor, you’re with me. I want you on the Bridge for this.”

“Huh?” Palin looked up in surprise. “For…? Oh, yes. Of course, Captain.”

Weston nodded to Milla again, and led Palin out through the isolation ward airlock.

*****

The planet hung in space, glittering in the reflected and refracted light of its primary like a jewel in a satin black setting. The beauty of the scene was marred, however, by the torn and shattered fragments that occasionally passed silently over the sea green orb, a testament to the fact that the world’s defenders had not gone easily.

The low rumble of the Odyssey’s big reactors sounded ominous to the crew, as they watched the planet approach. There was simply something about the world on the viewer that felt…, wrong.

“Launch orbital drones,” Weston ordered as the Odyssey slid to a stop, relative to the planet, already punching up a link to the main sensor array.

“Drones launching,” Roberts replied, the report punctuated by the brief shudders that they felt through the deck. “Moving to take up orbital positions.”

Weston nodded, distracted as he examined the information on the screen. The numbers didn’t look right, but he couldn’t quite tell what was off. After a moment he looked up, “Analysis!”

“Sir…,” a voice from behind him and to the right spoke up, and Eric turned toward the young female Ensign. He had to think hard, but he placed her name quickly. “Yes, Ensign Rodriguez?”

“The numbers are all wrong, Sir.” Emma Rodriguez replied, frowning to herself. “We’re getting a serious shift in the oxygen content of the atmosphere. That’s why the continents are red-shifted.”

“All right. Why don’t you tell me why that’s wrong, Ensign,” Weston frowned.

“Because we’re getting indications of a lot of the same plant life as we’d see from Earth. In fact, this world is extremely rich is photosensitive plankton,” she replied, shaking her head. “No Captain. There is something wrong here.”

Weston nodded, turning back to his own display. That pretty much jived with what he felt in his gut, but added a little logical substance to his misgivings. “All right. Show me what the Drones are seeing.”

*****

Carnivore Combat Drones were catapult launched unmanned reconnaissance vehicles, designed as stealthy platforms to conduct surveillance over combat zones that had been previously cleared of more conventional platforms like, for example, satellites.

Equipped with the same Counter-Mass Generators that permitted the Odyssey to approach two thirds of light speed at best speed without a prohibitive fuel cost, the Carnivores could accelerate to a tenth of light speed in under eight seconds, and crash to a halt in just under ten.

And that was in an atmosphere.

In Orbital space the drones literally ricocheted around, altering courses on the proverbial ‘dime’, until they reached their preprogrammed orbital trajectories and slowed to a ballistic course that gave each of the five drones a relatively stable orbit.

Then the heavily shielded bottoms of the drones slid open, revealing sophisticated optics and intercept sensors, and they got down to the nuts and bolts of their job.

*****

“Well. It looks… normal.”

That comment from Lieutenant Daniels was accompanied by a quiet murmur of agreement from the rest of the bridge crew, though neither Eric nor Roberts commented.

“Wait…,” Roberts frowned. “Pan back on Drone three. Was that a city?”

The screen changed as an operator obediently followed the order, panning the image back and tilting to the optics of Drone Three, so they could zoom in on the site of interest.

“Certainly looks like one,” Eric said after a moment. “Bring the drone back around. Put it in a stationary orbit over the city.”

“Aye Captain.”

The drone swung around easily, the stabilized optics staying focused on their target as it came back and slowed to a stop over the city.

“Zoom in,” Weston whispered, watching as the city doubled in size, then did so again, and again. After a moment they were looking at an area that the computer listed as about the size of eight city blocks. On this world that meant a lot less than it did back home, because Weston only counted three massive buildings within that area.

Someone whistled, but nobody else paid attention.

“Well, something’s alive down there.” Roberts replied, noting the movement of traffic in the ‘streets’.

Weston nodded, “Yeah. Anything on Radio?”

“Negative,” Ensign Waters replied. “Nothing from the Tachyon lab either.”

“Zoom in again. Let’s get a picture of these people,” Eric ordered softly, leaning forward as he looked at the image in awe.

An actual alien world. An actual alien city. It was utterly incredible, awe inspiring. Historical.

Nightmarish.

The scene flickered again, zooming in close enough to read a proverbial paper over someone’s shoulder, and the crew of the Odyssey got their first look at the inhabitants of the city below.

“Sweet Mother of God. What the hell are those things?” Roberts asked in utter shock as he stared at the viewer.

Eric Weston shook his head slowly, “I don’t have the slightest clue. But maybe our guest could enlighten us. Commander, I’ll be in the Medical Lab. Have the Drones finish mapping the surface, and continue to investigate… those.”

“Aye Captain.”

*****

Milla Chans blanched white with shock and fear as she watched the screen closely. Her reactions was duly noted by Captain Weston and Doctor Palin, as well as Doctor Rame, who began to watch her very closely as he worried about a possible relapse to her shocked state.

On the screen, there was a… . swarm. No other word could quite describe it, and even that seemed to fall short.

The creatures were black with mottled brown and red across their carapaces. They moved through the remains of the once proud city, slowly dismantling the buildings piece by piece. They looked like Arachnids in some ways, like other terran insects in others, except that they were far too large for that type of creature.

In fact, they were hundreds of times too large to be insects. The Carnivore Drone’s scale meter on the HUD indicated that the creatures averaged five feet in height, the long spindly legs that extended beyond that notwithstanding.

They roamed through the city’s ‘streets’ like ants, dismantling the buildings piece by piece and carrying the materials down into tunnels below. There was no sign of anything living other than the arachnid beasts, and no sign that anything had been living there, other than the city itself.

“They are… Drasin,” Milla said softly, pronouncing the word Drah-Sin. “I… I had no idea that they would become so numerous… so fast.”

“What are they, Ithan?” Weston asked softly. “It’s obvious that they didn’t build that city. So what are they… and who built the city?”

“My people did,” Milla said, sounding almost helpless. “This was one of our… . colonies for… foodstuffs?”

“Agricultural,” Palin supplied.

“Whah,” Milla replied, nodding though the word had not being caught by the translator.

“She means yes,” Palin said, keying the word in. “it’s slang… like Yeah, or Yep.”

“I understand, Doctor,” Weston said calmly. “Miss Chans… . Milla… What happened here?”

Milla sighed painfully and took a shallow, ragged breath, staring at the screen, her eyes filled with sorrow. Finally, she closed her eyes as to shut out the horrible scene on the screen. Shuttering, and in a distraught voice, she decided to relate the terrible history, that she felt would be best untold. “Very well Captain, I shall relate my story to you to the best of my ability.”

“Thank you, Miss Chans.” Weston said softly, and then he sat back and waited.

She took a deep breath and began to speak.

Chapter 8

“Lieutenant Chans!”

Milla Chans spun on her heal and found her staring at her new commanding officer, “Yes, Commander Rathe?”

“Lieutenant, I need you to work with Stavrim and Mailyn for the next several days. They need your expertise with the new ‘weapons’ systems we’ve installed.” The Commander scowled at the word ‘weapons’ as if it tasted bitter to him.

“I understand Commander, I’ll contact them immediately,” Milla understood the commander’s distaste, even if she didn’t share it.

Why do all the command officers act as if it’s insulting to be forced to equip their ships with weapon systems? Well…, all except the Captain, and even he doesn’t like them, Milla strode off, heading for the newly created control room where she knew we would find crewmen Stavrim and Mailyn. Work had been progressing well over the past few months of preparations, since the Tachyon burst from the frontier had changed her culture forever.

It was still a dream, or a nightmare, to her. The transmission hadn’t contained any information. Not even the most basic of modulation. It had been nothing more than a ‘tripwire’ of sorts. A warning, or alarm, given by a system so ancient that no one had known it was there until the Central World-Mind had begun giving the strangest orders.

No one questioned the orders at first, though they had been out of character for the World-Mind. Production on transports had slowed as new plans were spit out of the ancient database. Plans that included things that no ship in centuries had included.

Weapons.

Milla shook her head, clearing it as she stepped into the control room and looked around.

“Ah, Lieutenant. We are having some difficulties adjusting the target acquisition system that was recently installed.” Crewman Stavrim was trying to adjust the delicate crystalline circuits that transmitted the tachyon data streams.

Milla frowned, shaking her head severely. “Have you tried reintegrating the software? All those circuits should have been triple checked before installation.”

Stavrim had the good grace to look chastised, “No, we didn’t. No one here is checked out on the software.”

Of course not. Milla sighed, dropping into a crouch by the open panel. She looked over the systems, but didn’t see anything damaged. That was a good thing, especially since replacement components were at a premium, at the moment. Especially since the shipyards were all otherwise occupied by new constructions, or conversions like the Carlache.

“All right, make sure you haven’t damaged the crystals and close up that panel. I’ll check the software,” Milla said even as she bent to the task, her fingers flying over the panel.

It took only minutes to find the problem; a minor software conflict had shunted the targeting sensors off alignment by two degrees. A small error, perhaps, but at any realistic combat range it would result in missing the target by thousands of meters. Not something she could allow slip by so easily, even though they hadn’t known what to do about it, she was glad that the two had managed to spot the error.

The feat was made even more impressive by the fact that both of the technicians were mining engineers, whose work normally didn’t rely on split second arming and aiming. Milla dismissed them, sending them off to other areas, and other work, and walked over to the wall.

“Chans to Captain Tal,” Milla palmed the intercom’s switch with a graceful sweep of her hand.

“Tal here, go ahead Lieutenant.”

“The problem has been resolved all systems have been cleared for service.”

“Good, we’ll be breaking Orbit, shortly. Two of the outer colonies have reported unknown ships approaching their outer perimeters,” The Captain’s voice sounded grim. “Configurations appear to match the historical records.”

Milla signed off and sunk back into the programmers chair, the Drasin were little more than folklore to her and her people, until now. Scary stories that were bandied about on dark nights, they weren’t supposed to be real. They certainly weren’t supposed to be approaching the outer worlds.

Milla forced herself to relax somewhat, real or imagined they won’t be allowed to harm anyone. Our new systems are the best that can be made. We’ll meet these ‘Drasin’, and if they are hostile we’ll deal with them, on their own terms.

She had returned to her quarters, when she felt the slight shudder run through the deck plates, as the ship’s engines powered up. She instinctively reached out and grabbed the nearest wall, as the ship accelerated out of Orbit. A second later the ship’s artificial gravity field compensated and the feeling passed. She knew they were now powering away from Ranqil, her home world and were solidly underway to the outer colonies.

I never really believed that upholding the oath would fall to me and my generation. Like the Drasin, it was just a story. Milla thought to herself as she stripped down, pulling the silicon covered garments away from her body and grimacing as the gel and powder clung to her skin and hair.

Being an engineer aboard any ship, let alone a hastily refitted ’warship’ was dirty business. On a ship like the Carlache, it was doubly so. The Carbon crystals used to align the new weapon systems had a tendency to overheat, so each one had to be smeared with a silicone gel that contained suspended heat dispersion capsules. Which was a horribly, messy job.

As she activated the shower, letting the recycled water cascade over her, she dreamed briefly about the new ships, the ones with the integrated diamond crystals and heat dispersion systems. The ones with the triple redundancy built in, armored bulkheads, and energy shields that were supposed to be ten times as dense as the Carlache were capable of producing.

Those would be interesting to see in action. And even more interesting to crew on.

Milla hoped that she got a chance to see one, before it was broken up for scrap.

After all, they weren’t likely to actually need such things, and warships were illegal in peacetime.

Milla shucked her clothing, taking advantage of the down time to use a cleanser. As she was finishing up, the brief lurch of the ship under her let her know that the Carlache had made the jump to dimensional space.

They were underway.

The thrum of the ship’s engines echoed in her ears as she got dressed. We should be about three days out from the nearest of the outer colonies. I think I’ll recommend to the Captain that we test the systems before entering a possible danger zone.

*****

The next two days found Milla testing and retesting the prototype systems they had just installed on the cruiser, until finally she and the Captain were satisfied that they would perform as intended. Commander Rathe, for his part, tending to avoid the subject as much as possible, though. It was a touchy subject between them. Rathe had been the First Officer of an exploration ship and while a few offensive devices were always present, actual ‘weaponry’ was quite foreign to the ship. Most of the equipment that could be used to defend his ship had multiple purposes. The laser drills, explosive charges and even the hand ‘weapons’ were primarily used as tools rather than defensive items. The new systems they incorporated into the vessel were another matter entirely and no one even pretended they had an alternate use. His ship had become a warship almost overnight and while the explorer was having an extremely difficult time adapting, the warrior in him however, was adapting too quickly for the man’s comfort.

The Carlache decelerated into their target colony a little over three days after they had left Ranqil. The Captain had called Milla to the bridge a short time after their arrival without telling her why.

“Lieutenant Chans, I want to you to examine the data we are gathering on what’s left of the colony system,” the Captains voice twitched and for a second she thought he was going to break down and weep. A moment later she saw why.

The sensors were reporting back, the state of the planet and for a moment she hadn’t see what the Captain had. When she did, she paled until her ivory skin was a ghastly white.

The planet was there. The sensors even registered life that seemed almost normal.

What wasn’t normal was the fact that the entire upper register of the life detection gradient, the part of the register that indicated human life, was utterly and totally dead.

There wasn’t a single human left alive in the entire system. Or, if there was, their readings were being utterly eclipsed by something else.

But Milla knew that nothing could eclipse the sensors like that. Not while leaving a clean slate in the upper register.

She reached out and braced herself against the console, keeping herself from pitching forward. Great Creator. There were… Over twenty million people here just… just a day ago.

“Take us in,” Tal ordered his voice steady now. “I want to see it with our own eyes.”

“Aye Sir.”

The Carlache slid quickly into the system, sliding to a halt in the high orbital range of the sea green planet.

“Optics,” Tal called. “Show me the Capital.”

The System Capital was the only city worthy of the name on the entire planet, housing ninety percent of the planet’s population while managing the processing, administration, transport, and various other non-growing aspects of the world economy.

When it appeared on the screen, it was like looking at a ghost town.

The streets were empty, miles and miles of ancient stonework, broken up by massive buildings that towered over the terrain. And all of it was empty, to both the optical and the life detection sensors.

It was heartrending.

“Hey…, something moved!” Someone shouted Milla didn’t know who. She was too busy looking for the motions.

Something had moved. Something that was staying very closely to the shadows.

“Grid three twelve,” Tal snapped, coolly. “Enlarge and enhance.”

The computer replied quickly and the bridge grew silent as they stared at the face of nightmares.

The seconds stretched into minutes, until finally the Captain managed to speak without a strangled voice, an accomplishment that Milla greatly admired. “Database, search. Classify life form.”

When there was no response, Tal turned in his seat. “Now Crewman!”

The Crewman at the terminal shook herself and nodded, quickly entering the requested information. It took only a few seconds before the computer spit back the answer that everyone already knew was coming.

“I… It fits the parameters of a Drasin soldier, Captain.”

Tal nodded slowly, accepting the confirmation. He had already known it would and had only asked so that it would be entered on the permanent log. “All right. We need to…”

He was cut off as Milla’s station chirped a warning as it completed a complex algorithm.

Milla heard a sob from one of the rear stations but forced herself to focus on the information pouring in, “Captain, the energy decay readings indicate that this was just done a few hours ago. They could still be here.”

“Full alert. All personnel to…,” she heard the brief pause and the bitter sound in his voice, “battle stations.”

The bridge erupted into fervour as the ships active recorders were suddenly besieged by people using them to examine every square meter of the surrounding system. It wasn’t long before they found what they were looking for.

“Captain, there is a fading energy trail leading out of the system, looks like it’s on course for the Deserada system, Sir.”

“Lay in a pursuit course! Communications start calling in all available cruisers. We need to stop them before they strike again.”

A chorus of ‘Yes Sirs’ echoed across the bridge, as the ship pivoted smoothly on its axis and accelerated into trans-luminary speeds, in hot pursuit of the ships that had laid waste to a peaceful system.

*****

For two days, the Carlache pursued the rapidly decaying trail, gathering ships from surrounding sectors and constantly drilling their crews in the unfamiliar techniques of battle. On the third day, the Carlache’s long range sensors finally picked up what they had been searching for and, at the same time, dreading.

“Captain, there is a ship on the extreme long range scanners. It matches the historical configuration for a Drasin vessel.”

“Full Alert! Send to all ships: target has been spotted, adjust course by,” Tal glanced down at his displays, “point two three by eight degrees.”

“All ships confirm. We are moving in an interception vector.”

For the next three hours, the tension on the bridge built to the point that Milla entertained the notion that the friction from it would make walking across the bridge feel like moving through water. Then it was cut. They had caught up to the Drasin vessel.

The alien ship was slowly turning about on its axis as they approached, their energy fields blazing at maximum intensity.

“Hail them.”

Milla turned to look at the Captain in shock, these creatures had just wiped out an entire colony system and he was going to talk? Stunned, she sat there listening to the conversation going on behind her.

“They aren’t answering, Captain.”

Of course they’re not. They’re butchers. Milla thought in derision. She wouldn’t let it reach her voice, or attitude, but she couldn’t help feeling something she’d never felt before.

Hate.

“Keep trying to tell the other vessels to spread out.”

“Yes Sir.”

One moment the Drasin vessel was floating serenely in space, or as serenely as anything that ugly could be, the next a bolt of energy flashed out and the entire ship rocked under the impact.

Instantly the bridge was a furor of activity, with at least half of it, unnecessary. People yelled. People prayed, and some just stared with open mouthed wonder.

“They’re firing at us!”

No kidding, Milla’s fingers played across her panel, her sarcastic thoughts just echoing in the back of her mind as she did her duty. “Weapons are primed, Captain.”

The Captain’s hesitation was palpable, and the ship rocked under a new assault, “Fire. All ships, open fire.”

Outside, the area suddenly glittered with the exchange of fire, the newly installed system aboard the Carlache were matched by every ship in the impromptu fleet, all diverging on the unmoving Drasin vessel. For a brief moment, the vessel was clouded in the deadly hail, then the debris cleared and the Drasin vessel turned on the Carlache and fired again.

“No damage, Captain!” someone yelled.

The Captain turned on Milla’s position, “What’s wrong?”

Milla shook her head furiously, her short hair cascading around her head, as she did. The frustration was in full evidence on her face, as she glared at her console and tried to wring some sense out of it. “I don’t know Captain, the systems are working fine. They should have had SOME effect.”

“Well they didn’t, lieutenant! Find out why!” Tal snapped his voice brittle with tension.

“Yes Sir,” Milla was in a near state of panic, as she frantically examined the logged readings they had taken during the assault.

She damped several safety systems throwing more power through them than the official capacity was registered at. It was the only thing she could think of, at the moment, and she only prayed that it was enough.

“I’ve uploaded the changes to the fleet, Captain!” Milla cried out as she finished her program.

“Fire!” Tal ordered instantly, turning back to glare at the screen, as if his anger could damage the ship outside.

Desperately the fleets vessels turned on the lone Drasin ship and opened fire again, the lethal halo of energy enveloping the alien ship for a brief moment in time.

“Captain, we hurt ’em this time. Not much, but we did hurt them!”

Tal leaned forward, “how are our shields?”

“Not good sir, down by seven eighths, Sir. The Ronako is reporting a complete shield system failure and…” the young man faltered as he read something new on his consol. “Captain! The Ronako is gone sir. They just burned up.”

An altogether too brief silence permeated the bridge at that announcement, terminated almost instantly by the violent shaking of the ship, as they took another hit from the Drasin vessel. The alien ship turned on them, approaching under power as its weapons flashed at them. The Carlache rocked with every focused blast.

“All ships, this is Captain Tal. Pour it on! Every eighth of energy you have, I need. Put it all into the new systems and keep firing!” Tal ordered over the fleet communicator hanging on to his armrest with a death grip, as his ship seemed to shake itself apart around him.

Outside, the gathered vessels obeyed. Space flashed with the sudden massive discharge of all their amassed weaponry. Slowly, ever so slowly, they saw the results. The Drasin vessel fired less often and with less force. Many of the Drasin’s weapons protrusions melted off, leaving entire arcs of the ship’s hull open to attack, finally they saw a massive circular area begin to buckle and rupture under the constant attack.

Tal leaned forward showing a humorless smile. “We are going to do it! Keep firing!”

“Captain, we’re reading something strange from the Ronako!”

“Leave it. We don’t have time for them, right now! Keep firing!” Tal snapped, not even wanting to think about all the dead comrades on that fallen ship.

On the view screen, however, it soon became evident that the Ronako had once again become a factor in the battle. An energy distortion surrounded the vessel in a pale blue light, growing in intensity as a thin funnel appeared in the swirling mass and spired across the image of the dying Drasin vessel. Moments later both vessels were covered in the same blue light, as something was transferred from the drifting Ronako to the Drasin ship.

A scant few instants later, the Drasin emerged from its cocoon and left the entire bridge looking in dismay at a fully repaired and lethal Drasin destroyer. Tal gaped for a moment, not believing what his own eyes and the ships sensors were telling him, but finally shook him out of it.

“All ships, evasive maneuvers and keep firing. Keep your shields up they’d have done to us by now, if they could get through the shield systems!”

The fleet vessels spun on their flaring drives, firing wildly at the fully repaired berserker in their midst, dancing desperately away from the lethal beams of their Drasin opponent. The fleet began hit and run techniques, each one taking a few shots and running off when the Drasin vessel attacked them. When they had evaded pursuit and recharged slightly, they ducked back in, to repeat the maneuverer. It was slow, it was brutal, but the tactic was working for them, as the Drasin slowly began to slow and hesitate.

And, of course, things quickly got worse.

“Captain, the incoming vessel is on an interception course!”

“Ours?” Tal gripped his command chair tightly, looking over to the operations console.

“No Sir! Definitely Drasin configurations, Sir.” The young crewman looked sick, and well he might.

“How many?” Tal asked tensely. One more of those vessels are too many.

The young man gulped as he looked up from his boards in terror, “twenty-three, Sir.”

This time Captain Tal didn’t hesitate, not for an instant. He hit the fleet communicator and yelled into it, in no uncertain terms. “This is Captain Tal to all ships! Break and run! Vector zero two zero mark three! I repeat all ships retreat!”

The fleet vessels turned and ran sprinting for the only opening they had left a white giant system a few light minutes away.

They needed to buy time to generate enough power to escape into Dimensional drive, something they couldn’t do with the weapons drain on their systems. Most species had a choice when they were in a situation like this, it was called fight or flight, and in this case they could literally only choose one.

Tal was pale and haggard as he realized that he had chosen the wrong one.

The couldn’t outrun the Drasin in deep space, that was obvious even from the short battle they had just fought, the best they could hope for would be that they could draw them into a trap within a gravity well. Then if things went right, they could escape the well and enter dimensional drive, while the Drasin were recovering.

If things went well.

Milla heard the Captain order the ships to deploy the mines, which alone shocked her, since those nuclear devices were weapons of last resort. The small fighter craft they had worked on for months, to refit from passenger shuttles and small freighters were launched into the maelstrom. Their pilots could hope only to buy a few more minutes for the retreating fleet. Even that wasn’t enough and the Drasin were soon upon them.

As if through a dream, she heard Tal give the order to abandon ship, but when she moved to object, his stare silenced her words before they could be spoken and she left the battle-scarred bridge. Her last sight of Tal was his proud posture sitting firmly in his command chair, staring at the damaged viewer.

At the pod, Milla looked wildly about. It was the last pod and she didn’t want to leave anyone behind, but no one else came. Stumbling inside the small craft she thumped the controls, sealing the pod off and firing the ejection thrusters. The Carlache spun wildly, framed as it was by the small window of the pod, taking massive hits from the Drasin ships that had pursued it. Its weapon’s systems fired up one last time and she saw them blaze as they returned fire with as much fury as futility. The last thing Milla saw was a fatally wounded Drasin fighter spinning in her direction, then the pod spun violently and the universe went dark.

A long time passed, without her knowing it. Time that saw the rest of her fleet destroyed. Time that saw the Drasin hunt down life-pods just like hers, as her shipmates began to broadcast the plaintive cry for help.

Through all of that time, Milla floated in the micro-gravity of the pod, held in place only by her restraint system, as she tumbled over and over in space.

Outside, after a long time, the Drasin left, satisfied that they had finished their task. Satisfied that there was nothing left alive in the White Giant system. And after they were gone, after another long time passed, the circuits of Milla’s life-pod waited patiently for a command to do their duty.

Finally, the computer decided that something was wrong. It had been launched and yet neither the automatic, nor the manual triggers had been flipped. That was not correct. So it attempted to contact its ship, in case it had been ejected by accident.

No response.

The computer paused for an infinitesimal moment, accessed its internal scanners and analysed the air. When it detected the increase in carbon dioxide, the computer made a calculation and decided that perhaps it hadn’t been an accident.

So, unbeknownst to the single occupant of the life pod, the onboard computer overrode its own programming and flipped a bank of virtual switches.

And, above her head, also unknown to the unconscious woman, a small device began to beep softly, as it began its preprogrammed duty.

Chapter 9

“And, as far as I can make out, your people came along, a short while later. I suppose I’m extremely lucky that your ship was en route to that system, but,” Milla paused and looked at Weston strangely, “why would you be going there? There is nothing of use in that system…”

Dr. Palin spoke for the first time, “We wern-”

“Doctor, not now,” Weston shut him up with a gesture, he wasn’t yet willing to share that they had a faster method of interstellar travel just yet.

Milla, however, had blinked as she looked to the screen. “Great Creator. How long have I been here? That’s Duorchin… . Its two weeks from where we were. I…” her voice trailed off.

Eric and Palin watched, subdued, as the young woman restrained herself as the images of lost ships and comrades crossed her mind. After a moment, Weston shrugged slowly and spoke.

“Apparently, you’ve been out for some time,” he said slowly.

Milla looked between them curiously, knowing that something was wrong in what she was hearing, but not knowing what it was. After a long moment she gave up on it for the moment and let out a shuddering sigh. “At any rate, I thank you very much for your rescue of my Pod.”

“No need, Ithan Chans. Search and rescue operations are a part of our mandate,” Eric replied instantly, the response was an ingrained reaction. One didn’t leave anyone lost at sea, on land, or in space. Period.

“Nonetheless, I am grateful,” Milla’s lips twisted slightly, “in spite of the accommodations.”

Palin chuckled slightly, “I’m afraid that is also standard practice, my dear.”

“You were an unknown our medical procedures require a stay of several days in isolation while medical tests are performed. Although, I admit that the mirrored visors were my idea, and not from any book,” Eric explained as she looked curious.

“They were most… disconcerting,” Milla pursed her lips at the memory before she shrugged fatalistically.

Weston smiled, “That was the intention.”

Captain Weston walked over to the intercom and flipped the switch, “Doctor Rame, has Milla been cleared from isolation yet?”

“Yes Captain,” the doctor’s voice floated back through the speaker.

“Good, we’re coming out now.”

The three of them cycled through the airlock and stepped into the open medical labs. Milla was greeted by stares from a good number of the on duty personnel and their patients. Weston led her through the lab and out into the corridors of the Odyssey.

“Doctor,” Weston half turned to Palin.

“Yes Captain?”

“Miss Chans will need quarters and a change of clothing, as well,” Weston said, “Could you see to it that the Quartermaster assigns her something suitable, and has her fitted for some clothes.”

“Uh…, yes Sir…,” Palin blinked.

“All right,” Weston turned and smiled at Milla. “The Doctor will get you set up. I have duties to attend to.”

“Thank you, Captain.” Milla nodded. “I appreciate your help.”

“Not at all,” Eric replied, nodding to her as he parted company. “Just doing my duty, Ma’am.”

*****

“Here we go.” Palin said as the door slid open. “Watch your step…”

Milla nodded, stepping over the barrier that separated the cabin from the hall, and into the small room.

“I’ve called the Quartermaster, so we’ll get you fitted for some other clothes…,” Palin said, a tad uneasily as he gestured to her hospital clothes. “In the meantime, let me show you around.”

*****

“Status reports,” Weston demanded as he stepped onto the bridge, glancing around at the bustle of motion.

“Not much has changed, Captain,” Roberts said, nodding to the screens. “The Carnivore Drones have located another three central… nests of those things, but nothing near the size of the first one. They seem to be taking the planet apart piece by piece, Sir.”

“Explain.”

Roberts turned around, placing a hand on the shoulder of a computer technician, “Bring up the pictures from the city again.”

Eric watched as the picture on the screen changed and he instantly saw a difference from earlier. “Is that the same area?”

“No Sir. This one is closer to the center of the… population” Roberts replied. “Notice the state of the buildings.”

Eric nodded. They were demolished totally wrecked and the spider like things was dragging pieces of them underground.

“They look like bastardized spiders, Captain. But they act like ants,” Roberts replied. “Watch this… .”

As he watched, Eric saw the screen shift focus as the army of creatures picked at a towering scraper until it shuddered in place. On the screen, it seemed to happen in slow motion, but on the ground, Eric knew that it would have happened incredibly fast. The huge building shuddered and started to topple slowly over, toward the largest group of the spider things. As it fell some of them scrambled out of the way, but most couldn’t move in nearly enough time, and that monster of a building, threw up debris and dust, as it crushed and buried them.

For a brief moment there was no motion on the screen other than the rolling dust, and then some of the debris moved as buried creatures that weren’t crushed dug themselves out and went back to work. In minutes the scene was back to normal as hundreds, or thousands of the creatures, began picking the rubble apart and transporting it underground.

“Damn” Eric whispered in sober reflection. “What are they doing with all that stuff?”

“I don’t know, Sir” Roberts said uneasily. “They’re grabbing everything. Buildings, roads, trees and animals when they catch them.”

“And they drag it all underground?”

“Yes Sir.”

Weston shook his head, “They must have miles of tunnels built, but it doesn’t make sense.”

“Sir?”

“According to our ‘guest’, this world was only invaded a short while ago.” Eric explained, “Call it a month, at the outside, with some uncertainty to cover how long it was that she was floating out there before we picked her up.”

“Damn,” Roberts said calmly, but with a hint of real emotion. “That’s scary, Sir. But they do have the numbers in place to…”

“That’s just it, Commander,” Eric interrupted him. “According to her, there were only a few of them in the city after the invasion. Now, maybe they were just underground by then, but if she’s right…”

“Then these things take the expression ‘go forth and multiply’ to a whole new level,” Roberts frowned, looking again at the screen.

“Right you are, Commander.” Eric said softly. “Right you are.”

*****

Milla Chans looked around her cabin, deep in thought. It was small, that was for certain, but it was well appointed, she decided. Everything she needed was here, including access to food and water services, as well as a place to sleep and wash up.

On one of her ships, she’d have more room, but for the moment this would suffice.

Palin had just left along with the man he’d called a ‘Quartermaster’, but had promised to return with clothing shortly. In the meantime, she’d been advised to clean up and she intended to do just that.

The shower had been quaint, she had to admit, but there were backward parts of the colonies that used running water still, so she wasn’t overly surprised by it. Generally, she’d prefer a cleanser, but this would do in a pinch.

The soap, on the other hand, was a bit on the weird side. That, she decided, would take some getting used to. But it smelled okay and the lather was interesting, if nothing else.

She shed the flimsy gown the doctor had replaced her spacer’s gear with, briefly wondering what had happened to it, as she stepped into the shower and punched in temperature settings. The water cascaded over her, causing her to flinch back from the heat at first, then she eased back into it as her skin acclimated.

Cleansers feel better, she sighed. And I hope they didn’t destroy my spacer equipment. That takes weeks to form.

She shook her head and grabbed the soap. It smelled different under the water, she thought, but it always paid to adjust to the local customs.

Especially when you’ve been rescued by them.

*****

“Is this information verified?” Eric looked up from the PDA he’d been scanning.

“No Sir, it’s just an educated guess on the computers part,” Roberts said, shaking his head. “There’s no way to be absolutely certain of the growth rate, but…”

“But?” Eric raised an eyebrow.

“But that’s the low end guess, Sir,” The First Officer replied. “The high end stuff is a nightmare.”

“I’ll bet,” Weston sighed, sitting back in his chair as he looked down at the numbers again.

Doubling their number every three days. Jesus.

As Roberts had said, the high end number would HAVE to be a nightmare. Whatever they were, they seemed to put rabbits to shame. His lips twisted wryly at the thought, and then he decided to get up.

“Commander, you have the Bridge,” he said, turning toward the exit. “I’m going to have another word with our guest.”

“Aye Captain,” Roberts nodded, “Good luck, Sir.”

“Thank you Commander,” Weston smiled wryly. “Let’s hope I don’t need it with a single young woman.”

*****

Once the ‘shower’ was complete, Milla stepped out hesitantly and wondered what she was supposed to use to get dry.

If I remember my cultures lessons, there should be something. Ahhh…, here we are.

She located some dark blue wads of cloth that seemed in the right place to do the job. If they weren’t, she just hoped that she wasn’t desecrating anything, as she rubbed herself down. After all, one never knew about an alien culture. Even within the Colonies, people could create the strangest icons.

There was a knock at the door to the cabin, so she stuck her head out of the washroom and yelled, “Come in!” before she ducked back in and closed the door with a thoughtful frown.

Now…, Do they have a nudity taboo or not…?

Milla Chans sighed, rubbing her head. This just wasn’t her specialty. She blew things up, she wasn’t a social engineer. Granted, she usually blew up mine sites and other excavations, but the point was still valid. Her specialty wasn’t exactly the most social of professions.

Outside she could hear people talking, so she figured it was probably Dr. Palin back again, and then there was a knock at the washroom door.

“Excuse me, Ma’am?”

The Quartermaster, Milla recognized the voice. “Yes?”

“Clothes, Ma’am,” the voice said. “If you’ll just open up a bit, I’ll hand them in. I won’t look. I swear, Ma’am.”

Hmmm…, does that mean they do have a nudity taboo…, or that they’re worried that I do? Milla shrugged it off and opened the door a crack, accepting the dark blue bundles that were handed in to her, and then slid the door shut again, “Thank you.”

“No problem, Ma’am,” said the deferential voice. “Just doing my job.”

She doubted that actually, but didn’t press. No one with a title of ‘Master’ on a Colonies ship would be required to stoop to personal deliveries. More than likely, he wanted to see the ‘alien’ for himself. Not that she had a problem with that, of course. She’d probably have done the same.

“Ithan?” Another voice called after a moment.

Her eyes widened in surprise, “Capitaine?”

“That’s right, Ithan Chans,” Weston’s voice replied. “When you have a moment, I’d like to talk with you.”

“Certainly, Capitaine,” she said, hurriedly slipping into the clothes provided.

The lower part of the clothing was easy to figure out, as was the top, but she puzzled over the two black tubes for a moment before deciding that they must be for her feet. They’d make for an insane hindrance on her hands. Once she had those on, along with the pants and shirt, she frowned at the two pieces of clothing left.

What on earth are these? She puzzled over them for a while, not able to place either the one with the two cups or the other slip of cloth with anything she’d seen anyone else wear. Finally she just shrugged and tossed them aside. I’m sure someone will tell me, if they’re important.

*****

Eric nodded and smiled as Milla stepped out of her bathroom, wearing a basic crewman’s uniform with no insignia’s. The Odyssey’s wardrobe supply was fairly limited, but they had standard uniforms in pretty much every size under the sun.

“Ithan,” he said respectfully, as she pinched and pulled at the clothes.

Beside him, Doctor Palin, who had shown up a short while earlier, nodded as well but didn’t say anything.

“Capitaine. Docteur,” Milla nodded back. “My apologies for my…, motions. I’m afraid that this clothing doesn’t feel exactly right.”

Eric nodded, smiling slightly. “It takes a while to wear them in, so that they are just right for you. Don’t worry about it too much.”

“Very well,” she said, not happy with it, but determined not to complain, either.

“I was wondering if I might interest you in a tour of the ship’s facilities, Ithan,” Eric offered. He’d been debating that since he’d talked to her, but it seemed like a harmless way to talk with her and see what she reactions would be like. More importantly, it would let him try to get her ‘measure’ and that was something that he found himself feeling a desperate need of.

Milla nodded quickly, “I would be most fascinated, Capitaine.”

“Good,” Weston smiled tapped the side of the induction mic on his jaw, connecting to Commander Roberts. “Commander, I’m taking our guest on a short tour of the ship. Contact me via the mobile comm-net, if I’m needed.”

“Yes Sir.”

“This way, Milla,” Weston gestured down the curving hallway, noting her unsure steps as she accustomed herself to the curving corridors. “We noted that your vessels have artificial gravity, included in the design. Unfortunately, we don’t have that ability yet. You’re standing in a huge rotation drum, which serves as one of the two primary habitats, on board the Odyssey.”

Milla looked up the curving corridor and glanced back along the curve that she had just traversed, “I see, I don’t think that my people have ever used such a technique. Our first ship designs were null gravity freighters. The artificial gravity technology came along relatively quickly and was incorporated into our second generation ships, without this intermediary step.”

Weston smiled, “Well, I suppose we weren’t content to wait, we do have some ideas on creating an artificial gravity field, but they are all still in the design and only at the theory stage, mostly. The Odyssey was designed in response to the developing technology that allows us to cross great distances, faster than light.”

Milla acknowledged his words and they and Doctor Palin continued on their walk through the habitat.

“This section is largely laboratories and some living quarters. The forward module houses the Command staff, Bridge, the rest of the living quarters and recreation facilities. Our engineering area is, unfortunately, a null gravity area and is off limits to most personnel,” the Captain smiled wryly. “They don’t even like me going in there.”

Milla smiled wanly, “Engineers are engineers, Capitaine. It may be your ship, but it’s their engines.”

Weston laughed sharply, “True enough Milla. True enough.”

Their walk had brought them to one of the ship’s lifts and the trio stepped into the small capsule.

“Hanger bay.”

The capsule whirred off while Milla look around the small area “Here put these on.” she was startled by the captain’s voice for a moment before taking what he offered her.

“What are these?”

“Magnetic boots, the hanger bay is below decks, an area of the ship outside the rotating habitats.”

“Oh.”

Why is he showing me this? I’m not one his people, Milla couldn’t help but wonder as the gravity in the lift slowly lightened until it was negligible and she could feel her hair floating up away from her skull.

She kept it cropped relatively short, like most people who choose to spend their lives in space, but that had its disadvantages as well. Longer hair could be tied back for example and would be less of a spectacle than she was at the moment.

Still, she ignored it with long-standing practice and went about putting on the boots in question.

The lift arrived at the hanger bay. Milla had felt the gravity fade away, quite some time past, as the lift stopped matching rotation with the habitat module, and the door hissed open, revealing the cavernous expanse of the big ships hanger. She felt almost lost as she looked up and around herself, at the expanse of the room.

“This area was designed to this scale because some of the shuttles we operate from here are designed for trans-atmospheric flight and require more room for their control surfaces,” Eric explained as he noticed her eyes and expression. “That, and of course the fact that they are used to transport relatively large items to and from the ship.”

The sharp clanking of their steps had attracted the attention of several of the crewmen in the hanger, but only one had decided to approach them.

“Heya Cap,” Stephanus’ cheerful face was sidetracked a moment later, as he locked his attention onto Milla, “G’day there, now who’s this?”

Stephanus hadn’t seen the pod’s survivor when they’d offloaded her from the SAR shuttle; he had been too busy locking his own plane down, at the time. But others had noticed, while the e-med team had been hauling her off to the medical labs and with all the rumors that had inevitably begun to flood the Odyssey, he was quick enough to realize that this wasn’t a crew member.

“Is this the little lady we fished out of the drink, a while back?” He asked, mostly just to hear himself talk.

Weston laughed again, leaving Milla wondering if the translation she received over the induction set they had given her was in error, since it sounded to her like this man was being rather flippant, in front of the ship’s Captain.

“Yes, this is Milla.” Eric said, introducing the two, “and Milla, this is Commander Stephen Michaels, though we mostly call him Stephanus. Steph, Milla here was a duty officer assigned to one of the ships we found out there.”

Milla winced as the translation came through, her eyes then widened in surprise she noticed that the young man standing in front of them winced also.

“Sorry to hear that, Ma’am,” Stephanus’ joking face had dropped into a serious expression. The loss of shipmates wasn’t a joking matter to the young pilot, or to anyone who’d ever served.

Milla accepted his condolences without much visible reaction, covering whatever she was feeling internally, by looking around the massive chamber. A short distance, away she saw a shuttle that fit Captain Weston’s description of what he called a ‘Trans-Atmospheric’ vehicle. A distance away, at the other end of the bay, however, several sleeker shuttles were sitting in tight formation, with people scurrying around them, as if in some urgency.

“Captain Weston, what is the activity over near those shuttles?” She asked, her voice laden with curiosity as she tried to figure out what she was looking at.

Milla watched Weston and Stephanus look around themselves wildly, as if uncertain where she meant.

“What? Where?” Steph asked, confused.

“There,” she nodded.

“Huh?”

Finally, somewhat frustrated, she pointed to the activity near the shuttles, not expecting the reactions she would get. Dr. Palin just looked in that direction, as confused as he was before, but the real reactions came from Weston and the man he had introduced as Stephanus. They laughed.

“Missy, you call them ‘shuttles’?” A wry grin was growing across the pilot’s face, from anyone else those would have been fighting words, but the look of confusion drifting across Milla’s face had instantly quelled any indignation he felt. Must be getting soft! I’ve decked two hundred and fifty pound Marines for less than that.

Stephanus glanced from her to the Captain, who was trying very hard not to laugh again, “With your permission, Captain?”

Weston looked almost thoughtful for a moment, before another chuckling fit overtook him, “All right Steph, standard VIP tour. Nothing more. You know what I mean.”

“Yes Sir, sure do,” the cocky young pilot grinned, flipping a fairly smart salute that somehow managed to look half-assed, while still being within military protocols.

Weston shook his head as Stephanus turned away. One of these days I’m going to have to figure out how he manages that.

Stephanus gently guided Milla away from the Captain and Dr. Palin and began walking the long stretch down to Milla’s ‘shuttles’, the ready wing of the Archangel group. As they approached the fighters in the ‘ready flight’ position, Stephanus was greeted by several other pilots, many of whom had approached the two, with appraising looks at Milla, only to be sent back to their tasks with a word from the tall pilot.

“This is an Archangel fighter craft, Milla and it’s a far cry from any shuttle your likely to see.” Steph grinned wryly as he reached out to slide his hand along the smooth armor of the sleek Combat Craft.

“Fighter Craft?” Milla spoke the words slowly, almost tasting them as she considered the words. This ship in front of her was the Odyssey’s counterpart to the small fighters her ship had launched in the final moments of their encounter with the Drasin.

He’s right though, she realized quickly, examining the fighter, I could have called our ships ‘shuttles’ because that was what they were. Not these. These ships are made for war, no wasted space like our refitted freighters.

It was something of an eye opener in some ways, forcing Milla to revise her thoughts on the controversy that had been raging through her home world before she’d left. Many people, she included at the time, were against the commissioning of dedicated warships. Many people, herself included, felt that they were unnecessary. Refitted fleet craft had seemed to pack all the power needed at the time.

Now, of course, she wasn’t nearly so confident.

It was a good thing that Milla Chans had never minded admitting a mistake. Well, not much anyway.

“Trans-Atmospheric Superiority Fighter. The original design is about twenty-eight years old now, but most of the systems have been updated constantly over the past quarter century. The space maneuvering systems, for instance, were added to the design only two years ago. We never had much use for it until the Odyssey hit the drawing boards,” Stephanus finished with a half-smile.

Space maneuvering was pushing the envelope to the nth degree and for a pilot like himself it was the height of his craft.

“We even changed the airframes three times, so they just ‘sort of’ look like the original ’Angels.”

“Atmospheric Fighters?” The phrase awakened a sense of horror in her, “You flew these against your own people?”

We’ve been taught that the others often warred amongst themselves…, but to see proof of it. Milla shuddered at the thought of this magnificent machine she saw before her, used to mow down the very people who had built it, people like this. We would probably have been better off if they had stayed on their own be-damned planet.

Stephanus caught her reaction in her face and the little shiver that ran through her body, a reaction that he was used to, in all too many ways. His face hardened imperceptibly, the way it always did when someone questioned the morality of his choice to serve in the military, “when we had to. These planes were built for one reason, defence. Millions would have died, if these hadn’t been built. Billions more would be under the oppression of a dictatorship. Don’t get too caught up in your moralizing before you learn the whole story, lady.”

Milla swallowed her revulsion for the moment it would do her no good here and now “tell me more, Stephan.”

“That’s ‘Stephanus’, it’s a call sign not my name. Fighter jocks use call signs as a badge of pride in their abilities,” Stephanus turned his attention back to the fighter in front of him “Anyway the Archangel fighter is the fastest, most maneuverable plane we’ve ever devised. We normally measure aircraft speed by multiples of Mach, the speed of sound through our atmosphere, but the Archangel is a little different. The designers learned early in the project that the Archangel wasn’t limited to the same factors that its predecessors were a good pilot could bring an Archangel Fighter to speeds measured in fractions of light speed… even in Earth’s atmosphere.”

“Light speed!” Milla was shocked, fractions, or even near light speed inside an atmosphere was possible, but she’d never heard of a pilot who could keep control, at those speeds. Perhaps in very high atmosphere, but at lower altitudes the pilot’s first mistake would be his last…, and most likely take a considerable number of people with him, when he hit the ground with the force of a nuclear detonation.

“Yeah, the Cee-Emm field systems that give the ship it’s VTOL, that’s Vertical Take Off and Landing capabilities, also allow the pilot to create a pocket of vacuum around the fighter. Sort of a bubble that the air slides around so you don’t get the friction that would normally destroy the plane,” Steph said, explaining the Counter Mass system and its attendant functions, as best he could.

In actuality, he could do so pretty well indeed. Like all Pilots, Stephanus was required to know almost as much about his plane, as the people who built them. More than one pilot had been saved by knowing just which doo-dad had to be attached to which thing-a-ma-jig.

“The same thing also prevents any shockwaves that might normally be caused by something flying, at those speeds,” Stephanus smirked. “In practice though, we don’t go much above Mach Ten…”

“I realize that, we developed a similar system to transport materials into orbit,” Milla frowned, considering that. “What I do not understand is what type of control system you use to allow control, at those speeds?”

Stephanus looked briefly uncomfortable, but shook it off and climbed up a functional ladder, dropping into the cockpit as he waved her up. “Well, come on up here.”

Milla climbed the small ladder so she could get a view of the cockpit, “Yes?”

“Well, the pilot controls the plane’s movement with the foot pedals you see down there, as well as the throttle and the control stick on either side of the seat,” Stephanus reached down and toyed with the control stick. “You can see that it allows for full movement over six different axes…, or any combination of the six.”

Milla just nodded her head and accepted the pilot’s obvious omission without comment, she knew that the system was undoubtedly efficient, but it couldn’t handle a plane at a tenth light speed, within a planetary atmosphere. Obviously these people had their secrets and it wasn’t as if she were going to trust them with any of the defence secrets of her people.

The rest of the pilot’s ‘tour’ was interesting but, for her, the highlights had already been hit. She listened with mild interest as he described the fighters engines and safety features, noted with mild amusement that he skimmed quickly over the weapons systems without really saying anything and found herself instead, studying the man rather than the machine.

‘Stephanus’ was tall, over six feet, his hair a little rougher than most of the pilots and people milling around. She couldn’t decide what color his hair was because - in places it seemed dark brown and in others it was a reddish hue.

He seemed to have a permanent smile etched on his face, a sort of jovial glint in his eyes that was echoed by the lines that were drawn in his flesh by years of laughter.

Milla tried to remind herself that this was a self-confessed killer, a man who hunted his own kind. It was hard to keep that in mind, when confronted with the cheerful visage he presented.

He simply didn’t fit her image of the blood thirsty barbarians of the Legends of the Others.

“Are you done yet, Steph?”

Milla blinked, startled by Weston’s voice, how did I miss the sound of his boots on the floor?

“Huh? Oh, sure Chief,” the pilot smirked as he flipped another not quite sloppy salute at the Captain. “Standard VIP stuff, all done.”

The Captain nodded once crisply, “Good, I think we’ll head back up into the forward habitat module and check out the bridge, to see how the system survey is coming.”

“Sure, I’m going to go over some of the maintenance logs with Riley over there, I noticed some slack in the throttle when we were on the SAR,” Stephanus turned and headed over to a small man holding an oversized PDA.

“’SAR’, Capitaine?”

“Search and rescue operation,” Eric replied off handedly. “When we went out to pick you up.”

“Oh,” she nodded slowly.

“This way Milla, back to the lift,” Weston gestured the way they had come and began walking back toward the ships lift. Milla could see Dr. Palin standing nervously beside it.

“What is wrong with the Docteur?”

Weston looked at Palin for a moment, “he doesn’t like the Null Gravity. He probably has a sensitive stomach.”

Milla grinned, she had known his like in the fleet, despite the artificial gravity on their ships, null gravity was a commonplace occurrence and many fleet candidates found out the hard way, that space service wasn’t their optimal career choice.

A moment later they were on the lift and Milla felt the rotational gravity return as the lift matched speed with the Odyssey’s habitat module.

Captain Weston retrieved the magboots from Milla and Palin, stowing them away in the lift’s compartment, “Bridge.”

Chapter 10

Dr. Palin left Weston and Milla in the lift when it stopped at the second habitat, heading for his lab and the data they had retrieved from the pod and derelict vessel. Weston told the computer to continue onto the forward habitat and the Command deck.

“Captain on deck!” The crewman’s announcement stiffened the stance of the officers manning their duty stations.

“As you were,” Eric said instantly. He didn’t want his presence to disturb the work that had to be done. “Commander Roberts, what’s our position?”

The Commander turned to look at Milla, as if appraising her strengths or trying to look into her very soul. After a moment he shrugged and looked back to the Captain, “Completing another Orbit, Sir. The Carnivore Drones have pretty much completed the planetary survey, unless you want something more?”

“No. I think that you can call them back,” Eric said after a moment, looking at the screen with a disturbed expression. “No signals from the surface?”

“No Sir.”

Milla found herself staring at the world that filled the large screen, recognizing it from the last time she’d been in this very position, though on a different vessel. She shivered, thinking about the pictures Captain Weston had shown her, and suddenly felt an urge to be anywhere, but where she was.

She immediately felt a flush of guilt over that, and steeled herself against it. She may not be able to do anything for the people who’d died there, not yet, but she would not disgrace herself or them by running from her own weakness. Not that she actually could run far, she supposed. It really was more of a mental thing, in the end.

Her reactions had gone apparently unnoticed by the others as Eric Weston continued speaking with his First Officer, “When the drones are back, we’ll break Orbit. How long until the Transition Threshold?”

“Fourteen hours, Sir,” Roberts replied without hesitation. It had been the first thing he’d checked, before anything else including the Recon data from the Carnivore Drones.

“All right. Break Orbit as soon as the Flight Deck reports that the Drone has been recovered,” Eric ordered, more for the record than anything else. “Best speed out of the system.”

Transition threshold? Milla looked from one officer to another, hoping for some clue to the meaning of the words that filtered through the induction set on her jaw. Face to face, she searched, finding nothing more than the occasional look of disgust, a wince of pain glimmering across another face, and the occasional look of tightly reined terror.

“What destination, Sir?” Roberts asked.

Weston started to speak but stopped as he considered the question in some surprise. Technically, he supposed, he was only responsible to drop Milla off in the next port of call. At least under the revised Maritime act that space going vessels and crew adhered to in Sol System. In practice, that generally meant returning the rescue to Earth, though they had been dropped off at Mars Base or the Jovian research platforms once or twice in the past, when an outbound ship picked up a spacer in a damaged craft.

This was a distinctly different situation, Weston had to admit. In Sol System, the longest wait one had, would have be a few weeks, probably. A month or two at the outside. Taking Milla to Earth, however, could result in years or more, before anyone got around to authorizing another expedition.

Especially considering the Carnivore data, they’d just picked up.

He sighed finally, and turned to Milla. “Ithan Chans if you would be so kind as to tell us where we should be transporting you?”

Milla looked at the Captain for a long moment, where could she direct these people that would be of least worry to the council? Her home world was out of the question. It was one of the five and was central to the defence of the colonies. Perhaps one of the other agricultural colonies. One with a star dock.

She considered her options, and nodded after a moment as she remembered what worlds were out here on the frontier of the Colonies.

Yes, Port Fuielles is near this area, only a few days travel from here. That will do nicely.

“Well Ithan?” Eric prodded gently, smiling a little. “Unless you’d like to accompany us home after we’ve completed our shakedown tour.”

Milla smiled, “No Capitaine, that won’t be necessary. Please show me your charts of this area and I will show you to Port Fuielles, a small outpost orbiting an agricultural world. It will do.”

Weston gestured Milla to Roberts, who led her to a navigation display showing the local star systems. She quickly located her system, a small yellow star about twenty light years away, and pointed it out.

“Right here if you don’t mind.”

Roberts glanced at the system she pointed out and nodded slightly to Weston.

Captain Weston nodded, smiling gently, “No problem, Ithan Chans. Commander, if you would direct the coordinates to the helm?”

“Aye Captain.”

Weston stepped over to Milla, “I would recommend you report to the medical lab, I’ll clear a mild sedative with the doctor.”

Milla looked at Weston in alarm, “Sedative? Why?” These people mean to drug me!

“It is only a recommendation the transition drive can be,” Weston paused, looking for the right word. After a moment he gave up and selected one that was entirely inadequate for the task, “…’trying’ for someone who doesn’t know what to expect. We know first-hand.”

Milla looked at him speculatively, “you’ll be receiving one of these sedatives…, as well?”

Weston listened with some amusement to the way she spat the word ‘sedatives’, “No, I won’t have that luxury.”

“Then I too, refuse the ‘luxury’.”

“Very well, Ithan, but I expect you will regret that decision when we enter transition,” Eric smiled, shaking his head. He couldn’t blame her, really. He’d have done the same thing in her place. It was just funny how often being ‘smart’ got you into trouble.

Ignorance is Bliss.

“Perhaps,” Milla looked smug, having avoided the sinister trap.

Weston looked her over and smiled slightly, knowing full well what she was thinking and he knew that he couldn’t convince her that she was wrong. Oh well, her loss.

Eric shrugged, letting it go. It wasn’t his problem, anymore “Well then, we seem to have the better part of a day or so before we’re clear for transition, perhaps a visit to the recreation areas?”

Milla seemed to consider his offer, and nodded briefly. Weston guided her off the bridge and back to the ship’s lift.

“Recreation Decks,” Weston said.

*****

The efficient little lift had whirred away, dropping them to the outer levels of the forward habitat cylinder in mere seconds, and the two of them stepped out into a large room set up as a cafeteria, with several exits leading to other parts of the recreation facilities.

“Are you hungry?” Eric asked, glancing sideways at her.

Milla shook her head.

“I’m glad you don’t want to eat before your first transition.”

What is he talking about? Milla just shrugged her shoulders and looked around.

The ship’s mess hall was relatively crowded, as many of the ships officers and researchers had decided to take the last hour in this system to refuel themselves before they would return to their instruments and stations, for the next system they had to map. Most of the crew had gathered in small groups and were engaged in some fervent conversation, Milla did notice a few who were sitting on their own however. In one corner, the pilot identified as Stephanus sat drinking something and staring at something playing on a large view screen.

“What is he doing over there?”

Weston followed her eyes to where the pilot sat “Steph likes his moments of solitude he’s probably trying to watch the video.”

“Oh,” strange, I wouldn’t have seen him as the sort to be alone.

Milla eyed the young pilot for a moment but shook it off as Captain Weston led her into the room.

The two toured the room, drawing stares and hushed murmurs from the crew as some of them recognized Milla and pointed her out. Milla’s eyes roamed the room, taking in the facilities, as well as the crew, stopping at the viewer she had noticed Stephanus watching. On the screen a man was firing some type of weapon at several assailants, managing to hit his targets, in spite some of the most ludicrous distractions.

Weston followed his guest’s eyes and was barely able to suppress a snort or disgust at the video now showing, “I wouldn’t put much stock in that if I were you it’s just entertainment. None of it’s real.”

“Entertainment?” Milla looked at the video again with new eyes, watching death was entertainment?

Weston snorted again, “just barely. This is strictly LCD stuff, lowest common denominator, designed to hold the interest of the largest portion of the population it can. Even people like you who obviously dislike violence, have a hard time to pull their attention away.”

She had to admit to herself that he had a point it was difficult to turn away from the continual action of the characters on the screen. Looking around the room, she also noted that for the most part no one was really watching the screen, with the exception for Stephanus and something about his face belied his apparent interest in the ‘entertainment’.

“This must be a rather large vessel Captain, most ships I’ve seen don’t provide as well for the after duty time of their crews.”

Weston’s eyebrows arched “This is only a small section of the Odyssey’s recreational facilities Ithan, about a third of this deck is dedicated to the recreation section We have two full gyms, a small theater, a half a dozen simulators, and a small library room.”

It was Milla’s turn to do a double take, “that much? This must be a huge vessel to warrant that level of luxury for the crew.”

“That depends, we do build larger vessels, but they are primarily cargo vessels. The Odyssey is a carrier class ship, designed with a rather large flight deck for the shuttles and the Archangels, as well as extensive research labs. Since we found it necessary to design with a crew of about three hundred in mind, we included several amenities.”

Three hundred? We run crews of twice that size with less than a quarter the facilities this crew are afforded. Milla simply nodded, “Would you mind if we sat down while we talked?”

“Not at all Ithan” Weston slipped down into one of the seats across the table from where Milla sat.

“Capitaine, may I ask you a question?”

“Certainly.”

“Why is it that you always address me by my rank, where the others I have met, seem to prefer my name?”

Weston looked at her, he hadn’t actually noticed that, and had to consider his answer for a moment. “My position as Captain instils certain habits into a person. The only people on board that I refer to without using rank is Stephanus and the other Archangels, and I don’t use their names either, I use their Call signs because I used to be their Wing Commander.”

He flew one of those ‘fighters’? “You were a pilot, Capitaine?”

“Yes, I flew with the Angels from the beginning. I met Stephanus when he was fifteen years old and only dreamed of flying a jet.” Weston smiled at the memory “At fifteen he managed to break into the research facilities that were designing the Archangel Class fighter, and he did it over five times before we finally gave in and gave him a job there. Might have been more, those are just the times we caught him, he still won’t tell me the real number.”

Good thing we weren’t working for the military back then, Weston didn’t add aloud, but smiled at the thought, or he’d have probably spent the next fifty years buried in the deepest dungeon the MPs could find.

Milla smiled, “I too have known a few people like that, and they have much to endear themselves don’t they?”

Weston chuckled, “definitely.”

Weston saw Milla’s eyes focus behind him, her face reddening slightly, “he’s standing behind me, isn’t he?”

Not waiting for her to respond, Weston turned and looked up at the glint in Stephanus’s eyes, “telling stories about me already, Captain?”

“Sit down,” Weston growled, a grin struggling to be seen beneath the air of command he had immediately effected.

Stephanus grinned openly, “I do believe I will, at least to better defend my honor against the torrent of lies you’re undoubtedly telling our dear guest here.”

“Lies? You mean, like the time you convinced an entire bar full of drunks that I was covering their tabs for the night?” Eric asked archly.

Stephanus coughed slightly, “Well it was like this…,”

“Or maybe the time you had three different women drop in on Steffer announcing that he was the father of their child… on his wedding night?”

“Hey! He had that coming,” The pilot defended himself.

Weston looked back to Milla, “It took us two weeks to convince Steffer’s wife, not to have the marriage annulled.”

Milla snickered, as much at Stephanus obviously feeble protests of innocence as at the stories, Weston was relating to her. The casual interchange between Weston and Stephanus was a relief from the stiff formality that was normally observed onboard any fleet vessel. This type of joking about was normally limited to the junior officers and crewmen, though. It was odd to watch two senior officers banter about in public.

“It seems to me that you’ve pulled a few practical jokes yourself, Cap,” Weston could see Stephanus’ eyes light up as he began to formulate his next sentence.

Weston just smiled serenely and calmly interrupted his friend, “Does the word ‘Grounded’ mean anything to you?”

Milla looked between them in confusion, “grounded?” What ground? We are on a space vessel.

Stephanus looked at her with an expression of mock pain on his face, “the Captain doesn’t play by the rules. ‘Grounded’ is an expression that means ‘removed from active flight duty. ’”

Milla looked across at Weston, noting the laughter in his eyes, “One of the ‘perks’…, of command?”

“Just so Ithan. Just so.”

The three of them broke out laughing, drawing stares from dozens of people who wondered what the Captain and the space lady found so funny.

Weston was about to say something more when a call from the bridge interrupted them, “Captain, we’ll be breaking Orbit shortly. The transition vectors have already been calculated.”

Weston tapped the switch in the side of the induction mic. “Good. I’ll be up shortly.”

He turned to Milla, “I’m afraid that I have duties to attend, Ithan. If you’d like to stay here for a while, Stephanus can show you to your room when you wish. I’ll send for you prior to Transition, if you wish?”

Milla looked across at Stephanus, who nodded, “All right Captain. I’ll stay out of your way until we… Transition.”

Weston smiled slightly at her words, although he did wonder about the way she seemed to almost taste the word ‘transition’. She’s in for a nasty shock if she’s planning on a smooth ride.

Weston strode out of the room, heading for the lift that would take him back to the bridge. Stephanus watched him leave before turning back to Milla.

“You interested in seeing some more of the sights?”

Milla looked around her for a moment, “certainly, Stephanus, I would be most delighted.”

Stephanus stood up and motioned her out of the room toward the closest lift, “we’ll catch one of the lifts running along the axis of the rotating habitats, there’s something in the stern of the ship, I think you’d like to see.”

“Really? And what would that be?” Milla looked at Stephanus out of the corner of her eyes, trying to guess his intentions.

Stephanus, apparently oblivious to her scrutiny, just stood there smiling. “It wouldn’t be much of a surprise, if I told you that now would it?”

*****

They had boarded a lift, which sped along the central axis of the big ship until it reached the stern of the ship, slowly reducing its rotation until it was stopped and they were floating free. Stephanus slipped a pair of magnetic boots across the lift to Milla and they stepped out of the lift onto the Odyssey’s observation deck.

They slowly approached the enormous transparent steel windows that looked over both rotation drums of the Odyssey, as they spun, counter to each other. There were long lines of cable tracing paths through the stars as they interconnected different portions of the ship, providing guidelines for the currently collapsed sensory arrays, and just off to one side the blue-green world hung suspended amongst the stars.

Milla’s breath caught at the panoramic view afforded by the wall size windows that arced across her view. “It’s beautiful,” she simply said.

“Yeah,” Steph nodded. “I like this place. Normally you get quite a few people up here, but lately we’ve been a tad busy.”

Stephanus led her through the room, sidestepping tables and such that were bolted to the floor as they approached the glass. “The tables and chairs are remnants from the early design stage, there were plans to incorporate an artificial gravity system into the Odyssey. They even built the main bridge about two decks up before they realized that the artificial gravity systems drew more power than the all rest of the ship’s systems combined.”

Milla looked out at the starry expanse through the huge windows, “so you do have artificial gravity technology.”

“Well no, not really.” Steph frowned, “I don’t get it all myself, you understand, but the technology they were going to use in here is based on the antigravity tech that we use in the Archangel’s. It’s not true gravity, but a way to simulate it, roughly. The system was only activated during construction from what I hear; the workers used this level as recreation area.”

“I can easily understand why, it’s a lovely place to be. But why was it used even then, if the power drain was so bad?”

Stephanus shrugged, “Probably because the reactor was online and none of the other systems, except limited life support were drawing power. The Odyssey’s reactor outputs a constant amount of power so if it isn’t used, it’s basically lost. The work crew wouldn’t have had any trouble securing permission for the expenditure.”

“I see. Lucky for them, I suppose,” Milla said absently as she continued to take in the view.

“Definitely,” Stephanus nodded simply. “This was the only orbital place they had, at the time, with a gravity field. The construction was based out of the old International Space Station at the same time as the new orbital platforms were being built.”

Milla smiled, “that would provide the workers with a sense of home, I would imagine. It has been a long time since our ships were forced to travel without gravity. Even our small ‘fighter’ craft have gravity fields.”

Stephanus looked at her sharply, “Really? I would think that gravity fields would hamper the response times in a Fighter. We expand the field that provides us with antigravity to eliminate our own mass along with the fighters. No mass equals no inertia. Gravity is inconsequential once inertia is dealt with.”

Milla shrugged, ship design wasn’t really her specialty.

Steph sensed that she didn’t have anything more to say, so he just turned to look out over the rotating drums of the main habitats as they turned slowly below them.

*****

Sometime later, the conversation having started and stopped several times since they arrived at the observation deck, they were startled by the sudden blaring of the ship’s local PA system.

“Ithan Chans, if you wish to be present on the bridge during the transition you should make your way to the bridge now,” an unfamiliar voice said over the channel.

Stephanus, nodded reflexively and looked up at nothing as he replied, “All right, Commander Roberts, we’ll be heading straight there.”

“Very Good Lieutenant. The Captain is waiting.”

Stephanus grinned as he closed the connection, “translation…, get our backsides up there…, now.”

Milla smiled in response and the two of them headed back toward the lift, the clanking of their boots echoing through the room.

Chapter 11

Milla and Stephanus stepped onto the bridge while Weston was ordering for long range scans of the target system.

“Tachyon scanners powered up Captain. We should have preliminary telemetry in a few seconds.”

“Excellent Ensign. Send the data to helm, as it comes in.”

“Aye Sir.”

Weston turned and looked back at the two recent arrivals on the bridge, “ah, welcome back Milla. We’ll be transitioning out of this system in a few minutes. Ah, Stephanus, we should have just enough time for you to get to the hanger bay. I’ve scrambled the rest of the Angels.”

Stephanus stiffened to attention, quickly acknowledge the Captain, and pivoted on his heel and strode off the bridge quickly.

Milla looked after Stephanus and back to Weston curiously, “You are preparing your fighters for launch? Why?”

“Ithan Chans, whatever hit your people out here was remarkably efficient. We still haven’t determined why you survived, or even what they did to the rest of your ships out there. I won’t take unnecessary chances with my crew.”

Milla nodded quietly, she would be hard pressed to find fault in his position even if she had a say in the outcome.

Preparations on the bridge continued at a feverish pace as the tachyon telemetry came streaming back. Milla was shown to a seat that folded out of the rear wall of the room and was strapped tightly into it while the commotion on the bridge slowly wound down. Finally, with all the preparations finished, the Captain sat back and waited.

“Stephanus to the bridge.”

Weston leaned forward involuntarily when his friend’s voice came over the com, “yes Steph?”

“The Angels are ready to fly Captain, give the word and we’ll burn out of here.”

“Understood, standby Archangels.”

It was only at this moment that Milla realized what was bothering her. They act as if we’ll be in the Fuielles system within a few minutes. That system is days away, these people couldn’t possibly have that kind of ability?

Dimly she heard the Captain give the order to Engage and she forced her mind back onto the action on the bridge.

“Captain, forward spires have transitioned. The effect will overtake the bridge in thirty-two seconds.”

Effect? What effect? Thirty seconds later she found out. Milla just stared in horror as the bridge view screen vaporized, the particles spinning away into the emptiness of space.

This is madness! It wasn’t until the effect had overtaken the junior officers, spinning their atoms away into space that Milla came unfrozen. Her hands clawed at the restraints keeping her pinned securely to the chair as she tried in vain to loosen them, her panic mounting with each passing instant. Then almost the same second she had started clawing at her restraints she saw something that caused her to stop.

Captain Eric Weston was sitting in his chair, simply staring at the approaching maelstrom, and expression of slight distaste decorating his features but nothing more. She looked at him and was instantly calmed by his relaxed form.

There was something intangible about the man, as he sat there at the edge of the maelstrom, staring into the void.

She might not have been so calmed had she seen Weston’s bone white knuckles or the blood red holes he was drilling into his palms with his clenched fists, but she wasn’t supposed to see that and so she didn’t. Weston focused all his considerable willpower on projecting a command presence to everyone on the bridge, but the Transition effect took its toll on him, as well.

In a markedly different system over twenty lightyears away, the unique signature of the Odyssey reentering dimensional space began to unfold. Section by section and deck by deck, the big ship stepped down from the tachyon stream and rebuilt itself particle by particle.

Throughout the ship, its crew began the arduous steps needed to ensure that the ship had reintegrated the entire myriad of its systems successfully. On the flight deck, Stephanus ordered the first of the Archangel fighters into position on the ship’s catapults and had their backup take positions on the big elevators that separated the vacuum of the flight deck from the hangar bay.

On the bridge, the scene was much the same as elsewhere, with the notable exception of a very pale and, seemingly, very cold young woman strapped into her seat.

“Get the sensors back online, I need a full scan of the system,” Eric Weston snapped as crisply as his nauseated stomach would allow.

“Aye Sir. Full scan in three minutes Sir.”

Weston lanced back where he knew Milla would be, and quickly motioned a young Ensign over to check on her. As the young woman moved to respond to his order, Eric pulled another display forward and tapped in a command to echo the sensor displays.

Milla Chans looked up from her shivering self, as a warming hand was laid on her shoulder. The young woman looked at her with a gentle smile, “Are you okay, Ma’am?”

Milla looked up at the young woman who had stepped over to her, “That was among the most disturbing thing I’ve ever seen.”

The young woman smiled sheepishly, “yes Ma’am, the transition drive is hard to take. Here let me help you here.” She unlocked the restraint straps that held Milla in place and slipped them back into their rollers.

Milla pitched forward when the embrace of the straps was gone, but the woman caught her easily, expecting that. It took a few moments for the shivering and weakness to pass, and then Milla nodded slowly and began to move of her own accord.

Milla stood up and stretched of a moment, “thank you…?”

“Ensign Lamont Ma’am. Susan Lamont.”

“Thank you Susan. I am Milla.”

Ensign Lamont smiled, “I know. Most everybody on board knows your name by now Ma’am.”

Milla laughed silently, “I should have guessed that. A ship’s gossip network is always the most efficient system on board, no?”

Susan smiled ironically, shrugging, “Always has been as far as I know, Ma’am.”

Milla turned her attention back to the activities on the bridge; the Captain’s attention had been drawn to the incoming telemetry from the ships RADAR and LIDAR sensors. The main screen had come back online finally and Milla took a step closer to examine the diagram that had appeared on it.

She gasped quietly, mouthing opening into a round ‘oh’ of shock, and she stumbled forward, barely catching the back of the Captain’s command chair to steady herself. Behind her she, felt Ensign Lamont move up quickly, lopping an arm under hers, and bolstering her up, but she couldn’t seem too martial the presence of mind to thank the woman, or even throw her a grateful glance.

My God. It’s the Fuielles system.

It was impossible, but it was the Fuielles system that floated on those screens, outlined with red and blue lines by the computer. The Primary was a mid-sized yellow star, with eleven planets circling it. Milla stared in shock, taking an involuntary step forward and clutching at the chair back as she tried to find her voice.

“How?” Milla’s voice was soft floating on breath only a few feet, but her hesitant question caught the attention of Captain Weston.

He half turned and smiled at her, or perhaps the Ensign behind her, then gave Milla an apologetic look.

“I should have tried to explain it to you, but suffice to say our method of travel is somewhat faster than what you described in your story. Less pleasant I’ll bet though,” he finished with a wry grin.

“Yes, you could say that,” Milla said dryly, her stomach still churning as the memories of the event twisted at the back of her mind.

Eric nodded, seeing the emotion hidden in her eyes. The Transition Drive was perhaps one if not the most disturbing things he’d ever endured, certainly it was THE most disturbing thing outside of a battlefield. He took a breath as he glanced back around the bridge, then nodded and waved her closer.

Milla returned a few steps up to the chair that Eric had set up for her. The Captain smiled at her and tapped in a command into one of his smaller displays. A graphic appeared on it a second later and Milla blinked as she recognized the general outline of the Odyssey.

“Our system charges every molecule in the ship with a tachyon surge,” Eric Weston told her as the graphic surged with color, and the ship began to break apart. “Since Tachyon’s aren’t particularly fond of existing in this universe…”

He smiled crookedly, shrugging as the graphic vanished from the screen. “What happens is that we are actually broken down to sub-molecular components, which flash across the intervening space… When the Tachyon surge runs out of power…,”

The graphic on the screen reintegrated automatically.

“…so do we and we come to a stop. Hopefully, right on target,” Eric half smiled, “if we’ve done our calculations right.”

Milla nodded slowly, not really understanding the details in the slightest, but following the general principal easily enough.

“I’m told that the ship actually jumps instantaneously, the effect that we see is a result of a subjective time distortion,” Weston paused a moment, then smiled. “Of course that doesn’t make it any easier to handle the effect.”

“Fascinating,” She said, and she was fascinated. Instantaneous travel between star systems was an incredible achievement.

Beyond that, even, it flew in the face of everything she had ever been taught. It was supposed to be impossible, utterly and completely.

“We think so,” The Captain grinned. “We actually have a few theories about traveling like you do… well… something close anyway. The problem is that we can’t navigate at supra-light speeds, our nav computers aren’t fast enough.”

Milla simply nodded, she understood the problem. Navigating at faster than light speeds required Tachyon based computing systems, something these people hadn’t developed. Otherwise one was forced to constantly stop and start as one checked their position and, perhaps more importantly, the path one had chosen to ensure that it was clear of debris.

Remarkable, they couldn’t do it the easy way so they cut through the problem and made another option, Milla thought to herself, looking around the bridge of the starship just as something galvanized one of the men sitting ahead of her.

“Captain, readings are coming in from the long range scanners.”

“Report,” Weston’s attention snapped back to the task at hand.

Milla fell back a step, eyes still intent on the actions of the people around her, until she felt a hand on her shoulder and turned her head to see Ensign Lamont standing behind her.

“This way, Ma’am,” The young Ensign smiled, gesturing back to the chair. “You’ll be better off here.”

Milla nodded and allowed herself to be guided back as the people around her went to work.

*****

“Yellow Star, similar to ours. Eleven planets,” Ensign Waters pause a long moment as the data fed through his station, “no life signs, anywhere.”

Waters quiet statement froze most of the bridge, those without vital duties couldn’t help but spare a backward glance to the young woman seated at the back of the room. Milla had gone white, she couldn’t believe it. It wasn’t possible; the Fuielles system should have millions of people and enough life forms to have registered on even weak sensors from outside the system.

“You are mistaken,” her voice was firm.

Waters gulped and bent back to his station, rechecking the readings and directing the sensors more carefully at the systems planets.

“No Ma’am. There is a debris ring around the fourth planet that looks artificial, but no life signs. I… I’m sorry, Ma’am,” the young man said after a moment, his voice tense as his fingers automatically rechecked the numbers that the computers were sending him.

“Helm, plot a course to take us around the fourth planet. We’ll do a qui-” Eric began to say.

Weston was cut off by an exclamation from Ensign Waters, “Captain! There’s an object incoming on an interception course. Silhouette coming in now, sir.”

“Put it up, Mr. Waters,” Eric ordered his voice quiet yet firm.

Waters swallowed, tapping in the command, “Aye Sir.”

A moment later the dark silhouette of the approaching vessel was on the main screen. The ship read out as relatively small, only fifty meters or so, but it seemed to be pretty quick.

“Trying to get a clearer shot Sir, the material seems to be absorbing the LIDAR and RADAR signals.”

Weston nodded, “switch to the Tachyon sensors.”

“Aye Sir, but at this range they probably won’t be much better.”

Waters was proven wrong a moment later, when the silhouette on the screen snapped tightly into focus showing the ship in more detail. Weston was studying the vessel thoughtfully when he heard a sharp intake of breath from behind him and turned to see Milla’s face blanche.

As if I had to guess what that means, out loud Weston spoke calmly, as he half turned to face the visitor on his Bridge, “I take it you recognize the ship?”

Milla nodded dumbly for a moment, “It’s a Drasin reconnaissance vessel. The same type as the one we encountered after…”

After another star system was sterilized…, leaving only those things behind, Weston finished silently.

“Combat Alert. All crewmembers to their duty stations.”

The Captains voice rang out on all decks as the military crew of the exploration vessel snapped to their duties, going to full battle station alert in an instant. Commander Roberts slid into his station and began activating controls. Shudders ran though the Odyssey as armor plating slid aside from the weapons they protect and the ominous devices were freed from their captivity.

Eric nodded in satisfaction as he watched his people react smoothly to the situation, training kicking in as they brought the ship from a ninety percent stand down to full military power.

When he spoke his voice was calm and crisp, no hint of even the brief transition sickness that had been there minutes before. “Full power to the navigational deflectors. Waters, try to hail them. Commander, power up all weapon’s systems, get a passive lock on that ship. Don’t ping them, yet.”

“Aye Sir,” they both chorused as they bent to their tasks.

“Captain, we have a passive lock, but it’s only at eighty-three percent. The vessel isn’t radiating any tachyons, so a real time lock is impossible, unless we hit them with active Tachyon sensors. The computer is doing course estimations,” Commander Roberts reported a moment later, his voice showing exactly what he thought of the computers estimates.

“That’ll have to do for now Commander, Waters is there any response?” Eric asked calmly.

“Negative. No response to our hails. Initial sensor data is coming back, sir,” the Ensign said, sounding a little nervous as he leaned over his console.

“Send it to my station, Ensign.”

Weston turned his attention to the data feeding into his terminal, looking for any information he could use, to either prevent or win what looked to be an inevitable conflict. Frowning he looked at the data closer before realizing what had struck him as odd.

“Ensign, did you run this through the fractal imaging program? All I’m getting here are echoes.”

Waters stammered for a moment and re-examined the data himself, “what you have is correct, Sir. I don’t recognize the pattern. The material seems to be refracting the sensors. We can’t get a good scan.”

Weston cursed once under his breath, “that figures. Any response to the hails?”

“Still nothing, Sir… . Captain, they just increased their velocity…,” Waters sounded even tenser suddenly. “Sir! Sensors are reading an energy build-up from the same locus as the alien ship!”

“Ping them,” Weston’s voice echoed coldly across the bridge.

“Aye, Sir. Tachyon echo location going active.” A moment later, Waters voice continued, “we’ve locked their position into the combat systems.”

Waters stiffened at his console, reading the numbers that flashed past his eyes instinctively, “Incoming!”

“Launch drones! Sideslip two hundred meters to starboard!” Weston called up the intel that Waters was privy to. “Prepare to engage the enemy vessel. Give the Archangels the green light, and tell Commander Michaels, Godspeed.”

“Aye Sir.”

The Odyssey’s Cee-Emm field pulsed once as the navigation computers briefly transferred a large chunk of power into the generators, and fired up the maneuvering thrusters. The small, but powerful, thrusts pushed out from the port side and the big ship groaned and shuddered as its remaining mass objected to the maneuver.

The objections were futile though, as the big ship slid diagonally, away from its previous position, even as the blast shields that protected the enclosed flight decks rumbled open against the silent backdrop of space.

The Odyssey’s flight deck buzzed, as the Archangels screamed out into space, their twin reactors blazing as the nimble ships formed up and flew ahead of the Odyssey. The big ship’s thrusters burned hard, pushing the Odyssey to the side.

“We’ve slid by two hundred meters Sir, and the ‘Angels report that they’re forming up for a strafing run, on your command,” Roberts said.

“Good. Have them-” Weston began.

“Captain! The drones are gone, Sir! They just… vaporized…,” Waters muttered in shock, “I’m trying to compile the last few seconds of information that we got from them… It looks like they registered a very powerful energy signature intersecting our previous position.”

“Analyse it, Waters. I want to know what it was,” Weston told him, and then turned back to Roberts. “Have the Angels fly point for us, until further notice.”

“Aye Captain.”

Weston watched as Waters passed the data to the labs for analysis, and waited impatiently for the response. On the screen, the Archangels maintained their range from the Odyssey and Weston knew the pilots were waiting for his order to engage the fighter’s combat interface.

“Captain, the analysis is coming back. The energy signature is one of…,” Waters paused a moment before continuing, “a very powerful class one laser.”

“Class one? That’s it?” Weston’s expression was incredulous.

“Yes S… Sir,” Ensign Waters stammered a bit, “they’re pumping more power through the beam than I would have thought possible, but it’s still only a class one.”

“Adjust the forward armor plates to compensate and increase to combat velocity,” Weston touched a button with his thumb. “Weston to Stephanus,”

“Aye Captain?” The answer came back from the lead fighter.

“Ensign Waters is transmitting frequency data on the laser the bogy is using. Adjust your armor resonance and engage combat interface.”

“Aye Captain,” Stephanus switched over to the squadrons frequency a moment later, “Alright boys and girls, we’re clear for combat maneuvering. Engage the interface.”

Good natured groans sounded across the channel as a few of the pilots mock objected to the order, Stephanus himself hated pressing that button, but it had to be done. Depressing a small covered bottom on the side of his seat, Stephanus hissed in pain as two molecular thin needles snicked out of his helmet and enter the back of his neck on either side of his spinal cord.

The so called ‘Interface’ consisted of two very sensitive conductors that acted as neural sensors after they had penetrated to either side of the spinal cord. The needles themselves were thin enough that the specs claimed, an operator would barely able to feel the entry, though most pilots swore differently, and were certified not to cause undue damage to the nervous system.

In return, they continually monitored the pilot’s nerve endings, and interpolated gross motor functions into a sophisticated program that allowed the ‘Angel’s to very precisely adjust their maneuvers.

System initiation complete, Stephanus flexed his muscles carefully, trying not to think about the foreign objects in his neck, and turned back to the task at hand.

“Okay team, readjust the cam-plates to the frequency they sent over and give me a flying wedge in front of the Odyssey. Match her speed and bring all combat systems online,” Stephanus switched back over to his direct channel to Captain Weston, “we’re ready here Cap. You sure they’re only using class one’s?”

*****

Back on the Odyssey, Weston had been asking that question himself, “looks like it, Steph, all the scans match.”

Weston watched the tight formation of fighters on his screen shimmer as each of the sleek little craft altered their armor to reflect the laser frequency that the Odyssey had detected. Seconds later, the tightly formed squad had visibly shifted color to adapt to their enemy’s lasers.

Weston listened to Stephanus’ acknowledgment and then closed the channel, “Waters, what’s the estimated time to intercept?”

“Eighteen minutes sir, until then we can easily evade any shots they take,” the Ensign responded crisply, his nerves having either faded or been placed somewhere else, for the moment.

“All right, we wait,” Weston said, trying to sound calm as he watched the countdown to contact.

The tension rose on the bridge, as the clock ran down and the two ships closed the gap between them. Outside, the Archangel fighters maintained their formation as the rapidly approaching ship appeared on their less powerful scanners.

*****

Stephanus adjusted his scanners slowly, as more information was transmitted to his fighter’s onboard systems about the target. The enemy vessel had some way of scrambling most of the sensors they used on it, resulting in apparently random profiles and energy readings. The reaction on his fighter’s tachyon array was having the same issues as the larger one on the Odyssey. Neither system seemed capable of detecting the approaching vessel unless it varied from its course or, of course, powered weapons.

The pilot frowned; most materials had some tachyon signatures that could be used to get some type of lock, at almost any range. The incoming ship must not only be constructed of a material that was transparent to tachyons, but its energy systems must be incredibly well shielded as well, since energy fields normally disrupt local tachyon fields.

Stephanus’ fighter banked slightly as a course change was ordered by the Odyssey, the squadron all moved in unison as the big ship altered course behind them. The enemy intercept was less than five minutes out when their scanners picked up the smaller groupings of signals that erupted from the enemy ship.

“Weston to ’Angel Lead, we believe the target vessel has just launched fighters. Be warned they have adjusted their course again to intercept and are still not answering our hails.”

“Confirmed, Odyssey. Angel squadron has gone to combat maneuvering and is ready to provide cover,” Stephanus couldn’t help the rather large part of him that was eagerly waiting for this encounter. He already knew that the Archangels were best on Earth, now they were getting a chance to take on the neighborhood bully in a much bigger neighborhood.

“Odyssey, ‘Angel Lead is requesting permission to break formation with ’Angel’s two and three, to scout ahead.”

“Denied. Angel Lead, we’ll meet them together,” Eric Weston’s tone was dry, but Commander Steven ‘Stephanus’ Michaels recognized the old ‘follow orders you idiot’, admonition hidden under the tone.

“Yes Sir,” Stephanus sighed, it was worth a shot.

Three minutes to intercept.

Behind them all, at the back of the Bridge, Milla Chans had gone pale as she watched the intertwining of graphics on the sanitized computer screens in front of her. To her mind, part of it at least, they were already dead. The Drasin was faster than the fastest ship… No, they weren’t faster than this ship, she had to remind herself. However the Captain didn’t seem to have any intention of running.

It was insane. It was suicide. And yet she couldn’t manage to open her mouth to object to it. Part of her wanted to do nothing more than run and hide, lest the same thing happen to her and these people as had happened to her comrades before. Another part, however, wanted to do anything, even if it were futile, to kick the Drasin in the teeth.

She shivered, knowing of course that it wasn’t her choice to make.

At t-minus sixty seconds the Odyssey’s scanners began to go wild as they reported massive energy surges from the alien vessel’s general location. Before the crew could respond, the result of the power surge had already become evident.

The Odyssey shuddered slightly and the Bridge Crew stiffened in their chairs.

“Captain, we just took several direct hits. Class one lasers, all of them,” Water’s said tensely.

“Same frequency?” Weston had already called up for damage reports.

“Aye Sir. Minor damage to forward armor. Estimates say the forward armor reflected over ninety-eight percent of the power away from the Odyssey,” Waters frowned. “The two percent that was left was enough to ablate away several layers of armor.”

“Fine,” Weston hated to ask stupid questions, but he knew this one had to be asked, “Any chance those were comm lasers?”

“Negative Sir. Not unless they habitually use power levels consistent with a quantum thermal explosion for communicating with other species,” Waters replied dryly, then immediately flushed as he realized that he had just joked with his Captain.

Weston chuckled silently, “if they do then it’s probably safer to have them as enemies than allies.”

A soft round of laughter circled the bridge, killing a small amount of the tension, as Weston nodded firmly a second later and spoke aloud.

“All right, full power to the forward defence array. Inform me as soon as you have a clear lock on the target using standard sensors. And keep hailing them.”

“Aye Captain.”

Thumbing a control on the panel of his armrest, Weston opened a channel to Stephanus, “’Angel One, this is the Odyssey. You are clear to attack, keep your squad out of the fire zone between the Odyssey and the enemy Capital vessel. Good luck, Steph.”

Chapter 12

Stephanus felt the brief kick of the fighter’s acceleration push him back into the seat before the Cee-Emm stabilizer activated and the pressure equalized. He didn’t have to check, to know that the other fighters were still in perfect formation around him. They were all Archangels and that was all he needed to know. He had led them against more than one enemy group; he knew his people and he trusted them.

As the sleek fighters rocketed toward their target, the alien battle group took careful note of the approaching ships and casually sent a half squad to intercept the twelve incoming ships.

Stephanus blinked twice as he looked at his screens, “Four! They’re sending four fighters to intercept us?”

Archangel eight, a young man nicknamed ‘Brute’, was quick to respond, “Yeah, don’t seem hardly right. You’d think they would treat us with some respect…, at least in our first encounter.”

“Their loss, Brute. Let’s frag ‘em and leave the debris for someone else to worry about,” this from the fourth Archangel, a reckless woman who went by the, aptly chosen, call sign ’Flare’.

“’Angels three, four and eight, you’re with me. The rest of you stay on vector to intercept the aliens’ primary fighter group,” Stephanus banked hard, slipping out of the formation and accelerating toward the four hostiles coming after them.

The four fighters slipped easily into a tightly stacked diamond formation, the front and rear fighters offset vertically so they didn’t block each other’s shots. They approached the curiously shaped fighters the alien ship had sent to intercept them, each pilot trying to ride the edge of tension and relaxation that created the optimum reaction time.

The alien fighters, for their part, remained solidly on an intercept course for the bulk of the Archangel squadron and ignored the four fighters burning on vector, toward them.

“All right, I’m sending you your targets. Finish them fast and head back to the main group,” Stephanus figured that either the aliens were seriously underestimating them or they had something else up their sleeves.

The other Archangels acknowledge the order and locked onto their assigned targets, on Stephanus’ order they broke their diamond formation and flew in toward their individual targets.

Brute broke onto the tac-net seconds later, “I think they just locked on, sensors can’t confirm it, but my instruments just went nuts.”

“Roger that, stay clear and be ready to go evasive.”

Brute acknowledge quickly, but Stephanus could see his emotions echoed as clearly in his flying, as if he had a sign pointed at him saying ‘nervous’.

“Relax Brute, you’ll screw up your stabilizers flying like that,” Stephanus advised him firmly, noting the shaky flying with annoyance. Brute knew better than that.

Being nervous was fine.

Flying nervous was not.

Brute’s sheepish chuckle was echoed quickly in his flying as Archangel eight quickly smoothed out and resumed its original intercept course.

Steph smiled, “Better, Brute.”

On their scanners the Archangels watched as one of the alien vessels altered course, slightly toward them.

“You think he’s going to swat us?” Even Stephanus chuckled at the irreverent smirk he heard even over the tac-net.

The chuckle was cut off abruptly when Brute let out a shocked yell and his fighter rocked violently in space, “I’m hit! The cam-plate mods were useless!”

Commander Stephanus cursed under his breath, automatically linking his HUD into Brute’s systems and checking the other plane’s diagnostics. In a flash he found the problem.

“Brute! Calm down, have your system analyse the frequency and readjust. The fighter isn’t using the same frequency as the capital ship!” Stephanus watched the Archangel shudder in front of him, reading the fear and panic in the planes demeanor, just as he would have read it in the pilots face, at another time. The hit didn’t look bad; luckily Brute had managed to evade a continuous beam.

Stephanus tapped in a few commands, bringing his own Cam-Plate modifications up and then setting the computer to automatically control the system.

The original laser defence system became standard issue on all NAC aircraft after one of the prototype units successfully prevented Air force One from being splashed by an anti-missile laser, wielded by a terrorist group who had paid off the designer after the government cut his funding.

Ironically, the technology hadn’t started as a defence system at all, at least not in the conventional sense, but rather as an active camouflage system for tanks. The basic technology had been based on liquid crystal molecular shifts that occurred when an electrical charge was applied to the material. The Cam-Plate system used a series of nano-molecular constructs to shift the light absorption quality of the material, to blend it in with its environment.

The design was one of the great ‘eureka’ moments of the twenty-first century, though it would undoubtedly be forever shadowed by the development of Cee-Emm fields and the Transition Drive.

The nano-structures were incredibly efficient, and later tests determined that when they adjusted to a specific color, it was with far more precision than was actually required for mere camouflage. In fact, the nano-structures could alter the surface of the armor in such a way as to almost perfectly absorb, or reflect, any given frequency of light, and even many frequencies above and below the visible spectrum.

It was more effective to already have the enemy’s frequency programmed in than it was to rely on the computer to be able to detect, analyse, and adapt during battle conditions, but few enemies were quite so nice as to broadcast their laser frequencies.

Too bad.

So Stephanus and the rest of the Archangels would have to entrust their lives, yet again, to the computer’s adaptive capabilities.

Well, it’s better than nothing, Stephanus thought dryly as the program self-tested and flashed all green across the board, “All fighters, switch to auto-adapt combat programs.”

“O… okay.” Brute stammered a bit as his hands flew over the controls almost of their own volition, reacting instinctively, activating the analysis programs and algorithms that connected them to the plane’s armor plating.

Stephanus was relieved to see Brute’s plane smooth out as the computer adjusted its cam plates to reflect the incoming laser attack. He was considerably more relieved when Brutes wing stopped smoking as the automated repair system put out the small electrical fire and rerouted the areas circuitry.

“’Angel Lead, missile away.”

The rocket flared briefly under Stephanus’ wing and flew away from the plane accelerating fast toward the first of the enemy fighters. The alien ship had barely begun to react to the attack when the missile impacted and delivered its payload.

The oddly spherical explosion that was unique to zero gravity blinded both pilots and sensors for a moment before it cleared.

“’Angel Three confirm the kill,” Steph ordered calmly.

Archangel three, ‘Racer’, paused briefly to double check his sensors for his wing commander, “confirmed, nothing left but some dust.”

The Archangel’s growled in satisfaction.

None of them would admit it, but for a second there they’d actually been afraid that the aliens would prove to be juggernauts, somehow able to take everything they could throw at it and keep on coming.

Evidence that they weren’t, was the most welcome news the team had heard yet.

Stephanus grinned, “all right… Lock on and let fly. I’ll cover you from here.”

Stephanus listened briefly to the acknowledgment and watched the rapidly expanding contrails of the three fighters as they roared into the now, obviously, one-sided battle. Five minutes later, the battle was over and the four flyers were rocketing back to rendezvous with the main group.

Stephanus watched the small signals representing the combatants converge on his small screen, he knew that the ’Angels could handle the alien fighters in one on one, but they were outnumbered by the swarm that was preceding the alien capital ship.

*****

On the Odyssey’s bridge, Captain Weston watched the four lights blink off his tactical display, with no small amount of satisfaction. Good job, Steph.

“Commander Roberts, signal the Archangels main group and tell them to prepare for an artillery barrage. We’ll thin out their opposition for them,” He ordered, leaning forward slightly and designating corridors along the path between the Odyssey and the alien ship.

“Yes sir.”

A moment later the Commander turned back from his station, “they report ready, tactical is coordinating firing vectors with them now.”

“Good, tell them to fire for maximum effect, when ready,” Eric Weston said, sitting back calmly in his chair as his stomach churned and he watched the tiny lights that showed the Archangels, and wished that he was out there with them.

*****

Outside, the Odyssey’s primary laser array began to glow as the massive energy banks were charged, in preparation for the battle ahead. Seconds later the big weapons opened fire, aiming straight into the ranks of the Archangels, and beyond them, the enemy fighter craft.

As the powerful laser crossed the stellar void, the Archangel squadron split smoothly apart, allowing the powerful energy beam to slice through the space they had previously occupied. The enemy craft were not so fortunate.

A dozen of the small enemy fighters went up like matchbooks in a furnace, as the Odyssey’s big guns cut a swathe through their ranks. Most of the rest were caught in the explosions of their comrades, as the tight beam laser vaporized fighter after fighter with its lethal glare.

By the time Stephanus had rejoined his team, the Odyssey’s judicious use of its long range cannons had evened out the odds in the coming battle, considerably. With war whoops echoing across the tac-net, the Archangels plunged back into the fray, their weapons blazing as they engaged the enemy.

The silently screaming turbines of the Archangel squadron left rapidly, dispersing twin contrails of expanding plasma in the vacuum of space, as they roared through the Drasin fighters, wreaking havoc through the aliens’ formation as they worked to clear the path for the Odyssey.

One on one, it quickly became evident that the enemy fighters were no match for the Archangels and within minutes, Stephanus and his squadron had decimated the first wave of Drasin fighter craft. However, it soon became obvious to even the most gung-ho Archangel, that the Drasin learned from their mistakes.

The second wave of fighter craft came at the Archangels in trios, each Archangel suddenly faced with three enemy fighters. Stephanus was the first to realize the enemy’s primary reason for this method of assault or at least, the primary result.

“Watch it ‘Angels! Each ship uses a different laser frequency, so don’t count on the cam-plates to save you,” he snapped as he flipped his fighter in a barrel roll that dropped him under the line of fire of an enemy fighter. Invisible laser light scored space where he had been, but Steph just haloed the Drasin and flipped his fighter end for end as he loosed a missile up the alien’s plasma stream.

The explosion that followed tore the alien fighter to shreds, and Steph righted his plane quickly as he glanced around, “Stay with your wingmen! Don’t let them catch you alone!”

The tac-net echoed with replies from the others in his team, as Stephanus jigged his fighter into a tight roll, leaving two enemy fighter craft well behind. That still left him with one following tight to his six, however. Twisting the flight stick violently, Stephanus spun his plane around in a rapid spin, allowing the fighter’s inertia to continue pulling it along its previous course, and smoothly swinging his guns onto the alien craft. Hunter became hunted in a short handful of seconds, before Stephanus squeezed tight on the firing stud, turning the enemy fighter into a cloud of rapidly expanding debris.

Many of the other Archangel’s weren’t faring so well, Stephanus could see the drifting fuselage of three of his squad floating dead in space.

Thank god the cockpits were all ejected. He pushed thoughts of those drifting hulks from his mind, as the two Drasin fighters he had lost earlier swooped back onto a pursuit course with him. He quickly found himself hard pressed to avoid the criss-crossing lasers that dogged his fighter through his desperate evasions.

Sweat was beading above his eye, when the second Drasin vessel suddenly went up in a blaze of blue-white flames.

“Thought you might need a hand, Stephanus,” he heard the grin in Flare’s voice as Archangel Four slid alongside him for a moment before the remaining Drasin moved in for another pass.

“Break on three Flare, he can’t follow us both.”

“Roger that, Stephanus.”

The two sleek fighters paralleled each other for a moment longer before breaking hard away from each other and leaving the Drasin fighter to follow its original target, Stephanus.

“Anytime you’re ready, Flare!” Archangel Lead rocked quickly back and forth as incoming fire from the Drasin ship swept along its wingtips.

“Just lining him up, boss man.” Flare’s fighter dropped smoothly into position behind the Drasin ship, her vertical thrusters flaring as she bellied in on its six, giving him mere seconds to register her presence before the four linked laser cannons on her wings glowed briefly. Seconds later, a charred and drifting fighter was left in the place of the bogy who had been hunting Stephanus.

Stephanus thanked his savior briefly, before turning his attention back to the battlefield. The Archangels had acquitted themselves well in the battle, but the sheer force of numbers was quickly beginning to wear them down. He knew that if something didn’t happen soon things would go from bad to disastrous.

He needn’t have worried.

Captain Eric Weston had commanded the squad long enough to realize their limits.

A shadow passed over his cockpit, as the bulk of the Odyssey slid into the dogfight, its short range weapons blazing as they intercepted enemy missiles and fighters alike. Within moments the battle had been turned to a rout as the enemy fighters peeled off and fled back to their carrier.

Chapter 13

“They’re firing again. Minimal damage effect. The cam-plate modifications are holding.”

Captain Weston nodded, he hadn’t expected anything else. The Capital ship’s lasers were only Class One, so they couldn’t adjust the beam frequency without severe modifications; the fighters however, worried Weston.

“Have all local defence weapons continue to fire on the enemy fighters,” he ordered. “Then lock onto the Drasin mother ship and prepare to fire.”

“Aye Captain,” Waters replied. “I have telemetry coming back from our targeting laser systems now, Sir.”

“Good,” Eric replied. “Send the numbers to the computer and have it adjust the heterodyne frequencies of our main array to match the highest absorption level we can hit.”

“Yes Sir,” the young man grinned nastily, sending the command and data into the computers with a flick of his wrist.

It only took the computer moments to analyse the return bounce off the laser they had painted the enemy ship with, carefully filing away various snippets of information about its molecular structure, heat expenditure and perhaps most importantly, frequency absorption rates.

Then the computer took that information, sent it to the main laser array, and adjusted the frequencies of the primary heterodyne coils to produce what should be an energy beam that would induce massive critical failure in the chosen target.

However, in the short time while that was happening, something outside changed.

“Captain! We’re reading…,” Waters began to speak; jolting in his seat as his displays went haywire for a second, then went totally dead.

Weston tried to say something, but his breath suddenly caught in his throat and he clutched at his chest in shock, as a sweeping wave of dizziness dropped him to one knee. Around him the same thing was happening to the others on the bridge, and through the ship the scene was the same.

And, in the space of seconds the NAC Odyssey was drifting, unguided in space, her crew dropping to the deck plates like the proverbial flies.

*****

“Jesus H. Christ, Steph… What the hell is that?” Brute asked in shock as the Archangels broke wide, circling back around.

The battle with the fighters was all but won, when the enemy cruiser entered into the picture. The enemy ship had closed with the Odyssey, while the Archangels had turned and burned with their alien counterparts and using that damned stealth signature of theirs, had managed to get closer than anyone in the flight group had realized.

As the Archangel’s swept back around, they could see a spectacular sight, something straight out of a sci-fi film, greeted their eyes.

A crackling beam of energy had joined the two massive ships, a scene that Milla would have recognized in an instant, had she not been trapped in the embrace of the Drasin weapon. As the beam wreaked its havoc on the Odyssey, the Archangels soon found themselves under heavy attack again, as their artillery support drifted uselessly past.

Commander Michaels didn’t see any other options so he immediately made his decision and kicked the fighter he had strapped onto his back up a few more notches, “Archangels. Form up on me!”

Around him the rest of the flight team responded in kind, forming up smoothly behind him as they swept out and around, skirting the edge of the enemy range, just before turning back into the fires.

Stephanus’ voice rang out over the tacnet. “Team’s two, three, and four cover us from the fighters. Team one, you’re with me. Time for a strafing run on the big boy.”

Acknowledgments echoed across the net as the Squad broke up into teams and whirled in at the enemy fighters, weapons blazing. Stephanus’ team broke through the enemy formation and centered on the source of the energy beam that was assaulting the Odyssey.

“Team One. Fire at will.”

The enemy cruiser grew to massive proportions as they rocketed down toward its surface, pulling up at the last moment as their weapons blazed and skimmed along the armor plates. The three fighters’ missiles, lasers, and cannon fire, lit up the local vacuum with a blazing light. They ripped along the surface of the big ship, skimming the mottled black and violet hull. Semi-spherical explosions erupted in the wake of the four Archangels, shuddering through the big Drasin ship with destructive energy.

“No good! It’s too big; we’ll have to try hitting it, en mass!” Stephanus yelled over the screaming warning alarms that jangled in his cockpit.

The Archangels who had been covering ‘team one’ broke from the dogfight and accelerated suicidal fast, toward the enemy capital ship. They knew that there was no point in holding back now.

Lose this fight and there was no going home.

“We’re with you Lead, call the shot!” The anticipation in Flare’s voice brought a wide grin to Stephanus’ face; she was always the first in and the last out. Stupid girl.

“Target the center of that energy disturbance; give it everything you’ve got!” He snapped, flipping up all the remaining safeties from his firing studs.

No holds barred, the eight remaining Archangels swept in on the enemy energy weapon, all guns firing with desperate fervor. Behind them the enemy fighters were hot in pursuit, trying to destroy the ’Angels, before they could accomplish their task. As the Terran fighters swept away from the target it, became painfully obvious that they had failed.

Despite their best efforts, the energy maelstrom still connected the Odyssey with the Drasin mother ship.

The silence on the tacnet was broken a long moment later. “Cover me, boss man. I have an idea.”

Stephanus snapped his head around in time to see Flare’s fighter peel off from the rest, plunging back through the enemy fighters and towards the Drasin vessel. “Flare! What are you doing?”

Not receiving a reply, Stephanus cursed to himself and reluctantly backed the brash woman’s play. “All right everyone. Cover her!”

The remaining Archangel’s fell into a loose formation and plowed after the errant flyer, letting loose with their few remaining missiles to clear the small fighters from her path. The lone fighter was well ahead of them, by the time Stephanus realized her intentions and if it had been anyone else he would have ordered her back again. He knew that any such order would go unheeded by the hotheaded, young woman.

So, gritting his teeth at the sudden feeling of impotence, he watched his fellow ’Angel, accelerate into the jaws of the lion and wished her luck, as he followed his own instructions and started haloing enemy fighters and opening up with everything his fighter had.

The rogue fighter broke through the enemy’s defences, its cam-plate’s shimmering with iridescent ripples as the onboard computer tried valiantly to reflect the incoming fire. Stephanus didn’t know what was keeping the armor active, he’d have expected it to have been long overwhelmed by this point, but Flare seemed to have a higher power flying on her wing. Fighting the damaged thrusters on her plane, Flare kept the reeling aircraft on a direct course for the alien weapon emitter that was holding the Odyssey, in its clutching grasp.

Samantha Marie Clarke, call sign ‘Flare’, second generation Archangel, and general pain in her superior’s posterior, overrode the safety systems and threw full power to the Cee-Emm field, even as she slammed her throttle full up.

The fighter accelerated from just under .1c, relative velocity, to almost .85c in about a second and a half.

Flare died before the first quarter second passed, even the Cee-Emm field being unable to keep her from being crushed by the sudden acceleration, but her fighter continued on, slamming into the enemy’s capital vessel at relativistic speed.

The explosion that followed tore through the enemy ship, ripping its weapon mount from the hull in a single instant, and terminating the attack on the Odyssey.

*****

Groans echoed across the bridge of the Odyssey, as they did across the entire ship, as the crew began to struggle up from their fallen positions and retook their stations.

“Put the alien vessel on screen,” Weston was having trouble swallowing, his mouth felt like it had been packed in cotton and his lips were dry and chapped.

“Aye sir.”

Weston heard the dry rasp from Lt Daniels and assumed that his symptoms were far from unique. The screen flickered and showed the alien ship, a tall plume of flame marking a gaping wound in the ship’s hull.

“Sir, we have a signal coming in from the Archangels!”

“Tell them to hold on that for a moment and clear away from the alien ship. Target that ship with all weapons, fire at will.”

The barrage of cover fire the Archangels had provided for Flare had deteriorated into a vengeful blaze of fire that swept alien fighter craft from existence. A blaze that Stephanus found himself angrily reluctant to end, but finally, he signalled the others.

“All Archangels break off. Full burn. We have to get clear so the Odyssey can use the Pulse Torpedoes,” Stephanus was angry but he was still a military man and the best path to victory was following orders.

Not extracting revenge.

And the Archangels, in turn, were all soldiers.

They broke off.

Not happily, nor enthusiastically, but they broke off.

As the Archangels swept past the Drasin vessel, putting the enemy between them and the Odyssey, the big guns of the Earth vessel opened up. Blindingly fast bursts of pure white light marked the passage of the Odyssey’s pulse torpedoes, almost impossible to follow with the human eye. Yet, even before those lethal pulses left their firing tubes, white hot holes were already appearing in the alien hull as invisible radiation from the Odyssey primary laser array poured a hellish heat into the Drasin vessel.

Milla stared in shock at the screen, as the Drasin ship was dismantled in a manner of seconds, its hull reduced to a handful of fused slices of unrecognizable material. The remaining fighters were mopped up by a combination of the Archangels precision maneuvers and the judicious application of the Odyssey’s pinpoint defence systems.

In one furious moment, the Odyssey had managed what her own people had failed to do in hours of battle.

Ithan Chans of the Colonial Navy felt a numb shock spread through her, as she looked to the screens and just slumped into the seat she had been given.

And then it was over.

Captain Weston thumbed a command when it became obvious that the battle had ended, “Shuttle’s three and four, prep for SAR and salvage operations. Shuttle one will prep for planetary SAR,” Weston turned to look at his first officer, “Mr. Roberts, have Major Brinks prepare the planetary expedition. Inform him that I want him to take a full Special Forces contingent and whatever else he thinks he might need.”

Roberts snapped to attention, “Yes Sir.”

On his way out he noticed Milla out of the corner of his eye, “Sir, permission to bring our guest along? She could be helpful, if they find any survivors.”

Weston looked at Milla, judging the look in her face and the tense nod she sent in his direction. “Granted. Be careful.”

“Yes Sir,” Roberts motioned Milla off the bridge, “this way, Miss.”

“Commander,” Weston said quietly, but it brought the Commander up short.

“Yes Sir?”

“Have two Carnivore drones included in the shuttle payload,” Weston ordered.

Roberts nodded, “Aye Sir.”

Roberts led Milla off the Bridge as Weston turned back to the bridge staff, “Someone dig out those sensor records and get the labs to figure out what the HELL we just got hit with!”

Roberts followed Milla off the bridge and led her down the corridors to the lift, calling for the flight deck when they were standing in the small pod. Tapping his induction mic, Roberts began giving orders as the lift sped to its destination.

“Major Brinks, gather your men and report to the flight deck for a SAR mission. Standard equipment, plus full environmental gear. Tell Lieutenant Savoy that his team has been activated and have them report with you.”

Milla never heard the confirmation that apparently satisfied the tall, black man that she found herself with. Commander Roberts was an enigma to her, her ship didn’t have his equivalent. Oh, they certainly had a first officer on board, that was a given, but Roberts’ entire manner was alien to her. She had never seen anyone quite as disciplined as this man who stood beside her, his entire manner spoke of control. Control of himself, his environment, and everyone around him.

They remained silent as the lift arrived at its destination. Milla shifted uncomfortably under the Commander’s scrutiny. The lift doors opened to reveal the shuttle bay, and the chaotic flurry of activity around the three large trans-atmospheric craft, Milla had seen earlier. For a moment she found herself looking around for the sleek craft that Stephanus had shown her before, and she realized that they had been outside fighting the Drasin.

The Commander led her across the huge room, veering toward a shuttle that seemed to have attracted more than its fair share of the attention. Gathered around its base there was a large group of men in addition to the technicians she saw mulling around, men whose uniforms didn’t match any that she had seen on board so far.

As they approached one of the men broke from the group, marching out to meet them. “Commander,” the man snapped a salute to Roberts. “My team is good to go. Lieutenant Savoy and his geek squad are packed up and already on board.”

Roberts looked at the man in surprise. “That was fast Major.”

“Not really, Sir. It was anticipation,” Major Wilhelm Brinks, formerly of the United States Air Force, smiled dryly. “Rumors trickled down to us after we arrived in-system; we knew there was a good chance of another SAR. Savoy’s equipment was already down here, so when you called for his team, we just packed their gear, while Savoy assembled his squad.”

Roberts nodded approvingly, “All right, inform your men that you’ve drawn ground duty. We don’t have much data on the planet, so do a few orbits of the planet. We’ve been informed that it is supposed to have some people living on it.”

The three of them had begun to walk toward the shuttle, “Supposed to have?”

Roberts’s expression became grim, “sensors didn’t pick up anything except some residual energy readings that happen to match our playmates weapons fire. We might get something when we get in closer…”

“Any chance of Tangos?” Brinks asked softly, voice pitched low as he considered the situation.

“If it’s like the last one?” Roberts just shrugged with a slight nod.

Brinks nodded silently as the trio marched toward the shuttle and the waiting people. As they arrived, Milla saw the row of men with the odd uniforms snap into a rigid stance, their hands snapping up into a salute, like Brinks had given to Roberts. A moment later, Roberts returned the salute and they dropped their hands to their sides, standing at attention.

Commander Jason Alvarez Roberts looked over the rather motley crew he was faced with. He was aware that each of them was handpicked, the best of the best, of the various Special Forces Groups that had cropped up by the start of the third World War. Army Rangers, Marine Force Recon, Navy Seals, Joint Task Force Two, et cetera et cetera.

Each man chosen for being the best his unit could field.

Only one problem, Roberts thought with a carefully hidden frown. They weren’t, yet, more than the sum of their parts. They weren’t the well-oiled teams that each man had been plucked from, and it showed even in how they stood at attention.

He took a breath, stepped forward and nodded to the men.

“I’m certain that the Major has informed you of the situation, so I’m not going to add anything that you don’t already know. You’re going to do a SAR recon of the planet…, if you pick up any signs of survivors, you’re going to do your best for them. If you kiss dirt, watch each other’s backs and you’ll all come back alive. Hear me!?”

There was an interspersed return from the soldiers that varied from a ‘we hear you, Sir!’ to a roughly uttered, ‘Huah!’ Roberts sighed as quietly as he could, not because of any lack of enthusiasm, nor because their replies were wrong, but simply because he would have preferred if they had all replied as one.

*****

Milla and Brinks held back while Roberts spoke to the men briefly, then finally stepped back and nodding to Brinks.

Brinks nodded back, and turned to address his team, “you heard the man! Double check that your gear is all accounted for, then strap in. We’re going for a little ride.”

Brinks watched with satisfaction as his team smoothly broke up, heading to the equipment they had just packed up to make certain it was all intact. He turned to Milla and looked her up and down appraisingly.

“It was hard to find a fit for you and we don’t carry a lot of this stuff in your size. If you’d follow me,” he said, politely but firmly.

Milla followed the man to a locker on the far side of the bay, where he pulled out an armored suit, similar to the one he wore. She looked at it warily, “do I have to wear this?”

Brinks smiled, “You’ll be glad of it, soon enough. It is standard issue for entering hazardous areas. It’s what we call a ‘Firm Suit’, completely sealed environmental gear that can withstand pressures from near vacuum to fifteen standard atmospheres, without endangering the wearer. It also has a few other gadgets packed tightly into it that could save your life.”

Brinks looked her over for a second while Milla looked back, she was surprised to see the rather rugged looking man flush slightly and turn away, “one moment, Miss… I’ll have a female officer help you get suited up.”

Milla watched in confusion as the Colonel cleared the locker room, and stepped out himself. She looked down at the armor in hand, puzzling over the hard material it was constructed out of. Unless she was missing her guess, it was made of some sort of ceramic material, though she couldn’t be certain.

“Ma’am?”

Milla looked up, slightly surprised to see a female dressed in the same hard armor, looking at her from the door. “Yes?”

The woman smiled slightly, “I’m here to help you suit up.”

“Oh,” Milla nodded, “All right…”

The woman looked at her and she looked back for a moment, before she saw the armored woman roll her eyes and let out a soft chuff of amusement, “oh for… Look, I’m Jaime…”

Milla looked down at her extended hand before she slowly took it, “Milla.”

“All right, Milla,” the woman smiled, then waved her hand. “I’m afraid that you’re going to have to lose the clothes.”

“Pardon?”

“The clothes,” Jaime repeated. “You can’t wear those in a battle-suit. It’ll screw up the monitors and get real messy, if we’re stuck planet-side for too long.”

Milla was about to repeat her last word, but realization clicked in.

Of Course! She felt like slapping herself for a moment as she realized that the suits were much like her own Spacer Gear. You could be in it for hours, even days depending on the situation, and wearing clothing would prevent certain key functions.

Or at least render them disgustingly messy.

Milla shuddered, but quickly began to shuck her borrowed clothing, looking at the armor with a new eye.

*****

A short while later, Jaime led a tentative Milla out of the locker area and back into the hanger. Surprisingly she found that despite its armor hard exterior, it was fairly comfortable to wear and somehow, she didn’t feel encumbered by the bulky clothing. Though she grimaced, the burning sensation left from connecting its various plumbing connections aren’t something to be enjoyed. Thankfully that was going away quickly; otherwise the armor would be hellish beyond belief.

“It’s lighter than it looks,” Brinks said, when he noticed her look of surprise. “Has to be, otherwise it’d be a hindrance.”

Milla nodded, “it is…” She gingerly tried moving, “…, but, it feels strange to move in.”

Brinks nodded, a knowing expression on his face, “the legs and arms have a series of nano-fibre enhancements. They take some getting used to, but they’ll add about five hundred kilos to your lift capacity and let you jump about forty feet, vertically. Take care though, your step will be a little energetic until you get used to them, so you’d best start now.”

Milla bit her lip as she found out what Brinks meant, a simple step had catapulted her two feet off the deck and landed her face first into a bulkhead. Groaning from the floor, she slowly bent her legs under her and tried to rise to her feet. Instead of slowly rising from the deck, she snapped straight up, stopping only after her feet were six inches off the floor. Landing roughly on the balls of her feet, she balanced herself precariously on her toes while her right arm flailed around, looking for something to steady herself with.

“Whoa! I said take it slow,” Brinks reached out and grabbed her outstretched arm, steadying the young woman with a firm hand. “You practically have to relearn how to walk with these things. The fibres make for a fun step. Don’t make any sudden movements.”

Milla began to shuffle along, as Brinks continued his explanation and impromptu tutorial, “The suit is adaptive. It’ll learn to anticipate how much strength you actually need, but until it maps your habits, you’d better just scuff your feet. Okay?”

“O… okay,” she replied.

Slowly, the young woman progressed from shuffling movements to actual steps, she knew that the suit would undoubtedly prove useful, but it would be difficult to master. Watching the similar suited men over by the shuttle, she marvelled at the apparent ease of their motions.

Roberts walked over from checking the shuttle, “how is she handling the suit, Major?”

“Better than I did when I first tried one,” Brinks smiled, patting Milla’s armor on the shoulder.

He apparently decided that his comment needed some explanation, judging from the look on her face and he shrugged, “I decided to see how good the system actually worked. Put my head through a two-inch scaffold and woke up in a hospital room with a concussion and a purple heart.”

Milla smiled weakly, not understanding how he’d injured his heart, or why it would be purple, but she nodded and continued to walk painfully across the shuttle bay. The suit’s nano-fibres combined with the lack of gravity in the large room, forced Brinks to follow closely behind her and occasionally pull her back down, so the magnetic clamps on her boots could reconnect to the floor.

“Let’s get onto the shuttle the rest of my team is packing the last of the gear now. Once that’s done, we’ll be heading out,” Brinks said after a moment, as much to get his charge safely strapped in, where a null-grav leap wouldn’t wind up breaking her neck.

“Okay, I’ll be glad to sit still for a while,” Milla replied, relieved at the prospect of a chance to sit still and try to assimilate the new skills that she had to master.

*****

Strapped firmly into a tight fitting bolster seat, Milla looked around the interior of the shuttle at the other occupants. She found herself studying the men, as they strapped themselves down into their own bolsters, cinching the four inch wide straps so tightly that they couldn’t move an inch in any direction.

Their uniforms, she noted, varied slightly from the one that Brinks had given her. The main difference was a crumpled bundle of green cloth strapped tightly to some of their shoulders, black cloth on others, and some with no cloth at all. Milla couldn’t fathom what purpose the bundles might serve and was baffled in her attempt to divine, why some of them didn’t have any cloth at all, to say nothing of the color differences.

The first vibrations of the shuttle’s movement shook her from her observations, for a long moment, she didn’t understand the casual demeanor of the flight crew. They weren’t even looking at their controls. Then she realized that the shuttle was dropping out of the shuttle bay through some massive airlock, it wasn’t until the big elevator shuddered to a halt, that the flight crew turned their attention to the job at hand.

“Shuttle One to Odyssey command, requesting clearance on deck two,” the pilot, Milla assumed, spoke softly as she flipped a bank of switches over and illuminated the projected Heads Up Display, or HUD.

The woman sitting behind the shuttles controls had become a consummate professional, reading of the pre-flight checklists and requesting clearance for departure with efficient, clipped tones.

“Confirmed shuttle one. You are cleared for departure on deck two. Good hunting, Samuels.”

The anonymous voice from the control was the signal the crew was waiting for and a moment later, the shuttle was thundering off the deck, slamming Milla sideways into her bolster seat. Seconds later, the nimble little craft roared free of the confines of the Odyssey flight deck and into space.

“Odyssey Command, this is Shuttle One en route to the fourth planet,” Jennifer Samuels said with an easy drawl as she adjusted the course and trimmed down the thruster control.

The shuttle banked lightly and shifted its course toward the fourth planet, its four powerful engines blazing brightly, as the little ship accelerated. Behind them two more shuttles blasted clear of the Odyssey’s flight deck, banking tightly in the opposite direction toward the drifting debris that was once a Drasin capital ship and the flashing beacons of the fallen Archangels.

The fourth planet came rapidly into view, forcing the shuttle to decelerate and alter its course to orbit the barren world. Samuels brought the shuttle into a polar orbit, trying to evade the debris ring that made the equatorial orbit treacherous. Even so light shudders swept through the craft, as the deflectors shouldered bits of debris away from their path.

“Okay, I’m going to start a fast series of orbits to see if the scanners can pick anything up. Lieutenant Savoy, get that portable tachyon array aligned with the shuttles sensor column, so we can scan for modulated signals,” Jennifer Samuels called over her shoulder as she maneuvered the shuttle into a fast orbit of the world.

“Aye aye, Ma’am,” the Lieutenant said as he unsnapped his restraints and floated over to his gear.

It was on the ninth orbit that Savoy succeeded in isolating an encoded signal from the planet’s surface, after a few minutes of puzzling over the code he was startled by a voice from behind his ear. It was the first and only signal they’d received from the planet that looked like life, with the exception of a few of the insect like things that seemed preoccupied with whatever it was that they did on a conquered planet.

“It is a distress signal. Their equipment must be badly damaged though, because we should have picked it up before we left your ship,” Milla was looking over his shoulder at the signal form that was on the sensor display.

“You’re certain?” This was from Major Brinks, who had noticed Milla’s interest in the signal and listened for her judgment.

“Yes.”

Brinks looked at her for a long moment and nodded.

“All right. Jennifer?” Brinks waited until Lt Samuels cocked her head slightly in acknowledgment, never taking her eyes of her instruments, “launch the Carnivores, then take us down to the source of this signal we’ll do a land search for survivors.”

“Aye Sir.”

Chapter 14

The delta-shaped shuttle descended through the planetary atmosphere quickly, cutting a blazing swathe through the sky, as it homed in on the source of the distress signal they had detected from Orbit.

Samuels levelled it out, over a desiccated forest. The small craft banked into a light turn, heading for what appeared to have been a clearing, amidst the forest they were flying over. A clearing that had a squat structure standing squarely in the middle, a structure that was the source of the signal.

Lt Jennifer Samuels gently brought the chunky craft into a hover over a section of the desiccated forest, a short distance from the clearing. “Major, we’re going to need a landing area cut out or else this is going to be a mighty short rescue.”

“Master Sergeant!” Brinks snapped.

“Sir!” One of the smallest men on the shuttle snapped, half rising from his seat as his restraints popped free.

“Deploy four men with cutters. Have them clear a space one hundred meters in diameter for shuttle one,” Brinks told him, as he slid behind a console and accessed the Carnivore information stream.

“Yes Sir,” the Master Sergeant snapped, spun, finger picking four men, seemingly at random. “You heard the Major! Cutters out, we’re kissing dirt, boys!”

*****

The belly of the shuttle slid open and four repelling lines dropped down, followed quickly by four figures, tiny in relation to the delta-shaped mass above them, smoothly sliding down the fifty foot drop, into the dry timber beneath them.

“Okay, we’re clear,” the figures looked up as an equipment crate began slowly descending toward them.

Two of the figures gently guided the swinging crate to a steady landing, while the two others began a sweeping survey of the area, their weapons held at ready. Within minutes the crate was opened and the contents were assembled into two laser cutters, just small enough to be wielded by hand.

“Shuttle one, the cutter team is beginning procedure.”

Powerful lasers sliced through the dry timber of the dead wood, the invisible beams set so high that they vaporized the material so quickly, that it wasn’t given the chance to burn. Foot by foot the timber was quickly and roughly sliced and left where it fell. The two cutters moving onto the next one. In less than a half hour, a circular area over one hundred meters in diameter had been cleared of all upright obstructions.

Above them, two Carnivore drones almost lazily orbited the area, extending the shuttle’s sensors by over a thousand times, as they kept careful watch on the new inhabitants of the planet.

The Drasin, as Milla insisted on calling them, appeared to be much like drones from an ant colony back on Earth, Brinks noted once again as he watched the surveillance information, while the shuttle hovered on its Cee-Emm assisted jets.

They appeared to be dismantling a population center, about a hundred and fifty kilometers north of the shuttle’s location, much the same way Milla reported they had in the previous system they had conquered, but with far fewer numbers.

Major Brinks had the drones make an estimate on the visible drones and shunted the information to the shuttle’s computer for comparison to the previous data. It would probably be useful, he decided, to see how they work from an earlier point.

He puzzled slightly over the signals he was getting though, because they weren’t registering as living beings, according to the software he was using. This explained why they didn’t show up on their long range sensors of course, but didn’t help him much in trying to determine what they were.

Living beings had certain side effects on their environment that could be measured from a distance. It wasn’t an exact science unfortunately, but it was the best they could do. A laser, for example, could be reflected off the atmosphere and return a chemical analysis of the planet to the long range sensors.

Certain concentrations were a good indication of life.

Carbon dioxide for one was a common by-product of living beings, at least from Earth’s history. So one could look at the CO2 levels in the atmosphere and use it to make a guess. Levels within certain parameters may mean life signs, especially when corroborated with other sensor returns, like a certain oxygen content, and even signs of certain pollutants. If the CO2 range was ridiculously high or low, it was a probably sign that life wasn’t present.

At least that’s how the Odyssey’s current life-science programs were developed.

Unfortunately, it was rapidly becoming obvious that they weren’t quite up to the task of looking for non-human life.

This world, for example, was throwing almost all the readings off the scale. The CO2 readings were on the low side, though close enough to be within limits, especially if the world were a sparsely populated agrarian world, as Milla had suggested. However the O2 levels were rapidly dropping, and the resultant chemical shift in the atmosphere was red-shifting a lot of his readings.

The Insect things, Drasin, didn’t even register until the Carnivore Drones got close enough to detect motion. This meant that they weren’t built like humans at all.

This, in turn, meant that the Major was going to have to get on the Life-Sciences lab boys butts, to turn out a new program that DID read the little insect buggers.

More work, he grumbled wryly to himself, as he watched the drones gather in all the data they could.

For the moment, though, all he cared about was that they were a long distance away from where he and this team were.

*****

The shuttle slowly lowered itself into the cleared area, its big landing gear shattering the remains of the cleared forest, as the full weight of the twenty meter craft came down. As the heavy craft settled on its gear, a long gang plank slowly lowered, allowing the soldiers inside to quickly step down and assemble at the base of the shuttle.

“Sir, the signal source is three hundred meters, that way,” Master Sergeant Kail growled out, pointing off to the west as he addressed the Major.

“All right. Sargent, detail two men to stay behind and guard the shuttle, the rest of us are moving out to check the source of the distress call,” Brinks ordered firmly, grabbing his pack and dropping its braces into the mounting points, built into his suit.

Kail nodded and waved two of his men over to stand guard at the shuttle’s lowered lift platform, then joined the Major and the rest of his team, as they left the shuttle and headed towards the clearing; they had spotted from the air. Traveling through the remains of the forest wasn’t difficult, in spite the tightly woven embrace of the branches they encountered. A swipe of a machete or, more often, simply their hands would snap the brittle wood into splinters and clear the path for the marching soldiers.

Milla struggled to keep up with the group, but found that the peculiar qualities of the suit they wore were considerable different, when gravity was present. Practically every second step, she found herself stumbling over an upturned root, or stepping into a shallow depression and nearly falling into the man ahead of her. Only the presence of Major Brinks and Corporal Curtis kept her on her feet and moving forward with any reasonable degree of progress. In between falls, she noticed with a certain level of chagrin that the others moved easily and fluidly in their suits apparently using the properties to maintain a steady pace that quickly ate away at the distance between them and their destination. By the time they arrived in the small clearing, Milla was sweating heavily and exhausted from the pace, yet none of the others were breathing more than normal or had even broken a sweat.

Jaime leaned over her, as she doubled up in the clear, helping support her balance as Milla drew deep, ragged breaths, “the first march in these things are always tough. I’ve seen men used to eight hour quick-time marches get worn out in ten minutes of trying to walk in one of these.”

Milla looked up at him in between breaths, “how long does it take to get used to this armor?”

Brinks smiled wryly, glancing back at them over his shoulder. Milla couldn’t see his smile though, as it was hidden behind the shimmer of his armor’s face plate. His words however, came through loud and clear, “oh, usually a soldier figures it out after a three day forced hike through rough terrain. I think we’ll try to spare you that ordeal though.”

“Thank you,” she muttered dryly, along with a word that the translators screwed up. “I do not believe I could take one day of this torture, let alone three.”

Brinks shook his head, his knowing expression wasted on those who couldn’t see it. “You’d figure it out. Once they get the hang of it, most soldiers can maintain a full run for about six hours without rest; the suit makes movement a lot easier, once you learn to stop fighting it.”

Milla just looked at him unbelieving, her body language, even in the suit so obvious that a Lieutenant burst out laughing, while Brinks turned his attention to where Savoy and his men were examining the structure in the center of the clearing.

“I’ve never seen material like this before, Major.” Savoy told him. “It seems to have many of the same properties as the escape pod we found, but it seems to be designed to block signals rather than to be sensor transparent. We can’t read what’s inside.”

By this time, Milla had regained her breath enough to interject a comment, “It’s a survival bunker. The basic design has been in our archives for centuries.” She shook her head, “I did not realize that any were left.”

“Then again,” she considered after a moment, “when the Drasin threat was broadcast, someone on this planet may have copied the schematics out of the database and built this in a rush.”

“So there are people inside?” Major Brinks asked after she had finished.

Milla looked at him with a confused look on her face, “what else would there be?”

Brinks shook his head, he couldn’t decide if these people were hopelessly naive or if Milla was simply a consummate actress. Either way, he had little choice but to play out the hand. “Can you open it?”

Milla shook her head, grimacing. “No, they probably transmitted the frequency code to the other colonies, but without it I can do nothing.”

“Anyway we can talk to the people in there?”

This time Milla paused for a moment before shaking her head grimly, “no, we saw that their communications system was damaged. The only system they have active right now is a secure radio transmitter, no reception capabilities. It is a last resort device, built to gather energy from the decay of an energy element. If it is active, then they have lost all power including, perhaps, life support.”

Grimly, Brinks digested the information and finally nodded to Savoy, “Open it up.”

Savoy nodded and signalled to two of his men, who approached with a larger version of the laser cutters, used to clear the landing area, cradled between them. Approaching the bunker, Savoy took a lightweight hammer and pick from his belt and rapped the hard material three times in succession, paused a moment, before repeating the process. When no response was heard after a two full minutes, he signalled the two men behind him and stepped back.

The big laser cutter took a few moments to charge the capacitors as the two men began the process of slicing through the bunker material. A few minutes later it was apparent that blocking sensors wasn’t the only way this material differed from what Milla’s escape pod had been built of.

Wiping sweat from his brow, one of the cutters, Sergeant Mehn looked up at Savoy, “This is going to take a while, Major. The material is turning to slag and then running into the cut behind the laser and hardening again. The worst thing is that it seems to get harder to cut after each successive cooling.”

Savoy nodded grimly. “All right, we’ll work along and slip laser and heat resistant braces into the cut as we go. Should be easy enough to remove them afterwards.”

The work progressed slowly; as each section was sliced open a third man would slap a brace into the opening, to keep the melted material from filling the hole. Savoy’s team traded off on jobs, as they slowly cut their way through the Bunker, evening out the harsh work among the group. Hours later, the man sized cut was finally completed, and Savoy called to one his men.

“Burke, we’re going to need a special job on this one. Think you can blow that section out?”

The short man stepped up and began examining the area, finally turning to Savoy and nodding with a grin. “Yes Sir, with the braces in place, I could blow it inside out if you want.”

Savoy grinned in return and simply motioned the man to go ahead. The rest of the group began evacuating the immediate area, cleaning out the equipment they had brought, as they relocated to a safer area. Milla watched the man called Burke carefully laying explosives, triple checking and meticulously measuring each charge. A half hour later, he finished and headed over to the group, an innocuous device resting in the palm of his hand.

Burke nodded to the man when he arrived, then called out to the rest of the men. “Fire in the hole!”

Milla looked around for a moment, wondering at the sudden movements as everyone ducked their heads. The Corporal Curtis reached up and pulled her down, as well.

“Believe me, Miss, you want to be down here, right now,” she told Milla, as she placed an arm over her helmet and physically held her down.

That statement was punctuated by a loud explosion from the bunker and the sudden showering of rock that pelted down on them. Milla was suddenly glad of the tough armored suit and helmet she wore.

The group slowly stood up and dusted their armor off, admiring the work that Burke had done. The explosives had cut a clean hole in the bunker, blowing most of the debris out and away from anyone inside the squat structure.

The group approached the building cautiously, their weapons held ready. The point men stopped at the makeshift entrance Burke had made, expertly scanning the interior before they stepped inside. Once inside the squat structure they found themselves in an empty room that obviously took up the entire interior of the bunker.

Brinks looked around at the unimpressive room before turning to where Milla had just joined the group. “Well, where are they?”

Milla, looking around the room carefully, responded distractedly. “Under us, the bunker should extend downward one hundred meters. Give me a moment and I should be able to find the control panel.”

Roberts stepped back, allowing Milla to begin examine the room carefully. Finally she smiled and walked over to a blank wall. “Here it is.”

The rest of the people in the room stared at her blankly for a moment until she waved her hand a few inches from the wall, causing a shimmering display of light to appear. The display of light coalesced into a floating control panel that Milla manipulated by brushing her hands along its shimmering surface.

“Projected particle interface,” Milla explained as she entered instructions into the surface. “It’s activated by a three dimensional grid of motion sensors built into the wall.”

The Major just nodded but Savoy stepped up behind her, fascinated by the system. “Are you receiving tactile feedback?”

Milla nodded distractedly, tapping another button with an audible click. “Yes…, the particle field allows the computer to exert pressure, so that you know when you’ve activated a control.”

“How does it manage that?” The Major asked a tone of wonder in his voice. “I don’t see any projectors…”

Milla smiled. “No, you wouldn’t. The wall is the projector the same devices that are reading my input also display the interface.”

“Really? But how do you…”

Savoy found himself cut off as Milla entered the last command and the floor began vibrating. In the center of the room a circular seam appeared in the floor and the round section began rising. After it had rose a short distance it stopped, and then it rolled to one side revealing a deep pit beneath it.

“You have got to be kidding me,” one of the soldiers found himself staring down the hole, trying vainly to see the bottom. The best he could do was follow the rungs of a ladder down until even they disappeared from sight.

“Sorry,” Milla said. “It’s the best I can do. Without the power being active, I can’t bring the lift up.”

“It’ll do, Miss Chans. If we can get a power source down there, do you think you can recharge the system?”

She thought it over for a brief moment, “Probably, the system should be a standard reactor.”

“Good. We’ll have to lug the power-packs down there, so let’s get started.”

Chapter 15

Dragging five hundred pound power-packs down a vertical shaft that had apparently been built precisely to spec, at one hundred meters depth wasn’t the easiest job in the world, but after a few hours, Savoy and his tech team had managed it.

Four of them had found themselves standing on the roof of a lift car, waiting as Milla found the access panel and open a hatch in the lift, allowing them to drop though and hand the packs down, one at a time.

Inside the small lift, Savoy looked around, “what’s on the other side of the doors?”

“They open up directly into the shelter. I wouldn’t recommend you ask Mr. Burke to open this door,” Milla’s voice was dry, but some sense of humor managed to make it through the translation algorithms.

“I doubt that will be necessary,” Lt. Savoy told her, chuckling as he looked up at the hatch, “Jackie, would you hand me the pry bar from the tool pack?”

He took the tool as it was offered then sized up the door for a moment before moving.

Taking the pry bar firmly in one hand, Savoy rapped out a pattern on the door, paused for a moment, and then rapped the pattern again. After repeating the pattern several times with no response, he jammed the pry bar into the crack between the doors. The two soldiers, who had squeezed into the lift with them, took up flanking positions on either side as Savoy put his weight into the bar and slowly began to force the doors open.

Sweat was beading on his forehead from the strain of leaning into the bar by the time the door was a quarter of the way open. Sweat that turned cold when an unfamiliar, but unmistakable, barrel of a weapon was pushed up against his visor from the other side of the lift doors. The titanium alloyed bar clanged to the ground, as Savoy slowly raised his hands ahead of him, in an attempt to placate whoever was on the other side of the doors.

Harsh words rang out from the other side of the doors, mostly indistinguishable by their translators except for the word ‘open’. Savoy had little time to reflect on the situation as the lift doors slid smoothly open, exposing him to another person wielding a rifle-type weapon.

“Guys? I got a problem here. Two armed individuals with rifle-type weapons,” Savoy sub vocalized into the induction mic on his jaw.

“Can you recognize what type they are?”

Savoy’s response was impatiently sarcastic, his jaw barely moving as he spoke with the short and guttural sounds of sub-vocal phrases, “for Chris sakes, Hilliard! They’re alien manufactured. For all I know, they’re pea shooters.”

Hilliard’s calm voice came back, “All right, do you see any others with weapons?”

Savoy’s eyes flicked around the dark room beyond the lift, “negative, but there are a lot of people in there.”

There was a long pause, Savoy saw Milla try to move forward out of the corner of his eye and breathed a sigh of relief when the soldier at her side, Jaime, clamped a solid hand down on her shoulder and held her back. The two men he was dealing with weren’t professional soldiers; he could see that in their faces. They were scared kids and that made them a thousand times more dangerous, in this situation.

“All right Savoy, we’ll use maneuver Trojan-12. Jenkins, Mallard, don’t shoot unless you have to, move to disarm rather than incapacitate.” Hilliard decided on the spot, shuffling around as he and the others slipped into place.

As the acknowledgments echoed through the radio links, Savoy found himself tensing up as he prepared to play his part in the maneuver.

“Uh… Hi,” Savoy winced at how foolish that sounded, but forged ahead, “We come in peace…”

A single glance at the look on the faces of the two men facing him was enough to tell him that the translator had failed. Savoy was debating whether to risk asking Milla to translate for him when the choice was taken from him.

One of the gunmen uttered something unintelligible and roughly grabbed his arm and pulled him out of the lift, forcing him down. As soon as he was on the ground, Savoy put up a token resistance, drawing the attention of both gunmen, as they roughly forced him down, their weight pinning him hard. Then, seconds after the initial struggle, the weight abruptly vanished.

*****

Milla watched as the two men manhandled Savoy to the ground, stunned by the sudden violence, from a people she had thought she knew. A sudden blur of motion made her blink as her attention was captured by the two soldiers, Jenkins and Mallard, as they leapt into the fray. Jenkins’ leap launched him into what would have been a long arc that intercepted the top gunman and carried them both over a dozen meters into the shelter. Mallard limited her leap to a shallow arc that caught the second gunman low and tumbled them both to the ground, just beyond where Savoy had landed.

Just as she was about to rush into the room herself, Milla was roughly shoved aside as Hilliard dropped into the lift, allowing the fall’s kinetic energy to be absorbed into the suit. He then launched himself into a long arc that landed him fifteen meters into the shelter, his rifle swinging side to side as he searched for more hostiles.

“Clear!” Mallard said as she kneeled on her target, his rifle knocked well out of the man’s reach.

“Clear!” Jenkins crouched low over his man, his own weapon digging into the man’s neck, even as his right foot was planted solidly over the gunmen’s weapon.

“Clear!” Savoy had his hand gun out and was helping Hilliard cover the occupants of the shelter.

Major Brinks’ calm voice came over the radio, surprising Milla for a moment. “Confirmed, Miss Chans? You’re clear to enter.”

Milla nodded to no one in particular, and stepped tentatively into the room, looking nervously around. Gathering her nerve, she stepped more firmly into the shelter, looking around for someone who might be in charge. Everywhere she looked, she was met by fear, as the people cowered away from her, leaving her confused by the reaction.

Suddenly she remembered how alien the armor she was wearing actually looked, “Oh! Mr. Savoy? How do I remove this helmet?”

Savoy stepped up behind her and pointed out the release catches that sealed the helmet to the suit. Twin hisses echoed though the room as the suit pressure was balanced and Milla gently tugged the helmet off.

She looked around at the people who were all watching her now, and held up her hands in as comforting a manner as she could, “we are friends. I’m from Ranqil. We just arrived in system a few hours ago.”

One of the huddled survivors stepped forward cautiously, her face a mask that hid all but a small portion of her emotions. “You are from Ranqil?” Her voice was suspicious as she looked Milla up and down and then examined the Savoy and the others.

Milla shook her head firmly and spoke, “I am from Ranqil. These people are not. They are not from the colonies, they are of the Others.”

The woman’s face showed a distinct sign of distaste, as she looked over the soldiers in the room, “we do not want them here.”

Milla looked over her shoulder to where the soldiers were calmly waiting, their eyes scanning the crowd, even as their weapons didn’t… quite… cover the crowd. She thought about her own reactions to her rescuers shook her head. “You may not want them, but you do need them. They rescued me when my ship was destroyed by the Drasin. Now they come to rescue you, as well.”

A shiver of fear passed through the huddle mass of people at the mention of the word Drasin. Their spokesperson paused for a moment before speaking again “so the rumors were true. Few believed them to be, when we heard of the first Drasin attacks. It was a struggle to get permission to begin construction of this shelter. How many survived the attack?”

Milla swallowed before answering, “You are the only survivors that we’ve found. No life signs were detected, and there were no other signals from the planet.”

The silence in the room was palpable as Milla’s words sunk into the collective consciousness of the group. Savoy quietly cleared his throat behind Milla after a long moment, to remind her that they had things to finish.

“We have to restore power to your reactor so that we can evacuate your people.”

The woman looked disturbed, “why should we evacuate? The Drasin are gone now, we can rebuild.”

Savoy stepped in, his translator having stepped up its effectiveness after he’d had it recompile its program from the spoken words, they’d been recording. The local dialect wasn’t completely identical to that which Milla spoke, which wasn’t confusing for human ears apparently, but it had thrown the computer out of whack, for a moment.

Even as he started to speak, he was already starting to work out new algorithms’ in his mind, to enhance the translation. Dialects had always been something of a problem, but on Earth all they had to do was preprogram them and everything was fine. The system simply wasn’t designed to handle minor changes in pronunciation on the fly, like this.

Still, he’d have to worry about it later. For now, he and his team had more pressing concerns.

“I’m afraid that’s not true, Ma’am,” he told the woman, who appeared to be the leader of the ragged band, “They’re still out there. We have to get you and your people out of here before any of those drones find their way here.”

Savoy had expected more shock, but only an air of resignation followed his statement.

The crowd deflated a little, as if he’d taken away some fancy they had embraced, but the reality hadn’t been so far from their minds after all. The leader nodded after a moment then sort of half bowed to him and nodded.

“Very well. The reactor is this way,” the woman gestured to the far wall and a small door.

“Thank you, Ma’am. Mallard, Jenkins, let those two up and help me lug those power-packs over there. We should be able to jumpstart the system, if what Miss Chans said about the reactors is right.”

“I will have our engineer explain any systems necessary to you.” The woman was now exerting a command influence, confirming Savoy’s belief that she was of some importance to these people.

“Thank you, Ma’am,” he responded, keeping his tone respectful as he nodded his head to her.

The three soldiers each hefted a power-pack, casually shouldering them and walking toward the door at the far end. The local engineer stepped up to the fourth pack, gesturing helpfully as he kneeled down to carry it.

“No! Wait!” Hilliard strode towards the man as he tried to heft the power pack.

Consternation turned to a pained look as the man strained his muscles in a vain attempt to move the heavy pack. Hilliard laid a hand on the man’s shoulder and shook his head with a slight smile.

“Here, I’ll carry it;” Hilliard kneeled down and grasped the packs handles, hefting it with ease and flipping it casually over his shoulder. “It’s the suits, Sir. They have a series of strength enhancers, lead the way and I’ll bring up the rear.”

The man nodded as emotions wafted across his face, ranging from an unbelieving stare to a fascinated gaze. Finally, the man turned and lead Hilliard to the door, taking long looks over his shoulder, at the suit Hilliard wore and at the pack he carried with such ease.

The woman turned to Milla when Hilliard was out of earshot, “can they be trusted? The others are oath breakers. You know that.”

Milla took a deep breath before she continued, “I don’t know, but we have little choice, I’m afraid. And the oath breaking was a long time ago.”

“Oath breakers are oath breakers.”

“Perhaps. But, as I said, they rescued me and now they are saving you and your people. That should earn them, at least the benefit of the doubt, from us,” Milla’s face was earnest.

The older woman sighed after a moment, relenting. “Perhaps you are right.” The woman paused a moment, “what is your name? I am, or rather was, Titualar Saraf. Now I suppose, it’s just plain Saraf.”

Milla looked around her, “not to these people. You are still the Titualar of this system, to them. I am Ithan Milla Chans of the Ranqil merchant fleet. I was on an interception mission, when the task force I was assigned to was destroyed by a Drasin battle fleet.”

“The Drasin are that powerful?”

Milla nodded grimly, “they are more powerful than that, I fear. They annihilated our force with ease; our vessels had no chance against them.”

“Then we are lost. They will overrun our defences finally. Over eight millennia of peace and we end like this,” Saraf shook her head, her face sadly resigned.

Milla shook her head violently, refusing to accept that death was inevitable, and “it is not over, yet. The Five have several fleets of next generation starships nearing completion. They should put us at nearly an equal footing with what I have seen of the Drasin fleet. The era of peace has come to an end, but not our civilization.”

“What of your friends? I wasn’t aware that any of the Others had achieved dimensional travel?” Seraf nodded to the soldiers.

“They haven’t. Their technology is a puzzle to me. In many ways, their equipment is vastly inferior to ours. They have no knowledge of field manipulation, or dimensional access. Their computers are almost laughably slow, and their medical technology is archaic,” Milla stopped for a moment, her voice drifting away as she thought about the wonders, she had seen. “Yet, they translated our language in less than a day. They have software that is superior to any I have seen, and have the capability to jump between the stars in an instant.”

Saraf looked toward the door that hid Savoy and the others from her sight, “instantaneous star travel? Impressive, I admit. But I doubt if they will be of much help now that the Drasin have come.”

Milla laughed mirthlessly, her tone a bitter, yet somehow satisfied, sort of sound that Saraf didn’t recognize. “There was a Drasin vessel in your system when we arrived. A vessel of the same class that survived a full assault by six of our heaviest reconfigured combat vessels. Their one vessel, smaller than one of our trade ships, destroyed it in less the ten minutes of actual fighting. From a military standpoint, I don’t think that the Colonies have seen this much combat power, in one place, in the last twelve thousand years.”

“They are soldiers then?” Saraf’s voice was flat.

“They are. At least many of them are. In many ways, much of their ship seems dedicated to exploration and science, yet they do seem to believe in being capable of their own defence,” Milla replied with an odd smile.

The conversation between the two women was cut off when a loud hum came from the far wall and glaring emergency lights ignited around them. A moment later the four Odyssey soldiers and the local engineer stepped out of the reactor room.

Savoy headed back toward Milla. “We have the reactor back online, Miss Chans. Major Brinks is coming down in the lift now. We’ll have to prepare this group for evacuation immediately.”

Milla and Saraf nodded and turned to the rest of the survivors, calling out instructions as they walked through the group. By the time the lift had returned with Major Brinks, the survivors had already begun to organize their affairs and a rough sort of order had descended on the room.

Milla stepped forward to greet the Major when he stepped off the lift, “Major, this is Saraf,” she said, extending a hand toward the older woman. “She is the leader of these people.”

“Ma’am,” Brinks tipped his head slightly toward the woman as he surveyed the area, “may I ask how many people we are looking at?”

“Certainly, Major, there are nearly five hundred survivors here.”

Brinks swore at that, looking around as he started crunching numbers in his head. “One moment, please.”

They nodded as he switched to another channel, “Samuels, relay a query to the Odyssey. Five hundred refugees found. Orders?”

Jennifer Samuels confirmed the order so he settled back on his heels and began pondering the situation. The Odyssey was built to handle a lot more than they currently used it for, but five hundred additional lungs would stress the support systems.

The time it took for the light speed message to crawl out to the big starship, and then for its return journey, were like eons as Brinks tried to figure out what they’d do if the Odyssey couldn’t handle it.

“Standby for message from Odyssey,” Samuels said a couple minutes later.

“Roger,” Brinks told her then watched as a video window appeared on the screen.

Captain Weston looked out of the window at him, “Message received and understood. Organize the evacuation; Odyssey is dispatching remaining shuttles to help. Godspeed, Major.”

Brinks wanted to wipe the beading sweat from his forehead, but couldn’t because of the helmet, so he turned to the two women and ignored the infernal itching, “we’ll begin evacuating, as soon as possible. The Odyssey is standing by to treat any injuries and to provide succour. It’ll be cramped though.”

“They will endure,” Milla said firmly, receiving a nod from Saraf.

“We will, Major,” she said, for the first time nodding with genuine gratitude. “And on behalf of my people, I thank you for your aid.”

Brinks shook his head, “not a problem, Ma’am. Believe it or not, most of my people signed up in the hopes of getting a shot like this.”

He smiled wryly at them then his head cocked slightly as he answered a signal on another channel. “We have a clearing cut about fifty meters from the bunker topside. We need to get everybody out there, in groups of fifty to seventy people at a time.”

“I understand Major, I will inform my people. Please inform us when it is time for the first group,” Saraf turned to leave, but was interrupted by Brinks.

“The first group can leave immediately, Ma’am. Shuttle one is prepared to transport survivors as soon as the first group is ready to leave.”

“Very well, Major. I will inform my people immediately.”

Chapter 16

“Captain Weston, Sir?”

Eric Weston turned away from the view screen for a moment and made eye contact with the young ensign behind him, “yes?”

Ensign Lamont hesitated a little under his gaze, but firmed up a moment later as she went on with her report, “engineering reports that they’ve brought the recycling systems up to max, but for five hundred more sets of lungs, they’re going to have to unbox the backup units too.”

Weston grimaced, but nodded, “tell them to go ahead and log my authorization on the paperwork.”

“Aye Captain,” she said, gratefully heading back to her station.

Captain Eric Weston sighed, thumbing his way through the PDA that held the list of material that was being shifted, un-carted, installed, or torn out in order to make room for the five hundred refugees. It was a long list.

“Captain?” Waters looked up from his station.

“Yes, Lieutenant?”

“Lt Samuels just radioed in, Sir. The first shuttle with evacuees’ will be arriving in less the fifteen minutes.”

“Good. Thank you, Mr. Waters. Commander Roberts. You have the Bridge.”

“I have the Bridge. Aye Sir.”

Weston nodded to the young man and turned back to the view screen for a last long look at the floating, spinning, carnage that lay just outside the Odyssey’s bulkheads then he spun on a heel and headed off the bridge.

It took Weston less than three minutes to navigate his way through the ship corridors and find Doctor Palin. The eccentric linguist was pouring over notes from his earlier talks with Milla Chans and almost failed to notice Weston, when he came in.

When Palin finally conceded to recognize the presence of the Captain, Weston smiled thinly and nodded to him.

“Doctor, the first load of survivors is due in soon. I’d like you to be on hand, to meet them.”

Palin nodded tensely, “of course, Captain. I’ve been compiling the tapes of all our conversations with Miss Chans. There should be no communication problems.”

“Excellent Doctor, let’s head down to the shuttle bay, now.”

On the shuttle deck, Weston and Dr. Palin waited as the Odyssey’s flight control officer reported the shuttles approach and landing. A few moments later the deep grating vibrations in the deck plates announced the final cycle of the combination airlock/elevator that was bringing the shuttle up from the lower flight deck.

Palins eyes grew wide as he saw the tail fin of the big trans-atmospheric shuttle rise from below, the big ship being slowly revealed, as it rose on the powerful elevator. “Oh my… It never seemed that big before.”

Weston glanced over at the vessel casually, “that’s because when you boarded the shuttle planet-side, it was docked in a control building being refitted and refuelled. You never saw the whole thing at once.”

Palin watched in fascination, as a yellow behemoth trundled over to the shuttle, backing slowly into place, until the nose of the big ship had been secured to a stout pin in the machines back. The yellow loader slowly stomped off, dragging the shuttle along with it, toward the docking pylons. Palin stared at the approaching duo in consternation, finally turning to Weston, a question forming on his lips.

Weston cut him off before he could start “null grav.”

“Huh?” Palin was more confused now than before.

“We use the walking loader, because this deck is zero gee. A wheeled vehicle couldn’t get any traction, and Cat’s require too much maintenance. The big feet on the walker are magnetic, the same as the boots you’re wearing,” Weston explained easily. “The Loader holds the Shuttle down, as well as moves it around, until it’s locked into place.”

“Oh,” Palin said, blinking as he processed information that he’d not really considered before.

“You wouldn’t want to see what kind of damage a shuttle could cause, if it started floating around down here,” Weston couldn’t help but add.

Palin just paled at the thought.

It wasn’t quite as bad as the Captain let the linguist think of course, the shuttle had its own magnetic locks that could hold it quite firmly in place, in an emergency, but the threat was credible. All fighters, shuttles, and in fact, all equipment entirely had to be locked down solidly before the ship could engage in sharp maneuvers.

Only the Cee-Emm fields made the null-grav flight deck a reasonable design feature, at least as it currently stood on the Odyssey.

The big loader had finally done its job, locking the shuttle into the docking pylon next to where the Captain and Dr. Palin were waiting. Four huge servo powered arms whined into position as they watched, locking the shuttle down completely and then the shuttle’s loading ramp lowered down and two of the special forces team stepped down.

“Fifty survivors aboard, Sir. The Colonel and the rest of the Team are organizing the rest into groups of seventy-five, for transport. This group needs immediate medical care.”

Weston nodded, returning the soldiers salute before waving the E-med teams in, from where they were waiting. “Good work, Men. Report to the infirmary after decontam, then hit the showers. You’re relieved until your CO is back aboard.”

“Sir,” Both soldiers snapped quick salutes and double timed off the ramp and out of the shuttle bay.

Weston stepped to one side, as people were being carted off the shuttle, the E-med teams rushing them through decontamination and sending them to the medical labs. As the last of the E-med units left the shuttle, a lone woman walked down.

“Captain, this is Titualar Saraf. She is the leader of these people,” Lt Samuels had stepped forward to introduce the woman.

“Very good, Samuels. You’d better get the shuttle prepped for another run. We’ve directed all available shuttles to help with the evacuation, but you’ll have to do at least one more run, after you’re refuelled.”

“Aye Sir.”

As Lt Samuels turned back to her cockpit, Weston extended a hand to the woman, anchoring her to the floor, as she moved forward. “This way ma’am, we’ll catch a lift up to the habitat levels after decontamination.”

The woman blinked, then said something in return that came through as a garbled mess, in his ear. Weston frowned, glancing over at Dr. Palin.

“I don’t know, Captain. One moment and I’ll…,” the suddenly nervous linguist muttered, tapping away on his PDA.

“Just a moment, Captain,” Samuels said, snapping the helmet of her flight suit down. After a moment she looked up, “I’m sending you the new program now.”

A tone signalled the download and Weston checked his PDA. He activated the new program and looked at Saraf, “Can you understand me now, Ma’am?”

“Yes, Captaine,” she told him, smiling patiently. “I can.”

“They speak a different dialect, Sir,” Jennifer told him. “It’s close, but the differences give the computer some problems.”

“Fascinating,” Palin said, already digging through the source code for the new modifications, “oh, I say! Who coded this… it’s quite remarkable…”

“Lieutenant Savoy, Sir,” Samuels said. “Captain, if you don’t mind?”

Weston nodded, “Go do your pre-flight, Lieutenant.”

“Sir,” She saluted, turned, and vanished back inside.

Weston turned back to Saraf and repeated his earlier statement, “We have to go through decontamination. I’ll escort you up to the infirmary where you can look in on your people. Will that be all right with you?”

The woman nodded following, as Weston guided her toward the far wall of the shuttle bay. “Thank you, Capitaine.”

Weston smiled at her as they reached the far wall. “No problem, Ma’am. All part of the service.”

*****

The twenty minute decontamination procedures, left them both tired, slumping them in the lift’s seats, as the capsule carried them to the Odyssey’s second habitation cylinder.

“I do wish to see my people,” Saraf said, in the peculiar accent that sounded almost, but not quite French, to Weston.

Weston looked up, “of course, Ma’am. We’ll visit the infirmary first. After that we’ll move over to the recreation decks, to find place for your people to stay. That’s the only place we have room and normal gravity.”

“I’m sure it will be fine,” Saraf brushed off Weston’s concerns lightly.

Moments later, the two of them strode into the medical lab, Weston guiding his charge over to where Dr. Rame was working.

“Doctor, how are your new patients?”

“Arrogant,” Rame didn’t look up from his terminal.

“Doctor!” Eric Weston snapped, catching the Doctor up, sharply.

Glancing up, Rame took in the woman at Weston’s side and the Captain’s dark glare, a deep, red flush crossing his face.

“Sorry Sir, Ma’am,” he said quickly, then nodded to them both. “They’ll all live. Mostly dehydration and nutritional deficiencies. A couple appears to be suffering from early stages of oxygen deprivation as well, but that is being remedied naturally.”

Saraf nodded, diplomatically ignoring the doctor’s first comment, “the youngest?”

“Ah yes, the infant. She’s fine, in better shape than many of the older children and adults. With youth comes remarkable resilience,” Rame smiled softly, his expression changing as he glanced over toward a makeshift incubator, in the corner.

Saraf didn’t respond for a moment. Finally she nodded, letting out a long and deep breath, “Yes. May I see my people, now?”

Dr. Rame nodded, “certainly. This way. We’ve had to improvise a lot of our facilities, I’m afraid. We simply weren’t expecting five hundred patients to drop in on us, so it’s a lot more hectic in here, than normal.”

Weston allowed himself to fall behind, watching Dr. Rame show Titalur Saraf through the infirmary. His eyes wandered the room, moving from face to face, as he tried to take in the scene. At his best guess, none of the patients were more than twenty years old, most considerably less and at the far side of the area, he noted the tiny baby in an enclosed environment, medical equipment closely monitoring the child’s condition.

Weston tapped the induction mic on his jaw to open a channel, “Commander Roberts, could you please come down to the medical labs. I want to be on hand, when Ithan Chans returns from the planet and I need to you show Titalur Saraf around and arrange accommodations for our passengers.”

“Yes Sir,” Roberts’s voice sounded in his ear.

*****

Ten minutes later, Weston was on his way down to the shuttle bay, checking the ETA on the next transport and the passenger list. The next shuttle wasn’t due for over an hour, leaving Weston with the time to do something, he had felt the need to do for several days.

He made his way over the Archangel One, his own fighter and pulled open a maintenance flap, so he could do the customary check.

The ‘Angels had a full maintenance staff, of course and his own fighter had been checked out long since, but Eric had never believed that was quite sufficient. He’d been a student before enlisting in the old American Marine Corps, specializing in philosophy, oddly enough. One of the lines from the old books he read, always came back to haunt him, when he flew the last of the old Joint Strike Fighters.

It was a foolish warrior, who entrusted his weapons to the care of any man, save himself.

It was impossible for him to handle all maintenance on his fighter, of course, but he could check to ensure that the work had been done and done properly. So, despite the fact that his fighter was no longer his weapon, Eric Weston settled in with the computer interface and called up the maintenance log, and slowly moved down the checklist.

All the while, trying to keep his mind off what was happening outside the armor-plated hull of the Odyssey. Trying not to think about things he couldn’t change and things he couldn’t help.

*****

It was nearly forty-five minutes later, when Weston was disturbed by the reverberating clang of the flight deck’s massive airlock closing. Glancing up from his position, he noted that it was one of the Archangel’s returned from patrol. Weston was about to turn his attention back to the shakedown he was performing on his fighter, when he noted the markings on the returned fighter craft.

Extracting himself from his position, Weston pushed off of Archangel One and glided across the Null-Gee bay until he snagged the docking pylon that was locking down, over the newly returned fighter. As he got closer, he saw the pilot pull off his helmet, revealing a very tired and frustrated looking Steven Michaels.

“Stephanus, you look like hell,” Eric told the younger man flatly.

A wry grin twitched the corners of Stephanus’ mouth, though no humor entered the young man’s eyes, “thanks Captain. You always know what to say, don’t you?”

“I’ve already arranged the memorial service for Flare. You have a few hours to shower and change. From the look of you, I suggest you get some rest, too,” Eric said, patting his young friend on the back. “Don’t worry; I’ll make sure it’s handled.”

Stephanus nodded slowly, the loss of Flare was weighing heavily on him and he knew that Weston was right. He did look like hell and he needed the time to prepare for the memorial service.

“All right, Captain. I’ll see you later.”

Weston watched as the young pilot dropped to the floor. His magnetic boots snapped down and then he walked away. In Weston’s experience, losing a pilot under your command was one of the most difficult things, a wing leader could experience. The added feelings of responsibility tripled the crushing weight that fell on a man’s shoulders, when he witnessed the death of a friend and comrade.

It was unfortunately, not something that anyone else could really help with. Stephanus was on his own, for the moment, at least. Until he burned the initial rage from his system, Eric knew that his young friend would listen to no one.

Not even him.

Shaking his head slowly, Weston walked back to his fighter to continue his work.

He wasn’t interrupted again until the airlock cycled the next shuttle craft through. At that point, he had completed his inspection of his fighter’s systems. Hefting himself out of the cockpit and drifting to the floor of the shuttle bay, he watched as the big shuttle was trundled into place, by the lumbering loader.

After the shuttle had been locked into place, Weston walked over to the lowering ramp to greet the occupants as they disembarked. Savoy and his tech team were the first ones off.

“Captain,” Savoy and his men saluted.

“At ease. How many on this trip?”

“Seventy, Sir. With the two heavy lifters and the three shuttles following us in, we managed to pack ‘em all aboard. They’ll be here in less than ten minutes,” Lieutenant Savoy replied, dropping his salute, as the Captain dropped his. “Colonel Brinks is in the last one.”

“Of course he is,” Weston smiled briefly, nodding to the men. “I’ve read his reports, and I believe that Doctor Palin was quite impressed with your alterations to his translation algorithms.”

Savoy shrugged, actually reddening slightly under his helmet, if Weston was right, “it wasn’t that hard. He has set up a fine system, Captain.”

“Very well,” Weston nodded. “As you were.”

Weston stood his ground as the men saluted again and moved off. He watched and greeted the survivors as they disembarked the shuttle, wondering that anything had survived the holocaust that had hit their world. The initial readings they were getting, both from the Odyssey’s main array and the relay signal from the atmospheric reports from the team and the Carnivore drones, indicated an event of biblical proportions.

He didn’t know how those monstrosities had managed the damage they had inflicted, but it was obscene.

Genocide on a scale that Weston could never imagine, even in his worst nightmares.

The Captain had to shake himself free of the creeping sensation that followed those thoughts, forcing himself to continue greeting the survivors, as they descended.

When they had all been guided off by the team that Commander Roberts had sent down, Weston turned away from the shuttle and moved back to his fighter. He looked at the sleek craft, and wondered if there was anything else he could do, while he waited. Since early on in his career he had learned to understand the systems he entrusted his life to, often working on his fighter when he felt the need to relax.

“Captain?”

Weston turned to see Commander Roberts standing a short distance away. “Commander, have you gotten everybody settled?”

“Yes Sir. I’ve assigned Lt McRaedy to act a liaison officer.”

“Good. Good. Do you have the latest ETA on the arrival of the last shuttles?”

“They’re already here, Sir. Just clearing the quarantine fields I should expect.”

Weston smiled, “Good. Have the helm take us one more orbital pass of this system. Make sure we intersect the battle coordinates on the way out.”

“Yes sir. Gave the order fifteen minutes ago.”

Weston looked at him in surprise, “you’ve been researching the Archangels?”

“Yes Sir.” Roberts replied evenly.

“Good,” Weston paused a long moment, then nodded. “That’s very good, Commander.”

Roberts turned his head as a low rumble echoed through the bay. “That’ll be the first shuttle through the lock now Sir.”

“All right Commander. Return to the bridge. I’ll be along shortly.”

“Yes Sir,” Commander Roberts pivoted on his heel and walked towards the exit while Weston slowly moved toward where the next shuttle would be docked.

Chapter 17

Milla found herself wandering the corridors of the Odyssey, after she had seen the survivors settled into their temporary quarters. The Captain had been had been very clear that the majority of the survivors were not to leave their designated areas, but she and Saraf had been given exemptions. Even so she wasn’t certain where she was going she had simply felt the need for a walk. She stopped at one of the vessels unobtrusive computer terminals and asked it a question.

“Computer, where may I find Commander Stephanus?”

“There is no Commander Stephanus listed in the ships directory.”

Milla stopped for a moment remembering her earlier conversation. “Then please direct me to the location of Commander Michaels.”

“Commander Michaels is currently on deck eight, second habitat. Training facility.”

It took her thirty minutes of wandering, but Milla finally found her way to the location the computer had specified. Standing outside the large doors of the training area, she pressed the buzzer on the wall.

“It’s not sealed!” The voice was muffled, but audible.

Milla walked in tentatively, not certain what to expect. She had half thought to see rows of workout equipment and other physical training devices. Instead she was greeted by a long empty room that seemed to stretch an immense distance for a shipboard area. Stephanus was standing idle a few meters away, with a chunky black rifle cradled casually in his arms.

“I… I didn’t realize you were…” Milla stammered handheld weaponry was quite foreign to her despite her experience with shipboard batteries. The concept seemed so much more personal…, and final.

“No worries. Just working off some steam,” Stephanus looked relaxed, sheen of sweat on his brow, but the smile she had become accustomed to, was no longer present.

“With a weapon?” Milla shivered.

Milla saw a slight expression cross his face, annoyance perhaps, but maybe not.

“For some people, shooting is the ultimate form of therapy. A lot of aggressions can be worked off, in a very short while. Stay if you wish, I’ll be here for a while, yet.”

Milla nodded slightly, watching in fascination as Stephanus turned back to his ‘therapy’.

Stephanus turned his attention back to the weapon in his hands; it was identical to the ones carried by the Special Forces troops, when they went down to the planet. Comparatively short for a rifle, the weapon was built with versatility in mind. Stephanus thumbed the clip ejection switch and the hefty clip dropped to the deck, with a solid clang. Moving over to a small work bench, Stephanus slapped open the rifles grips and exposed two long blue-green cylinders, which he also ejected from the weapon. After examining the cylinders carefully, he reinserted them into the rifle and closed the breech. Pulling a full clip from the bench, he slapped it solidly into place and flipped off the safety.

Milla, watching his motions with ill-disguised horror, found her voice again. “You actually enjoy this?”

Stephanus turned his head sharply after hearing the note of censure in her voice. “Enjoy? I suppose. Firing a rifle requires focus. It’s almost meditative in its own way.”

“But…, you like being a soldier?”

His eyes narrowed at the tone in her voice, when she said the word ‘soldier’. He stopped for a long moment, considering, “yes, I suppose I do. I’ve accomplished a lot of good in my life. Saved a lot of lives.”

Milla digested this for a moment before trying another tack, her voice not quite being able to avoid becoming dry and sarcastic. “I suppose you see yourself as a warrior for peace then?”

Stephanus felt his face harden, as many times as he had heard that fallacy, he could never understand the people who uttered it. Taking a deep breath, he called to mind all the patience he could muster before replying. “No soldier worth the title would ever make that claim, Milla. Peace is the one thing we don’t fight for.”

A look of shock slapped across Milla’s face, “then why?”

Stephanus smiled slowly, “freedom. That’s the core of why we do, what we do. Peace is a fallacy in itself. Personally, I only know of two forms of peace. Peace in death, and the peace of slavery.” He snorted in amusement, “and I’m not certain about death.”

“If you make peace your only goal, then you lose sight of reality. Obviously fighting for peace is stupid, that’s why we don’t do it,” the man said flatly. “We fight to be free, we fight to defend ourselves and others, and we fight to win.”

Stephanus paused for a long moment, letting his words sink in. “let me ask you something Milla. What do you believe is a soldier’s primary function?”

Her answer was as fast and a wrong, as Stephanus had expected. “To fight.”

“Wrong.” Steph shook his head firmly, his face an iron mask.

Milla looked startled, what else was a soldier for?

He looked at her calmly, considering his answer for a moment, but only for a moment. It was something he had often thought about himself, wondering if killing was what he existed to do, or if there was something more.

He had decided that it was something more, formulating his response to this very question when it was flung at him, likes some accusation by someone who had never worn a uniform, never made the commitment that Steph had.

“A soldier’s first duty, his reason for being, is not to fight. Fighting is the final recourse for any civilized people. His duty is not even to preserve the peace, that is a police officer’s job,” Commander Steven Michaels of the NAC Military said by rote, remembering the many long nights of arguments and discussions that had brought this to his mind. “A soldier’s first duty is simply to stand between his nation and any who might wish it harm.”

Milla blinked at the simplicity of the statement, as Stephanus went on.

“To stand there, with crossed arms, and say to the universe, ‘You are not getting past me. ’” Stephanus said wryly, then stopped for another brief moment before finally he continued, a little more subdued. “The fighting happens when the universe decides to test him. A soldier doesn’t seek conflict, Milla, even if he often seems to find it.”

Stephanus couldn’t tell if she had listened to him, or simply heard him, but it didn’t matter much, anyway. It was a lesson she and her people, would have to learn, one way or another. After a moment’s consideration, he made a decision. “Here, don’t knock something that you don’t understand.”

With that he turned his attention back to the rifle and the range, this time taking care to include Milla in the exercise by describing as best he could, what was happening and why.

“This is an MX-112 infantry support rifle. It has been standard issue for the NAC military and most of our allies, for the past eight years. This one’s an Mk-A7 model, so it’s been refitted a few times, since the original weapon was put into service,” Stephanus was speaking clearly as he thumbed a control on a spindly pedestal.

“Active program will begin in thirty seconds.” The computers voice startled Milla as the lights dimmed and a glow showed up at the far end of the room.

“This one has been configured to fire ‘virtual ammo’ to give a realistic training experience without blowing holes through the hull.” Stephanus pulled the rifle up to his shoulder and gazed down the long length of the room, looking for a target. “It’s what we call a hybrid model, designed to maximize both old and new technology, into a single…,”

The weapon roared, causing Milla to jump and swing her head away from Stephanus to the end of the room. For a moment she saw nothing, and then an armored form materialized and swung a similar weapon in Stephanus’ direction.

“… seamless…,”

The gun barked a second time, the armored form vanishing into the ether, from whence it came.

“… design.”

This time two soldiers appeared, their weapons already pointed at Stephanus. Milla heard a motion and looked back at Stephanus who was on the move, ducking under the ‘enemies’ fire and returning fire in kind. The black rifle stuttering out a loud, steady, beat as shots left it with a flash of blue white light. In short order, the two soldiers had vanished and Stephanus straightened from his crouched position.

“Pause.”

“Simulation Paused.” The computers drone was punctuated by the lights returning to their former level.

“It uses a hybrid chemical/electromagnetic propellant system. The result is a peculiar mix of technologies.” Stephanus walked over to Milla, offering the weapon to her.

Taking it gingerly Milla almost dropped it, as Stephanus let its entire weight fall into her hands. “It’s heavy.”

“Yeah, the clips are a partially reconstructed uranium alloy. Non-radioactive, but still quite solid. It’s built that way to isolate the power cells in each clip from the chemical propellants in the shells,” Stephanus reached over Milla’s hand and hit the ejection button, dropping the heavy clip into his other hand. “Here, see? The clip is separated into two compartments; the first one holds the physical shells and propellant, while this smaller section contains a small power cell and enough hydrocarbons to power the electromagnetic accelerators, for eighty shots. Since a clip only holds sixty, it gives the soldier a nice margin of error, in the field.”

Steph smiled slightly, “and, off the record, it also gives us another source for energy, if our equipment runs dry…, and I’ve heard more than a few stories about guys using them as field expedient demolition packs.”

Milla tentatively twisted the stocky weapon around, examining it from different angles. “It is uncomfortable to hold. Our lasers are much smaller, easier to manipulate,” and they have other uses than slaughter. Milla thought to herself as she hefted the weapon.

Stephanus shrugged. “It takes a bit of getting used to, that’s all. It’s very well balanced, and exceptionally accurate. It feels a bit big, because it’s designed to be used by soldiers in light power armor.”

Milla nodded as Stephanus showed her the workings of the rifle, but her attention waned rapidly, as she glanced at his face. The man’s normally jovial visage was hard, chiselled, and very stern, in spite of the lilting tone that he spoke with. Without forethought, Milla reached up a hand, almost touching his face, before Stephanus turned away. In the last glimpse, she had of him, before his face moved away; Milla saw a sheen across his eyes.

“Steph?” Milla was confused for a moment; she was at a loss to understand the emotions she saw flit across his face. She took a halting step forward, her hand reaching for his shoulder.

“I’m all right.” Stephanus stepped away from her, stepping up to the control pedestal and thumbing the simulator off. Turning briskly, he hurried past the confused Milla and left the room, slapping the rifle into a cradle set in the wall as he went passed.

Milla looked around the room for a long moment, confusion and hurt sweeping across her face, until she followed in the pilot’s footsteps and left the target range.

*****

Captain Eric Weston was standing at his desk, the chair having been pushed well out of the way and the entire top showing a holographic depiction of thousands and thousands of stars. He’d been staring at those stars for so long now, that he imagined that he could see them without the holograph, and the thought brought an ironic twist to his mouth.

Weston had never had any particular interest in either astronomy or in space and here he was now, bound to study both like a drowning man seeking air. He was still pouring over the images when his door chimed.

“Come in,” he said, loud enough for the computer to hear and key the door sequence, but he didn’t look up to see who it was.

Footsteps approached and stopped on the other side of the desk, so Weston looked up and nodded, when he saw whom it was.

“At ease, Commander.”

Commander Roberts settled back and eyed the holographic starscape with mild interest for a moment, before speaking, “Sir, have you considered on our next transition coordinates?”

Weston’s lips twisted, but he’d been expecting that question, “may I presume that you have a suggestion, Commander?”

“I don’t see how it’s a choice, Sir,” Roberts said frankly. “Things have gone far enough…, Captain. It’s time to go home.”

Eric sighed, then stepped back and waved a hand at the holograph, “do you recognize this, Commander?”

“Sir?” Roberts looked confused for a moment. Then he shrugged, “it’s a star map, I presume?”

“Yes. But more specifically, it’s of a section of the galactic arm, that Earth lies in,” Weston told him, reaching into the holograph and triggering a preset program. “Right… here.”

A star lit up, bright blue, out along the edge of the map, closest to Roberts and the Commander glanced at it with slightly more interest.

“The attacks we’ve encountered occurred here. Here, and here,” Eric said, gesturing as the program lit up three more stars in fiery red.

One of them, Roberts noted, was quite close to the blue point.

“That’s where we found Milla,” Weston told him. “Forty-five light years from the Sol System. This one… is fifty-eight light years from home.”

Roberts nodded as Weston pointed out the second light.

“This one,” Weston nodded to the third, “is where we are now. Port Fey. Almost ninety light years and the latest attack, of which we’re aware. Tell me Commander, do you see what I see?”

Commander Roberts frowned, suddenly looking closer at the four stars that were highlighted. Finally, he shook his head and looked back up at the Captain, “Sir?”

“Do you remember the brief that I had filed, concerning Milla’s story?” Eric asked.

“Of Course.”

“The Drasin haven’t been seen for thousands of years, according to her. That implies a lot of space for a space faring civilization to move around in. So tell me, Commander,” Weston lit up a swath of light across the galaxy of stars with a gesture. “Why is the front in their war on this side of Milla’s people?”

Commander Roberts blinked and actually paled as he registered what the Captain was saying. The attacks had moved inward from Earth’s direction, moving more or less away from Earth and into the area of space, controlled by the Colonials. Roberts let out a long breath, “so either they’re conducting a massive, pre-planned attack from all sides, or…”

“Or their home world lies somewhere much closer to Earth than I’d like,” Eric finished for him.

“Sir, this is all the more reason to return home,” Roberts stated. “We have to warn the Admiralty and get production started on more ships.”

Eric Weston shook his head slowly, “I don’t think so, Commander. Not quite yet.”

“Sir,” Roberts looked quite grim, “if I may ask?”

“You may… in fact, I’d be disappointed if you didn’t,” Weston said, his tone light.

“Then, pardon my language, but why the hell not?”

“Because it would be pointless, Commander,” Eric told him. “Either we would arrive far, far, too late, because the Earth simply does not have the resources to defend itself now, or at any point in the near future, or there is simply no rush.”

Roberts stared at him for a moment, not quite believing what he’d heard.

“Have you had a chance to look at the power estimates we registered from the alien ship, Commander?” Eric asked.

“Not yet, Sir. I was busy…”

Eric nodded, “I know. I’m not implying anything, Commander. Just wondering if you’d had time. You should look at them, they’re…, revelatory.”

“Sir?”

“The first beam the ship fired,” Eric paused, until he saw Roberts nod, “Exceeded the entire output of our reactor by over three times.”

“What?” Roberts had known that it was powerful, but not by that much. “Sir, that’s insane. You’re talking about more power than…”

“Than our entire ‘fleet’ is capable of putting out. And damned few of them are equipped with our armor,” Weston said then shook his head. “And besides that, if Milla was telling us the truth…, and I have no reason to doubt her, then the Drasin have committed at least twenty identical ships to this war.”

Roberts took a breath, nodding. He wasn’t questioning the story of Miss Chans either; too much of it had been proven true, now.

“So, assuming a worst case scenario. How many of those do you think we could intercept, if they attacked Earth?”

Roberts took a deep breath, thinking hard. Finally he sighed and looked up, “If we abandon Demos and the outlying bases. No more than two on our own, assuming that they were intent on getting to the planet. The fleet might be able to take another two, maybe three.”

Eric nodded, “I guessed slightly more, but I assumed that we could get the Block to point their guns somewhere other than our heads.”

Roberts blinked then winced. He’d forgotten to calculate for the Block’s fleet, meager though it was. Even so, he decided, it wouldn’t make much difference. Block ships didn’t have the reactive armor, and would go up like matchbooks under laser fire that powerful.

Still, he nodded, accepting the Captain’s correction.

“No, Commander. I think I may just have to plot another course,” Weston said after a moment, then checked the time and corrected himself. “After we complete one last duty, in this system. Come along, Commander and I’ll explain my intentions along the way.”

*****

Milla was wandering through habitat two, head down, deep in thought, when she ran into a solid form and was sent sprawling to the floor.

“Oh, dear me… I am sorry…,” the man she had run into looked up and his eyes widened in surprise. “Miss Chans, are you all right?”

Milla’s second glance identified the man as Dr. Palin. “Yes docteur, I am fine. I apologize; I was not looking where I was going.”

“Not to worry, my dear. . , .” at the word dear, Palins face turned red. “Ah… I mean, Miss Chans, I’m quite alright.”

Palin paused for a moment then looked at her curiously. “What has you roaming the halls, in such a distracted manner?”

“I just had a most disturbing conversation with Commander Michaels. He was showing me something, and then he was very distracted and distant suddenly. I’m afraid, I don’t understand,” Milla told him; uncertain on whether she had done something wrong.

Palin looked very solemn all of the sudden. “You don’t know? I thought you were on the bridge during the battle?”

“I was.” Milla had become more confused.

Palin looked almost embarrassed. “Commander Michaels lost one of his team. She flew her fighter into the enemy ship, to save the Odyssey.”

Milla was quiet for a moment, a look of shocked understanding crossing her face.

What was worse, Milla suddenly she realized that she should be feeling the same as Stephanus, or worse. After all, didn’t she just lose her ship, a fleet, and two colonies? For a long moment, she just stood there, wondering why she felt nothing. Why hadn’t she felt anything in the entire time since she had been rescued?

How can that be? I’ve lost hundreds of thousands of my people, dozens of friends, my shipmates, my Captain. Yet I feel nothing? And this man, this self-proclaimed warrior is so devastated by the loss of one comrade, that he is forced to hide his tears? Milla’s silence stretched for long moments. What does this say about him? And, perhaps more importantly, what does this say about me?

Palin cleared his throat, uncertain of how to react to the sudden silence. “There is a memorial about to start, for the lost pilot on the observation deck…, if you like to attend, that is.”

Milla looked around, as if expecting the answer to her unasked question to appear on the deck plates; finally she looked at Dr. Palin. “Yes, i believe I would like to attend. If it would not be an intrusion?”

“No. No, I shouldn’t think so. Here, I’ll escort you up.”

Milla followed Doctor Palin through the halls of the Odyssey, finally reaching the central lift.

*****

When they stepped out of the lift onto the observation deck, Milla became acutely self-conscious of the deep thunks, caused by her magboots on the carpeted deck. Her fears were baseless however, since the people who had congregated here were silently surrounding a long casket-shaped object, didn’t as much as move their eyes from the center of the room.

Captain Weston and Stephanus were standing stiffly with their backs to the open vista of space that lay beyond the observation decks huge windows. As Milla moved closer to the group, she could hear Weston’s softly spoken words, describing the battle that had transpired earlier and the debt everyone on board owed the fallen pilot.

“Lt Samantha ‘Flare’ Clarke gave her life in the defence of her comrades, and in doing so saved her ship, her wing mates, and the remaining civilian population of this system. No greater gift can be offered, no greater honor achieved. While we commend her body to the stars, we keep her memory alive, in our hearts and in our minds.”

Weston stopped, silence reigning in the room for a long moment before Stephanus stepped forward, his stance stiffly at attention. “Beacon Away!”

A low shudder passed though the deck plates, as a small beacon was launched from the forward hull of the Odyssey. It arced away from the big ship, circling the debris field that had formed in the wake of the battle. Locking into position the beacon began to broadcast its message, a log of Flare’s accomplishments, from her first solo flight in the Archangels, to the final run that saved her ship from destruction. A small ion engine came online and locked the beacon into place. The debris may drift, but the beacon would insure that anyone who cared to hear it would remember the sacrifice that marked that spot forever in the annals of the Archangels.

Chapter 18

“We cannot tell you that, Capitaine,” Saraf said firmly, shaking her head. “I am sorry, but it is not done.”

“Titualar…,” Weston paused, wrapping his tongue around the unfamiliar word, “I don’t believe that you understand the situation that I’m in, at the moment.”

“No, Capitaine. I most certainly do not, nor must I,” the woman said with a wave of her hand. “We cannot give you the coordinates to one of our central worlds. It is not possible.”

Weston nodded, “Very well. Then I have no choice, but to set a course for home. I’ll make certain that your people are well received and we’ll try to arrange some kind of return to your worlds, but it will most likely be some time.”

“What?” both she and Milla paled.

“I simply can’t justify spending any more time out here,” Eric said, clasping his hands in front of him as he settled onto his desk. “Not with this situation escalating like this. We lost a pilot today, and several multimillion dollar fighters. More than that, we discovered alien life that tried to kill us.”

He shook his head very seriously, “no, I’m afraid that I can’t risk this ship or the people and information it carries without something to leverage against the risk.”

“What leverage?” Milla asked softly. “What is it you hope to accomplish?”

Eric shifted his attention to her, “One of your central worlds, as you say, will have the authority to send a diplomat back with us. Someone that our government can talk with, someone who can perhaps make deals.”

“Deals?” Milla blinked.

“He means, negotiating for our technology.” Saraf muttered.

Eric shrugged, “there is that, there is also the possibility of you receiving some of our technology. There is mutual defence. Though, to be honest, I wouldn’t expect that for a while.”

“Why not?” Saraf asked with a wry twist.

“Because our military power, at this time isn’t prepared to project past our solar system,” Weston answered her evenly, despite Roberts stiffening behind him. “The point is, that the only way I can see my way through to remaining out here for any longer, is to bring back someone who can speak with authority. And that means going to the source.”

Milla fell silent for a moment, while Saraf just shook her head.

“This isn’t done,” the older woman said firmly, “it’s not an…”

“I’ll tell you,” Milla spoke up softly.

“Ithan!”

“He is right,” Milla sighed. “He has his own Council to answer to; we cannot expect more than he has given us already. I will tell him how to find Ranquil.”

Saraf’s eyes widened, “you cannot.”

“What does it matter now? The Drasin have penetrated our borders. What will these people do, that they won’t?” Milla asked sharply. “I am sorry, Titualar Saraf, but I am with fleet, and you are not. I will give him the coordinates.”

Eric Weston let out a low sigh, as he settled back in his seat, wondering if he’d done the right thing.

*****

Sometime later, on the refugee decks Milla found even more problems to consider, at the moment, as she was trying to get the refugees on the recreation decks to accept sedation prior to the ships transition.

“Why would we want to sleep?”

Milla sighed, “The technology of this ship is undoubtedly effective, but it is not pleasant. What they call transition is…, difficult to describe. Please accept my word that you would prefer not to experience it.”

While some of the people were inclined to accept Milla at her word, the majority were voicing strong objections, when Doctor Rame walked in with a contingent of medical personnel.

“I’m afraid the Captain has ordered short-term sedation, for all passengers.”

Immediately protests were heard through the room, causing Titualar Saraf to step forward. “I object, Docteur. You cannot drug us like this.”

Rame sighed, “We don’t have a choice, Ma’am. Right now your people outnumber our crew. We have had to completely clear most of this habitat and a sizable portion of the other decks, to house your people. We don’t have sufficient security or medical personnel to deal with the effects of Transition, on your people.”

“If it’s that dangerous Docteur, why do you use it?” She demanded.

“The Transition drive is physically harmless. However, none of your people have been cleared psychologically and you are utterly unprepared for the effect it may have on your minds,” Rame told her flatly, without rancor in his voice.

Saraf was about to argue further, when Weston stepped through the door into the room. “I’m sorry Titualar, but this is necessary.” Weston paused for a moment, considering, “I will permit you and Miss Chans to join us on the bridge, while we Transition. But the rest of your people must sleep through it.”

Faced with Weston’s implacable position, Saraf and the others backed down, leaving Weston breathing much easier. An uprising among the refugees would have complicated matters incredibly. He quietly lead Milla and Saraf toward the ships lift, the three of them carefully making way for the medical personnel that had filled the hallways.

“Why are all these medics here?” Saraf watched the men and women passing with suspicion.

“When we pump the aesthetic into the air system, they have to watch for potential allergies and the like. We want your people to sleep through the Transition, but we’re not willing to risk their lives or health for it.”

Saraf and Milla nodded, accepting the Captain at his word, for the moment. The trio took the next available lift directly to the bridge, stepping into the Odyssey’s command center less than thirty minutes from the systems gravity threshold.

*****

Two minutes after the Odyssey completed its transition, a now familiar state of controlled chaos, ruled on the bridge. Weston was examining sensor reports from all decks while Commander Roberts coordinated system wide checks to insure no damage had occurred and been missed. All of the bridge crew was frantically trying catch up with the data pouring in from the sensors and Milla Chans was trying fervently to calm down Titualar Saraf, who had just experienced her first Transition.

Weston, for the most part, ignored the conversation going on behind him. The words were flying back and forth a bit too fast for the translators to adequately keep up with the conversation. Short buzz words and phrases echoed back to him, eliciting the occasional grin around the bridge, ‘Appalling’, ‘Unnatural’ and ‘Insane’ being the bridge crews favorites.

After the brief downtime caused by the transition, the sensor had resumed feeding real-time data to the bridge terminals, resulting in a rapid cooling of humors around the bridge.

“Sir, we’re reading the residuals of a firefight from in-system.” Commander Roberts was the first to speak.

“Signature?”

“Two. The first matches the Drasin vessel we encountered earlier. Number two falls within estimated parameters for the fleet, we found destroyed.”

Saraf found herself abruptly alone, as Milla’s attention swivelled to lock onto the conversation and reports echoing across the bridge.

“Get their locations and plot us a safe course, to observe the battle.”

“Aye Captain.”

Milla took a step forward, face tight. “Observe?”

Half turning in his seat, Weston caught a glimpse of outrage on her face. “Yes, observe. This isn’t our war, Miss Chans, if we can avoid fighting it, we will.”

Besides Milla, Titualar Saraf just stared at the screens, her color gone a pasty white as she listened to Milla’s statements. The Drasin in one of the core worlds was worse than a nightmare, it was Armageddon.

“There are men and women…, humans…, fighting and dying out there, Captain Weston!” Milla pressed.

“You’re military?” Weston asked, almost casually, though there was a hard edge to his voice.

“Of course.”

“Then it’s their job to fight and to die, if the need should arise. It’s not our job.” He replied evenly, gritting his teeth against the words. He didn’t like that fact any more than Milla did, no matter what she may think, but there it was.

Milla was outraged, barely able to keep from shouting. “You fought the Drasin at Port Fuielles.”

“We defended ourselves at Port Fuielles. They initiated combat, most likely believing that we were one of your ships. This is a different matter.”

Milla was obviously looking for something else to say, when Commander Roberts called the Captain’s attention back to the battle.

*****

In what might charitably be called a ‘bunker’ on the fourth planet of the system, a group of uniformed people watched a large screen with frozen hearts, as the drama above them unfolded on the screen, in front of them.

“Captain Duclos has engaged the Drasin, Sir.”

The man in charge, an oddly small gentleman in an impeccable uniform, grunted once to acknowledge the comment, but didn’t look away from the screen. He was Admiral Rael Tanner and he was… nominally… in charge of system defence.

What little of it there was?

“What about the third ship?” He asked finally, eyes flicking away from the battle.

The technician frowned, shaking his head. “Still nothing on them, Sir. They’re circling well clear of the battle…”

“Probably a freighter,” the Admiral replied, eyes still drawn to the new ship for some reason. “They should be running, if they know what’s good for them.”

“Uh… Yes sir,” the technician replied. “But… well, where did they come from?”

That WAS the question, Tanner supposed. The new ship had just appeared from nowhere, literally, amidst a Tachyon surge that lit up every sensor, in the entire system. Whoever, or whatever they were though, they were of no importance, at this moment.

He had a friend out there, giving his life, just to buy a few minutes more.

*****

“It’s over, Sir. The Drasin vessel is moving on the planet.”

Milla looked at the starry view screen in a horror that was echoed across the bridge.

“Planetary defences?” Weston asked in clipped tones, heart dropping as he realized the position he was being pushed into.

“Minimal orbital defences detected, one small station and maybe a dozen defensive satellites, as near as the sensors can tell.” Roberts was staring intently at the information relayed to him from the sensors and the many technicians assigned to interpret them.

“Any readings on ground-based defences?”

“No Sir. Nothing even remotely close to the power rating needed for effective ground to orbit defences.”

Weston slumped back into his seat; he could feel the chill that permeated the Bridge. The situation was forcing him into a decision, he dearly wished to avoid. With a deep sigh that echoed across the bridge he sat up in the seat and slapped the switch that opened a direct line to the Odyssey’s flight deck.

“All Archangels, Scramble! All pilots to their planes, all deck personnel to their stations. This is not a drill. I say again, this is not a drill. Search and rescue crews’ standby for immediate deployment.” The Captain’s voice echoed through the ship, snapping everyone into action.

Milla turned from the screen, looking at the Captain in confusion. “But… I thought…”

Weston sighed as her voice trailed off “We won’t sit back and let them kill all life on an entire world. No matter the circumstance, no one has that right. I would interfere no matter who was on that planet and no matter who was in that ship.”

Weston turned back to the matter at hand, “Helm, plot an intercept course. All available thrust.”

Daniels bent to his task, the chill that had permeated the Bridge lifting, as the Odyssey shifted to battle stations. “Aye Sir. Plotted and engaged, Sir.”

“Good. Bring all weapons online and increase power to forward sensing systems. I want to know, the instant they notice us.”

The Odyssey arced a long parabola, turning sunward, to intercept the looming figure that was, even then, entering the plant’s orbit. The big engines on the Odyssey firing to life, as the ship accelerated deeper into systems gravity well. The big ship was four minutes out from its target, when it became apparent that they had been spotted.

*****

“Sir! The unidentified ship!” The technician’s horrified voice snapped Tanner around.

He turned to the screen again, having looked away after their last defending ship had died, and his eyes widened, “what in the Oath, do they think they’re doing?”

The ship had arced in from its nice safe course and was now closing on an intercept course with the Drasin cruiser.

Whoever they were, they were no transport, Tanner thought with a mixture of disbelief and shock.

No transport Captain in the Colonies would be this stupid, and the merchant fleet habitually screened their people for insanity. The Admiral growled to himself as he turned to his people.

“Order them off! There’s nothing they can…,” Rael Tanner paused, grimacing as he considered something else.

That ship was as good as dead. He knew that they couldn’t fight the Drasin.

But, maybe…, just maybe, they could delay them just a little longer.

It might even, by some unimaginable miracle, he supposed, be enough. He gritted his teeth, hating with every fibre of his being for what he was about to do, but he had a world to consider, so he just did it.

“Cancel that,” he said as the technician started to access the comm channels.

“Sir?”

“You heard me.”

“But Sir, they’ll be…”

An icy pit lodged in his stomach, but the small man just nodded. “I’m aware of that.”

There was a long silence.

“Yes Sir.”

*****

“Sir! Enemy vessel turning to port. They’re adjusting course, to intercept us.”

“Stand down from passive sensors. Get an active lock on the enemy ship.”

“Active lock, aye sir.” There was a brief pause as the ships tachyon-based sensors were used to lock on the Drasin ship’s position, “Captain! They’ve launched fighters.”

Weston thumbed the intercom switch again, his voice booming over the rumble of activity on the Odyssey’s flight deck. “The enemy has launched fighter craft. All fighters prepare to launch.”

“Passive sensors are reading an outgoing transmission from the Drasin ship, radio frequency,” Roberts looked up from the tactical display, he was monitoring. There was a sharp look of concern crossed his features, a moment later. “Captain, they’ve received a response!”

Weston sat violently upright, eyes gleaming with a mixture of fear, and a sudden adrenaline surge. If they had picked up a radio transmission this soon, and replied to it… “Step up the scanning! I want to know who answered them.”

A long, tense moment passed before the answer was found. “Got them! Captain, two more enemy ships and full fighter complements closing. One was hiding behind the Gas Giant’s second moon. The other is moving in from two point zero three AU away.”

“Estimated time to intercept?”

“At present speeds, the first bandit group will intercept us in eight minutes. Two and a half minutes later, group two will join in the fray, and ten minutes after that we’ll have to deal with group three,” Roberts presented the data in a matter of fact tone that belied the grim look on his face.

Weston’s face twisted as he considered his options, in a one on one confrontation, he could afford to wait and let the enemy make the first move. It was foolish, but it allowed him and his people to do as they had to, without worrying about whether or not it could have been avoided. For a long time, it had been a proud tradition of Weston and the Archangels that they had never started a fight, but once started, they always finished it.

Apparently, however, he wasn’t going to get to have that luxury this time. A three on one battle against relatively unknown enemies was already too foolish a situation for him to compound it with an equally foolish act of chivalry. “All right, let’s make this spectacular. Lock the forward pulse torpedo launchers onto the lead ship. Fire a full barrage, then let the Archangels out of the pen.”

“Aye Sir,” the response came back instantly, and everyone bent to their tasks.

It took only moments for the calculations to be made.

“Target locked, Captain.”

“Fire.”

*****

“By the Oath,” someone swore under his breath into the shocked silence of the room.

The small man couldn’t blame him. There were three Drasin cruisers in the system now and they’d completely missed the other two.

Well at least that poor bastard out there did us one favor. Rael Tanner thought to himself as he whispered a brief prayer for those who were about to die.

“Send a coded tight beam to the Forge. Inform them of this revelation… Tell them…,” Tanner paused, shaking his head. “Tell them that we haven’t much time left.”

“Yes Sir.”

Chapter 19

The Odyssey shuddered as the blazing white charges were expelled into space, streaming ahead of the big ship, in an ever widening cone. The instant the lethal charges were out of range, sleek Archangel fighters poured from the dual flight decks, weapons and pilots both primed and raring for action.

On board the lead ‘Angel, Stephanus took a deep breath before opening the tac-net and addressing his pilots. “All right boys and girls, our threat board is all lit up and this time around, we’re going to be heavily outnumbered and outgunned.”

“So what else is new?” Paladin’s wry grin carried well over the radio frequency, eliciting a laugh from those of the squad who remembered skirmishing with the Block’s air force in days past.

The Archangels had never relied on numbers to win a fight.

The ‘Angels spread themselves out, keeping pace with the Odyssey and providing a flying wedge between their mother ship and the enemy. The small sensor displays in front of each pilot echoed the current displays on the Odyssey’s bridge, a countdown to the impact of the pulse torpedo barrage. The tac-net was silent, as they watched the slowly diverging path of the torpedoes.

The silent displays showed the paths of the torpedoes widen further, as they approached their targets, the similar charges inherent in the weapons repelling them away from each other, in a lazy fashion, until the enemy vessels entered into their sphere of influence.

In that indefinable moment, the displays changed dramatically as the gently arcing trails of the torpedoes suddenly twisted and turned into an untraceable corkscrew that colored the entire screen. Sixty-five light seconds from the Odyssey, the Drasin vessels were treated to an awesome lightshow, as a dozen brilliant globes descended upon them, literally from the heavens. For many of them, this lightshow was the last thing they ever marvelled at.

The first torpedo struck a tightly packed formation of Drasin fighters, utterly annihilating one in the first blast and destroying the rest with secondary explosions. The next eight torpedoes had much the same effect, wreaking havoc on the fighter wing, the Drasin mother-ship had launched. The last four, however, breached the barrier that had been constructed by the fighters and struck heavily into the Drasin mother-ship. Four blazing plumes of fire rose from the stricken vessel as its hull was vaporized by the effects of the torpedoes.

On the Odyssey’s bridge they had to wait an additional sixty-two seconds for the results of their efforts, but it was well worth it.

Captain Weston took a deep breath, nodding slightly to the tactical controls, and the man who had handled them. “My compliments, Mr. Waters. Time to recharge?”

“Tubes are recharging now Captain, but it’s going to take a while. Firing a dozen of those things has drained the reserve capacitors. We’ll need to recharge them from the reactor.”

Weston nodded slightly and turned to Roberts for a report, “damage?”

“The first enemy ship is turning from its intercept course. They’re limping off.” Even through his rigid demeanor, Weston could hear the satisfaction in Roberts’s voice.

Weston wasn’t quite so satisfied, though. Four direct hits from Pulse Torpedoes shouldn’t have left much alive, to limp off.

Tough bastards, Weston thought, but didn’t let it color his voice as he nodded to the Commander. “Let them go, continue tracking the other two.”

“Aye Sir.”

The Odyssey, with its flying wing of escorts, continued to roar toward the next intercept point. It wasn’t until they passed the debris caused by their long range fire that they realized the situation had again changed. The further Drasin vessel had turned back to the planet, the energy from its charging weapons lighting up their sensors like a beacon, in the black.

*****

This time no one cursed.

The shock was complete in the large command and control room, based in Mons Systema and it could have possible to heard the proverbial pin strike the floor.

“Identify that ship!” The Admiral snapped, breaking the shocked silence and jerking everyone back to work.

“There’s still no transponder ID!” Someone yelled, “It’s a Spirit, Sir…”

“I do not believe in Spirits!” He growled back, “Especially not ones that can cripple a Drasin cruiser with one attack. Find me that ship’s identification. I do not care if you have to go outside with a telescope and read the name off its hull!”

“Yes Sir…”

“Sir… One of the Drasin is looping back! They’re coming here!”

The silence once again descended as they watched the Cruiser circle back around and make for the planet under its best thrust.

“Alert the orbital defences. Prepare to engage landers,” Tanner replied, half turning to see the action in another section of the bunker.

A huge hulk of a man, just in sight, nodded to him and Tanner sighed, turning back, assured that his counterpart was already on the job.

For all the good it was going to do.

Tanner left that job and worry, in the hands of the one most able to accomplish it. He turned his focus back to the mystery ship that had managed to cripple one of the ‘invincible’ Drasin cruisers.

Who are you? He asked in his mind as he glared at the purple dot on his threat board.

*****

Weston watched the tactical display, the cool blue and red dots dancing across the screen like the display of some warped video game. It would be more than an hour before the capacitors for the torpedo tubes could be recharged and the laser array was nearly worthless at this range. Weston found himself debating two bad options, looking for the lesser evil. Intercepting the closer enemy vessel would be the safest route for the Odyssey, with the support of the Archangels and the formidable close range firepower, of the Odyssey, the single enemy vessel could be dispatched of, relatively quickly. However the second enemy vessel would have thirty, perhaps forty minutes or longer in orbit of the planet, an eternity to those on the surface. Even so, Weston hesitated to attempt an intercept of the second ship. Moving thus, would place the Odyssey in the cross fire of both enemy vessels.

With seconds ticking down to conflict with the nearer enemy vessel, Weston reached a hard decision. “Helm, re-plot our course. Put the Odyssey between the second vessel and the planet. All available thrust.”

As the big ship began to rumble off its flight path into a tighter trajectory, Weston linked into the Archangel’s tac-net. “Stephanus, I’m ordering the Odyssey to intercept the second ship. We have to cut them off before they can begin planetary bombardment. We’re going to need you and the Archangels to stay on course to harass and delay the first ship, so we can get into planetary defence position.”

*****

Stephanus replied with a simple acknowledgment, belying the concern he felt about the mission at hand. Their earlier encounter with the enemy had nearly turned disastrous, and had only been successful after the combined strengths of both the Odyssey and the Archangel Flight were pitted against their adversary. In spite this he knew that Weston could no more allow the bombardment of a relatively helpless planet. He could have allowed a civilian town to be bombed back during the war.

“All right ‘Angels, form up and kick in the burners, time for a little hit ’n run!” Snorts and chuckles echoed over the tacnet as the ’Angels checked in and joined up with Stephanus on an intercept course with their targets fighter wing.

“Just like the old days, Steph!” Racer said with a grin.

Stephanus groaned, “Don’t remind me Racer, The Yangtana wasn’t exactly a bright point in my career. And this monster packs a slightly bigger wallop.”

Snorts, catcalls, and cries of ‘not likely’ echoed through the net as Stephanus thought back to the last time they tried this maneuver. The Yangtana was the Eastern Block’s penultimate warship, a combat carrier capable laying waste to a thousand square kilometer area from up to five thousand kilometers away. The Archangels had volunteered to prevent the Yangtana from reaching its launch zone, a point five hundred miles off the west coast of California, from which it would launch a crippling attack on the New York and Delaware regions of the North American Confederacy.

The Angels had lived in their planes, literally, for three and a half weeks, all the while running harassing attacks on the Yangtana and its fighter cohort. The Yangtana was the prototype for its class, the latest in a long line of ships, deemed to be unsinkable. Surprisingly enough, Stephanus mused, in the Yangtana’s case that turned out to be a literal truth. Fifty-eight miles from the launch point, the Archangels reformed for one last attack, their numbers having been depleted by over sixty percent, during the last three weeks.

The massive Chinese warship had taken everything they could throw at her and a good deal more from the surface ships that had joined the attack. In the end, the NAC forces had won the day, but the Yangtana herself, survived the attack. In fact, she was still sitting there, where the ’Angels attack had driven her, beached on a shallow reef that had become her final resting place.

That last battle had weighed heavily on Stephanus for months afterward. Of fourteen planes that went in, only eight had come out. A rate of attrition that Stephanus hadn’t believed possible, a month earlier. That was the first time he had realized that the Archangels weren’t, in fact, Angels, but only human after all.

Stephanus shook his head clear, noting that he was less than a minute away from intercept range. And this monster does indeed pack a more lethal punch than even the Yangtana’s big gun batteries. Not to mention that this bugger isn’t limited to one plane of motion.

The tight formation of fighters blazed in, on their alien counterparts, taking almost continuous fire from the alien fighters, almost from the moment they first entered within range. Every cockpit filled with warning alarms as the onboard computers struggled to adapt the cam-plates, to deflect the incoming laser fire. From the outside, the sleek fighters shimmered with iridescent colors, as the modifications occasionally altered the visible color of the fighter’s armor.

The Archangels ignored their alien counterparts, trusting their over beleaguered combat computers to defend them from the other fighter’s laser fire. Stephanus and his team instead, focused their weapons on the Drasin carrier ship, directing Havoc missiles, eighty millimeter cannon rounds, and thirty gigawatt laser fire at the big ship, as they skirted along the very edge of their firing range. Due to the speed they were traveling and the shallow angle of their attack, Stephanus and his team had only engaged the enemy carrier for a few seconds before they were peeling off from the battle group and soaring back into open space.

“Great fun!”

“Yeah Yeah, quiet down, Racer. All right, peel back and initiate assault plan twelve. Racer, you and Reaper start waxing those fighters as we slip past, if they get smart, they’ll start nailing us with coordinated strikes. And you know what happens then…”

Stephanus’ warning was unnecessary, since every pilot in the ‘Angels knew the limits of their fighter’s laser dispersion technology. Coordinated bursts from multiple frequency lasers would overload the system and crash the onboard software that handled the cam-plate reflection modifications. The resulting twenty second reboot time often translated into eternity. Literally.

The fighters wheeled back into line with the big Drasin ship, ’Angels five and eight flanking their brethren, as their computers were focused on the approaching line on enemy fighter craft. As they did, they saw the line of enemy fighters form up into a wall of defence between them and the enemy capital ship.

“Looks like we have to handle the fighters first, ’Angels.”

The Archangel group acknowledged Stephanus’ message, understanding it to be an order as much as a comment. The fighter group split up into a group of two-fighter teams and increased speed toward the waiting line of fire.

*****

The huge threat board that made up the main focus of the command and the control center was lit up from one side to the other, with lights. Furious battles were raging all through their system now, it seemed, and the key players were still closing in, on the planet.

The Drasin had the lead, but the unknown ship was closing fast, on a course that would swing it around the planet and bring it in between the Drasin cruiser and its objective.

The computers were unable to predict exactly who would win the race, all they could say at this point, was that it was going to be close.

Too close.

*****

The Odyssey accelerated into the plane of the nearby planet, hooking her powerful gravity field and swooping around, just as the Drasin ship reached orbit, immediately aligning to bring its forward guns to bear on the target. It was quickly obvious to everyone on the Bridge of the Terran ship, that the enemy cruiser had taken early notice of their intentions.

“Sensors to full sweep!” Weston ordered as the Drasin vessel slowly brought its own forward weapons to bear on the Terran vessel.

“Aye, Sir.”

The Odyssey’s formidable forward sensor array went active, painting the Drasin ship with an inescapable web of electronic and tachyonic signals. The Drasin ship accelerated, as it detected the increase in local energy signals, vectoring to intercept the Odyssey’s position, as it did.

“Ping them,” Eric said, his voice cold.

The Odyssey released a single focused burst of tachyons and captured the reflected signals, the barest slice of an instant later, locking the Drasin’s course changes into the targeting computer.

“They’re closing, Captain.” Roberts reported from where he was examining the combat display. “No sign of a weapons lock, or firing as of yet.”

Weston nodded curtly, accepting the report. They want to play a game of chicken, “Report on the second ship and the status of the Archangel group.”

Roberts looked down, flicking the display aside for a second, “the Drasin ship is moving to bypass the Archangels, while its fighter support keeps the squadron busy, Captain. They’ll be here shortly, if they aren’t stopped.”

“Keep tabs on him.”

“Aye, Captain.”

*****

“Yang-boy is making a break for it, Steph!”

Stephanus looked up from his HUD display for a second, glancing over his shoulder, through the canopy of his fighter, to where the big alien capital ship was slowly pulling away. Stephanus cursed quietly, “All right, Wings four through eight, break off and start harassing maneuvers. One through four, provide cover!”

The squad splits smoothly apart, the first team targeting the fighters as they swung in on another pass. The second team accelerated out of the dogfight and vectored toward the enemy capital ship.

Stephanus ‘haloed’ another fighter in his HUD and loosed a havoc missile, forgetting the target as soon as he did. That fighter was dead the second the big missile dropped from its pylon and Stephanus had more things to worry about than some soon to be flotsam.

*****

Roberts smiled tightly as he watched the Archangels break up and move to harass the enemy vessel. “Captain, Commander Michaels has initiated harassing maneuvers against the Drasin ship.”

Weston just nodded, accepting the report while he kept his attention focused on the cruiser he was going head to head with. He’s not going to make the same mistake as the others. He’s going to keep this up close and personal, where we can’t duck his shots and adapt to his laser frequency.

Inwardly Weston smiled, he could respect an opponent that was able to adapt as quickly as this, “lock the forward laser array and fire a medium beam.”

Which wasn’t, of course, the same as liking said enemy.

Like any warrior, Weston liked the easy targets. The ones he could respect, he’d rather have on his side, then against him.

*****

The laser array glowed a bright white briefly as it charged, an invisible beam erupting from it a few seconds later. The beam slashed across the vacuum toward its target, only to flash through empty space and vanish into the depths, as the Drasin ship slipped aside.

The Drasin vessel slowed slightly, making its closet pass to the planet as it did, and launched a dozen chunky pods with fighter escorts. The ship continued toward the Odyssey as the pods and fighters descended toward the peaceful planet below.

*****

The back and forth of weapons signatures were echoed on the threat board in the command and control center, and the occupants of the room watched in rapt attention as the computer displayed the exchange of fire in clean, sanitized, graphics for their consumption.

Admiral Tanner watched the board himself, wondering at the miracle that was being given to him.

He and his people had been prepared to die for a few minutes delay, but this unidentified ship was buying them more time than they’d dared to dream of.

Now, if only it would be enough.

*****

“Captain! The ship just launched fighters and what looks like a planetary assault squadron.” Waters spun around, looking over his shoulder at the Captain.

Weston just focused on the descending ships, calling up the minimal profiles the Odyssey’s active sensors had managed to gather before they hit the atmosphere. “Project their landing point, Commander.”

“Aye Sir,” Roberts called up a vector projection and had the computer estimate probable landing sites. “Captain, looks like a major settlement on a continent in the northern hemisphere.”

Milla stepped forward and looked at the data, over Roberts shoulder. She gasped slightly as she recognized the city on the data display. “That is Mons Systema! It’s the government capital of this system.”

Weston nodded, accepting that information quietly. “Roberts, go down to the shuttle bay and have Savoy prepare his men for some ground pounding.”

“Aye Captain.” Roberts face looked troubled, but he got up quickly and strode off the Bridge, tapping the induction set on his jaw, as he did.

“Commander?” Weston half turned.

“Yes Sir?” The Commander paused, glancing back.

“Once they’re away, take command of the auxiliary Bridge,” Weston said stiffly. “I’ll have a command crew waiting for you.”

“Aye Captain,” Roberts nodded. Turning back toward the lift.

Eric Weston didn’t watch him leave, but rather turned back to the tactical repeater that showed the situation outside.

“Colonel Savoy, we have a situation developing,” he could hear Roberts speaking as he waited for the lift. “Prepare your men for a hot insertion; you’ll have to do an OILO.”

The doors hissed shut then, and the Captain paid them no more attention, as the situation outside became paramount to his thinking. Behind him, he didn’t notice his young ‘guest’ hit the call switch for the lift, while everyone else was busy with other matters.

*****

Stephanus jinked to the left as a stray missile detonated just off his wingtip, rocking the plane with the concussion, but thankfully missing any major shrapnel impacts. He flipped the plane end for end on his directional thrusters, killing his main engines as he did, and let the plane’s momentum take it along its previous course, as he ‘haloed’ the fighter that tried to ice him.

“Adios, sucker.”

Stephanus’ eighty millimeter cannon blazed, ripping the pursuing fighter to shreds in an instant. He watched the blaze of flame and shrapnel for a second before he kicked his main engines back into full power and killed his momentum, swivelling around and accelerating toward another target.

Around him, the Archangels were faring well against their alien counterparts, often taking the enemy fighters by sheer element of surprise. The enemy pilots were obviously not used to targets that shot back.

*****

Roberts burst into the hanger bay just ahead of the assault team the clangs of the magboots echoing off the walls and ceiling as they headed for the shuttle. A few moments later, the lift doors opened again and a lone figure stepped out.

“Miss Chans,” Roberts said as he recognized the figure. “I don’t think that your presence is needed this time.”

Milla finished snapping the armor on as she walked into the room, the helmet crooked in the bend of her arm. “I think that you will need someone on the surface who knows the people, Commander. And I do not think that anyone else on board fits that description and knows how to operate your ‘firm suits’.”

Roberts scowled slightly, but had to acknowledge the point. “I don’t suppose you’ve had any weapons training?”

Milla’s face darkened, “I have had some with our own lasers, and Commander Michaels showed me the basics of your own rifles.”

Brinks and Savoy looked at each other, a concerned look passing between them. Neither liked the idea of having an armed civilian at their backs.

Roberts would have agreed with them had they said anything, but he also knew that Milla brought other things to the mission. He looked at her with an odd smirk and spoke again, “And you’re probably not OILO qualified either.”

Milla raised her eyebrows, “OILO?”

*****

“The shuttle has launched, Captain.”

Weston nodded, otherwise ignoring the update, and snapped another order. “Direct a new barrage at the enemy capital ship, bracket it while the shuttle makes its approach.”

“Aye Sir.”

The weaponry officer tapped the commands into the keypad and the low whine of charging capacitors was heard, as the laser array charged for the next volley.

A moment later, the laser array flared briefly with the incidental illumination of its pulsed energy release, just as the Odyssey engaged the enemy ship and its fighter complement with its smaller cannons, rockets, and laser systems.

The Drasin vessel rocked under the multiple impacts, saving itself from serious damage by reversing engines and slipping back past the dispersion range of the Odyssey’s weapons. As it did so, Lt. Samuels slipped her shuttle through the opening the Odyssey had prepared for her and rocketed for the planet ahead.

“The shuttle has broken through, Captain.”

Weston nodded, “ETA to Pulse Torpedo recharge?”

“Thirty-eight minutes, Sir.”

Weston growled low in his throat at the answer, causing several Bridge officers to pale slightly and studiously examine their stations.

*****

“Christ, Samuels!” Brinks yelled as his armored body was slammed into the restraints for the eighth time, in as many seconds. “Cut me some slack back here, I’m not as fond of acceleration bruises as you pilots!”

Samuels just grinned, showing her teeth as she favored the big man with a glance over her shoulder. Several other soldiers groaned at the sight, and muttered amongst themselves. Samuels had been something of a legend in their circles, a truly insane pilot who did anything to get her squad into and out of the worst possible missions imaginable. The only thing worse than her smiling during a flight, was when she showed her teeth.

Samuels turned back to her controls, her eye flickering wistfully toward the distance flashes that marked the area of space, where she knew the Archangels were fighting for their lives. A moment later, she hardened her eyes and turned back to the assault team in the back.

“We’re picking up signs of fighting near the Capital on the southern continent!” The young pilot yelled back to where the fighting teams were preparing their equipment. “I’m moving into a geo-sync… Red light is off, we’re at yellow now!”

Milla watched as the military people continued their work with cool precision, not bothering to respond to the announcement. The young pilot didn’t seem to expect any answer either, she turned back to her piloting and focused her attention on the instrument displays in front of her.

“Geo-Sync?” Milla asked when she managed to get Savoy’s attention.

He responded over the radio link, still examining her equipment along with his own. “Geo-Synchronous orbit. She’s getting us in position for insertion.”

“Ah…” Milla responded, her tone making it quite clear that she had little idea of what he meant. Savoy didn’t take the hint; he just finished checking her suit and equipment and then bent to his own equipment with cool professionalism. Milla let it drop.

Lieutenant Savoy looked around at everyone, noting that some of the faces were still visible within their armored helmets. “Combat standards, people.”

Milla blinked at the odd words, glancing up just in time to see the clear face plates of the armor soldiers around her suddenly shift and blacken, until she was looking at a rank of faceless men in alien armor.

“You too,” Savoy said, turning to her.

“H… how?” Milla asked in confusion.

“It’s not difficult,” he told her, opening his tactical network HUD, as he did.

Milla jumped suddenly as a bank of lights and diagrams lit up inside her helmet, following the sweep of her eyes.

“Calm down,” Savoy instructed her, “Watch the center of the screen. You see the highlighted square? It’s red.”

“Y… yes, I see it…”

“Eyeball the screen, watch for movement.”

Milla did as he told her and watched as the square turned blue, and another beside it turned red.

“Third square over… the one with the picture of a shield.”

“S… shield?”

Savoy sighed. “The blue thing with the white star. Highlight that square.”

“O… ok.” She said when she had done it.

“Say ‘activate’.”

Milla spoke hesitantly, “Activate.”

To her nothing seemed to change, except that the pictures suddenly grew smaller and lined the bottom of her ‘screen’, but to Savoy her face was suddenly hidden behind the flat black of her molecular armored faceplate, as it shifted its molecular structure to prevent the transmission of any electromagnetic frequency.

Similar to, though less sophisticated and versatile than the Cam-Plate armor technology that protected the Odyssey and the Archangels, the personal armor used faceplates designed from a hardened transparent aluminium, originally created for the windscreens of military Hummer assault vehicles.

Since then the material had been improved several times, with nanoscopic level upgrades, allowing it to change its molecular structure between a default ‘clear’ mode and a laser resistant ‘opaque’ mode that required a constant power feed to maintain.

The power trickle was minute, but its requirement kept soldiers from being totally blinded on the field if, for one reason or another, they found themselves without power.

“Green in sixty!” The pilot announced. “Lock down in five! We’ve got enemy fighters inbound! Prepare for combat maneuvering!”

Five seconds later, the large hatch between the command deck and the troop section slid shut, sealing tightly. Milla jumped at the loud, metallic clang that echoed even through her suit. Around her, the troops snapped to their feet, or as close to it as they could manage in zero-G.

“Snap in, boyos!” Savoy yelled over the common tac-frequency. “I’m blowing the hatch!”

A soldier beside her grabbed a safety line from her belt and clipped her onto an overhead railing before doing the same to himself. “Hold on.” He said, not unkindly.

Milla nodded inside her suit, not realizing that even if the soldier had stopped to wait for confirmation he wouldn’t have been able to see her moment inside her helmet. She wrapped her hands tightly around a rail that ran along the wall. Now what? She wondered to herself as Savoy tapped a code into a panel.

Suddenly the hatch blew, exposing the interior of the shuttle to the hard vacuum of space. Milla felt the tug of the explosive decompression pull at her, trying to pull her armored form into the depths of space, and tightened her grip even more. “Are you people mad?” She demanded, in shock.

A group of chuckles floated back across the tac-channels,

“Mad? Naw… just crazy.”

“We’re worse lady, we’re spec-ops.”

“Ya know, I’ve been wondering the same thing ever since I signed up…, pretty smart chick, to get us pegged so quick.”

“Awright cut that out!” Savoy ordered tersely. “Playtime is now OVER!”

Savoy looped himself back toward where Milla was holding onto the wall, as if her life depended on it. “You can relax now. Decompression is over, and your suit’s integrity is rated to several hours in hard vacuum.”

Milla glared at him from behind her mirrored visor, again not realizing that he couldn’t see it. Savoy chuckled however; he had years of reading emotions through the way a soldier held themselves in their suit. “If you’re pissed now, you’re gonna be ready to kill me, when I tell ya what comes next.”

*****

Stephanus wheeled his fighter around in a hundred and eighty degree spin without killing his forward momentum, loosed a missile and two bursts from his cannon and spun back. Behind him, the pursuing Drasin fighter stumbled directly into the hell storm barrage thirty-three seconds later, erupting into a ball of flame and expanding debris.

“Yeehaw!” Brute yelled over the tactical network, “Lovely shooting, Bossman!”

Stephanus suppressed a smile, instead snapping an order into his mic. “Can the chitchat, Brute. And watch your six!”

Brute laughed over the net as he flipped his fighter in a graceful pirouette, his cannon blazing as he did. “No problemo, Boss Man! These jokers react like computer drones!”

Stephanus had to admit that Brute had a point, the enemy fighters flew well, but predictably. Do this and they do that. They were either relying heavily on computer interfaces, or discipline was extremely rigid among the enemy flyers. Either way, the Archangels had a marked advantage over their flying foes in this fight.

Chapter 20

“No!” Milla declared firmly. “I will NOT!”

Major Brinks grinned nastily, exchanging looks with Lt Savoy, “You’re the one who wanted to come along planet side. This is the only way that’s going to happen.”

“This is insane!” She tried reasoning with him.

Savoy shrugged, “welcome to the military. You think any organization with a quarter ounce of sanity would use the motto, ‘It’s not a job! It’s an adventure!”

“But… But…” Milla stammered.

“Look,” Brinks began as reassuringly as possible, “I’ll be with you all the way down. You’re going to be perfectly safe… at least until we hit dirt.”

Milla’s armored form shifted back from Savoy, and Brinks could read shock in her stance. “Until?”

He shrugged again, an awkward motion in armor. “War is a funny thing. It doesn’t allow any guarantees.”

Milla shuddered, but finally acquiesced. “Very well… What do I have to do?”

“Whatever you’re going to do, you’d better do it quick!” Samuels snarled over the intercom. “We’ve got three more bogeys joining this here party, and they look a might pissed!”

Savoy pulled Milla around, standing her in front of Brinks so he could clip her armor to the Major’s with the built in security clips. Then he floated the two of them toward the back of the shuttle, actually bouncing off the wall, as Jennifer Samuels slammed the stick hard over to avoid a burst of fire.

“Green light!” Samuels shouted over the intercom, “We’re lined up! You’ve got a thirty second window! Go, Go, Go!”

“I am not certain of this!” Milla screamed as she was roughly manhandled to the open air lock.

“Too late,” Savoy grinned and threw them both out of the orbiting shuttle craft.

He watched for ten seconds, as the boss and the space lady floated clear, then grinned privately. How many troops could say that they had just tossed their commanding officer out an airlock and expect to get away with it?

Some days, I love my job. Savoy grinned, checking the shuttles approach velocity and the tell-tale green light. All the numbers checked, and he had another five seconds on his window, so he grabbed the bulkhead and threw himself after his boss.

*****

Jumping from orbit bears few similarities to skydiving in the classic sense. The first few moments are more akin to swimming or the types of dreams where you try and try to move, but can never seem to budge. After that, however, the sudden acceleration as your orbit decays is, without doubt, frightening. Your stomach feels like it’s being driven into your spine, and pity the poor person who made the mistake of eating before his or her first jump.

Milla, fortunately, hadn’t been hungry during the preparations for entry into the system, and only had to worry about the spinning planet that loomed ever closer beneath her. Tossing her cookies into a sealed helmet was asking for trouble, particularly when the next time you’d be able to remove said helmet was sixty vertical miles straight down.

Brinks’ tight grip kept her from struggling much, as the planet’s gravity pulled them down, but it left him little time to properly guide their descent.

“Miss Chans!” Major Brinks yelled over the tactical sub channel, “Please stop trying to struggle! I have to give this my entire attention.”

Her struggles instantly died down, the young woman going limp in her suit as the fear of what might happen overrode the fear of what was happening.

The Major thanked whatever God watched over lunatics, as he examined the HUD system overlaid over his visor. He could see the LZ lit up in green, with colored concentric circles surrounding it. Yellow for a close drop, orange for a long walk. Red indicated a distance that would prevent him from being a factor in the coming battle and was a position to be avoided, since his team would be relying on every combat hand they could get.

He was fairly confident that he could hit the inner green dot.

The gravity of the planet had quickly caught them in an irrevocable tug as Brinks adjusted his trajectory with slight puffs from the MMU system he had attached to his backpack.

*****

An observer on the planets’ surface would have had a very interesting sight on that chilly pre-dawn morning. Earlier great glowing orbs had sliced through the cold atmosphere, heating up the earth where they passed close on their approach to the great city. An attentive observer would have been able to hear the explosions and screams that marked the passage of those first orbs of blazing light.

But now there were new players in the pre-dawn sky. Twenty-one separate points of light appeared, moving against the dimming starscape, organized into seven groups, of three. Lights that quickly brightened to a nova-like intensity as they plummeted to earth, friction and heat build-up bleeding off of them, in a trail of flame that stretched to the heavens.

The ablative coating that made up the outer three layers of their armored suits bled off first, leaving fiery trails of light behind each of the soldiers, as they drifted together.

When that was gone, the inner armor began to heat up and glow, as the heat friction continued to build, but the material held and the heat merely fed the thermocouples that shunted the extra juice to the suit’s capacitors.

As the old Earth saying, and new Earth motto, went…

Waste not, want not.

*****

In the Command and Control Center, the local activity had jumped up a hundredfold as men and women rushed around, tracking the incoming objects and tried to rally support to their landing zones.

“There’s a Drasin lander coming in over the City Center!”

“Satellite defences ineffective!”

“Admiral! The unidentified ship has launched a shuttle…”

Tanner spun in his chair, glaring at the last speaker. “Where?”

“Entering polar orbit now, Sir…” The bewildered tech said, looking up. “Four of the Landers have been destroyed, along with their fighter compliments…”

“Congratulate the gunners…”

“It wasn’t us.” The Tech said, shaking his head.

Tanner growled, but nodded as he turned back to the threat board.

Who ARE these people!?

*****

At twenty thousand feet, Brink’s visor finally lightened as the unearthly glow of superheated metal and composite material faded to a tolerable dull orange. He could see the spinning horizon and began shifting his weight and Milla’s, to guide the airflow around them and shift their fall slightly in the desired direction.

When he hit five thousand feet, he triggered his ‘chute’.

The ‘chute’ wasn’t a haphazard masse of rope and silk, nor even a carefully designed airfoil. It was a small block of metal that drew on the suit’s internal power and energized its core with the same anti-mass technology that gave the Archangel fighter-craft their VTOL capabilities.

This small pack separated from the armored suit, connected by two super strong wire cables, leaving Brinks and Milla dangling under the floating pack.

*****

The other soldiers were in an OILO, Orbital Insertion Low Opening, operational stance and waited until they slipped under five hundred feet to trigger their own ‘chutes’. In teams of three, their aborted falls became great, sweeping glides that brought them in, low over the population center and the alien orbital pods.

“Teams, this is one. Call by the numbers.” Brinks ordered as he observed from his altitude.

“One, Two. No contact.”

“One, Three. No Contact.”

“One, Four. Have a visual. Sector G10, firefight in a populated area. Civilians… Hostiles… No local soldiers yet… look like a couple cops, though.”

“Four, One.” Brinks interrupted the soldiers, “Cops?”

“Affirm. Two uniforms, cops or local militia. Resistance ineffective.”

“Four, One. Render assistance. Three, provide backup for Four.”

“Affirm.”

“Affirm.”

“Five through Seven, continue reporting.”

“One, Five. Minor contact. Looks like a pod had a rough landing. No motion.”

“One, Six. No contact.”

“One, Seven. Contact. Major battle at I9 and J1, require assistance.”

“Teams Two and Six, render assistance to Seven. Five approaches with caution remain in contact.”

A echoing of ‘affirm’ came back over the net as the soldiers moved to their tasks.

*****

Stephanus cursed into his mouthpiece, as he jinked his fighter hard about, barely avoiding some type of compressed energy burst, fired from the Drasin fighter that was dogging him.

“This bastard is better than the rest! Brute, give me a hand over here!”

Brute’s voice came back over the tacnet, almost instantly, “Righty-oh, Bossman. Inbound on your Nine, high.”

Stephanus looked sharply to his left and spotted the twin burn of Brute’s fighter, as it angled around toward him. “Roger, Brute. Rope-a-dope?”

“You got it, Bossman,” Brute’s grinned voice came back.

As the Drasin moved in for another burst at Stephanus, Brute blasted in from above with his guns blazing. The Drasin was fast, and skipped to the left to avoid the shells. While his attention was diverted by Brute’s attack, Stephanus flipped his plane around, killed his momentum with a long burn, and rocketed down the enemy fighter’s throat.

The Drasin, though taken by surprise, angled his own thrust and skipped just above the barrage of rounds, that Stephanus had sent his way. A second later, he was rocketing off at an angle from the fight and circling for another move.

“Damn!” Stephanus cursed, “is it just me or does anyone else notice something different about that bastard?”

“Other than the fact that he’s a competent pilot?” Brute asked with a wry grin.

“Yeah. Other than that.”

“Nope.”

Stephanus shook his head, “Something about this one is familiar…”

“Worry about it later, Bossman! He’s coming around for another pass.”

Stephanus checked and sure enough the fighter was coming in for another try. “Peel out, Brute. I’m gonna bird-dog him.”

“Got it.”

As Brute’s fighter peeled out of the area on full burn, Stephanus checked his displays and found what he was looking for. The Drasin was coming in tight, on his six, as he let out the throttle and showed the enemy a taste of what an Archangel was really capable of.

*****

Tsari Reme depleted her small laser’s charge into the creature that had just finished murdering no less than three of the people in her community. It wasn’t a big community actually, just a close knit sub-section of the capital. She had grown up here. Tsari knew everyone here by their first name and they all knew her.

As the laser whined dry, she tried to swallow, but her mouth was too dry. Her throat worked continuously, without any real function as the thing turned its gaze on her. Some movement to the rear of it shook her attention and her heart dropped.

Oh God, she thought in shock. There are more of them.

Five more of them to be precise. And they all turned on Tsari and her junior partner, a young man named Nethan.

“Do you have a charge?”

He shook his head wordlessly, his worthless laser held limply in his hand.

She growled, though not really at him. It wasn’t his fault, the local constabulary wasn’t supposed to be faced with this sort of thing. Hell, most of the time, they gave directions to lost people from Central Systema and the rest was spent on domestic calls. A ship crashing into their little community and disgorging six lumbering beasts with a taste for carnage wasn’t in the handbook.

The things were huge, almost a dozen feet high at the shoulders and they moved with a purpose. Their purpose was destruction and they were good at it. Tsari winced as another store front was trashed by a casual backhanded swing from an armored fist. She wasn’t sure what to do … but… By God! this is my community and I’m going to do something.

Nethan stared, goggle-eyed, as his normally sane and well adjusted, superior strode out into the middle of the street and pointed her empty weapon at the creatures.

“I don’t know who you are, or what you are, but I want you out of my neighborhood!”

*****

Corporal Sam Deacon shook his head, as the computer relayed the translation to his ear, “brave Lady, that one. Stupid as all hell, but brave.”

Beside him, his two squad mates nodded their heads, “you got that right, Sam.”

They watched as the creatures actually paused in mid-destruction, and stared at the Constable with a degree of confusion that was actually laughable. Unfortunately it didn’t last long, and the team could see them aiming their weapons at the lady cop.

“Move!” Deacon ordered as he kicked off the ground and launched himself into the fray.

Behind him, the two men didn’t bother to reply they just followed his example and jumped from their perch, into the middle of the battle, on the street below.

*****

Tsari entertained a brief fantasy that they were actually listening, when the things paused in their actions and looked at her, then each other. When they lifted their weapons toward her, she again tried in vain to swallow and consigned her soul to the after-life.

She certainly didn’t expect what happened next.

A sudden impact, a few feet to her left jerked her attention to the side, just in time to see a blur of motion, rebound off the ground and fly into her. She cried out in shock and heard the aliens weapons open fire at the same moment, charring the place she had been standing, to a cinder. Then she hit the ground with a heavy weight pressing down on her.

“Stay here, Lady,” the weight ordered as it got off her, slinging an odd looking rifle from its shoulder and aiming it back down the street.

“Who are you?” she asked. Military… they must have arrived finally…

“No time,” he triggered his weapon, causing her to flinch back in horror, as it let out a whining roar and a flash of firelight.

What kind of weapon is that? She couldn’t place it. Certainly it wasn’t on the police standard issue books, or even any of the military books that she knew of. Tsari shook her head and tried to make sense of the strange figure in armor that was kneeling over her, firing an imposing weapon, back at the things that had trashed her community.

That last thought was enough for her. If this guy was shooting at those things, he was a friend. “Hey you got a charge pack for a Milosan Laser?”

She saw the figure twist slightly to look at her and swore it looked somehow confused, “sorry Lady, got nothing like that.”

She let out a slight curse under her breath, an atrocious habit, but one she’d picked up a long time ago and had never been able to break away from. To her surprise the armor turned around to look at her again and when it spoke, the voice was laughing.

“Here,” it handed her a small hand weapon that was over four times the weight of her laser. “There’s no safety. Point, and pull the small lever.”

*****

Deacon grinned under his helmet. He’d been hanging around these people for days, on the Odyssey and they never cursed. It irritated him to no end, how reasonable they always seemed to be. Nobody was that calm. Nobody. So when the translator actually whispered a few choice invectives in his ear, he did something that he never thought he’d do…, he handed her his sidearm.

Then he returned his full focus to the things, the Drasin ship had landed in this formerly peaceful suburb. They were ugly, that much was certain. Their armored forms were covered in something slick and slimy that gave the large things a decidedly sinister air. They had a vaguely insectoid appearance, just like the long range scans indicated, but he’d had seen that before. Any exo-skeletal armor tends to take on insect like features, when it’s taken far enough. God simply got things right, when he made those things.

Sam Deacon shrugged internally and levelled the big rifle on the thing again and opened fire. Across the street he could see and hear the rifles of his two comrades joining in.

*****

The Drasin soldier drones were enjoying this run, as much as they enjoyed anything. This group hadn’t had a lot of chance to see the action so far in the war and it was only in the fighting that they found meaning.

The six members of the clutch were pretty much walking through the area like they owned it. Local police were unable to mount an effective defence, and if the military’s ground troops were anything like their Navy, it was going to a pretty easy job.

The leader stopped when he saw a lone female human march out and demand that he leave her community. Laughter was soon bouncing back and forth between his squad, until he finally got himself under control and lifted his weapon toward the brave fool.

As he was about to fire, a blurring motion swept her from his sights, faster than he was able to track effectively, as he fired on reflex. The particle beam erupted from his forward mandible, ripping up the stonework street, but utterly missing its target.

He summoned two others quickly, taking chances wasn’t part of his makeup and the three of them slowly approached the building that the motion had vanished behind. When they were within only a short distance, a mottled black and grey figure appeared from behind the building and hefted a weapon.

Expecting no problems, despite the previous miss, the soldier took his time aiming. To date, the ground weapons, on this world were laughably ineffective.

The roar of sound and light seemed to stagger him and he fell back in surprise and shock, a burning pain erupting through his body. As if from a distance, he could hear the others calling for him, but it was too dark to find them and soon their voices were lost in the blackness as well.

*****

With the immense acceleration that an Archangel was capable of, it took Stephanus only moments to find what he was looking for and to reach it. He was mildly surprised for a moment, when he realized that the Drasin was still on his tail, but mentally berated himself for assuming that he’d lose them that easily. He’d have to do better now that he had located one of the Trojan points of the system, and he’d use the asteroids in the area to make certain of it.

It was difficult to remember that the technological edge he was used having in previous conflicts, wasn’t certain out here. The fact that the technologies they had encountered were so wildly different than Earth’s made it even harder to understand, or even make an accurate guess.

He jinked the fighter under a tumbling mountain, firing his retro-thrusters as he passed it, cutting forward motion to almost a standstill in an instant and climbing ‘vertical’ in relation to his fighter to hide behind the asteroid.

The Cee-Emm field that surrounded his fighter allowed for such insane maneuvers, and it was one advantage that he seemed to hold over the enemy pilot. The Drasin fighter ripped past, decelerating wildly as it spun around to aim at him, but Steph had precious seconds in which he could react first.

He loosed three rockets, haloing the target in his Helmet HUD long enough for each of the ‘fire and forget’ munitions to accelerate away from his plane, then he keyed the vertical thrusters again and dropped under the mountain, rotating back the way he’d come, and fired his main reactors.

*****

Behind the human fighter, an alien craft shook slightly under its own heavy power, as it decelerated toward the retreating target. Its sensors reached out ahead and detected the munitions that were hurtling through space towards it, and it briefly contemplated its options.

After a split second, it locked the rockets up and opened fire.

*****

The Archangel standard munitions were powered by the same technology as the fighters themselves and were, in many ways, even more effective, since the mass involved was considerably less.

As the rocket left the Counter-Mass field that surrounded the fighter, it lurched briefly into what could be described as ‘real space’, its acceleration limited enormously by the laws of physics, as they applied to normal dimensional space.

It took only a matter of tenths of a second for the rocket’s own CM fields to power up, reducing the appreciable mass of the munitions, to a number that infinitely approached zero. When that happened, it accelerated on its pre-determined course, like a laser beam.

In those tenths of a second, however, the alien fighter had already fired its lasers and destroyed the three weapons, leaving nothing but a cone of rapidly dispersing fragments in their place.

*****

“Damn!” Stephanus swore as his munitions blinked off the HUD, well short of their target. “This guy is no joke…”

He risked an instinctive glance over his shoulder, but there was nothing to see, of course. The black of space prevented him from seeing much of anything at any reasonable range, and the fighter he was tangling with wasn’t at what he would call a ‘reasonable’ range.

Turning his focus back to the hub, Steph checked the range and noted that the Drasin was once more closing the gap and coming up on his six, hard. Steph growled hitting his retro rockets and flipping the Archangel, end for end.

Two missiles left, he thought, checking the munitions stores from the corner of his eye, as he armed the remaining Havoc missiles and haloed the incoming fighter.

Whatever else this guy was, Stephanus had to grant him a certain grudging respect. The enemy flyer was a real pilot, unlike most of the drones they were dealing with…

Stephanus blinked, a thought coming up to him from the past.

It clicked in, and the light came on.

“Drones,” he said suddenly into an open comm channel.

“Pardon me, Boss?” Racer asked a moment later as the time lag kicked in.

“They’re drones! Just freaking drones!” He snapped, “There’s only one real pilot out here! He’s directing the rest!”

Another pause as the time lag filtered though. Steph didn’t wait; he armed his seeker countermeasures as the countdown clock ticked down on his meeting with the only Drasin flyer he’d yet seen that was worth his time as a pilot.

“Are you sure, Boss man?”

This time it was Brute, sounding genuinely disbelieving.

Steph didn’t blame him.

No one, NO ONE, used drones for combat duty.

It was stupid, it was wasteful, and it gave the enemy a decided advantage.

The United States Airforce, back when it still existed as a discrete military organization, had a plan, once upon a time. They used some old airframes from the venerable F16 platform, rebuilt them with the latest in technology, gave them combat programs, and placed a wing of them under the command of a single pilot.

The result was a cluster-fuck of near epic proportions.

While marginally successful in simulations, the real world effect of the birds was decidedly poor. In spite of having higher acceleration rates and tighter maneuvering than any manned vehicle, the drone birds were consistently shot out of the sky, by vastly inferior planes.

Simply put, they were predictable in a way that humans never were.

Just like the fighters, Stephanus was looking at now.

All except one of them, that was.

“Yeah,” Steph said dryly as he keyed up all his countermeasures and programmed a macro with a few flicks of his eyelids and motions of his fingers. “I’m sure…”

“Angel Lead…” He almost whispered as the Drasin fighter closed to within extreme targeting range. “Fox two.”

Stephanus’ finger snapped the firing stud shut, and the recessed missile rack dropped its final two birds from the limited space within the Archangel Fighter, and his last two Havoc Missiles screamed silently away.

*****

The Soldier drone went down, its leg shattered in a dozen places by the burst from the squad’s MX-112 rifles. They didn’t pause to evaluate it, Deacon merely took a step forward and put another burst into the drone, center mass, while the other two fired as they moved, targeting the other enemy units.

Deacon held the rifle high as he stepped in, eyeing the downed target briefly, then hit it again when it twitched.

“Stop moving and die, you dumb bastard,” he muttered darkly, glancing over for the others in his squad.

A short distance away, the two troopers that he had with him caught one of the other drones in a blistering crossfire, the MX-112 auto-rifles spitting fire as they dropped the drone hard.

At close range the MX-112 rifle wasn’t at its most effective, but he was glad to see that it was enough.

He froze when his armor’s HUD threw up a warning light from his eight o’clock and he instantly threw himself hard to his left, as a sizzling stream of energy fried the rubble behind him to a crackling sludge.

Deacon hit the ground rolling, noting somewhere in his peripheral mind, that the local cop had thrown herself to one side as well and came up firing.

This time the target was about fifty meters away, just outside the point-blank range for the MX-112.

The magnetic accelerator spit out the first of a ten round burst, its muzzle velocity over three thousand meters per second. The round cracked the sound barrier instantly, punctuating the whine of the rifle with the snap of a sonic boom, and crossed the fifty-meter gap on momentum alone.

Then, just before slamming into its target, the round ignited a second stage booster and began to accelerate again.

The overall effect, at fifty meters wasn’t much more effective than a ballistic round, but the ignited mini-rocket slammed into the Drone with enough force to shatter its armor and penetrate through to its interior before the onboard explosives detonated.

The remaining ten rounds struck less than a second later.

As the drone dropped, a hissing and smoking fluid pouring out of its cracked shell, Deacon straightened up, slowly turning with his rifle ready, as he surveyed the immediate area.

“Area clear.”

*****

“We lost track of the groups when they slipped into the city proper, Sir…”

Admiral Tanner turned on his heel, “trajectories?”

“Analysed,” the technician handed him a crystal data plaque.

The Admiral glowered down at the information, noting that the landing locations for the Drasin matched up with the projected approach of the group that had fallen from the unidentified ship’s shuttle.

“Fine. Get me an observer on the ground in each of the reported hotspots,” Tanner growled, slapping the plaque back into the techs chest. “I want a pair of eyes on the enemy, and five pairs on the objects that dropped from the unidentified shuttle.”

“Yes Sir.”

*****

Teams Two, Six, and Seven stood perched on the top of one of the Scrapers that made up the immense population center, they had landed in and looked down at the scene below them.

It was awesome, in a bizarre sort of way.

The Drasin Drones had landed on the rooftops, and found that they had more than enough space to set up operations where they were.

This made sense given that each rooftop was larger than a football field.

So they’d actually appropriated three of the huge sprawling buildings and, much to the annoyance, or downright fear, of the local military, they’d apparently decided to get ready and work their way down through the buildings.

The resulting firefight sprawled across the three buildings and through the intervening spaces, with what the Terran teams took to be military vehicles engaged the Drones as they hopped from place to place with apparent impunity.

The flashes of laser light and the odd sizzling sound of the invader’s energy weapons were easily seen and heard by the nine members of the NAC Odyssey’s Special Operations Teams.

Lieutenant Sean Bermont looked down at the scene from where he was kneeling by the edge of the rooftop and shook his head. The combined computer network had tallied all the tangos, the nine of them had spotted and the numbers weren’t looking good.

“I read at least fifty of them,” Corporal Givens said from behind him.

Sean didn’t bother to remind the Corporal that they had a shared data network, and whatever the Corporal was seeing was what they were all seeing. It wouldn’t change the numbers, nor would it make the defenders actions any more effective.

Whatever the drones were packing in the way of armor, it was clearly effective against laser weapons.

Sean looked away from the battle zone, looking around the garden of sky scrapers that they stood upon. Finally, he tagged three buildings with his HUD, knowing that the tags would be transferred to the others.

“Rogers, you and Givens take the building to our right. Establish a presence and prepare to snipe at the enemy. Adams, Benoit… The middle. Jenkins, Carter. Take the left,” Bermont said. “Samms and Curtis, you’re with me.”

A quick chorus of acknowledgment was heard and Sean nodded once.

“Move out.”

The six men he’d assigned to sniper duty nodded once, then quickly turned and took a running leap from the building, their assisted muscles driving them straight up, over forty meters and out into the dizzying heights, with deceptive ease.

*****

Gunnery Sergeant Rogers and Corporal Givens landed easily on their assigned rooftop, legs flexing as the nano-fibres in their armor absorbed the impact, of the three hundred meter, pack-assisted jump, and quickly got to work.

Rogers was a Marine Force Recon sniper specialist from way back and had been a career soldier all his adult life.

He quickly dropped to one knee as Givens lay out prone near the edge of the roof. His rifle was the long rifle variant of the MX-112, given to all the branches of the NAC military and its allies, and he’d spent many long hours learning every nuance of his particular rifle.

He casually flipped down the bi-pod and then flipped up the two reticule lenses of the rifle’s integrated long range sight.

Only then did he lay out beside his spotter, and turn his HUD over, to openly accept the targeting information that Givens had been gathering, while he prepared.

“What have we got?”

“Three tangos, pinning down survivors from a crash. Looks like some military, but they aren’t doing all that well against the tangos, Sarge.” Givens said, lighting up the HUD icons.

Rogers grunted, noting the display and checking the scene.

“Looks like they got one,” he said, noting a downed Tango.

“Sure did, Sarge…, but I think they hit it when they crashed the… Whatever the hell that thing is,” Givens replied.

“Probably,” Rogers grunted, lining up his first target.

The tango he’d chosen was making a real ass of itself, chewing through the cover that the survivors had fled to. In short order, it would probably open up the path, then those people would die.

Maybe in your next life, asshole, Rogers thought to himself as the reticule in his sights flashed red and he squeezed the trigger with the same cool, calm, deliberation as he used on the range.

The long rifle bucked once against his shoulder, and it spat its heavy round out with the combined whine of its electronics and crack of the sonic boom.

The round left the barrel at three thousand meters per second; tearing through the atmosphere like the proverbial, bat out of hell. Fifty meters from the rifle, the onboard rocket booster kicked in and it quickly accelerated on target as a set of fins snapped out, stabilizing the round in flight.

It roared into the Drasin drone at over twenty thousand meters per second and still accelerating, the kinetic impact holing the hard shell of the drone just before its payload went off.

The Drasin stopped in mid-motion, staggered to one side, and collapsed.

But by then, Rogers had already picked his next target and fired.

*****

Sean Bermont glanced back at the two soldiers he’d selected for his team.

Russell Samms and Jaime Curtis were both drawn from the old US Army Ranger’s Corps, while Sean himself was a former member of Joint Task Force Two from back before the Confederation.

“All right, we drew shit duty,” Sean told the other two with a wry smile that they could hear, even if they couldn’t see it. “We’re going to get in close, while the other groups cover us, and make contact with the locals.”

“What for?” Jaime asked, sounding mildly disgusted. “It doesn’t look like they’re doing much good for themselves…”

“That’s what for,” Sean snapped. “We’re going to pull them out if we have to… Then we’ll hit these bastard’s with thermobarics, if all else fails.”

“On top of a skyscraper??” Russell objected, “No offence, Sean, but are you nuts?”

Jaime snickered, but Sean just rolled his eyes. “Have you checked this thing out?”

He tapped his armored boot on the rooftop.

“It’s like obsidian or something…,” Sean shook his head, “A thermobaric pressure wave won’t do fuck all to this… But I’ll bet it knocks those bustards’ off their feet.”

“If it doesn’t, I wanna go home,” Russell whined mildly, then nodded with a chuckle. “All right. Let’s do this.”

“Hang on a second!” Jaime muttered, “Are you sure!? I don’t want to start collapsing the entire city here.”

“Trust me, Curtis,” Sean said calmly. “Me and Savoy are already running the numbers, but it’s looking like this city could take a multi-megaton nuke and come out in decent shape.”

The slim trooper shook her head, “It’s the boss’ call…”

“Yep, so don’t worry about it,” Bermont said, looking around. “All right, we’ve got to get moving. Ready?”

“Ready!”

“On the bounce,” Sean grinned, using an old phrase long embraced by troopers in powered armor, though no one really seemed to remember why. A few people insisted it had to do with some old sci-fi novel. Sean doubted it, but he’d seen stupider reasons for traditions.

For whatever reason, it fitted the situation as the three soldiers judged their position and then leapt from the rooftop toward the carefully marked landing zones on their HUDs.

Chapter 21

Commander Roberts swung himself over the threshold, in the null-gravity of the Auxiliary Bridge, letting his momentum propel him into the lavishly sized room.

Compared to the main bridge, this room was at least twice the size and just as well equipped, mostly because it was the primary control center of the Odyssey, in the original plans. When the artificial gravity generators fell by the wayside, due to their enormous power requirements, the Bridge had been moved to the second cylindrical habitat, and this room had been turned into its backup.

“Commander,” a Lieutenant didn’t bother to come to attention or even salute as he approached, entirely for practical purposes since standing at attention in zero gee was about as effective as equipping firefighters with flamethrowers.

Instead the young man reached up as Roberts sailed past and hooked his hand, swinging the Commander down into the command chair.

“Much obliged, Lieutenant,” Roberts said calmly as he looked around.

The Bridge was built into the top of the Odyssey’s ‘Control Tower’, which was more of egotism than anything else, but it provided a magnificent view on three sides, through the clear transparent armor around them.

However, in battle, having transparent sections in your wall was contraindicated.

“Take us to battle stations, Lieutenant,” Roberts commanded. “And bring us completely online.”

“Aye Sir,” the lieutenant replied, tapping in a command code. “Sealing the Bridge now.”

The incredible view offered by the transparent battle steel vanished, as the armor shifted to block all wavelengths.

“Activating screens.”

Rolls of transparent plastic slid down from the recessed ports in the ceiling, the thin film covering the walls with a milky coating for a moment, before they flickered and the external view once again returned, in an ultra-high definition display that had been filtered through the computers and overlain with an electronic Heads up Display.

Roberts finished clipping in his restraints just as the ship rumbled, the screens lighting up with the red on red of a direct fire warning.

“Status!”

*****

The Bridge of the Odyssey shuddered and rolled slightly, as the crew gripped tightly to their seats and consoles.

“Damage reports coming in!” Lamont yelled over the screeching of tearing metal that could be heard right through to their teeth.

Weston grabbed for the console and slid it over as he punched up the damage control code, bringing the reports up on his own screens.

Not good. We’re venting atmosphere from the forward weapon’s stations. He grounded his teeth, “get damage control crews down there!”

“Aye Captain!” Ensign Lamont said instantly, hands already keying into the emergency channel, as she spoke quickly and calmly over the emergency frequencies.

“Incoming!” Waters yelled a warning.

“Take us up! All power to vertical thrusters!” Weston ordered, leaning forward in the command chair. “Pitch us forward! Bring the Primary array and the forward HVM banks to bear!”

“Aye Captain!”

The NAC Odyssey clawed for vertical altitude, relative to her opponent, climbing above the lethal beam that scorched vacuum, just shy of their position. As they did so, Ensign Waters stood on the proverbial stick, as he pitched the nose down, while the ship climbed.

Slowly the Odyssey’s forward Laser Array came back into targeting range of the enemy, just as her forward HVM banks slid open.

As she climbed and twisted in space, the cutting beam of the Drasin laser followed suit, tracking its wayward target through space.

The forward bow of the Odyssey erupted, as her Laser Array flashed to life, just as her Hyper Velocity Missile (HVM) banks were flushed. The gleam of the charging banks cast an eerie glow on the plasma exhaust of the HVM launch, as both weapons tore out of the Odyssey and sought out their target.

Then the Drasin Laser scorched the lower keel of the Odyssey, vaporizing metal and venting atmosphere, as it blew out her lower flight deck.

Inside the big ship, the deck rocked as a five-man team tried to make their way down the zero gee corridor in hard suits.

“Shit!”

“Belay that chatter!” Chief Petty Officer Corrin growled, her harsh voice echoing over the suit comms of each man. “Move it, you pansies!”

The team kept moving, occasionally bouncing off the walls, as the ship rocked around them, but finally got to their positions.

“We’re here, Petty Officer,” the lead man said, glancing back from the sealed door. “We’ve got hard vac on the other side.”

“All right,” Corrin muttered, slapping a sealing switch beside her and dropping the heavy lock door behind them. “Break the seal and let’s get to work.”

The man nodded, turning back to the door as the corridor pitched and rolled around him. “On it, Chief.”

As the men moved quickly about their job, the information concerning the battle continued to feed from their suit computers and from computers all over the ship, into the main Bridge systems.

Once there the entire networked computing grid of the NAC Odyssey was sliced into bite-sized pieces, prioritized according to report priorities and a specialized computer algorithm, and then it was fed straight to the screens of Ensign Susan Lamont.

“We’re bleeding air from the flight deck!” Lamont snapped over her shoulder, her fingers already cutting off the deck from the rest of the ship, as she called up a list of the personnel still on the lower decks.

“Send rescue teams!” Weston growled. “Daniels, did we hit anything!?”

*****

The Drasin cruiser pitched upward as it tracked its quarry, trying to keep a solid beam on the human ship as the vessel performed the most… unexpected actions.

As it reconnected the beam to its target, the controller had a moment of satisfaction before warning alarms went off all through its systems.

That moment was its last.

*****

Hyper Velocity Missiles (HVM) could accelerate to nearly .8c in the few seconds they took to cross their normal effective range. The ones that launched from the Odyssey were targeted at an enemy ship within half that radius.

Even so, they managed to accelerate to .63c before impacting on the Drasin cruiser, delivering their kinetic payload on target, less than four seconds after they had launched.

By that time, the ship was already bubbling under the hellish heat of the Odyssey’s primary laser array.

*****

“We got him!” Daniels yelled throwing his arms up as the cruiser vanished from his screens.

The bridge erupted into cheers, but Captain Weston didn’t join in.

“Lamont… Damage control?”

Ensign Susan Lamont swallowed and nodded, turning back to her station as the brief exultation passed and she began to coordinate the crews, moving through the bowels of the ship.

*****

“They did it, Admiral.”

Admiral Tanner nodded a little dumbly as the central computer painted the death of the Drasin cruiser, on the threat board in brilliant detail.

Whoever that ship belonged to, it was a formidable force in and of itself.

However, since it had entered Orbit, they had tried contacting the crew on every frequency used by the colonies, to little avail. It either wasn’t answering, or it didn’t hear them.

In either case, it wasn’t exactly comforting.

Rael had no quarrel with the Captain of the vessel; certainly he had nothing but respect for the man’s abilities, as well as those of the people under his command.

However, neither did he have any liking for an unidentified ship, holding high orbit over his world.

Especially not one that was capable of defeating a Drasin Cruiser, in a close range exchange.

Unfortunately, he found himself in a situation where he had little control, and less choice, over such things.

For the moment.

Rael looked at the threat board for a moment and ducked his head to look at a different display.

Soon.

Very soon.

*****

A body floated past the crewman as he pulled open the hatch to the forward laser control room, limbs floating freely as the iced eyes stared sightlessly.

“Oh fuc!” The crewman fell back, gagging in his helmet as he tried to keep from vomiting, more from the shock of the scene than anything else.

This time CPO Corrin didn’t say anything to reprimand the crewman she just moved forward and dragged the body out of the way.

“This is why pressure suits are required during alerts,” she growled over the net, turning the body over and shoving it unceremoniously into another room. “And they don’t do you any fuckin’ good, if you don’t seal the helmet. Now find that fucking breech.”

The men nodded, swimming forward, eyeing the debris path.

Anything that hadn’t been locked down had been torn up by the decompression, throwing papers and smaller items through the rushing air and right to the source of the breech.

Of course, as it turned out, it wouldn’t have been all that hard to find, anyway.

Crewman Jacynck slid over to the four foot hole burned through the hull, passing his safety line back to his closest companion, then slowly slid out into the black. He looked up along the front of the heavily armored ‘bow’ of the Odyssey, then twisted and looked back down.

“Well, Chief…,” his voice came dryly back over the comm, “I don’t think that we’re gonna be able to slap a quick-patch on this and call it a day.”

Corrin snorted and waved to the other two, “bring up the torch and start patching that up temporarily… I’ll tell DC the bad news.”

*****

Ensign Lamont nodded, acknowledging the report, and turned half around, “we’re going to need at least three hours to reseal the forward weapons stations. Another three, if you want the armor repaired too, Sir.”

Eric Weston nodded, tapping a command into his screen, “how are the ’Angels doing?”

*****

The Havoc Missiles had just dropped from the internal pylons, when Stephanus launched every countermeasure in his fighter’s stock.

Flares, dazzlers, EM screamers, and old fashion chaff erupted out from the fighter, as the two missiles were briefly vulnerable to interception. This confused the Drasin’s sensors for a split second, as the Havoc Cee-Emm fields firmed up and their rocket motors kicked into full burn.

Both missiles slammed into the fighter two and an half seconds later, hitting like the hammer of God.

As the fighter vanished in a cloud of expanding debris, Stephanus pivoted his fighter in place and slammed the throttle forward as he sought out the next furball.

He was halfway there when, his conclusion was proven beyond the shadow of a doubt.

Two previously competent, though predictable, pilots slammed into each other in the middle of a tight maneuver, their communication obviously cut by the loss of the Flight Leader. In a few moments, the remaining fighters were mopped up, by the superior flying of the Archangels.

“Good call, Boss man!” Brute called over the tac-net as Stephanus slid into position between him and Racer.

“Thanks, Brute,” Steph said, checking his HUD. “Where’s the big boy?”

Across the few meters that separated them, Stephanus could see Brute nod his head in the distance. “Looks like he wants to play with the Cap, Boss man.”

“Damn it!” Steph snarled, “Roll call!”

*****

“Archangel Squadron reports that the enemy cruiser has slipped past them, Captain.” Waters said grimly. “Commander Michaels intends to intercept.”

“Belay that,” Weston told him, looking at the course projections. “Tell him to take a least time return course. The Archangel’s can get here an hour ahead of them. We’ll meet him together.”

“Aye Sir,” Waters replied, keying into the channel.

“Sir,” Lamont half turned. “We don’t have the lower flight deck at the moment. Sir. Rescue crews are still pulling survivors out of there, and there’s an eighteen-meter slash right up the trap.”

Weston grimaced, “The upper deck?”

“Clear, Sir… but it’s meant for the SAR shuttles and…”

“I know what it’s meant for, Ensign,” he said crisply, turning back to Waters. “Tell the ‘Angels that they’ll have to come in softly. We don’t have any traps for them.”

“Aye Captain.”

“And tell Samuels to get her ass out there to pick up any survivors of the engagement!” Eric growled, pulling his console close again as he started tallying up what they’d lost, against what the last ship in the system still had.

“Aye Captain.”

*****

Major Brinks and Milla Chans touched down on the roof of the tallest scraper the Major could find and he immediately cut the lines and let his ‘chute’ float up and away on its own.

His HUD and suit computer was collating the feeds from all the free ‘chutes’, using them much like the Carnivore drones to provide real time intel from the local hotspots.

Unlike the Carnivore drones though, the ‘chutes’ were neither particularly stealthy, nor were they nearly as good at gathering the intel, as the drones were.

But they were what he had, and he had a lot of them.

“If you can get a hold of anyone, in charge,” Brinks told Milla as he crouched by the lip of the roof and looked down over the battle scene about a kilometer away. “Do it now.”

With that, he turned his focus on the fight below.

*****

Lieutenant Sean Bermont and his team landed ‘on the bounce’, right in the middle of a firefight between three humans and one of the drones.

The drone twitched in their direction, causing the three to scatter, as its weapon drew a line of fire in the obsidian roof of the building, their own guns firing in return.

Bermont rolled under the cover that the locals were using and glanced in their direction as they stared back. For a people under attack, they weren’t exactly as jumpy as he’d have expected.

Though, frankly, they reminded him more of civilians than the military that he’d assumed they were from their weapons and uniforms.

“Stay down,” he ordered them, hoping that the translator wouldn’t give him any problems, then he popped up with the MX-112 levelled at the drone.

The Drasin drone was firing at Curtis as the former Ranger dove across the roof, the beam scorching her side. She fell and rolled to a stop some distance away, as Russell and Bermont both opened fire.

They moved forward, weapons blazing as they did and walked the fire right into the single drone in their sights with short bursts that ripped its carapace apart.

As it tumbled, Bermont waved Russell to Curtis’ side then turned back to the locals.

Corporal Samms, formerly of the United States Army Rangers, crossed the distance between himself and his wounded teammate in a fraction of a second, sliding along the smoothly fused surface of the rooftop, as he dropped to his knees beside the tough lady who had taken enemy fire.

“Jaime!” He muttered, “Come on, girl. You okay?”

When there wasn’t a response he flicked his HUD over to the tactical menu, and then called up her medical stats.

The weapon, the alien monstrosity had used had done one hell of a job along her side, either melting or maybe vaporizing away a large chunk of her armor, and ravaging the flesh underneath.

Russell had to rely on what her armor sensors were telling him though, because the Military armor had automatically sprayed hardening foam over the breach, to plug the gap and apply a coagulant to the wound. Her heart was still beating, which was a relief, but she wasn’t responding.

“Got a problem, L.T.,” he muttered as he linked into her suit pharmacy. “Curtis is out like a light. Heartbeat is strong. You want me to wake her?”

Lieutenant Bermont frowned, glancing over his shoulder for a brief moment. “Negative. Leave her as is for now, recon and secure the area. I want to talk to the locals first then we’ll see what to do about Jaime.”

“Whatever you say, L.T.,” Russell nodded, rising to his feet, more than a little relieved.

The injury she’d suffered wasn’t going to be pleasant, and waking her from it was going to hurt the tough lady…, a lot. The suit wouldn’t dispense painkillers or tranquilizers without either her or a corpsman’s authorization either, so she was going to be in a lot of pain until she woke up enough to order a couple aspirin.

He hefted his rifle and glanced around, quickly deciding on a rectangular block that looked like it was probably an access door, to the scraper they were standing on. He easily hopped the thirty-meter distance, landing on the block and dropping almost instantly to his knees, as the suit’s sensors reached out and began identifying everything in range.

Behind him, Bermont had turned back to the trio of local ‘soldiers’ that had been pinned down by the soldier drone.

“You guys understand me?” He asked, eyeing them carefully.

They should, from what he had been told. The Commander had told them all in the Pre-mission brief that this was the space lady’s home world, and her dialect should be the best handled of the translation programs they had so far, though his suit memory also held an extensive library from the refugees, as well.

One of the locals, a woman with a statuesque sort of build and very hard eyes nodded slowly, her weapon not quite aimed in his direction.

That was fair, after all, his rifle wasn’t quite aimed at them.

“Who are you?” She asked him.

“Introductions will have to wait,” Sean told her flatly, his HUD already linked to the others in the Odyssey’s assault force. “We’ve got at least another twenty of those drones inbound on our position and frankly, I don’t think we’ve got enough firepower to hold them off.”

She and her two male companions looked around in sudden nervous fear, but Sean just shrugged and held up a hand.

“They’re not here, quite yet…,” he told her, knowing that the drones he was referring to were currently being distracted by Sniper fire from all sides.

With luck, they might have time to check out the corpse of the one that he and Russell had taken down.

“What I need you to do is pack up your shit… umm gear,” Sean had to backpedal and correct himself when he could tell from the look on their faces that the translator obviously flubbed the word.

Cursing wasn’t something computer programs were generally much good at translating, as a rule.

“Cause when we move, we’ll be moving fast.”

The woman blinked, then shook her head. “We can’t jump like you…”

Sean grinned, though they couldn’t see it, “Don’t worry about that, lady. We’ve got it covered.”

*****

Milla Chans tore open the roof access panel by accident, completely misjudging the strength granted her by the armor she wore and tossed the panel away while blushing slightly under her mirrored visor.

She shook it off while moving down into the building.

The suit she wore was well equipped for communications, but had nothing it its vast repertoire of comm channels, transceivers, amplifiers, and beam comms that would be picked up by the local defence forces.

And those were precisely the people that she had to get in touch with, hopefully before some misunderstanding resulted in the local militias opening fire against the soldiers from the Odyssey.

Chapter 22

“One, this is Five.”

The signal came in, over the command channel as Brinks examined the overhead of the rooftop battle in his HUD. He pushed the schematic aside for a moment and a floating image of Lieutenant Bermont appeared in the lower corner, the soldier’s eyes flicking off to the side as he obviously was dealing with something.

“Five, this is One,” he responded. “Go ahead.”

“We’ve got three locals, plus one injured, for pickup. You have a couple packs to spare?”

“One moment,” the Major said, tapping into the Chute control programs with a flick of his finger. “Have two inbound. ETA, forty-five seconds. I’m showing five drones approaching your immediate position. You’d better pull out.”

“Will do,” Bermont nodded. “I just have one thing to do first.”

“Right,” Brinks confirmed, trusting his man to know what he was doing. “Once you get those locals clear, I’m going to drop a Tee-Bee on your location. So when I say bounce…”

“We hit the sky,” Bermont nodded with a smirk.

Major Brinks frowned slightly, but didn’t bother saying anything else. One of the problems that you encountered when dealing with special operations units, especially when what you had wasn’t a Spec ops Team, but rather, a select gathering of the best Spec Ops individuals, was the fact that they had a, perhaps justifiable, sense of superiority.

And, of course, they were all insane.

He himself excluded, of course.

The soldier smirked a little under his helmet while moving onto the next group.

*****

Lieutenant Erin Mackay listened to the radio chatter from the other teams, letting it run in the background as he and the two soldiers with him moved over to drones they had taken down.

The streets were empty as the proverbial ghost town, but his suit sensors could read the occasional motion source flicker by a window, looking out at the destruction that had rained down in the neighborhood.

The area he had dropped into was obviously a suburb of the city and the buildings here were only twenty or so stories high, not the monstrous buggers that rose against the sky to his back, as he kneeled by the drone he’d shot.

“A… are you sure you should be doing that?”

Corporal Deacon glanced back at the police woman, he’d handed his weapon off too, exchanged a brief glance with Mackay, then shrugged in the armor, one of the grossly exaggerated motions that armored troops got used to using, “Just having a look.”

Beside him, Sergeant Steward knelt down and reached down to run his finger through the creature’s ‘blood’. He almost instantly yanked his hand back with a curse and drove his hand into a pile of rubble to scrape the liquid off.

“Mother fuck!” The Sergeant cursed.

“What is it, Sarge??” Deacon jerked around, weapon coming up.

“Fucking shit started eating away at my suit!” Steward growled, checking his finger. “Fuck!”

Deacon’s rifle dropped, “No shit?”

“No shit.”

“Whoa…,” the younger man said, voice filled with a kind of awe. “These things actually got acid for blood? Cool.”

“Shut up,” Steward growled, using a tone that made Deacon take a step back.

“It’s not acid,” Erin muttered, checking the basic analysis, his HUD was putting up for him. “It’s some kind of superheated compound. It just ate off some of the ablative material that survived your jump, Sarge.”

“Oh,” Deacon sighed, sounding disappointed.

“Deacon, you need to get your candy ass out of the TV room once and a while and quit watching that sci-fi shit,” Steward told him in no uncertain terms. “That stuff will rot your brain, what’s left of it.”

Deacon didn’t have an audible reply, so Mackay just rolled his eyes as he spoke up. “These things have molten rock or something for BLOOD. Would you two mind saving the mutual bitch session for when we’re back on the Odyssey??”

“Molten rock…,” Deacon sounded interested again, and he stepped up and dropped down, checking out the corpse of the drone, flicking slowly through a series of computer enhanced images on his armor HUD. “No way…”

Steward and Mackay waited patiently for him to explain what the hell he was talking about, but all the soldier did was let out a long low whistle and repeat himself.

“No fuckin’ way…”

“Deac!” Steward finally snapped.

“Huh?” Deacon jerked around, “Yeah Sarge?”

“What the fuck are you jabbering about?”

“Wha… Oh, sorry, Sarge,” the soldier flicked his fingers a couple times and sent a download over to the other two’s suit HUD’s. “I think they’ve got silicon based chemistry… But whatever it is, it’s got a real high tolerance to heat…”

He glanced back at the cooling body for a moment, then back at the other two. “Nasty little things for sure, but it might be good news for us.”

“How?” Steward asked in clipped tone.

“Well, that thing there,” he gestured to the dead drone, “has a current body temp that’s over one eighty… I’m guessing that the living ones are hotter…”

“So we can use the IR sensors in our suits to spot them easier… all right…” Steward nodded. “All right, now THAT is what I like to hear, kid.”

“More than that,” Mackay added, thinking furiously. “Our bullets can track heat. If these things are that much hotter than humans, we can activate the thermal guidance chips without worrying about hitting locals.”

“Bingo, El Tee,” Deacon grinned under his darkened face shield.

*****

“I hear you,” Major Brinks said as he mulled over the information. “Hold back on the IR until I get back to you.”

“Confirmed,” Mackay replied.

Brinks frowned as he pondered the thought, while quickly browsing the suit network until he found the person he was looking for, “Lieutenant.”

“Sir?” Savoy’s response was instantaneous, the whining crack of gunfire in the background.

“Got a problem for you.”

“That’s what we Tech Geeks like to hear, Major,” Savoy smirked. “What’s up?”

“These things are running a body temp over one eighty,” Brinks started to explain, “The thought that Corporal Deacon had was…”

“Crank up the sensitivity in the rifles,” Savoy interrupted, grimacing. “Shit.”

“What?”

“Nothing Sir,” Savoy shook his head, jostling the image slightly. “I just should have thought of it first. Give me two minutes.”

Brinks nodded the signed off, leaving Savoy on the other side to mutter a mild curse for having missed something so obvious. He frowned locating the team with the closet Drasin drones.

“Bermont, I need you to do something for me, before you move out,” he said a moment later.

*****

Sean Bermont paused in his handling of the ‘chute’, cocking his head briefly as Savoy told him what he needed.

“Gotcha, Sav,” he said after a moment, then switched his tactical frequency to the squad level. “Russell, we need an IR scan of one of those things, while they’re still kicking!”

A few meters away, Corporal Russell was kneeling on the roof of the apparent access building that adorned the top of the massive sky scraper. “No problem. We’ve got three of the bastard’s jogging over here, right now.”

“Great,” Bermont muttered, yanking one of the guy wires from the ‘chute’ and pulling one of the locals to his feet. “This isn’t going to tickle.”

While the man looked at him oddly Bermont looped the wire under his arms and around his torso. He clipped it to a loop built into the wire for just that purpose. Bermont then grabbed the second man, and repeated the process.

“Two to evac,” he signalled, then turned to see the next chute swoop in.

The two men had a chance to look confused and scared out of their minds, as the line was suddenly drawn taught and they were pulled off their feet, while the wire loop suddenly bit into their chests and under arms. They yelped in pain, but the remote-controlled ‘chute’, didn’t really care one way or another, as it hung low, then dropped over the edge of the skyscraper, using the immense building itself as cover, as Savoy guided the two to safer ground.

“Wait here,” Bermont told the third, the woman who had appeared to be in charge, “I’ll be right back.”

Then he reached up and grabbed a handgrip on the bottom of the ‘chute’ and kicked off the ground, skimming the rooftop over to where Curtis was still unconscious.

*****

“Beautiful,” Savoy whispered as the suits tactical network grabbed the information that Russell was picking up for him, just over a kilometer from where he currently stood. He tossed the numbers over to a module he had developed for on the fly programming.

From there it was just an electronic hop, skip, and jump to recoding the computer buried deep in the carbon fibre chassis of his rifle.

Just after the turn of the twenty-first century, it had become obvious to all, but the most conservative of military men, that while the aging 5.56NATO round, and its bigger brother the 7.62NATO caliber, had served their countries with distinction, it was time to develop a new caliber for military actions.

The old style rifle rounds were still enjoying nearly a hundred percent infiltration in militaries around the world, but the development of armors that could stop even high powered rifle rounds, while remaining man portable was spelling the end for the, then venerable, M16 and ever popular AK47 weapons.

Several competing designs emerged by 2015, all vying to replace the stopgap designs that had been implemented in various, occasionally successful, attempts to extend the life of the widely used munitions.

The European Union, along with its then Allies, in the slowly forming Eastern Block, had begun developing new munitions that could perforate Class X hard shell body armor from distances of up to a hundred meters. Their designs followed a new trend in military munitions, started two decades earlier by many of the leading companies in the field.

They focused on smaller, high velocity rounds, designed to perforate armor while still dumping nearly all of their remaining energies into the target.

Many of these designs became the weapon of choice in the Terror Wars, which preceded the last World Conflagration. The FN P90 and The Heckler and Koch MP7, to name two, became early favorites for the new military standard, the Elite Anti-Terrorist Tactical Units.

However, in the United States especially, dissatisfaction quickly arose in the upper echelon of the military ranks. A dissatisfaction that stemmed from the fact that many of those men had cut their teeth in the last REAL warzones of the twentieth century, and they didn’t believe that the small munitions, no matter how well designed, were going to cut it on a real battlefield.

And thus was born the MX-112 Infantry Assault Rifle.

When it was first introduced, the accolades were unimpressive.

The rifle was big, it was clunky, and it weighed as much as three or even four of the smaller weapons preferred for the standard mission specs of the era. It only carried 75-90% of the bullets one of its smaller brethren could manage, and it had a nasty habit of over-penetrating lightly armored targets and potentially killing anything that was hiding behind them.

For the new standard of the day, it was an obsolete behemoth that no SWAT or EATT-U team would even consider using.

The United States Marine Corps, however, didn’t much care about any of that.

The MX-112 was big, nasty, and it put equally big and nasty holes into whatever it was fired at. It didn’t jam, it fired underwater if someone was stupid enough to try it and if the barrel was clogged with sand, the first bullet simply cleared it and greased the way for the rest.

Put simply, the Marines of the day were in love from grunts to Officers and beyond.

The rest of the world, however, wasn’t.

So, aside from that one branch of the United States military, the basic design wallowed in near obscurity for almost a decade.

Then the Asian Block bombed Tokyo, in retaliation for Japan’s refusal to abandon its economic partners and side with the Block in the political power struggles that had developed over three decades of the War on Terror.

Thus, was born the Third World War.

During some of the earliest land battles, the Block soldiers were understandably perturbed to find that their opponents on the beaches were carrying rifles that were able to perforate light to medium armored Vehicles and still retain enough energy to kill the soldiers inside.

And in that heated forge, a new military legend was born.

A legend that had continued to grow over the decades that passed, as the rifle underwent revisions and evolutionary changes, until the latest product found its way into the hands of one Lt Savoy, NAC Odyssey, on an alien world over a hundred light years from where the rifle was born.

Savoy flipped open a programming window in his HUD, keeping one eye on his threat indicator while calling up the onboard computer built into the rifle. The electronics were entirely optional on the weapon, but when they were in use they offered several degrees of sophistication over any mere convention weapon.

One of those degrees was what concerned Savoy, at this moment in time. He tapped into the software that controlled the rudimentary seeker systems on the heavy caliber bullets, and tapped a single digit into them.

In about thirty-three seconds of programming, most of that time used just to find the appropriate line of code in the first place, he had altered the thermo-sensor’s sensitivity from 96 degrees Celsius to a toasty ,196 degrees. Then he smiled and squirted the program change to every man in his unit.

“Savoy to all teams. Apply incoming program change, and switch weapons to thermal-guidance.”

*****

Milla Chans, Ithan of the Colonial Fleet, found she was forced to pry open the lift doors within the immense construction’s transport tubes. The maglev tubes were necessary to provide for the transport needs of the pyramid’s inhabitants.

Milla knew from personal experience that a great many people within the immense habitats never left them, and never wanted to. Each one was a city in its own right, and they were merely grouped this close together because of convenience.

She made her way through the tube, still moving a little awkwardly in the armor she had been given, looking out for a debarkation point.

She knew that at this level in the pyramid, the local population would be sparse, in spite of the marginally less room available at the apex of the huge tubular design. Those that lived in the apex habitat that was suspended directly below the point of the pyramid would be among the most influential families, and thus able to secure the entire habitat for themselves.

She wasn’t looking forward to bursting in on them, in the slightest.

The debarkation point was fairly easy to locate, and she found herself wishing she’d been carrying one of the standard issue lasers, she normally had. The weapon they had provided her, grudgingly though it may have been, was almost certainly not suited to opening doors.

Milla sighed and looked over the debarkation doors in annoyance.

Finally she reached forward and began to go to work prying them apart.

*****

Lieutenant Mackay sent the coded pulse to his rifle computer, then flipped the weapon over to burst mode, as he glanced around at his squad mates.

“Come on. We’d better move out,” he glanced along the long street that led toward the three towering pyramids that appeared to float eerily over the placid waters, supported by massive struts sunk into the ground below.

“’Fraid that might not be a great idea, Sir.”

“What’s up?” He asked, turning back.

“Roving recon shows another squad of those suckers coming this way, Lieutenant,” Sargent Steward told him, pointing off to one side. “Not sure what the hell is going on with them, but the ‘chutes’ are having trouble locking them down…”

“Hey, no sweat,” Deacon grinned under his helmet. “We took these bozos easy. We’ve got the guns, and we got the mobility…”

A screeching hissing sound jerked all their heads almost straight up, just in time to see three of the Drasin drones clear one of the smaller buildings, the one that was only thirty stories tall, with a bound and come crashing down to street level.

“You were saying, Corporal!” Sargent Steward growled as the three of them scattered, grabbing the local cop as they ran, just ahead of the sizzling blast from the enemy weapons.

*****

“Sorry ‘bout this, Jaime,” Bermont muttered quietly as he hooked the wounded soldier’s arm and unceremoniously flipped her over.

Normally he’d be worried about aggravating her injuries, but in this case, two things kept that from being a primary concern. First was the fact that the suit automatically held her immobile, while unconscious from injury, for just this reason. Second was the fact that he could hear the rapid crack of the Scramjet rounds, fired from Russell’s MX-112, as they went supersonic.

Which meant that they were about to have company!

He yanked the wire down from the ‘chute’ and slapped the clip onto the metal eye-bolt that was located just between the shoulder blades of Curtis’ suit and tapped an order into the chute’s program.

The Cee-Emm powered device lifted off the building, drawing him and Curtis up with it, then smoothly glided back to where the sole remaining local militia-woman was still taking cover.

“Alrighty!” Bermont smiled at her, though she couldn’t see it under the flat black face plate, “It’s your turn now.”

“Who ARE you people?” She finally ventured, surprising Bermont.

“We’re here to help.” he told her. “Now come on… arms up…”

She obeyed, her right fist still locked tightly around the handle of the weapon she’d carried. Bermont clipped the line, then paused and glanced at the rifle style weapon. “Hey. What does that thing fire?”

“What?”

He tapped the weapon, “this. What does it shoot?”

She looked at it and shrugged. “It is a laser.”

“Laser, huh?” He plucked it out of her hand, despite her attempt to hang onto it.

“Hey!”

“Relax, Lady,” he muttered, flipping the rifle over in his hands. “Let’s see. Control panel… can’t read that shit… red light that probably means it’s hot. Let me guess, this must be the…”

The weapon hummed in his hand and a sharp crack and sizzling sound made him jump. He dropped the weapon in surprise while looking over at the section of wall he’d just melted down.

“Whoa holy shit,” He whispered. “That’s impressive.”

*****

People screamed when Milla stepped through the mangled doors she had bent and ripped open like paper. She really couldn’t blame them. She knew from first hand, how frightening it was to see a faceless figure, especially one that had just mangled a pair of security doors with its ‘bare’ hands.

Not that they were all that strong, she had to admit. Strong enough for civilian use, but certainly not constructed out of anything that resembled actual armor. And since they were inside, they weren’t designed to withstand the elements either.

Just ordinary, average people who weren’t using strength augmenting alien armor.

Ironically they’d probably have been less afraid if she’d used a laser to cut her way in.

Milla Chans took a moment to examine the area and noted that there were several people with palm lasers, pointing them shakily at her. She held up her hands slowly and made it a point to not make any sudden motions.

“I am Ithan Chans,” she told them. “Colonial Navy.”

The palm lasers stayed pointed at her, but the shaking subsided a little, so she breathed a little easier. Palm lasers were intended more for survival than anything else. They start fires, heat rocks, cut things, those sorts of utilities. However, they were powerful enough to injure a person, even fatally in extreme cases and she had no desire to put the alien armor to a serious test.

There was, of course, absolutely no reason for any of these people to actually own them, but Milla found that people in the cities tended to do strange things, for no apparent reason. She doubted any of them had ever actually used the small devices, however, it didn’t stop them from acquiring them.

She wouldn’t mind really, if they would acquire a training course at the same time. Unfortunately, most people who wished to own such things really had no idea what they would do with them, should they actually acquire them.

So after they had calmed down some more, Milla reached back and pulled the tabs that broke her suit’s seal, and slowly pulled the faceless helmet off and looked around. “I require a communications terminal.”

*****

Fleet Admiral Rael Tanner was still trying to scrounge up any available assets to step between the sole remaining Drasin Cruiser and, if necessary, the alien ship that had taken to hunting the Drasin, for no discernable reasons.

He’d left the command of the ground units in the hands of his alternate in the Colonial Army, but judging from the constant flow of contraband language flowing from the adjacent communications pit, Commandant Nero Jehan wasn’t having much more luck than he was.

Tanner sighed, taking care to do so extremely quietly and wiped his brow, as he crossed the short distance to his peer and laid a hand on the roughly built man’s shoulder.

Jehan was from one of the outer colonies, one that had so far only been populated for a few centuries and had grown up in real wilderness, not in the carefully monitored and tamed preserves, that still existed here on Ranquil. That was undoubtedly one of the reasons the man had chosen a military career in the first place and certainly led him to his vocation in the ground forces.

It also made him a little rougher than most people from the Five Colonies were willing to tolerate.

“Calmly, Nero,” Tanner said as the mountain of a man half jumped and spun on him.

Tanner stood a full head and a half shorter than his army counterpart, but he didn’t flinch as the big man turned and it was the bigger man that backed down first.

“Apologies, Rael,” Nero Jehan mumbled, shaking his head.

“No need,” Tanner assured him. “However, do check your language; it makes my naval personnel nervous.”

The big ogre of a man smiled ruefully and nodded, rubbing the back of his head in slight chagrin. The ultra-civilized culture that his diminutive friend came from was hard for him to work his way around in easily, as he’d grown up in a community of less than one million people that had been spread over several hundred square kilometers of rugged forest and brush land.

Here on Ranquil, with over five billion people living within only a few square kilometers, he had found that there were few people indeed that wanted to be around him.

Rael Tanner had been one of those few.

“Apologies again,” he said, glancing back over his shoulder.

“How’s it going?” Tanner asked, nodding in the direction of Jehan’s staff.

Jehan grunted a sound that communicated more annoyance and disgust than all the illegal curses Tanner had ever heard, “I’ve lost three brigades so far. Enemy losses are negligible.”

Tanner frowned.

It didn’t make sense, damn it!

The weapons they carried, the ship board tools of destruction, they were more powerful than some suns! One Laser rifle could render a small mountain to molten slag in short order, its beam able to radiate focused energy that was on par with the surface of a small star. The shipboard weapons were even more powerful.

The Drasin shouldn’t be able to stand up to that. No ONE should be.

“Have your people seen any of the objects that fell from that alien shuttle?” Tanner asked.

“Soldiers. Not objects.” Jehan corrected.

Tanner hadn’t heard that. He looked up sharply, “Oh?”

“Heavy armor. Loud weapons.” Jehan told him in that clipped way of his. “Their weapons kill Drasin.”

Tanner blinked.

Well at least something was killing Drasin.

All he had to do was figure out whom, what, and of course, why. Then maybe he might be able to save his world.

Tanner was about to reply, when one of his aides came running up.

“Admiral, Sir… We have a call for you.”

“I don’t have time for…,” Tanner started to say.

“It’s from Ithan Chans… Assigned to the Carlache.”

Tanner froze.

He turned slowly, eyes falling on the flushed aide, “that is not possible.”

“Her identification has been verified, Sir.”

“Show me.”

*****

“Listen to me carefully, Lieutenant,” Major Brinks growled. “I don’t care if that laser can play the star spangled banner. I read over thirty of the damned ET spider things coming your way now and I want you and the rest of your team out of there. Now.”

Lieutenant Bermont didn’t look happy over the order, but he acknowledged it.

“All right, I’m sending in two more ‘chutes’ to pick you up,” The Major told him, waving off a reply. “I’d suggest you don’t miss them.”

“Yes Sir,” Bermont said over the network. “Understood.”

“You’d better,” Brinks growled, wiping the channel clear with a finger flick and an eye blink.

He was watching two full-fledged firefights, one cautious approach, and at the same time was eavesdropping on Milla, while she talked to her boss. Of the four, he was firmly convinced that it was the conversation that would prove to be the most important, but he had an artillery barrage to direct.

“Sniper teams, prepare to direct a mortar barrage to Lieutenant Bermont’s position.” He ordered softly, “Thermobaric munitions are cleared for use.”

*****

“Russell!” Bermont yelled, though he didn’t have to, “Pack your shit, boy! We are LEAVING!”

Corporal Russell glanced back, nodded once and emptied the rest of his clip into the approaching wave that was slowly clambering up slick smooth sides of the pyramidal structure’s tube-like pylons.

There were more and more of them now, as if they were attracted to anything that could kill one of their numbers.

Bermont wasn’t sure if they had a tactical network of their own and were deployed to cover the hottest spots, or… something else, but the net effect was the same. The soldier drones were converging on his and Russell’s location and with each one, either of them took down, several more appeared out of the woodwork.

So to speak, of course, seeing as how Bermont had yet to actually see any wood.

He emptied his own clip, the heavy scramjet rounds blasting from the muzzle of his rifle, accelerated by the rail gun to lethal speeds even before the scramjet engines ignited. He felt a warble through his suit as the weapon went dry, then a flicker of motion from above caught his attention.

He hit the clip ejector with a smooth motion, rising from his kneeling position as he saw Russell do the same. The fresh clip slapped into the rifle even as he looked up to see the Cee-Emm ‘chute’ swoop down over his position.

In a practiced maneuver, Bermont grabbed the ‘chute’s’ handle in his left hand as it flew past, letting the familiar sensation of giddy weightlessness pass over him as it enveloped him in its field, then the building under him dropped away as he was pulled into the air.

A few meters away, Russell was already airborne and whooping out some mad war cry as he sprayed fire back in the direction he had just come from.

Bermont watched as the creatures converged on the top of the pyramid-shaped city, milling around in apparent confusion as their intended targets were no longer waiting there for them. There were some halfhearted attempts to find them, he noted, but they didn’t seem to be looking UP.

Bermont wondered briefly how long that would last.

Long enough, he hoped.

*****

“Mortar unit… hold fire,” the Major ordered, watching the scene on the top of the immense pyramid over a kilometer away.

He could see the drone things still arriving, even as the ones already there milled around as if lost. It was better then he’d hoped, and the former Marine Major couldn’t resist taking advantage of it.

He flashed back to the information they had on these things, thinking about what they had done to the first planet the Odyssey had seen them on. How they had begun taking it apart, piece by piece.

How they had apparently increased their population.

Doubling every three days.

He knew that they had to be destroyed. Not merely defeated, that wasn’t enough. Every single one of them that had landed on this world had to be wiped out in detail, without exception. He didn’t know how they bred, and thus couldn’t take a chance that one of them might, just might, be able to replenish their numbers in only a few weeks.

So, finally, as the arrival of new drones began to peter out, and he saw some of those already there start to look antsy, about leaving, Major Brinks opened his mouth to give the order.

Chapter 23

Archangel Lead slid to a controlled stop only a few meters from the rear bulkhead, its reverse jets flaring brightly, as Stephanus stepped on them in order to kill his inertia. Without the dedicated fighter ‘traps’ used on the lower deck, landing the Archangels on the Odyssey required a great deal more skill the normal.

Even so, he stopped with a comfortable, though narrow, window and leaned his helmeted head back against the seat as one of the trundling loaders made its way out to him.

The entire flight operations staff was scuttling over the deck in their hard suits, working feverishly through the vacuum of the flight deck, and he could see that the large equipment elevators were moving nonstop as they transported men and equipment to the lower deck.

The fighter rocked then, drawing Steph’s attention, as the loader backed into the blunt nose of his fighter and locked into place. Then, with the steady gait of the indefatigable machine, the fighter and its pilot were turned around and guided straight to one of the immense airlocks that served to transport shuttles to the repair bays above them.

He had to wait for three other Archangels to make the run and watched as they were slowly moved into place beside him, itching to be out of his cockpit now that he was back aboard the Odyssey. He forced himself to wait, though, until the four fighters were in place, and the big airlock/lift rumbled steadily upwards.

From that point, it was only minutes to where his fighter was locked down, his cockpit pressure equalized, and Stephanus was popping the seal. He crawled out of the tightly fitted bolster seat and accepted a hand from one of the flight crew as they in turn crawled all over his plane with their tools and scanners.

“How’d you do, Sir?” One of them asked as Steph’s feet clanged to the bare deck, boots locking him in place.

“Chalk five more up, Ben,” he said softly, half smiling at the man.

“Yes, Sir,” The tech saluted him, though Commander Michaels just nodded in return as he walked away.

He moved to the closest call terminal and keyed in a request to speak to the Captain.

Weston must have been waiting for the call, because in a few seconds he was looking back through the terminal screen. “Good to have you back, Steph.”

“Good to be aboard, Captain.” Stephen said tiredly. “How long have we got?”

“That’s the good news,” Eric told him calmly, eyes flicking to something beyond the camera. “The Mother ship you took on has apparently decided that it doesn’t want to tangle with the two of us just now. It’s adjusted its orbit to scale outside ours, about two point three AU out… It’s not going away, but it’s not coming any closer.”

Steph let out a long sigh, and nodded. “Thank God, Sir. My team needs as much time as we can get.”

Weston nodded, “See to them, and get some rest. We’ll call you if we need you.”

“Aye Captain,” the tired pilot saluted, albeit somewhat sloppily, and smiled wearily as the picture flickered out.

He half turned, noting the three other pilots standing some distance behind him.

“Grab a shower and hug your bunks.” He ordered them. “We’re standing down for now.”

They didn’t cheer, or even comment much, which was a testament to how tired they were now that the fight or flight adrenaline surge had started to leave them. Instead, the three pilots just nodded and trudged toward the lifts as Michaels turned back to the airlock as it started to rumble back down to the flight deck.

*****

Eric Weston stood up releasing the restraints that kept him secured to the command chair in case of extreme maneuvers or combat damage, and walked over to where Susan Lamont was talking steadily over her Damage Control channels.

“How bad is it, Susan?” He asked softly, leaning over her shoulder and resting a hand on the console.

“Could be worse, Sir,” she said, tapping in a command. “CPO Corrin’s got the patch underway in the forward weapon control rooms, should be another hour or so, and we’ll be ready to re-pressurize them.”

“Armor?”

“Four more hours, Sir.” Lamont replied, glancing up. “We have a crew outside putting the slab into place, but we’ll have to recall them if that ship heads back in.”

Eric nodded soberly.

They certainly couldn’t leave men out in the black if it came down to combat maneuvers, it would be nothing short of a death sentence.

“The flight deck?”

“That’s a bit trickier.” Lamont told him, calling up a schematic.

The picture on the screen was of the lower flight deck and it showed an immense gash, right up the center of the long deck. The edges were melted down from the extreme heat they’d experienced, and the beam width was over four meters wide, at its worst.

“We didn’t lose much there, since the deck is almost never under pressure, anyway,” Lamont said calmly, “But the enemy beam sliced through the Cee Emm circuits that made up the fighter traps. They’ve got to be re-wired before we repair the deck damage. It’s going to be at least twenty hours, Sir.”

Weston grimaced, but nodded. “Fine. Good work, Susan.”

“Thank you, Sir,” she said, back straightening slightly.

Eric straightened up and moved across the Bridge to the tactical console. “Waters.”

“Sir?” The young kid said, looking up.

“How’d they get through our armor?”

Waters grimaced, shaking his head. “I’m afraid they just overpowered it, Sir. No tricks, nothing fancy, they just burned right through it.”

Eric winced.

That was bad.

The Cam-Plate modifications were capable of reflecting over ninety-eight percent of the beam energy of any class one laser away. That meant that the beam power they were facing was such that less than two percent was enough to kill them.

Eric didn’t want to think of what would happen, if they had to face more than one enemy vessel at once, or if one enemy got a lucky shot through one of the multitude of chinks in their armor where the Cam-Plates didn’t cover.

“Alright!” Was all he said out loud though. “Analyse everything we’ve got on these things, and make sure that our labs are doing the same. And Waters?”

“Yes Sir?”

“Tell the egg heads that they’re on a deadline here,” Weston said grimly. “I don’t want answers two years from now, I want them NOW.”

“Aye Aye, Captain.”

*****

“Fire Plan Romeo, Mark,” Wilhelm Brinks said simply as he watched the overview of the fight through his suit’s HUD.

“Romeo, confirmed.” The signal came back an instant later.

“Engage,” Brinks responded, eyes watching the crowd of drones that had gathered at the top of the tubular pyramid that Bermont and his team had just pulled out of.

“Engaging.” The calm answer came back.

From his position it was anti-climactic, at least at first. The single word was spoken in confirmation and a series of lights lit up, as the sniper teams opened fire according to the Plan Romeo schedule.

Their computer network controlled the exact timing, of course, and the fighting was far enough away that the launches were less than nothing to Brinks, even with suit enhancement, had he been inclined to watch for them.

He hadn’t been.

Brinks watched the target zone instead, knowing that when the thermobaric rounds detonated, it would be climactic enough.

*****

Thermobaric weapons, also known as Fuel Air Explosives, were a known quantity in military technology for a long time, before they entered into truly widespread service, in the early twenty first century, moving from weapons that had to be deployed by large aircraft, to forty millimeter grenade versions placed solidly in the hands of individual soldiers.

The Soviet military had actually pioneered the concept as a useful military ordinance in the late twentieth century, but it was the sudden flash of violence, that became the ‘Terror Wars’, of the early twenty first century, that led to the rapid development of the technology into the refined versions used by the Odyssey troops.

Five separate shells were fired at Brink’s command, fins and computer controls guided the little kamikazes along a carefully selected course. As they topped their arc and started to fall toward the Drasin drones, the shells spread out in a geometric pentagon that kept the enemy mass at its center.

When they reached within forty meters of the targets, the first stage explosion, detonated.

The shells ruptured, blowing out their payloads with a sudden massive force, and sprayed aerosol chemicals over the entire region. As the area became laden with the harsh, poisonous chemicals, the second stage ignition, detonated.

The resulting rumble was like a clap of thunder, directly overhead and shook the air for over a kilometer.

A firestorm raced through the air, jumping from molecule to molecule of the harsh chemicals, erupting in an orgy of destructive power that forced the air aside with effects best compared to a nuclear weapon.

The over-pressure wave erupted on all sides, casting out further and further as the chemicals ignited, until it met the Drasin and, by extension, the over-pressure waves erupting from each of the other shells.

*****

“Who is this?” Rael Tanner growled at the screen, looking straight at a face he didn’t recognize, but which matched the computer files they had for one, Ithan Milla Chans.

The figure, clad in alien body armor, stiffened and saluted. “Ithan Milla Chans, Admiral.”

“Ithan Chans died when the Carlache went down, with all hands.” Tanner told her coldly. “I lost a good friend on that ship, and I’m not inclined to be flippant about her fate.”

The woman looking at him paled, eyes widening, but her jaw just locked slightly and momentarily. After a moment she got herself back under control, “Admiral, I survived the loss of the Carlache and was rescued by the Starship, Odyssey.”

“The ship in orbit?” Tanner asked, not willing to give up the chance to identify the ship in question.

“Yes Admiral,” the supposed Ithan Chans replied.

“Why don’t you tell me who they are,” Tanner said coldly, “Assuming that you are who you claim to be.”

“They are… . ,” Milla’s face twisted, “I believe them to be of the Others, Admiral.”

Tanner heard a hissed intake of air, but ignored it. “Ithan, I don’t believe in myths.”

Milla looked shocked, but didn’t cross him on the statement.

Tanner ignored her look, “so what I’ll presume you mean is that they are not a Colonial vessel, however they ARE human.”

“That… that’s correct, Admiral.”

“What frequencies do they use?” Tanner asked, “I wish to speak with their Captain.”

“They communicate on radio frequency, Sir.”

Tanner grimaced.

Radio.

That was irritating. He wasn’t even sure that they had anything that would transmit on so low a band.

He glanced over his shoulder, “Find me a way to talk to these people.”

“What? But we…” The technician paled suddenly under a withering look. “Uh… Yes, Admiral.”

Tanner turned back to Milla, “What else?”

“Admiral, they have soldiers on the ground here and…”

“Yes, I am aware of that,” Rael told her, “They are engaging the Drasin at several key points and have been…”

A sudden explosion of curses erupting from the army control pit startled him, and Tanner looked over. “What the hell is going on over there?”

His naval ratings looked at him in shock, but he ignored them.

“Admiral,” one of the army ratings came running over. “There has been an explosion over the Third habitat.”

“Damage?”

“Minimal, Sir, if any,” the rating replied. “But it was… unexpected… and very, very large, Sir.”

Rael glanced back at Milla, “Your friends?”

“I don’t know, Sir,” She replied, hefting something. “One moment, I’ll check.”

*****

The overlapping compression waves ripped through the Drasin drones like five separate hurricanes of power all tearing and rending in different directions. One drone would be lifted into the air by the front of one wave, and then slammed into a dozen other drones and torn in another direction completely as it intersected the front of a second over-pressure wave.

From the outside, the scene was hellish, the sort of thing one might expect from an action movie, flames and smoke obscuring the deadly consequences of the eruption of power.

Several of the drones were simply thrown clear off the peak of the pyramid, flying out into the air hundreds of feet above the ground, until gravity took over and guided them down to, what Brinks hoped would be, extremely rough landings.

Just in case, he tagged each of them in turn, and sent orders to his outlying units to check on them, as soon as possible.

More often it was parts of the Drasin that flew out of the miniature holocaust, legs here, bodies there, and so forth.

Brinks had those tagged as well, but on a lower priority.

The rumbling sound died out slowly, the crackling thunder softening as he looked over the scene at maximum magnification.

*****

“We counted thirty-eight drones there, Sir.”

Nero nodded, looking at the information. Whatever those other soldiers had done, it had ripped through the Drasin group, like nothing he’d ever seen. Fiery explosions were actually rare in combat, they normally were rather subdued events with a lot of noise, assuming you weren’t in space, but very little else, other than smoke or shrapnel.

This, though, was something else.

The computers had registered at least twelve confirmed kills in that instant conflagration, and the tally was going up as the smoke cleared.

Across in the other control pit, Rael Tanner was looking at the faceless visage that had been Milla Chans, and waiting for information that only she could provide him.

After a long moment, the face nodded slowly and the armored hands came up and pulled the helmet off again.

Milla Chans looked a little pale, which Tanner could understand well enough, but in control as she spoke. “It was them, Admiral. They had managed to group many of the Drasin together in one place… Major Brinks assures me that they analysed the building structure for any danger before he ordered the attack.”

Tanner forced himself to nod slowly, as if it made much sense to him. “Ithan, what are their intentions?”

“Sir?”

“Why are they helping us?” He asked softly.

Milla looked confused for a moment he thought he saw her shrug, but it was hard to tell through the armor she wore. “I don’t know for certain, Admiral. All I know is that their Captain told me that he wouldn’t… couldn’t… stand by and watch an entire planet die… He saw what happened at Port Fuielles, Sir… and at Duorkin.”

Tanner winced.

“Port Fuielles, as well?” He asked painfully.

“Yes Sir.” Milla said. “The Odyssey rescued five hundred survivors… but that was all.”

Five hundred.

Tanner closed his eyes, whispering a few words for the loss of fifty million people.

He shook his head, “Ithan, I think you should come here. We need to communicate with these people and for the moment you are our only method.”

“Of course, Sir,” Milla bowed her head slightly. “I will arrive, as soon as possible.”

“Good,” He told her. “I will await you.”

*****

Bermont hit the rooftop running, letting the ‘chute’ soar up and away from him, as he skidded to a crouch by the edge of the insanely tall skyscraper and looked over at the clearing smoke that was obscuring the place he had just left.

He whistled, the sound audible only to him, as his HUD enhanced and magnified the scene of destruction for him.

“God damn,” he muttered, switching to a thermal overlay.

For a moment, his HUD just went white, as the temperature overloaded its initial settings, but in a second, the computer adapted and altered the sensitivity of the sensors, until it could differentiate through the rapidly dispersing heat of the explosion.

“Oh shit,” he breathed a few moments later. “Oh Shit.”

There were still moving heat sources in there.

“Major,” he accessed the command channel. “We’ve got a problem.”

*****

Brinks cursed, shaking his head. “How many?”

“About seventy percent of them survived, Sir.”

“Jesus Christ,” The Major cursed. “What the hell are these things?”

The words went out over the command channel and to all the members of the impromptu war council.

Savoy’s voice came back, sounding like he was sighing. “They’re obviously adapted to a different environment than this, Sir. I’m guessing that the Tee Bee’s just didn’t have enough heat to cook ‘em, and the chemicals apparently aren’t harmful to them, either.”

“But the concussion should have been enough to rip them apart, anyway!” Sargent Rogers objected over the line. “Nothing gets up after a blast like that!”

“Underground, you might be right, Sarge,” Savoy told him. “But out in the open, even with the tandem controlled blasts… Apparently there’s at least one thing that can get up.”

“I’m with Sav.” Bermont said after a moment, frowning over the HUD. “I saw what that laser rifle could do… If that can’t cook these things, they’re not going to be burned by a little explosion. We ripped a few of them up with the concussion, but the ones that survived that weren’t affected by the other components of the Tee Bee.”

Brinks growled slightly, but nodded. “All right. We still have to clear them out. Suggestions?”

“Major,” Bermont said, sighing. “I think we’re just gonna have to get down and dirty with these guys. I don’t see any slick trick that’ll take ’em out.”

“He’s right, Major,” Sargent Rogers replied.

Brinks nodded slowly, almost unwillingly, and though he wasn’t opposed to the idea, he’d rather not risk his men that much. “All right… Go to it.”

“Yes, Sir,” the Chorus came back.

*****

“Report coming back from Major Brinks, Sir.” Waters said as Weston turned around.

“How are the teams doing?”

“Not badly, Sir.” Waters frowned, “Some injuries, only one that looks serious. The Major is requesting that we deploy Carnivores, so he can re-task his ‘chutes’ for squad deployment.”

Weston nodded. “Do it.”

Launching Carnivores during the firefight wouldn’t have been possible, given that the drones required either the Odyssey or a shuttle to control them and all of the above had been quite busy at the time. Now, it was feasible, so he’d give the Major whatever he could.

“What’s his progress?”

“Unknown at this time,” Waters shook his head. “They’ve eliminated some of the ground troops the enemy vessel launched, but they aren’t certain of total numbers…”

Weston nodded, but grimaced. “Give him his drones, Mr. Waters. Have Commander Roberts and the auxiliary bridge take up their controls, for the moment.”

“Yes Sir.”

“After that, consider yourself relieved,” Weston told him, “Get yourself something to eat and a cup of coffee.”

“Aye Aye, Captain.”

Eric Weston turned away from the young man and looked back at the screens that depicted the outside orbit of the remaining Drasin ship, as it circled far out beyond the planet’s orbit, waiting.

Waiting for what, was the question.

Chapter 24

The first of the three Carnivore Recon Drones slid into position over the city, while Major Brinks looked out over the incredibly complicated mesh of buildings and structures that made up the population center.

“Switching Carnivores to Active Thermal Scanning.” Commander Roberts’ voice came crisply over the network. “Drones two and three are descending to two hundred meters… Drone one is being tasked at eighteen thousand meters, please set waypoints for deployment, Major.”

“Thank you, Commander,” Brinks said, tagging several key points for close overflies. “I’m dispatching troops to these points now.”

“Confirmed. I’ll have detailed recon data waiting for them.” Roberts replied.

“Excellent,” Wilhelm nodded reflexively, eyeing another section. “I’ve also dispatched Savoy’s team to investigate an apparent wreck. It looks dead, but I’d appreciate it if you could drop Drone one to a tactical altitude.”

“Roger,” Roberts replied. “Primary Carnivore descending to eight thousand meters, could you relay a waypoint for this wreck?”

“One second, Commander,” Brinks said, tagging the location, then attaching all the information they had already gathered to the waypoint before shooting it up to the Odyssey. “Done.”

“Confirmed. Wait One.”

Brinks waited as patiently as he could, knowing that the computers and technicians, on the Odyssey were already meshing the various scans from his ‘chutes’ and Suit sensors into one high resolution scan.

“Confirmed. Drone one will remain at a maximum tactical altitude, Good luck, Major.”

“Thanks Commander.” Brinks said.

*****

“Man, this shit sucks,” Corporal Deacon griped as he and the other two members of his squad ducked under a fallen wall, the huge slab of whatever it was, actually still intact after having been blasted clear off the building, it had been previously attached to.

Sargent Steward made a face behind the anonymous faceplate of his armor, but didn’t respond as he lay back against the solid material and slowly pushed his gun over the edge and twisted it around.

“Looks like…, five of them,” he said after a moment, pulling his rifle back. “Everyone have their weapons set to thermal guidance?”

“Do I look like an Officer?” Deacon asked in amusement

“No, and you never will, if I have anything to say about it,” Lieutenant Mackay replied in like manner. “We’re good to go, Sarge.”

Steward nodded in the exaggerated motions necessary when wearing powered armor. “All right. Spread out a little, and remember… at this range, we’ll only have a two, maybe three, degree flight correction… So don’t pretend you’re in an action flick, alright Deac?”

Corporal Deacon rolled his eyes, but only nodded tersely in response as the three of them spread out.

“Wait! What are you doing?”

Deacon glanced back, looking at the local cop who’d been tagging along with them. “Relax, stay low.”

Tsari didn’t have much to say in response to that, so she did as she was told and hugged closely to the wreckage as the three soldiers spread out.

There was no traditional three count, the three of them didn’t need one, in this case. Their linked systems shared a few million calculations, estimated the location of the enemy from indirect heat sources it flashed a green light on their HUD’s.

Together, they rose up, weapons levelling as they brought them snug to their shoulders and squeezed the triggers. The air was immediately filled with the whining of the capacitors discharging in rapid fire sequence, and the roar as their bullets went supersonic, letting a hundred of the lethal little killers fill the air.

The Drasin reacted almost as fast, two of them jumping for height, their tough outer carapace somehow letting them dig their mandible like claws into the obsidian smooth material of the surrounding buildings as they moved to bring their weapons to bear.

The other three spun around, weapon mandibles coming up, only to be chewed to shreds as the heavy rounds struck home. Each of the three caught the bullets originally intended for five, as the guidance systems in each round, redirected them away from the two escapees, right into the armored carapaces of the three that remained.

Even as those three fell, though, the two that had escaped the opening barrage opened fire and the sizzling beams slammed into the fallen wall, one of them tracking fast enough to catch Lieutenant Mackay as he twisted aside.

Flame and nauseous gases erupted from the armor as he fell, the material being vaporized by the extreme heat and force of the blast.

As Mackay hit the ground, Steward and Deacon raised their rifles, even as they threw themselves aside, rolling in the air, and firing.

The weapons made their unique whine/crack once more, sending dozens of hefty killers upwards in the reflex shots, as the two troopers hit the ground hard and slid to a stop.

Neither of them had aimed particularly well, but it didn’t really matter, because as the bullets leapt forward, their eager little forward sensors detecting the heat of the Drasin drones above them almost before they even left the barrels of their rifles. The hardwired nano-circuitry took a moment to glimpse at the few lines of onboard software, just to confirm the target parameters, they happily raced off in search of the warmth they were designed to seek.

Less than a tenth of a second after they fired, the Drasin drones were torn apart and falling to the ground.

Sargent Steward ended his slide with a reverse shoulder roll and came back up to his feet, rifle seeking out any other targets around them as he shouted over the net, “Deac! Check on him!”

“You got it Sarge!” Deacon said, already on the move.

The Corporal hit the ground, skidding on his armored knees, and came to a stop by the fallen Lieutenant, even as he automatically called up the medical information from Mackay’s suit.

“No heartbeat!” He shouted, ordering the suit to defib.

Mackay jerked once, back arcing off the ground as the suit shunted a jolt through his body. His face mask cleared as the armor automatically shifted to medical mode, letting Deacon see his eyes open wide from the shock, staring around unblinkingly as he settled back down.

“Still nothing!”

Deacon hit him again, jolting the soldier off the ground again, even as his suit finished applying foam to the breach and the drab green substance started to harden.

A series of beeps and symbols flashed across Deacon’s HUD and he let out a breath, “Got him back, Sarge, but he’s in a bad way!”

Steward didn’t answer as he finished his circuit and let his rifle drop from his shoulder as he shifted to the Command Emergency channel.

“Major, we’ve got a man down. I say again. Man down.”

*****

Milla Chans didn’t move as the two armed men entered the habitat, weapons aimed at her. She’d expected some degree of caution on the part of the Admiral, though this might be somewhat extreme in her opinion.

A third man entered behind them, eyes alighting on her, “Ithan Chans?”

“Yes.” She nodded, helmet concealing the motion though she didn’t realize it.

“You are to come with us.”

Milla nodded again and took a step forward.

And accidently jumped about ten feet.

The two armed men almost jumped out of their skin as she lurched forward, right into their midst, and landed practically within arm’s reach. They swung their weapons around to fire, and probably would have, except that Milla fell over, as badly surprised as they were.

“Blast!” She muttered from the ground. “This thing is insane!”

The third man, now well outside the room, looked at her cautiously. “Perhaps you should remove the suit, Ithan.”

“Even if I knew how, we will need it to relay communications,” she said sourly, slowly and gingerly picking herself up off the ground.

The man didn’t look happy about it, but nodded. “Very well, Ithan. Follow me… Gently, please.”

“Yes Sir,” she nodded, glad that her blush and chagrin wouldn’t be seen from within the mask.

*****

“Roger that,” Brinks replied tersely. “Am redirecting a ‘chute’ for pickup. Standby.”

Steward confirmed the transmission, signed off leaving Brinks to do his job. He now had two seriously injured soldiers, and no immediate evac point. He directed the ‘chute’ to pick up Mackay after shifted his comm-suite to locate Milla.

“Miss Chans,” he said after a moment.

*****

“Yes Major?” Milla paused, head cocked slightly as she listened.

The guards froze behind her though the man in front moved on for a few steps before realizing that no one was following. He half turned, “Ithan? What are you doing?”

She held up a hand, “one moment. Yes Major, there are extremely good medical facilities in the city. Yes Major, I will arrange it.”

“Arrange what??” The third man demanded.

“Medical treatment for injured soldiers,” she told him calmly. “There are two seriously injured men in need of medical attention.”

“Ithan, we have to get you to the Admiral. You can deal with that, once we arrive.”

“No, I will deal with it while we travel. You have a Comm, of course?”

“Of course, but…”

“Then contact the Admiral,” she told him coolly, starting forward again as she motioned to him with one hand. “Now.”

*****

Across the city, far from the heavier built up sections where the majority of the fighting was currently contained, Lieutenant Savoy and his ‘Geek Squad’ were moving slowly toward a badly chewed up, piece of machinery that looked more like a fallen rock, than the remnants of a lander craft.

“What kind of radiation are we getting off this, Lt?” Burke asked softly, his weapon traversing the wreckage slowly as they moved forward.

“It’s hot, but not smoking,” Savoy responded, eyeing the levels carefully.

They were peaking at lethal levels for unprotected humans, but nothing that would seriously endanger armored soldiers. The odd thing was where the spikes were in the EM field, most of them were very low in the spectrum for radiation, rather in the higher energy wavelengths.

Another odd thing was the mist that had formed around the wreckage, making the entire approach feels like something out of an old horror flick.

“Jesus,” Mehn whispered, watching as the mist curled up around his legs, reaching higher as it poured out from the wreck. “Where the fuck is this coming from?”

“Looks like water mist…,” Savoy replied. “Probably a coolant breach or maybe their reactor is running hot. The heat might pull water vapor out of the atmosphere.”

“It’s fuckin spooky, Boss,” Burke said in no uncertain terms.

“Yeah,” Savoy whispered as he stepped up to the huge rend in the hull of the lander. “Tell me about it.”

No one had anything to say to that, so Savoy just swung his rifle around the corner of the rip, watching the results from the built-in camera that beamed back to his HUD, as he swept the interior.

“Looks clear,” he said, pulling back. “Mehn, cover me.”

“You got it, boss.”

Savoy crouched down slightly and jumped up in a calculated motion that brought him up to the lip of the tear and landed just inside. His suit systems automatically adjusted to the low light levels, bringing up a computer enhancement over his HUD that includes thermal and light amplification. Savoy automatically rejected the suit’s query concerning active night vision systems while stepping inside slowly.

“It’s a wreck in here,” he muttered after a moment.

“Say that again, Boss,” Burke replied, landing just where Savoy had been and looking around for himself. “Must have been one rough landing.”

“Don’t let your guard down,” Mehn reminded them both. “We saw that these things are tougher than you’d expect.”

“Right,” Savoy nodded, pushing forward slowly as he looked around. “More to the point, I don’t see any bodies, boys.”

“Shit,” Burke muttered, crouching just beside the tear, as Mehn jumped up. “I don’t like the sounds of that.”

“Can’t say I much like it, either,” Savoy shrugged invisibly within his armor. “But thems the cards we’ve been dealt. I’m going to move further in. Give me some cover, okay you two?”

“We got your back, Boss,” Mehn said instantly.

Savoy just nodded as he swung his rifle around a corner, scanning quickly before he ducked around in a crouch to let his suits more effective sensors give him a second opinion. Nothing was in sight, so he rose slowly to his feet and moved forward again.

*****

Admiral Tanner looked at the face on the screen and frowned, “What is it, Saren?”

“The Ithan wishes to speak to you,” the man said stiffly.

“I told you to bring her here, as fast as possible…”

“I am… We are…, that is,” the man replied. “However she insists on speaking to you as we travel.”

“Very well,” Tanner sighed, “Hand her the comm.”

The image jiggled a little and came to rest on the smooth faceless armor that was even disconcerting over a Comm.

“Admiral,”

“What is it, Ithan? I’m quite occupied at the moment…,” Tanner began.

“The soldiers from the Odyssey have incurred injuries,” Milla interrupted him, “Their emergency craft has been redirected to rescue pilots, lost in the outer system, so they have no local medical support, at this instant. I’m told that they can, of course, redirect a shuttle to supply them with what they need, but it will take time…”

Tanner grimaced, but nodded. “One moment, Ithan.”

He stepped back while moving over to the control pit that handled ground operations. “Nero!”

“Yes, Rael?” The big man asked, stepping up.

“The soldiers from the ship have had casualties, they would appreciate medical aid,” Tanner told his counterpart. “Would security concerns permit redirecting them to one of your hospitals?”

“Of course,” the big man replied instantly. “I’ll provide you with a list immediately and…”

“No need,” Tanner smiled, “It’s in Central. I’ll inform Ithan Chans of the locations.”

“Please do not neglect to inform me of which ones they are directed to,” Nero told him. “I will ensure that they are received without undue trouble.”

Tanner nodded and headed back.

*****

“Roger that, Miss Chans. Can you locate these sites on an aerial map?” Brinks asked, looking at Milla’s tense face over his HUD.

“I… I think so,” she said hesitantly. “Can you show me this map?”

“One second…” Brinks activated one of the command override circuits while snaking into her system using the ‘Boot Camp’ backdoor. He called up the Carnivore data and fed it to her via the HUD.

Milla watched, surprised as the image of the city floating in front of her, translucent but clear enough to see. Wherever she looked, a blue circle seemed to follow and she quickly realized that it was somehow tracking her eyesight.

“Here…,” she said, looking at one of the hospital sites. “This is one of the places.”

Brinks downloaded the information. “All right. Thank you, Miss Chans. I’m redirecting our wounded there now.”

“It is… nothing, Major,” she told him. “It the least we owe you.”

“Just get to that bunker, Miss Chans. We need to coordinate with your leadership if we want to finish this off,” Brinks told her, shutting down the HUD backdoor, and returning her to normal operations.

Redirecting the wounded to the new site took only a couple commands; he summoned another ‘chute’ for himself.

There was no way, he was going to entrust his people to a place, he hadn’t checked out first, if he had any choice in the matter.

*****

“This cannot be good,” Lieutenant Savoy said after a long moment of silence.

“What is it, Boss?” Burke asked, coming up behind him, stumbling to a halt as he saw what Savoy was looking at. “Oh Shit.”

“Eloquent, Burke. Worthy of the bards,” Savoy said as he blew out a long breath, letting his armors air-conditioning catch the moist air and whisk it instantly away from the faceplate HUD.

“What the hell are you two blathering about?” Mehn asked as he stepped up, coming to a dead stop between the two of them and looking down.

A long way down.

The hole in the deck was about five meters in diameter and seemed to bore right through the hull of the landing craft and into the hard ground beneath them.

“I’m getting a depth reading… Jesus… Thirty meters… How’d they manage to dig that this fast?”

“Don’t know, Boss…, but it can’t be a good thing.”

“Yeah…,” Savoy shook his head. “All right, Burke, head back out and get one of the ‘chutes’ in here.”

“How come?” Burke objected. “The sensors on those things aren’t gonna be worth much, in that tight an area.”

“I know that…,” Savoy responded. “But my suit sensors will be. I’m going down there.”

*****

Eric Weston was sipping a steaming mug of coffee when the alert came in.

He dropped the mug unceremoniously into a recycling hatch, and turned to the even younger ensign who was taking Waters position. “What is it, Ensign?”

“Tachyon wakes, Sir,” she replied tensely, eyes darting across her board. “I… I think its several ships decelerating from FTL.”

“Put your readings up on the screen,” he ordered quickly.

The screen flickered, showing a computer enhancement of nicely animated blue particles being pushed ahead of something and breaking out and around, like the bow wave of a boat, pushing itself through a calm lake.

Only there were five of them.

“Oh my God,” someone whispered.

Weston ignored them.

At least now he knew what the last ship was waiting for.

And he’d been right too.

He didn’t like it.

Chapter 25

Lieutenant Savoy slowly twisted in a nonexistent breeze as he dropped down the five meter wide hole, the Cee Emm ‘chute’ lowering him slowly into the pit.

“Heat dissipation is roughly even,” he reported, looking down through the thermal overlay that decorated his suit’s HUD. “The walls are almost smooth, very regularly cut… But not glassy like a laser drill…”

His running commentary was being relayed up to his tech squad and from them, to the Major and the Odyssey, so he kept speaking for the record, as the walls continued to loom further and further above him.

“I’m approaching the bottom now…, slowing ‘chute’ deployment,” he said, slowly bringing himself to a stop just above the turn in the tunnel.

Savoy then inverted himself, hooking one leg up and around the cable that held him suspended in the air, and commanded the ‘chute’ to descend again. His head dipped below the curve of the tunnel a few seconds later and he stopped it again, watching through the thermal overlay down the tunnel, looking for any heat sources that might be the enemy drones.

“It’s quiet down here,” he said after a moment. “Nothing to indicate enemy activity.”

Other than the tunnel itself, of course, he thought privately to himself without stating the obvious. After a long look, he made a choice, “All right guys, I’m cutting the tether.”

He unhooked his leg from the cable and snapped back upright as he triggered the release and dropped the remaining four meters to the ground. The sound of his landing echoed around him as he came down in a crouch, retrieving his rifle from where it was latched to the back of his armor.

In the passive night vision of his HUD, the tunnel appeared endless, vanishing off into eternity, with only minor thermal variations apparent throughout its length. Where he stood was cooling off, only a few degrees above the air temperature, which was running a relatively high thirty degrees Celsius.

Savoy took a few steps down the tunnel before coming to a decision, “I’m switching to active night vision now.”

A few motions brought up the options then he turned on the infrared spotlights built into the helmet and shoulders of his armor.

The HUD lit up bright green for a second it instantly darkened as its filters kicked in. Now he was looking at a tunnel, he estimated at about fifty meters long, with obvious branches moving off to either side at roughly ten meter intervals.

“Industrious little bastards,” he muttered as he moved forward slowly, one foot in front of the other, dry dirt and gravel crackling and crunching with each step, as he began to plumb the depths of the alien tunnel system.

*****

The three small flying devices approached the medical center together, something that might have prompted an attempt at defending the building, if the military command hadn’t placed a call through several minutes earlier to warn the guards of the approach.

So all they did was spread out slightly as the lead device swooped in and dropped off a hulking figure that carried a weapon, at least three times the size of their laser rifles. He, or it, walked directly to the closest guard, not showing any sign of caution or fear that they could see and spoke sharply.

“Is this the medical center?”

The guard nodded, blinking in surprise at the odd accent the man had. He’d never heard anything quite like it; it was almost like a total lack of accent, a flatness that he couldn’t place.

“Good,” the hulking figure said not moving, but somehow giving the impression that he was doing something.

The other two devices approached and the guards saw the limp figures dangling from them.

“Doctor!” The guard yelled over his shoulder, nodding at two of the others.

The other two guards stepped aside and three of the medical staff, rushed out with a hovering platform, sliding obediently along behind them. Immediately behind them were another three and another platform.

The guard turned back to the hulking figure and was surprised to see that the anonymous black faceplate was no longer in evidence. Instead, he could see the face behind it, lit up by a series of soft, red lights. The grim looking man actually looked a great deal more frightful than the impersonal black of the faceplate.

“Your people will need my help to open the armor,” he said, walking toward the medical teams.

The guard quickly signalled to three others and rushed along behind the hulking figure, as he reached the first medical team.

They were puzzling over how to treat a man, they couldn’t seem to get onto their platform, let along physically reach. The hulking figure just grabbed the limp figure, disconnecting the cable that supported him effortlessly, and slung him onto the platform.

“The suit has a subsurface breach in case of medical emergencies,” he told him in that curiously flat tone as he placed a finger alongside the prone man’s helmet.

They couldn’t see it, but Major brinks initiated a physical link to the suit, so that he could access a command set that wasn’t available over any wireless link for obvious reasons. Once the link was established, he ordered the suit to breach.

A hiss of escaping gas startled the team, causing many of them to jump back and the suit split along the center of the chest, down along the abdomen. It then slid open on hidden pneumatics as Brinks popped the helmet seal and pried the clamshell armor from Lieutenant Mackay’s head.

“You can treat him in the armor, or pull him out, if you have to,” Brinks told them brusquely, then turned and moved quickly over to where Jaime Curtis was still hanging, suspended above the ground by her cable connection to the ‘chute’.

The medical team stared after him for a second, before the lead doctor shook her head and snapped at them. A few seconds later, the platform was retreating into the facility with the three of them jogging alongside as they scanned and attached devices to their new patient.

*****

“If they continue their current deceleration,” Waters told his Captain, “they’ll rendezvous with the other ship in eight hours… If he accelerates to match course with them on a least time approach, we’ll be facing all six of them in about twelve, Sir.”

Weston nodded grimly, looking at the status board.

The Odyssey would have its forward armor repaired long before that, but its flight deck would still be breached, though the circuits for the traps should be repaired by then. That would put the Odyssey in near fighting trim, along with a full charge on her pulse torpedoes.

This, even under ideal circumstances, placed the Odyssey at the wrong side of long odds.

Eric shook his head, letting his PDA clatter to the console in front of him and looking over at Susan Lamont. “All right, what’s the status on the Archangels?”

“Not as bad as we’d feared, but they’re still down by four pilots. No fatalities, but three of the injured pilots have major radiation burns from cockpit hits from enemy lasers, and we have one man with a head injury. We think his Cee-Emm field collapsed when he ejected his cockpit,” Ensign Lamont said. “Counting Clarke that brings our total fighter compliment down by just over a third.”

Weston winced, but nodded.

“Further,” Waters spoke up again. “I’m afraid that the Archangels just don’t seem to be carrying enough firepower to really damage the enemy cruisers. We’ll need them for fighter coverage, but they’re not going to shift the odds substantially.”

Eric didn’t like to admit it, but the young man was most likely right. The weapons load for the Archangels wasn’t intended for the level of power being thrown around, in these engagements. Even the heaviest missiles they had available for the fighters were originally intended to sink sea born battleships and dreadnaughts.

Weapons that appeared to be roughly the equivalent of popguns against the alien cruisers they were dealing with.

“All right, I need options. Waters, talk to your department, talk to the civilian researchers, talk to God himself, if you have to, but get them to me,” he told the young man, then turned to Lamont. “Get as many people on the repairs as you can, and have Engineering start siphoning off more power from the reactor to the auxiliary capacitors. I want as many charges in the Pulse tubes as I can get, this time.”

“Aye Aye Captain,” they both replied, stiffening as they gave him a quick salute and turned to their tasks.

Weston sighed, then picked up his induction mic and slapped it onto his jaw. “Commander Roberts.”

“Yes Captain?” The Commanders voice returned a moment later.

“I’m coming up to the Auxiliary Bridge to discuss the current situation, Commander.”

“Yes Sir, I’ll be waiting.”

Eric nodded, letting the link close, and turned to Waters. “Lieutenant, you have the watch.”

“I have the watch, Aye Sir.”

*****

Bermont snarled under his armored helm, the vibrations of the whining, roaring weapon only reaching him in his imagination, as he fired another burst into the scampering, skittering, drones. They’d appear from some crevice or another like wraiths, firing a burst at his team, vanishing around a corner or into some hole they’d found.

The soldiers had managed to avoid any serious injuries, though Bermont himself was sporting a burn on his thigh that was going to sting like a bitch, once the local aesthetic started wearing off. It had been a glancing blow from the enemy’s beam weapons, but it had been enough to cook his armor and by extension his thigh, before he’d managed to roll free.

Most of the others now sported similar wounds, or at least scarred patches on their armor to show how close they’d come to joining the club, but they were getting wise to the enemy’s tactics now and it was showing. The last attack hadn’t scorched anybody, and the Drasin had lost another drone in the attempt.

It was a pity, Bermont thought, that the thermal guidance on their bullets wasn’t able to manage ninety degree turns. They’d have fried a great deal more of the spider like things if they could, but the system only allowed relatively minor course corrections, especially over short distances.

The mission was turning into a gruelling manhunt, or rather, alien hunt through the bewildering streets and alleys of the alien city, sometimes climbing up through immense arcing ‘roads’, and sometimes digging down into the depths of the city, as they went practically underground in their pursuit. And unfortunately Bermont’s own prediction that they were simply going to have to get down and dirty was proving to be altogether too accurate, and the constant pursuit of the devilish bastards was starting to wear on both him and his people.

The light nerve-tingle alarm went off just then, and Bermont let his empty magazine drop to the ground automatically, and fell back slightly as others moved ahead of him to take up the slack. Slapping the new one in took a few seconds, then he was moving forward again, foot crunching the spent clip into the ground as he brought his weapon back up to his shoulder and looked for another target.

*****

“Another empty one.” Savoy said voice calm despite the beads of sweat that had formed on his forehead.

The silence was deafening, as the saying went, and the Lieutenant found himself almost wishing for something to happen. Anything would be good, a dark part of his mind whispered.

A dark and stupid part, of course.

Savoy knew that it was just the tension speaking, demanding some form of release, but the voice was seductive just the same and it took all of his intellect and trained reflexes to shove it down and maintain his current operational stance. He knew that wishing for action was as useless, as it was stupid.

For one thing, no one ever answered wishes. And for another, the demon Murphy just might answer this one.

So he forced his mind into the job and moved as silently as he could onto the next tunnel.

He paused at the tunnel wall beside the branching point, taking a breath as he gathered his thoughts for a moment and looked around and down the tunnel. He wasn’t certain what they were doing, this bunch, whether there was a plan for the tunnels or even if maybe the crash had scrambled what passed for brains and they were just doing some random kind of act.

This time, there was a soft scratching that reached his armor’s sensors and Savoy froze, mind blanking as he looked into the pits of hell.

At the end of this tunnel, there were a dozen, fifty, maybe more of the alien things, he couldn’t tell. They were crawling over each other, scraping at the walls and gathering up the material that fell. Savoy watched as the horde seemed to actually eat the rocks and material, ingesting the minerals automatically, and even going so far as to apparently carry certain bits to one or another of their group and feed it to each other.

“Oh man,” he muttered, knowing that his helmet would insulate all sound. “This is something else. I think…, it might be nest building? Computer, flag this data to be relayed to the research labs on the Odyssey immediately…, Xeno-biology department.”

They were eating rocks, or at least ingesting them. Whether they got any nutrients out of it wasn’t something he could guess at, but there had to be some reason.

Savoy inched forward slightly, trying to get a better view of the activities, only to freeze when one of them suddenly snapped around and stared right at him.

He didn’t make any noise that he could remember, but the beast had apparently spotted him anyway, because in a moment all the rest turned as well. Worse, perhaps, from his point of view was that they did it without any sound or obvious signal. They just seemed to all notice him at the same time.

“Oh shit,” Savoy muttered, backing away.

It was like a dam breaking, the sudden charge of the drones was like the rush of water over the broken floodgates, and that was all the signal, Savoy needed.

He turned and ran, just as another flood burst from a tunnel further down and came racing straight up at him.

“SHIT!!” He screamed as he ran, “Mehn! Burke! I’m coming back and I’ve got company on my ass!”

He didn’t wait for an answer just bolted up the incline of the tunnel at the best speed his suit could give him, which was fairly impressive in all truth. Each step was more of a leap, angled to propel him parallel to the incline, sending him flying for a dozen meters before he would power his other leg down to meet the ground and accelerate him ahead even faster.

The end of the tunnel was approaching at blinding speeds, but his wraparound sensors showed him quite clearly that the room behind him wasn’t all that much better, so Savoy didn’t slow down.

He grabbed the cable of the ‘chute’ in mid leap, keying its automatic lift even as his wrapped it around his hand in desperation move.

The cable went taught almost instantly, the Cee Emm field dropping his weight to near nothing as the ‘chute’s’ thrusters whined and pulled him straight up. Savoy struck the wall as he swung on the end of the ‘chute’s’ line, caroming off it like a billiard ball, but kept his grip on the cable as he shoved the ‘chute’s’ climb rate to maximum.

“Coming through!!” He yelled as the ‘chute’ cleared the tunnel entrance and slammed into the ceiling of the lander, throwing sparks and fragments around as its lateral thrusters kicked in and yanked Savoy suddenly to the right.

His upward motion remained largely unchecked, of course, so he bounced off the ceiling. Before snapping to one side and careening off a wall, slamming into another bulkhead and finally coming to a rest against a charred piece of machinery.

Mehn and Burke didn’t have time to watch his rather rough flight though, as they were watching the tunnel as he flashed past. They both saw the horrific mass that was scrambling up along the walls, like they weren’t a smooth vertical surface.

“TB!” Mehn yelled, twisting a cylinder in his hand and dropping it down into the mass.

“TB!” Burke returned, doing the same thing.

They both turned and sprinted away from the tunnel, grabbing Savoy from where he had fallen and lunged for the rent in the ship that had given them entrance.

The rumble behind them was enough to inform them when the thermobaric grenades detonated, shaking the entire lander as the over pressure waves erupted in the contained space, each reflected shockwave reinforcing the next, as they had been designed to.

A blast of flame and gas erupted out of the tunnel, curving around the bulkheads like a living thing, seeking a way out, just as the soldiers did. It caught up with them as they passed the tear in the hull, slapping them with over ten pounds per square inch of pressure and tossing them from the lander, like toys in a hurricane.

*****

“Savoy! Burke! Mehn!” Major Brinks growled, eyeing the scrambled signals that were once three of his best men. “Damn!”

He was still standing outside the hospital facility and his angry body language was apparent to the guards. It took the Major a few moments to recognize how nervous they were getting and to move off. He didn’t really care about their nerves, but he’d rather not test the discipline of troops he didn’t know.

“God dammit, Lieutenant Savoy, report!” He growled again, keying and rekeying the network reconnect command.

*****

Dust and debris rained down around them, covering the three soldiers in a fine coat of powder, and several hundred pounds of what used to be an alien landing craft, as the rumbling thunder slowly died out.

“Ohhh… . fuck,” Burke groaned, pushing himself up to his hands and knees, shunting a half ton of debris off his back. “You guys… dead?”

“Just wishing,” Mehn replied as he shifted some more material and they both pulled a chunk of something off Savoy. “Hey, El Tee. You ok?”

Savoy didn’t move, but his suit sent them a steady stream of medical data, when they queried it that showed him to be alive.

“Come on, Sav,” Burke hooked him under his arms and dragged him back. “Snap out of it. We might have company any time now…”

Savoy groaned, but moved his arm in a flapping motion that really didn’t help much.

“Well, he’s alive and probably awake,” Mehn muttered. “I’ll contact the Major and get a pickup…”

Burke nodded, dragging Savoy along the ground as they both shot glances at the somewhat more dilapidated looking landing craft.

“Oh fuck,” Mehn muttered.

“What’s wrong?”

“Our network link is scrambled.” He told Burke, “Long range frequencies are junked…”

.

“It’ll settle down,” Savoy groaned more than spoke.

Burke looked down at him in surprise, but chuckled slightly. “Welcome back, Boss.”

“Yeah, yeah…,” Savoy croaked, pulling himself free of Burke and climbing unsteadily to his feet. “Reboot the comm suite, both of you.”

“You got it,” they told him, following his instructions.

The software reboot took a few seconds, the network connection wizard activated and sent out a query signal. A few nanoseconds later, after two ‘handshakes’, three passwords, and a gigabit encryption code, the network connected again.

“Major…,” Savoy said painfully, staggering slightly as he tried to walk. “We’ve got trouble.”

Chapter 26

“Tunnels?” Commander Roberts demanded, fists tightening into a clench as he looked at the face on the large screen. “To what end?”

“According to Lieutenant Savoy they seem to be…, eating the minerals in the ground, Commander.” Major Brinks told him, “Using it as resources for breeding or something similar.”

Roberts’ eyes flickered around the room for an instant, taking in the reactions of the others sitting on the Auxiliary Bridge, strapped down against the zero gravity environment. Their eyes widened, some of them seemed to understand the implications, more than others, paling at the thought. Roberts himself had enough of a base in concept technology to understand what was being implied, though he wasn’t certain he was ready to believe that it could possibly exist in a naturally evolved species.

“Major, are you aware of what you’re saying?” He asked grimly.

“I’m afraid so, Major.” Brinks told him, “But it does make the pieces fit, Commander. If they’re able to process minerals in order to fuel themselves, it explains their rate of reproduction.”

“What evidence did the Lieutenant give?”

“His suit’s computer counted no less than two hundred of the Drones in those tunnels. Our worst case estimates is that a lander can’t hold more than a hundred, maybe a hundred and fifty,” Brinks replied. “Unless they’ve got some other twist that they’re working, I think his theory is sound.”

“Damn,” Roberts closed his eyes momentarily. “Major, the situation up here is deteriorating quickly. In less than twelve hours, unless we withdraw, we’ll be facing six of the enemy cruisers. If you’re still on the ground then…”

He let the words draw out, but the Major nodded grimly. “Understood, Commander. Do we know what the Captain intends to do?”

“Not yet,” Roberts replied, “I’ll be meeting with him shortly in order to confer… However, I doubt that we’ll abandon the planet easily.”

Brinks just nodded, “all right. I have to get back to work, Commander. I’ll contact you later with an updated sitrep.”

Roberts nodded, “Very well, Major. Godspeed.”

The connection closed and Roberts forced his fists to relax. The situation was rapidly turning from bad to worse and even at best, there was no way that they could take on six of those alien cruisers. The computer had run the scenarios and, even adjusting for the severe lack of imagination in any simulation, the best they could hope for would be to eliminate or disable four of the enemy ships.

The damages they were likely to incur while dealing with those four would make the Odyssey a sitting duck for the remaining ships. Those were best case scenarios as well, assuming that the enemy followed patterns of behavior consistent with their last engagement, and that the Odyssey made no mistakes and suffered no interference from Mr. Murphy.

Roberts actually thought that they’d be lucky, if they successfully took on two enemy cruisers at once and forget the added disadvantage of the additional four. Two of the enemy ships attacking from a similar tangent would turn their armor advantage into a joke. The phase shift in the armor would work against one of the lasers, but the second would cut them up like a hot knife through butter.

The problem was that he couldn’t see any way out of the encounter, now.

Certainly, they could turn tail and run, but the thought left a bitter taste in his mouth to even contemplate. Military units were only as good as their traditions, in Roberts’ opinion. The NAC had a short history, but its military traditions went back hundreds of years, just the same.

To begin the NAC Interstellar Armed Forces with the act of abandoning a world to genocide would be setting a precedent of the worst kind. A tacit approval of the act, in implication, even if not in fact. It would be a tradition, not only of dishonor, but of perceived cowardice.

The problem, however, wasn’t in the dying.

Commander Roberts was willing to die, for his own people or for the strangers, because that was what his duty demanded. However, his intellect would not permit his emotion to forget the fact that the Earth knew nothing of their situation and, if they died out here on this day, the Earth could well follow them into the abyss, because they had failed to provide data, vital to the survival of the human… the Terran species.

In the middle of his contemplation, the door behind him whisked open and he saw the people around him stiffen. Roberts shook his mind clear, inclining his head slightly to the left as he nodded, rather than salute.

“Captain.”

*****

“Bring that Carnivore down to three thousand meters,” Lieutenant Savoy ordered as he and his team stood, observing the great wreck they had made of the already wrecked lander.

They were standing about a hundred meters from it now, watching the settling debris through their enhanced HUD’s, as they waited for the information from the Carnivore’s Ground Penetrating Radar to come back.

The signal was fuzzy at first, the initial pass only returning a low resolution scan, but their fears were confirmed as subsequent passes were used to clear up the signal.

The tunnels showed up clearly, long lines extending dozens of meters down and out from the lander, with several branches that extended in all directions like the limbs of an inverted tree.

Or perhaps like the roots of a virulent weed.

Inside the tunnel spaces, some pictures would return places that were blocked in, while others would later show those spaces to be quite clear. The pattern was overlaid quickly scans being taken, even few milliseconds apart, while played back in a real time sequence.

They could almost make out the flailing limbs of the drones as they crawled through the tunnels and continued their digging.

“The computer estimates are coming back now, Boss,” Mehn said softly. “The computer says that there’s a ninety percent probability, that there are over two hundred and eighty of them down there.”

Savoy nodded. “Tell it to keep counting.”

“You’ve got it, Boss.”

Savoy flicked over to another comm channel, accessing into the command. “Well it’s confirmed, Major. We’ve got a nest or something being built, under our feet.”

Major Brinks growled his face grim. “We’ve also got the sky about to fall on us, Lieutenant.”

“Sir?”

“Six more Cruisers are up there, in less than twelve hours we’re going to have to fight or flee,” Brinks told him, his voice grim.

Savoy grimaced, “I can’t say I like the thought of turning tail, Sir.”

“Not our call,” Brinks replied. “In the meantime, we’ve got twelve hours to try and get a handle on the situation. I’m open to suggestions, Lieutenant.”

Savoy frowned, sighed, “We should redirect one or more of the Carnivores back to the Odyssey for rearming. Right now they’re equipped with air to ground missiles, but if we load them up with some Bunker busters, we might have a chance…, maybe at taking the nest out, with minimal risk.”

“Time to rearm?”

“An hour, including flight time,” Savoy responded.

Brinks considered it, nodded. “All right. But we’ll keep our drones where they are and have the Commander detail two more with the appropriate hardware. That’ll save us some time, and let us keep on with our own work.”

“Yes Sir,” Savoy nodded.

“In the meantime, do what you can. Miss Chans is being transported to the local Command Center now. With luck, we might be able to get some coordination with the locals.” Brinks said, glancing over his shoulder. “Their medical facility seems competently run. Makes me wonder why their military is just a fuck up.”

“Sir, I’m not sure if I’d put it that way exactly,” Savoy replied, a little cautiously.

“Are you kidding, Lieutenant?” Brinks snorted “they’re getting their butts handed to them.”

“That’s true, Sir, however it’s not due to a lack of power. Bermont’s little test with that laser rifle proves that.” Savoy shook his head, “and while they’re a little rudimentary by our standards, Sir, they’re probably on par with most conventional forces I’ve seen.”

“I suppose you’ve got a theory for why these Drasin things are kicking ass and taking names, then?”

“Sir, they seem to be two steps ahead of their opposition,” Savoy replied. “Nothing more than that. Power wise, they appear to be at parity with each other… The Drasin simply seem…, I don’t know, more prepared. Like they knew what they were getting into, and packed for the job.”

Brinks nodded reluctantly, but pushed the thought aside. Whatever it was, it didn’t matter at the moment. What did matter was the situation as it stood, so the Major just had to play the cards he was dealt.

No matter how badly the hand sucked.

*****

“Admiral!”

Someone shouted, a tinge of shock and fear in their voice causing Tanner to spin around, just as the doors to the rear of the command pit burst open.

Burst, being the operative word, since the heavy metal doors literally were pulled off their equally heavy hinges, as a hulking figure stepped through, paused and looked around. For a crazy moment, Tanner could have sworn that the figure looked chagrined.

Then she spoke.

“Oops,” a decidedly tiny and feminine voice came from the hulk, sounding embarrassed, as if she had just accidentally jarred someone’s elbow or something equally inane, rather than having just ripped two security doors off their hinges.

“Ithan Chans, I presume?” Tanner asked calmly, his voice causing the guards to pause and lower their weapons, just slightly.

The hulk snapped to a rigid stance and nodded in salute, “Ithan Milla Chans reporting, Admiral.”

“Relax,” he ordered, stepping up out of the pit, to come face to face with the Ithan.

Or, as close to it as he could manage, since the armored suit placed her face plate about two feet over his head. Tanner didn’t flinch though, or alter his expression as he looked up at the faceless features of the armor.

“What can you tell me about the…, Odyssey, Ithan?” He asked simply.

“They belong to the…, to a human world that is not part of the colonies, Sir,” she said told him, obviously correcting herself, as she almost mentioned the mythical ‘others’ again. “Their technology is largely of inferior quality to ours; however they have markedly superior weapon systems and an ingenious though disconcerting trans-light drive.”

The Admiral’s eyebrows went up, “and their intentions?”

“Sir,” the hulking figure seemed to relax a bit, her stance shifting and becoming more pensive. “They rescued me, and the survivors at Port Fuielles, without second considerations. In this system, they were reluctant to engage the Drasin, until it became obvious that the Drasin would continue on to kill the civilians on this world.”

She paused, “they don’t wish to be involved in this war, Admiral. But they…, I don’t think that they can turn their backs on the annihilation of an entire world.”

Tanner grimaced, but nodded. “Are you in contact with them now?”

“Yes Sir.”

“Very well,” Tanner nodded. “Give them my thanks for their aid and ask them what my people can do to help.”

*****

“That’s it?” Brinks blinked.

It couldn’t be that simple.

“What is it?” Milla asked him over the link, her voice as puzzled as the computer translation could manage.

“What can he do to help?” Brinks repeated. “No demands, no posturing, no questions?”

“We have very little time, Major,” Milla reminded him.

This was true, the Major had to admit, but it still seemed insane to him. If nothing else, the Admiral should be talking about how to integrate Brink’s people into his own strategies. Military people didn’t just let some rogue group, pop into their turf and start shooting things up.

Brinks shook it off, chalking it up to a complete alien mentality, and nodded. “Fine. Inform him that we’ll need to start coordinating the sweeps of the city; if we want to be sure that we get them all. We also have a problem where one of the landers apparently crashed.”

*****

“Tunnels?” Tanner asked, eyes narrowing. “Where?”

Milla’s eyes flickered over the map on her suit’s HUD. She looked up to the large display that showed a similar map at the front of the large room. “There.”

Tanner turned to look where she was pointing, “Nero!”

The big man came up from the ground forces control pit, standing almost as tall as Milla in her armor, and looked curiously at her as she stood there. “This must be your missing Ithan?”

“It is…, or so I believe,” Tanner’s lips twisted. “It is difficult to say, of course, as I have yet to see her face.”

Milla’s eyes widened under her helm and she uttered a shocked sounding, “ohh.”

She immediately started fumbling with the controls until she located the ‘shield’ that Brinks had shown her before and activated the control.

“Sorry,” she told them, her faceplate shimmering from a flat, opaque black to a transparent form, backlit by internal lights. “I require the helmet to communicate with the others, however.”

Tanner nodded, and Nero just gazed evenly at her.

“Nero, the Ithan tells me that the Drasin are digging tunnels under the Corinth landing site,” Tanner said stiffly a moment later, remembering what he had called the bigger man up for.

“Corinth?” Nero frowned, “That was a crash. Nothing could have survived.”

“I’m aware of that, however, I believe that we may want to check just the same.”

The big man nodded gruffly. “Agreed. I’ll correct the oversight.”

“I’m certain you will,” Tanner nodded confidently. “However, if what our…, friends are saying is true, we may have a serious situation developing.”

“Agreed,” Nero nodded again.

“Their scans indicate that there are over two hundred Drasin in those tunnels at the moment, Admiral,” Milla said at that point. “They have ordered two assault drones from the Odyssey with weapons they believe might be able to eliminate the Drasin.”

“They act quickly,” Nero intoned, his voice not giving any indication of his opinions of that speed.

“Indeed,” Tanner nodded, “Let us act as quickly.”

“Agreed,” Nero replied, then turned away without another word.

“Now, Ithan,” Tanner said, looking up at Milla evenly, without any hint of discomfort, in having to look so far up to meet her eyes. “I believe that you and I should have a conversation that includes the Captain of the Odyssey?”

Milla nodded at once. “Yes, Admiral.”

Chapter 27

“Captain… Weston, I assume?”

The translation came through clear enough, though the computer seemed to hitch up on the last word and for a moment, Eric could have sworn that it was going to go with the clichéd ‘Doctor Watson, I presume?’ Rather than what he hoped was the more accurate translation.

Weston pushed the trivial thought from his mind and nodded, though he knew that unlike himself, the other man couldn’t see whom he was talking to. “That’s correct. You’re Admiral Tanner?”

“That is correct,” the slim built man nodded, looking out of the screen with every appearance of examining the Auxiliary Bridge, where Weston had taken the transmission.

He wasn’t, of course, seeing the Bridge. Rather, what Admiral Tanner was looking at was Miss Chans’ face, while her suit systems transmitted his image, to Weston. The reverse wasn’t possible, of course, but Eric was able to speak out of the suit speaker system, so that they could hold something that at least remotely resembled a coherent conversation.

The Admiral was an unassuming man, Weston noted, the type that one would probably overlook, if they saw him on the street. His uniform seemed oddly rudimentary, more like work clothes than something any Terran Admiral would wear, but it was spotless and well kept.

His eyes though, there was something about his eyes. Eric couldn’t pin it down, but it was a look he’d seen before.

“Captain,” the Admiral was speaking again, forcing Weston to put the thought from his mind and pay attention. “We all owe you, our thanks for your intervention. I do not believe that my world could ever repay you for what you have done.”

Weston waved a hand, almost irritated by the suggestion. “Nonsense. Gratitude is fine Admiral, but beyond that, it isn’t of any concern to me. We wouldn’t let anyone do what these things were planning to do. They killed two worlds, Admiral. My people wouldn’t let them take a third, not unchallenged.”

“Yes…,” Tanner glanced down, eyes flickering shut briefly. “I was pained to hear of Port Fuielles. Is the system Titualar there with you?”

“She is with her people at the moment Admiral, though they are still sedated,” Weston told him evenly.

“Sedated?”

“When we’re finished, Milla can fill you in. Suffice to say that the sedation was as much for their sake as for ours. We would have woken them already, but given the situation we appear to be in, I didn’t want panicked civilians adding to our problems.”

“Yes,” the Admiral nodded, “I can see that. We shall, of course, prepare a place for them immediately.”

“That would be welcome, Sir.” Weston replied, “However, we have something else to discuss, at this point. You are aware of course, of the five ships currently approaching to join the one already in system?”

“Yes Captain,” Tanner replied grimly. “We have them on our long range sensors now. It’s worse than I had hoped, but much as I’d feared.”

“Admiral, I have to be frank, Sir,” Eric leaned forward as he talked, clasping his hands in front of him. “The odds of the Odyssey mounting a successful defence against six of those cruisers are very nearly zero.”

*****

Milla held herself still as the Captain’s words came over the speakers, but her heart was in her throat at the admission. She’d known it, at least that it was likely, but to hear it put into words by Captain Weston was something else.

Was he going to leave them?

Could he justify fighting a lost cause for a world that wasn’t his own?

She didn’t know.

Words spoken with a calm assurance brought her back, as she realized that Admiral Tanner was speaking again, so she tried to focus on what he was saying.

“I expected that might be the case, Captain,” the Admiral said, sounding almost resigned. “Part of me wishes very much to ask you to stay; however, I understand that we are not your people.”

“I didn’t say, I was ready to run out on you just yet, Admiral,” Weston’s voice came back over the suit’s systems, a moment later. “I’m just giving you the odds.”

“I’m afraid that I don’t understand,” Tanner said, trying very hard not to sound confused.

“Admiral, the way I see it…, judging from reports from our ground forces, it’s not totally impossible to fight off these things on the ground,” Weston said. “I understand that your weapons aren’t as effective as you might like, however, if you were to adjust your tactics you should have the people, to take out any invasion force that might land…, assuming you do it fast enough.”

“I’m afraid that isn’t my specialty, Captain,” Tanner smiled slightly, glancing over his shoulder. “However, I can speak with our Ground Force Commander.”

“I expect you can,” Weston said. “In that case, what we might be able to do for you, is to help cut down the opposition somewhat. Every ship we can take out for you, is one less that you’ll have to deal with on the ground.”

Admiral Tanner took a deep breath, understanding entering his eyes. He nodded slowly, “I understand, and, I thank you for your help, Captain.”

There was a moment of silence from the speakers, and Captain Weston’s voice returned, its tone serious.

“It’s what we do, Admiral.”

*****

Traditions.

They mattered more than most people realized, especially in military units.

Commander Roberts knew this, and he had always felt that the best units were those that had traditions of excellence, that every member could aspire to. Few were those who both saw the birth of those traditions and who realized just what it was they were seeing.

Something told him, deep inside, that he was now among those few.

When the Captain said those words, Roberts lifted his chin a little higher on reflex, though he knew that no one was looking at him. And, around him, he could see the same effect, on the others sitting there.

The young men and women assigned to the Auxiliary Bridge weren’t the Odyssey’s primary command crew, they were a little younger, and in what was already a young man’s Navy that meant they were practically in nappies. They had joined after the war, most of them, probably out of the same ideals, misguided though they may be, that the Captain was now espousing.

They stood just a little taller, sat just a little straighter, and Roberts caught a gleam in the eyes of one of them, as he glanced over his shoulder at the Captain.

The Commander risked a look at Weston, wondering if the Captain had done it on purpose, but couldn’t tell from the other man’s stance. Weston was intent on his conversation with the Alien Admiral and wasn’t paying attention to the effect his words had.

Before the next shift was out, Roberts knew, the word would be spread across the ship. Everyone would know the gist, if not the details, of the Captain’s proclamation.

It’s what we do.

Roberts doubted that the Captain meant it the way it would be interpreted. It was just what soldiers said when they were complimented or thanked. In another time, another place, the words would be just that. Words.

Here, though, and now, they had already taken on a new meaning.

Traditions, Commander Roberts mused silently, were funny things. They started when you least expected them and endured through everything the universe could throw at them.

And the Captain had just started one hell of a tradition.

Assuming, of course, that anyone survived to pass it on.

It’s what we do.

Spoken to an Alien Admiral by a Terran Captain, in the defence of a world that wasn’t his own.

The rest of the fleet, and all those that followed would have one hell of a tradition to live up to.

Commander Jason Roberts just had to wonder, if it was a good thing or not.

*****

“Yes… well. . , .” the Admiral seemed flustered, something that didn’t look quite right on him, Weston noted. “We still owe you greatly, Captain.”

“All you have to do for the moment, Admiral, is fight,” Weston told him. “We’re willing to lend a hand, but we can’t do this for you, Sir. So fight.”

Tanner inclined his head, nodding in acceptance. “I believe that you may count on that, Captain.”

“Good,” Weston nodded.

The Admiral looked up again, “if I may know, though. How do you intend to fight six cruisers at once?”

Weston smiled, almost ferally, the effect sadly lost on the Admiral who couldn’t see it. The members of the crew around him, however, noted the smile and shivered in response.

“There is an old expression where we come from, for people in our position,” Captain Weston replied, his tone edged with a hint of dark humor. “A piece of advice from the past, you might say.”

“Really, Captain?” The Admiral had a hint of a smile as well, “Do your people, make a habit of getting into situations like this?”

Eric laughed a low chuckle, that washed across the bridge, “Not this precise situation, but close enough perhaps.”

“I see,” Tanner replied, that same hint of a smile gracing his fine features, “And what is this advice from the past?”

“Run Silent, Admiral,” Weston replied. “Run Silent, and Run Deep.”

There was a moment of silence, the Admiral looking genuinely puzzled. “I’m afraid that I don’t understand…”

“I didn’t expect you to, Admiral,” Weston replied. “So, I just hope that the enemy doesn’t understand it either.”

“I… See…”

“I’m afraid that I have duties to attend, Admiral,” Weston said. “I’ll contact you before making any moves.”

“I… Very well, Captain. Again, thank you for your help,” the Admiral said.

“Not at all, Admiral,” Weston replied. “Until the next time we speak.”

Admiral Tanner nodded, and Weston cut the connection.

“Sir,” Roberts spoke up after a moment. “Are you sure…?”

“I am,” Eric nodded, not looking back.

“Yes Sir,” Roberts nodded.

“Ensign,” the Captain said, glancing to one side.

“Sir!”

“Contact the Bridge, inform them that I’m on my way back and have them recall the senior officers.”

“Aye aye, Captain,” the Ensign replied crisply.

Weston loosened his restraints, floating up into the air and kicking off the Command Chair towards the rear door, “Commander.”

“Yes Captain.”

“You’re with me.”

“Aye Sir,” Roberts nodded simply, waving a hand to the Lieutenant at the Auxiliary Conn.

As Roberts followed Captain Weston from the Auxiliary Bridge, the Lieutenant shifted himself over to the command seat and snapped in his restraints, eyes on the screens that displayed the ‘bow wake’ of the decelerating ships, a hint of steely determination in them that had been missing an hour earlier.

Chapter 28

“The Drasin ships continue to close, Admiral.”

Tanner barely acknowledged the report, his focus instead on the young Ithan who was standing stock still in the center of his command pit, apparently not in the least tired or inclined to sit down, despite the fact that it had been quite some time, since she’d arrived.

“Are you certain you won’t take a seat, Ithan?” He asked once more, ingrained civility forcing him to do so, despite the irritation that washed over him, at the repetition.

“No, Admiral,” Milla replied. “I am fine. This armor seems to keep pressure off my feet so, in a strange way, I’m already sitting.”

“Ah,” Tanner nodded, “Very well. Ithan, tell me something…”

“Certainly, Admiral.”

“The Carlache…”

Milla winced visibly under her helm, causing Tanner to wince in sympathy, but he pressed on.

“Her Captain and I were old friends,” he told her. “I would appreciate knowing…, how it happened.”

Milla was silent for a moment, “after he ordered the evacuation, Captain Tal remained on the Bridge, controlling the defence weapons. The last I saw of him was when he ordered me to leave, Sir.”

Tanner nodded, face thoughtful.

“Yes, I see,” he said after a moment, a small smile on his face. “Oddly, I believe that it was not the worst way Tal could have imagined dying.”

Milla didn’t have anything to say to that.

*****

Work crews were hanging, literally, out of the ship as they welded new armor joints to the flight deck of the Odyssey, carefully applying patches around the powerful coils that controlled the Fighter ‘traps’. The work had been going for hours and was going to go on for a good many hours more that was until Chief Corrin stormed onto the deck in her hard suit, snapping orders.

“Rowley! Get those men out of there!” She growled. “New orders came down, we’re gonna forget the armor.”

“What?” Alistair Rowley, Machinist’s Mate First Class, looked up in confusion. “We need this deck back, Chief!”

“And we’re gonna get it back, fast.” Corrin growled, grabbing a Crewman and pointing across the deck. “We’ve got some steel plate coming down through the lock, grab a crew and bring it over here.”

“Yes Ma’am,” the Crewman nodded, clunking off instantly toward the lock.

“What’s going on, Chief?” Rowley crawled up out of the gash the enemy lasers had ripped.

“We’re gonna fill the gash with laser reflective foam, then laser weld some plates down over it. You’ve got the trap fixed, right?” She demanded.

“Yes, Ma’am,” he nodded. “But the armor…”

“We don’t have time for the armor, Rowley,” Corrin told him. “Just get the deck operational and let me and the Captain worry about the Armor.”

“You want it that way, Chief, you got it,” Rowley nodded with a shrug. “I’ll have the deck ready to use inside of…, say two hours?”

“Good man,” Corrin nodded, “I’ll be back in an hour to have a look. In the meantime, I’ve got some bad news to drop on a couple other departments.”

“What’s going on, Chief?” Rowley asked a second time, his voice tense.

“We’re going to war, Rowley. Got a problem with that?” Corrin asked her voice just slightly hard edged.

“No Ma’am,” Rowley stiffened.

“Good,” the Chief said, nodding once in her helmet. “Get your crew back to work.”

“You got it Chief!”

Corrin nodded again than turned to leave. Behind her Rowley switched over to his crew’s frequency, “All right you bums, we’ve got a deadline. Franks! Get me a couple canisters of that insulating foam from storage, we’re gonna patch this bitch the dirty way!”

*****

“Sir,” Commander Roberts hesitated, “I’m not sure this plan of yours is going to work.”

“Join the club, Commander.” Eric said wryly, as he took a seat behind his desk.

The two of them had just come from the staff meeting that Eric had called and Roberts was having severe problems with the details of the plan of engagement. Not that Eric blamed him in the slightest.

“Sir, it relies on too many unknowns.”

Weston nodded, “Agreed. But you and I both know that we can’t hope to win, in a standup fight, Jason.”

Commander Roberts paused for a moment, his mind blinking back a bit of surprise, as Weston used his first name for the first time. After a moment, he shook his head, “Even so, you’re risking a lot on our Stealth systems. We don’t know what kind of sensors the enemy has.”

Eric Weston nodded. “True. But I think that we can pretty much imitate a hole in space for anything short of an active Tachyon scan.”

“For anything using conventional frequency scans, you mean,” Roberts corrected, though he had to concede the point.

The Odyssey had been built with the Cam plates, for two reasons. The first, or rather the first reason that became important to them, was the fact that with appropriate modifications the Cam-Plate system could reflect over ninety eight percent of Laser energy away from the ship. It was, against energy weapons, the ultimate form of armor.

However, the original design wasn’t built with armor specifically in mind. The Cam-Plate technology was based on the development of Carbon Nano-tubes designed to shift reflective frequencies as an active camouflage for Main Battle Tanks. An appropriate program shunted through the armor coating would allow a tank to blend into practically any environment with a nearly perfect camouflage.

At the far end of its ability was the ‘black hole’ setting, a phase shifted armor that would absorb everything in the EM range sent its way, including RADAR, Laser, and all other conventional detection systems. The net effect was to reduce the electronic and sensor profile of any unit coated in it, to less than two percent of its normal signal.

Of course, Roberts knew that particular use had, had one rather nasty side effect. “You do know what will happen, if one of their lasers nails us while we’re using the Black Hole settings?”

“We’ll probably be vaporized before we know, we’re hit,” Eric told him flatly.

Since the net effect of the Black Hole setting was to absorb over ninety-eight percent of all energy directed against it, it would actually behave like an inverse of the normal armor, and offer absolute minimal resistance to enemy lasers.

And, given how powerful those lasers were, one shot would be all it would take.

“It’s reckless, Sir,” Roberts said calmly, finally taking a seat across from Eric.

Weston nodded.

“I know.”

*****

“Hey El Tee,” Burke called out. “We’ve got some company coming up here?”

Savoy glanced over in the direction that Burke had indicated and noted the armed force that was converging on their position. “Great. Don’t make any fast moves, guys. I’d hate to get toasted by the guys, we came here to save.”

“Don’t worry.” Burke muttered dryly.

The team watched as the militia or the military group came up, finally stopping just in front of them and one of the figures stepped forward.

He was a big man, Savoy noted, his face craggy with exposure to the elements and he handled the laser rifle in his hands, like it was a toy.

“You are Ithan Savoy?” The man rumbled.

Savoy frowned, the translator either scrambled the word or he’d just gotten a new rank. In either case it didn’t matter, so he nodded in an exaggerated fashion so the big man would be able to tell. “That’s correct.”

“Kimbo Yulth,” the man said, gesturing in what might have been a salute. “We are assigned to you.”

Savoy blinked, toggling into the command channel reflexively. “Hey Boss?”

Brinks growl came back, “what is it, Lieutenant? I’ve got mopping up operations in three quadrants and a firefight in a civilian building, in the fourth.”

“You know anything about local reinforcements?”

“They get to you already?” Brinks muttered, “Shit. I meant to warn you that they were coming. Didn’t think they’d be so fast.”

“I guess Milla got through to the local bossman,” Savoy stated evenly.

“That’s affirmative, Lieutenant,” Brinks told him. “They’re yours, use them as you see fit. The local guy has given us the lead.”

Savoy almost cursed from the surprise of that statement, blinking furiously as his mind whirred.

“Sir?” He finally squeaked out.

“I know, I know,” Brinks said, sighing. “I don’t know what to make of it either. I can’t say I’m opposed to it, mind you, just doesn’t make sense. The local military is acting more like a militia group or something…”

“Could be that’s all they are, Sir.”

“Whatever,” Brinks muttered. “Doesn’t matter. They’re yours, deal with it.”

“Yes Sir,” Savoy replied just before the channel went dead.

When he turned his attention back to Yulth, he found that the man was waiting patiently for him to say something, to all appearances completely at peace with the world. Savoy tried to shake off the disturbing feeling that gave him and started speaking.

“All right, Yulth,” he said through the suit speakers. “Here’s the situation, we’ve got over two hundred of those Drasin things down in tunnels, under our feet. We can’t ignore them, or they’ll rip this city out from under us. Got that?”

Yulth nodded.

“All right, here’s what I need to know,” Savoy stepped forward, placing a hand on Yulth’s shoulder and turning him around. He pointed down toward the wreckage moving his hand expansively to either side. “Are there any civilians in that area, and if there are, how fast can you boys clear them out?”

Yulth frowned and for a moment Savoy was worried that the interpreter had messed up the translation.

Finally the immense man nodded slowly and spoke, “there are civilians. Many. Too many to evacuate. It will take time.”

Savoy sighed. “We doesn’t have much of that, so you’d better get to work.”

Yulth nodded, turned with an almost alarming speed and started shouting orders to his men. Savoy and his team watched them break up and rush off, impressed with their speed, if nothing else.

Whether they would be as effective as they were fast, Savoy thought, was another matter.

*****

“Get those circuits degaussed!”

“Yes Sir!” The Tachyon Specialist said not looking up, as the Chief Engineer growled under his breath, while they all but dismantled his babies.

The Transition drive was first, but it was also the most painful.

The Captain’s orders had come down and at first no one really wanted to believe it. It was insane, for one, but the orders were quickly confirmed and the engineering team had gotten to work in short order.

All the ship’s Tachyon generation systems were being discharged, degaussed, and taken offline. Since that list included the FTL sensor systems, as well as the Transition drive, the net effect was to make the Odyssey blind, as well as lame.

Yet those were the Captain’s orders, so the teams got to work and ‘sailored’ on.

*****

“Admiral, we have the Orbiters prepared.”

“Ah, excellent, thank you,” Rael said, turning to Milla. “Pardon me, Ithan, could you contact Captain Weston?”

“One moment,” she told him, her eyes refocusing.

It was odd to watch from the outside, Rael decided as he saw the young woman’s eyes flicker around, looking at something he couldn’t see. He wasn’t sure if she knew how to use the system effectively, but from the outside it looked very odd and impressive as well.

His reverie was cut short, when a distinctly non-female voice came from the young woman’s direction.

“Yes Admiral?”

“Ah, Captain,” he caught himself, refocusing on the suit again. “We have prepared four Orbiters, if you wish to unload your passengers?”

“Thank you, Admiral. That will be fine,” Weston’s voice said again. “What is the size of these…, Orbiters?”

Rael blinked and waved a hand at one of his subordinates.

The answer came back in a few seconds in the form of a plate dropped into his hands, so he rattled off the numbers from the display, then looked back at the armor.

There was a long pause.

“Uh…”

Tanner blinked, the sound made no sense whatsoever.

“Perhaps you should send one up and we’ll just scan it,” Weston continued after a moment. “I’m afraid that the translator is missing a few important modules.”

“I see,” Rael replied, not entirely certain that he did. “Very well, I’ll authorize their departure immediately.”

“Thank you, Admiral. I’ll be in touch.”

The signal went dead, leaving Rael Tanner blinking owlishly at Milla, as she looked back, just as confused.

“How will he be in ‘touch’ from Orbit?” Tanner asked after a moment.

“I do not know, Admiral. I said that they were human, not that they were normal.”

*****

“Waters!”

“Sir?”

Eric looked over to where the Ensign was sitting, “scan those ‘Orbiters’ when they lift off. I’m hoping that they build them small enough to fit our locks.”

“Yes Sir.”

Eric nodded once, then turned and walked over to Susan Lamont’s station. “How are the preparations coming?”

Lamont looked over her shoulder at him, “They’re about as expected, Sir. The primary and secondary sensor arrays have been degaussed as you ordered and the Tachyon generator has been taken offline.”

“And the Transition drives?”

“Should be completely offline in an hour.”

“All right, good,” Weston nodded. “Thank you Ensign.”

Weston turned back, thinking about what he was doing.

The Tachyon systems were among the most delicate on the Odyssey, engineered to tolerances that were determined in nanometers. Taking them offline was a risk, particularly with the Tokamak generator that fuelled the active systems and the Transition drive.

Bringing that back online would take at least an hour, under normal circumstances. The Chief had assured him that she could actually cut that back to fifteen minutes, and he hadn’t questioned her on it, despite the shiver that ran down his spine, when she said it. He hadn’t really wanted to know what corners she was going to cut to get that done.

Most likely she’d keep the large coil capacitors on full charge the whole time, which would save a great deal of charge time, before they were prepared to run the Tokamak up the first time. Weston, however, knew that approach would only save about a half hour, which was the point where he decided to trust his people and save himself a couple nights of terror in the future.

She couldn’t cause any more damage than those alien warships could anyway.

Well, not much more.

*****

“We have two more drones inbound from the Odyssey, Lieutenant.”

Savoy nodded, flipping his HUD over from the ground penetrating radar display to the drone control screen. The two new drones were flashing red as they approached, indicating that they were loaded with the bunker buster weapons, he’d requested.

He ordered them into an orbit of the area while he waited for news concerning the civilians.

“Burke!”

“Yeah, El Tee?”

“Start calculating the impact point and program the GBU-98’s for the job.” He ordered his explosives man, “I want to launch as soon as we get this area cleared.”

“You got it, Boss,” Burke replied, automatically going to work as he talked. “We’ve got four of the ‘98’s to work with do you want to use them all?”

Savoy frowned, thinking.

The GBU (Guided Bomb Unit) 98’s weren’t exactly cheap, nor were they small, either in stature or payload. The eight thousand pound penetrators were loaded with the equivalent of five kiloton payloads, and weren’t exactly something he’d want someone setting off indiscriminately in his backyard.

However, given what they knew about these little alien monsters they were dealing with, Savoy didn’t want to take any chances either.

“Give me a plan for two and four bomb placements,” he ordered. “I’m sending the ground penetrating radar readings back up to the Odyssey’s Exo-Geology lab for analysis. If they say that you’re not going to sink the city or something, we’ll go with the full blast.”

“Yes Sir,” Burke replied, his voice edging a little with a smile.

Savoy shook his head.

Burke loved his explosions, just a little too much for the comfort of those who had to bunk anywhere near him.

*****

“Captain?”

“Yes Ensign?” Weston looked up.

“I think I’ve got the Orbiters on sensors now,” Waters said.

“What’s the verdict?”

The ensign shrugged, looking a little confused. “They’ll…, well, they’ll fit, Sir.”

“That’s good.” Weston said frowning slightly. “What is it, Waters?”

“Sir?”

“What’s wrong?” He asked.

“Nothing Sir… It’s just…,” Waters shook his head, “Here, Sir, Look for yourself.”

Weston watched as the information was relayed to the main screen. He blinked and frowned. “Are those dimensions correct, Ensign?”

“As far as I can tell, Captain.”

“How many are coming up?”

“Four, Sir.”

“How in the hell are they going to fit five hundred people on board four of those things?” Eric Weston asked, looking at the comparatively tiny craft that were approaching.

They were roughly two thirds the size of one of the Odyssey’s shuttles and looked like ugly, squat, flying bricks.

“We’re getting minimal energy readings off them, Captain. Their drive systems must be very efficient. Probably a lot smaller, than our own.”

Eric nodded, that made sense. The Drive systems on the shuttles, Archangel Fighters, and even the Odyssey itself made up over a third of the ships total mass. If they had a considerably smaller drive mass, then it was just remotely possible that they could cram five hundred people onto four of those things.

“I’d hate to try dead sticking one of those suckers in,” Eric muttered, not really realizing that he was speaking out loud.

“Excuse me, Sir?” Waters asked, half turning.

“Nothing, Ensign,” Weston shook his head. “Link me back through to Miss Chans.”

“Aye Captain.”

Eric watched the approaching ships for another second, eyeing their ugly, completely non-aerodynamic design, and repeated his comment, mentally this time. Dead sticking one of those things would be suicide, of that he was certain.

There was a reason why the Archangels and other craft were still designed to fly, more or less, in an atmosphere despite the abilities of the Cee Emm generators. No pilot wanted to fly something that would become a crater the first time there was a power glitch.

“I have Miss Chans now, Sir.”

He shook his head, turning his focus to the screen, where the Admiral was already looking out at him.

“Admiral,” Weston started.

“Captain,” the Admiral replied, “I trust that you have scanned the Orbiters.”

“Yes Sir and we won’t have any trouble with them,” Eric told him simply.

“That is good.”

“Please, inform your pilots that I will be launching a drone. They are to follow it into our flight deck. We’ll have the refugees waiting.”

“Thank you, Captain,” the Admiral half bowed, formally. “I’ll pass your message along.”

“Excellent. Weston out.”

Waters cut the signal automatically.

“Ensign Waters.”

“Yes Sir?”

“Full scans on the incoming craft, if you please,” Weston told him simply.

“Aye Captain.”

It was highly unlikely that they’d be trying anything, given that the Odyssey was the only thing standing between them and the Alien Warships that were approaching, but Weston had all but grown up in one warzone after another.

You didn’t take unnecessary chances with your life, or the lives of your people.

If he didn’t need to get those people off the Odyssey, in the worst way, he’d have taken the time to use the ship’s own shuttles, just on principal. However, at the moment they were not only using up his air, but they were also closing off an entire deck and taking up the time of his medical staff.

To say nothing of the fact, that he had no suits on hand for those people and in the battle to come, a hull breach was all too likely.

Chapter 29

“Clear that deck!” The LSO screamed, though he didn’t technically have to raise his voice. The comm-net would intercept and normalize the volume before it was shot across the vacuum of the flight deck. “Inbound on the ball!”

The computer filtered out the mass of acknowledgments, its programming designed to bring problems to his attention, rather than highlight what was going right. This time everything seemed to be working well, and the software didn’t raise any flags.

Not that Chief Mackenzie was going to take that for granted.

His eyes roved the flight deck, looking for anything that might inflict FOD (Foreign Object Damage) on the incoming craft. He wasn’t sure if the alien ships were likely to suffer any bad effects from a FOD strike, but it was better to be sure.

When the deck was cleared to his satisfaction, he nodded and waved to one of the Cat Control Crews who were standing well out of the way in their green accented suits. The Crew Chief flashed him, a thumb’s up, rather than clutter the network with chatter and Mac turned back to the front of the immense flight deck.

The unblinking stare of the stars beyond the maw of the deck was just a little unnerving, but he’d seen it before and was finally starting to get used to it. Certainly it wasn’t as bad as trying to launch fighters in a hurricane; though it was close he had to admit. He had two men down by the opening, clearing the deck and didn’t envy them that job in the slightest.

Once they were clear and out of the way, he switched over to a control channel, “deck is clear for landing.”

“Roger that,” the answer came back instantly. “Drone will lead, watch the followers.”

“Right,” Mac muttered, cutting his channel just after.

Who thought up this idea, he didn’t want to know. Chances were that it was the Captain and in that case, he’d really rather NOT know. Because he and his crew were duty bound to curse the idiot’s soul for this and Mac rather liked Captain Weston.

The problem was of course, that the incoming ships didn’t have any active communications with the Odyssey, let alone Mac’s deck crew. Which was the closest thing to insanity he’d run into, since the war.

Four alien ships, who don’t know fuck all about our systems, procedures, or technology…and we’re landing them on a closed flight deck that has a damned field patch running up its center… Mac shook his head.

Total lunacy.

Someone yelled and it was patched through his suit.

“I’ve got the drone in sight!”

Mac looked up quickly, eyes sharp as he scanned the maw of the deck.

“There it is!” One of his men pointed.

Mac spotted the drone a second later as it dropped into view from above the top of the closed deck, settling in on an approach course that would bring it right down the center of the deck.

The LSO grimaced slightly, though not seriously. Normally that was the optimal course, but with the steel sheets patching the gash in the center of their deck, it might be a bit rough on the smaller size of the drone and could even damage the systems.

He shrugged that off as it wasn’t his problem, but made a note to have the deck FOD checked again as soon as he could, just in case something got jolted off the drone, in the process.

That was about the time that someone screamed, this time for real.

The yell was logged into the system, its source noted. Mac’s HUD lit up like a Christmas tree, as he spun around.

The man who had yelled was pointing outside, and still yelling.

“Sweet Jesus! Look!”

Mac looked.

The experienced LSO went pale in his vacuum suit, as he saw what had scared the crewman. The four alien shuttles, such as they were, were coming in practically right on each other’s tails!

“Wave them off!” Mac yelled, flashing signals with his arms. “Wave them off!”

Men were darting out of the way, gluing themselves to the walls of the flight deck, as part of his signal corps held their ground, signalling desperately to the alien crews with lighted batons.

The four ships ignored or, more likely perhaps, didn’t understand the signals and kept on barrelling in.

Men dove for cover on both sides and even Mac kicked off his position and flew for the blast shield that was set up near his position, in case a fighter hit the deck hot. He hooked his hand in the grip and swing down into the bunker, where two men from the Crash and Salvage crews were tensing to jump into motion, if the worst came to happen.

Mac pulled himself out of way of the figures in the red accented suits, grabbing a handle so he could look through the clear blast shield.

His eyes widened as he watched the four ships come in like a goddamned freight train, barrelling into the deck, well past any sane speed, then come to a smooth stop like they were bolted together.

The four shuttles came to a rest, just meters from where he was hunkered down, maintaining precise distance from each other and for a moment, Mac found himself looking for the braces that must be connecting them.

He didn’t find any though, and just wasted long minutes staring, until his heart finally slowed back down to normal. Finally, he climbed out of the blast bunker and walked over to the shuttles, wondering if anyone inside had seen the scramble.

A flash of embarrassment and anger rose up in him, but the experienced LSO forced it down and pulled the two lighted batons, from his hand. He flicked them over to the brilliant green setting and waved both of them to the nearest lock.

Slowly, the first of the ships began to move in that direction, this time at a decent pace and Mac walked it to the lock.

“Gregor! You get the next one.”

“You got it Chief,” a shaky voice came back and business slowly returned to normal on the flight deck.

*****

“They’re aboard, Captain.”

Eric nodded a little dumbly at the unneeded comment, still staring at the screen. “Any injuries?”

“No sir.”

“Thank God for that.” he sighed, standing up. “Commander, you have the Bridge. I’m going to have a chat with the pilot of the lead ‘Orbiter’.”

“Aye Captain,” Roberts nodded, moving to take Weston’s place, as the Captain turned and strode back to the lift.

Eric shook his head as he sat down in the lift, after letting it know where to take him. He wasn’t certain what he could say to the man, or woman, flying that heap, other than to inform them of proper flight protocols.

Proper protocols for this ship, at any rate. He corrected himself.

It was obvious that the alien drive technology was entirely different, then the reaction-based system, that the Odyssey and its onboard compliment used. The Archangels could match that kind of precision flying and often did, but no other craft built on Earth could hope to do it and even the ’Angels would never try it on a landing.

The pilots were obviously used to maneuvers that made Earth’s precision flying look like child’s play, so Weston idly wondered what would happen to flight teams like the Blue ’Angels and the Snowbirds, if and when this drive technology became part of the Earth tech base.

Probably nothing, he thought after a moment. Fighter will always look impressive and dangerous to crowds, even if freighters were able to match their maneuvers.

Still, it wasn’t a happy thought to the former fighter pilot.

As the lift stopped, Weston pushed the thoughts away and grabbed a pair of magnetic boots as he kicked out into the zero-gee deck.

*****

Impressive drives or not, they were still ugly as sin.

Weston floated along the wall, as the first of the ‘Orbiters’ rose up from the evacuated deck below, riding the massive airlock up into the ‘parking’ level.

The squat ship was little more than a flying box, without even the bristling sensor antennae that would give it a vaguely utilitarian look. Instead it looked like someone had attached some kind of drive system to a cargo container and wished its crew the best of luck.

Weston waited for the Orbiter to come to a halt in one of the parking places normally reserved for the Odyssey’s shuttles; he walked over, as a small crowd gathered around it.

“Where’s the door?” Someone called out.

“Damn if know.” another of the flight op crew shrugged. “Looks like a brick without the wings.”

“Captain on deck!” Someone snapped out as Weston approached.

The men snapped to attention as Eric touched down, the echoing clanks of his boots rebounding through the deck.

“As you were,” he said, waving them off.

The crowd began dispersing as the airlock began to rumble once more.

Weston and the Deck Chief stood there, watching the ‘Orbiter’ for a moment, before they were startled by a section of its sidewall just melting away.

“Hole-ee Shit,” the Deck Chief muttered, actually taking a step back, flushing as he realized what he said. “Sorry, Cap…”

“No need. I know the feeling,” Eric replied, watching the fluid motion of the ‘metal’ as it pooled on the floor of the deck, and built up a ramp that led up into the ship.

It looked impressive, but Eric had to admit that he didn’t like the idea of flying in a ship that could melt around him without warning.

It was at that point, that a figure appeared at the ‘hatch’ and began to walk down the ramp. She, Weston realized, stopped just before stepping onto the Odyssey’s deck and made a motion with her hand, crossing her chest, palm up and open. It struck him that it was probably a salute or something similar, so Eric Weston snapped to attention and brought his fingers up to his temple, while he felt the Chief do the same at his side.

“I would like permission to set foot on your vessel, Captain,” the woman’s voice came through the translator clearly.

Weston nodded and dropped his salute. “Granted.”

“Thank you,” she nodded, stepping off onto the deck, only to float free suddenly as her feet no longer wanted to remain connected to the ground.

“Chief!”

“Got it, Cap!” The Chief said, boots clanging on the deck, as he grabbed the woman’s arm in mid-tumble and pulled her down to the deck.

She was none the worse for wear, but her face was flush with embarrassment and anger, as she muttered something the translator didn’t catch.

“My apologies,” Weston said, as he motioned the Chief to take her over to the wall where they could find a pair of over-boots to fit her. “I forgot to mention that our lower decks are all in zero-gee.”

“My mistake, Captaine,” she said, her flowing accent quite crisp from her annoyance. “I should have checked my instruments.”

“Nonsense,” Weston waved a hand. “It’s my understanding that your ships all have artificial gravity why would you check?”

“Perhaps,” she grated obviously distressed by the rather ignominious impression, she felt she had left.

She took a deep breath as they reached the wall turning back to Weston. “I am Ithan Cora Sienthe.”

“Captain Eric Weston,” Weston nodded once. “Pleased to meet you.”

“I as well.”

“Now,” Weston smiled thinly as the Deck Chief fetched a pair of magnetic boots. “Let us talk about your landing protocols and how they impact on my ship.”

*****

“How are they, Diana?” Doctor Rame asked as he moved slowly through the ranks of patients who were slowly returning to consciousness.

“No obvious allergic reactions and they seem to be reacting to the stimulant, as expected.”

Rame nodded, “good. As soon as they can walk, get them divided up into groups. We have to get these people off the Odyssey, before we break Orbit.”

The nurse nodded professionally, returning to her task, as Rame continued on, masking a grim look on his face.

The Doctor really didn’t like being pushed on such a tight schedule, but the Captain had given him his orders in no uncertain terms. Get these people off the Odyssey, upright or on their backs, within three hours or the Odyssey would be entering battle with them on board.

Being the Chief Medical Officer gave him quite a lot of power, even over the Captain, but none of it concerned tactical decisions.

So he found himself pushing the envelope of what he’d recommend under similar circumstances, trying to get as many of the patients moving under their own power as possible. Any others, they’d carry off, if they had to.

A ship in combat was no place for an innocent bystander.

Not even when the ship was itself, an innocent bystander of sorts.

*****

“Captain.”

Eric Weston nodded as he watched the first flood of shaky passengers being led to the small ‘orbiter’ that was parked on his deck. “Lieutenant.”

“Begging the Captain’s pardon Sir, but I just came back from the Archangel’s berth.”

“Did you deliver my request to speak with Commander Michaels?”

“Yes Sir,” the Lieutenant was sweating, Eric noted.

“Then why is the Commander not here, Lieutenant?”

“Sir, I… Sir… That is Lieutenant Amherst…, Sir, he…”

“Spit it out,” Weston snapped.

“Sir!” The young man snapped straight. “Lieutenant Amherst told me that unless the ship was about to be blown to hell, I wasn’t getting within twenty feet of The Commander, Sir.”

Weston kept a straight face and managed to nod. “Very well. If you’ll inform Mr. Amherst that I would like to speak with him, I would be appreciative.”

“Aye Aye Captain!” The young man snapped a salute and beat a hasty retreat.

Weston watched him go with a mildly amused look. Amherst was just doing his job even it sounded like he’d been a little rougher than he had to be. If he felt that Steph needed more sleep, then Weston wasn’t going to argue with him on the subject.

Not until the attack was underway, at any rate.

Still, if Amherst wanted to play that game he was going to have to learn the consequences one had to suffer, as a good XO.

Weston smiled slightly turning his attention back to the refugee exodus.

Things were going as well as could be expected, he supposed, given that most of the refugees were still, at least somewhat under the effects of the sedatives the doctor had administered and weren’t exactly in the most lucid state of mind, at the moment.

The pilots of the ‘Orbiters’ had pitched in and seemed to be trained medical personnel as well as pilots, which made things a lot easier.

Their efficiency almost made Weston sorry for ripping a strip off each of them in turn for their landing.

Almost.

*****

“Commander! Enemy Status changed!”

Roberts turned and approached Waters calmly, “what happened, Ensign?”

“They accelerated once they rendezvoused with the sixth ship, Sir. New ETA is still being calculated, but it’ll be less than eight hours.”

“All right. I’ll inform the Captain. Are all our people back, yet?” Roberts asked as he turned around.

“Yes Sir,” Lamont replied crisply. “The last SAR flight just came back in. All we have left out there are dirt-side, Sir.”

Roberts nodded and shrugged slightly, “Major Brinks and his team are going to be on their own shortly.”

“Yes Sir.”

“Lamont, contact the Captain. Inform him of the new ETA.”

“Aye-Aye Sir.”

*****

Chief Corrin smiled under her hard suit helmet, knowing that no one could see her. The work on the flight deck had been superb and she was proud of the damage control team that had guided and done most of the work.

Not that she was going to tell them that.

“Not bad,” she growled over the comm channels. “Not half bad, at all.”

The figures around her in the suits relaxed noticeably.

Well, she wouldn’t tell them in so many words.

Good crews knew without being told. That was what made them good crews.

“Awright,” she snapped her tone subtly different.

The men and women snapped back to attention, each of them focusing on her.

“We’re going to war, ladies,” she growled. “That means that damage control just got bumped up to the front lines on this here tub. You’re all off shift starting now, but by God you better be ready when I call.”

A chorus of acknowledgments came from the fatigued group. Corrin just waved a half salute to them and dismissed them without a word. They quickly made for the personal locks and she knew they’d be riding them up to the crew berths, in short order.

The Chief looked over the repair job one last time, noting the smooth bead on the laser weld and nodded inside her suit.

“Not half bad at all.”

*****

“Sir!” Lieutenant Amherst saluted as his feet clanged together on the deck. “You asked for me, Sir?”

“I understand that you refused to allow my message to reach Stephanus.”

“Sir, I decided that the Commander needed the rest, Sir.”

Weston suppressed both the urge to smirk at the format of the response and the desire to club Amherst in the back of his head. “I see.”

Amherst didn’t respond.

“Well in that case, Lieutenant,” Weston smiled thinly. “I believe that you have some decisions to make.”

“Me Sir?”

“You are the XO of the Flight group, are you not?”

“Yes sir but…,” Amherst paled slightly.

“Well, then you make the decisions and Steph will rubber stamp them, when you decide he’s had enough sleepy time,” Weston said with just a hint of sarcasm to his voice.

“Uh… Yes Sir.”

“Good. First, what’s the status of the flight?”

“We’re down by four pilots and planes, Sir. Two losses, not counting Flare, and Brute is in the Medical Lab.”

Eric nodded, “We’ll need you to be at your best, in a few hours…”

“Sir, the Archangels are always ready.”

“I remember that, Lieutenant,” Weston replied mildly. “But you’re badly weakened and despite the downtime, you’re going to be tired, too.”

“Sir… Captain, we won’t let you down.”

“I’m sure you won’t, Lieutenant,” Weston told him. “But I was thinking about giving you at least one more pilot.”

“Sir?” Amherst frowned, “I’m afraid I don’t see how that’s possible. We’re missing four planes, and we don’t have any replacements…, even if we did have another pilot.”

“We have at least one more pilot on the Odyssey, Lieutenant.” Weston replied, his voice a little brittle.

Amherst paled, “Captain, with all due respect, you can’t mean yourself!”

Weston permitted himself a small smile, letting the moment stretch out while the pilot paled even more. “No, Lieutenant. I wasn’t referring to myself.”

Amherst let out a breath.

“You don’t need to sound quite so relieved, Lieutenant,” Eric told him mildly.

“Sir, you know it’s not that. But you’re needed here,” Amherst told him steadily.

Eric just nodded, “Well, be that as it may, what’s your opinion on Jennifer Samuels?”

“Jenny Sir? She’s good people,” Amherst replied. “Tried out for the ‘Angels, didn’t make the cut.”

“She made the cut, Lieutenant,” Weston corrected him.

“Pardon?” Amherst blinked.

“Samuels flight scores were well above minimum standards,” Weston told him.

“Begging the Captain’s pardon, Sir, but why the hell isn’t she in the Flight??” Amherst blinked owlishly.

Weston heard the incredulity in the man’s voice and didn’t blame him. Finding qualified pilots for the limited neural interface system on the Archangel Fighter Craft wasn’t easy. During the war, the main limitation wasn’t in how many of them they could build, but rather how many of them they could man.

“The war was over before she could be accepted, Lieutenant,” Eric Weston replied. “We Archangels aren’t that much of an asset in peacetime, you see.”

Amherst winced.

“However,” Eric said with a thin smile. “I don’t believe that I see any ‘peace time’ in our immediate area. Do you, Lieutenant?”

“Umm… No Sir.” Amherst returned, still frowning. “But we’re still down by a plane.”

“Are we, Lieutenant?” Eric asked, gazing across the deck.

Amherst followed his Captain’s gaze nodding slowly as his eyes settled on Archangel One, the Captain’s own.

“Inform the Lieutenant of her ‘promotion’,” Weston replied.

“Aye-Aye Sir.”

Chapter 30

Savoy watched the display trailed off, and then blinked away the information.

“Burke!”

“Sir!”

“We’re cleared for a four point detonation,” he told the explosives expert. “You have the blast map for me?”

“Yes Sir, I’m dropping it in your slot now.”

Savoy nodded as curtly as the over exaggerated motions of moving in a suit would allow access his memory slot on the network. Sure enough the map file was waiting for him so he tabbed it and watched as it opened in fifty percent transparency, over his HUD.

The map was thorough, as he’d expected, so Savoy just gave it a quick glance over before he tagged it with his electronic signature and approved the plan. The suit’s computer automatically attached the geological estimate provided by the Exo-Geology lab, just to cover the paperwork required to release the powerful explosives.

“Where are we coming on the evacuation?” He turned, looking for Mehn.

“Those local boys say they’ve almost got the place empty!” The other soldier replied, his voice a bit stressed.

“Are you all right?” Savoy frowned.

His HUD flickered, a video window opening up in half transparency and the sweating face of Edward Mehn appeared.

“I’m fine, El Tee,” he panted. “Just having a little trouble here.”

“Do you need backup?”

“Negative.” The soldier replied, half tired and half irritated. “I’m almost done. There was some structural damage when the ship impacted. I’m just holding up a wall, while some kids get out.”

“All right,” Savoy shook his head. “Report back when the area is clear.”

“Yes Sir.”

*****

Commander Steven ‘Stephanus’ Michaels groaned and stretched as he stepped out of his berth and looked around.

“What?” He asked, frowning in confusion as the Archangel flight was there, staring at him.

“You tell him, Amherst. I didn’t have anything to do with it,” One of them said.

“Oh, this is gonna be good,” Steph smirked, eyes settling on Lt. Amherst.

“Well, you see, Sir. It’s like this.”

Stephanus knew that it was going to be one of those days when Amherst called him ‘Sir’. Informality was the formality of the Archangels, so when his XO retreated to proper military decorum, he’d done something he was half expecting to get spanked for.

*****

Lieutenant Jennifer Samuels lowered herself into the cockpit of the fighter almost reverently. She knew it’s every control forward and backward, her hands sliding over each in turn, lightly fingering the firing studs and arming switches with a delicate hand.

She had a hard time believing that she was sitting in a fighter, let along this particular one.

Archangel One.

The Captain’s Own.

She settled her feet onto the form molded pedals, just letting them rest there without pressure and sat back in the bolster seat that was just a touch too big for comfort.

That would be fixed when she suited up, she knew from experience, but it still felt unreal to be there.

She was lost in those thoughts, when the voice startled her from behind.

“Like a dream, isn’t it?”

Jennifer Samuels twisted in her seat, eyes wide with surprise. “Captain! I… Sorry, Sir. I shouldn’t be…”

“Relax,” Weston half smiled. “I hear you’ve accepted the posting.”

She swallowed, “I… That is, Yes Sir. Thank you, Sir”

He nodded, face serious. “It won’t be a cakewalk, you know.”

“I know, Sir.”

“I’ve checked your records, Lieutenant,” he told her, “You’ll do just fine. Just don’t get fancy and remember to stay with your wingman. You’ll have the least experience of any of them out there, so you might have some trouble keeping up at first. Don’t let it get under your skin. If you let the little mistakes get to you, they’ll pile up into a big one.”

“Yes Sir.”

Eric smiled, kicked off the fighter and floated toward the wall. “I’ll let you two get acquainted, Lieutenant. Treat her well as she’s an old friend of mine. I’d like to have her back in one piece.”

“Aye-Aye, Sir,” Jennifer replied, throwing the departing officer a salute, as she felt her attention being drawn back to the fighter that was wrapped so tightly around her.

It was good to be home.

*****

Admiral Tanner watched the displays as the first of the Orbiters departed the Odyssey and began its downward spiral. It seemed foolish in so many ways, evacuating people from one danger, just to plant them smack in the middle of another.

If the Odyssey failed to eliminate the ships, if the Forge failed to finish the work they were so desperately trying to accomplish, if the ground forces now on Mons Systema failed to account for each and every Drasin…

If any one of those things occurred, those people would die here on the planet instead of there, in space.

It hardly seemed fair, Tanner thought. That they should survive so much on their own; live through the destruction of their own world, just to die here on someone else’s.

So this is war, he thought grimly to himself. Such an innocuous word for something so horrific.

Millennia of peace didn’t prepare a man for this. Tanner wasn’t a warrior, he wasn’t like his old friend. He was in charge of a mining and exploration fleet, scouring the galaxy for new worlds, new resources, and new things to see.

And now he was here, defending a world with no assets of his own and forced to rely on gifts from the Gods, to save his people.

That wasn’t the way it was supposed to work.

*****

“Captain!”

Eric paused in mid-step, glancing over his shoulder. He nodded as he saw Stephanus jogging to catch up with him.

“I need to speak with you, Captain,” the pilot said.

“Walk with me, Commander,” Eric told him, “I have to get to the Bridge. We’ve almost got the refugees of my ship and we’ve got some tricky maneuvers to plan.”

“Sir, about Lt. Samuels…,” Steph started earnestly, “You can’t be serious about assigning her to the Flight.”

“And why would that be, Commander?” Weston asked calmly as they walked.

“Sir, Jenny’s a good pilot, but she’s not been drilled with the Flight,” Commander Michaels said, “The Archangels isn’t just any fighter group…”

“I like to think that I know that, Commander.”

Stephanus flushed a little, but nodded. “I know you do, Captain, but… damn it, Sir!”

“Watch yourself Commander.” Eric snapped coming to a stop so fast that Stephen was past him before he knew it. “You’re overstepping yourself.”

“Maybe I am, Sir,” Michaels said, turning back, “But you’re asking me to take a rookie out on a hot run for her first mission. Sir, I’d rather go underpowered than to do that. If she messes up, she could take my Flight with her.”

“Perhaps,” Eric nodded, conceding the point. “But I think that you’re forgetting something.”

“Like what?”

Eric ignored the challenging tone in his friend’s voice and responded mildly, “you aren’t going a little ‘underpowered’, Steph. You’re down by four planes and pilots, that’s a full quarter of your Flight.”

Stephanus grimaced, but nodded, “I’m aware of that.”

“Are you also aware that Lieutenant Samuels passed her NICS-Exam with a point three nine variance?” Weston retorted, “Or that she trained at the ‘Angels flight camp for nine months, before the war ended? Or that she was in line for a commission with the Flight until the Congressional decision to stop ’antagonizing’ the Block by dangling our feathered butts in their face?”

Steph paled slightly as the Captain spoke without raising his voice, listening to the hard edge in the man’s voice, and finally spoke. “No, Sir, I wasn’t aware of that.”

“Then I suggest you review her file,” Eric told his friend coldly.

“Aye-Aye, Sir.”

Eric watched as Stephen walked away.

“Steph,” he said as the Commander reached the corner.

Stephanus paused, glancing back. “Sir?”

“I understand your worry,” Eric told him simply, “but you need every able body you can get. If I had my way, I’d be out there, too.”

“I don’t think we’re quite that bad off, begging the Captain’s pardon,” Steph replied with a half smirk.

“Wise ass,” Weston shook his head, turning away.

“Always, Sir.”

*****

“Captain on the Bridge!”

“At ease,” Weston said, accepting his seat back from Commander Roberts. “Status report?”

“The last of the refugees will be departing in the next twenty minutes, Sir.”

“All right, Mr. Daniels, have you prepared the course information, I requested?”

“Aye, Sir,” Lt Daniels replied, tapping out a command on the navigation board. “Using nothing but thrusters will be tough on the ship, Sir, but we can mount a successful intercept if we use minimal Cee Emm generation.”

“How minimal?” Weston’s voice was clipped.

“Eight percent, Sir. For the first hour of the burn only.” was the instant response.

Weston grimaced.

The Cee Emm technology was what allowed both the heavy lift capability of the Odyssey’s shuttles, and the lethal speed of the Archangels, not to mention the acceleration of the Odyssey herself. The downside of the technology was that it created a rather large ‘sinkhole’ in normal space that was the equivalent of a searchlight to someone with eyes to see it.

It was also a large part of what kept the acceleration from plastering the crew, over the rear bulkheads of the ship. Since their mass was reduced along with the rest of the ship, their personal inertia was affected by the laws of the little ‘pocket reality’ that the Odyssey dragged around with her, at all times.

“I’m sorry Sir; it’s the best I can do with the time restraint.”

Eric nodded absently, still studying the data.

Daniels was right, without eight percent they’d never be able to intercept the ships far enough from the planet to reasonably ensure that they could prevent more landers from being dispatched.

“All right. Approved,” Weston said, signing off on the order. “Lamont?”

Susan Lamont stiffened, “Sir?”

“Status of the preparations?”

“We’re ready to run silent, Captain,” she replied with a satisfied tone.

Eric nodded, not noting the sharp look Commander Roberts threw across the Bridge, as he noted the use of the term.

“All right. Let’s test the system then, while we still can,” Weston said, settling in. “Engage ‘black hole’ stealth systems. Kill all unnecessary power use. Make us invisible.”

“Aye-Aye, Captain.”

*****

“Admiral!”

The unseemly shout jerked Rael Tanner around in surprise, pulling him away from his status board. “What?”

“The alien ship, Admiral…, she’s gone,” The technician’s face was pale.

“She left Orbit already?”

“No, Sir. She just…, we lost visual, Sir.”

“What about sensors?” Rael frowned, reaching over the man’s shoulder and tapping in commands.

Nothing. Every system he checked said the same thing, there was nothing there. He accessed the logs with a few quick taps and blinked as he watched the oddly configured ship simply vanish.

He was still staring at the screens when someone else shouted, this time just in surprise.

“What is it??” He looked over.

“Sir… I… I think they’re still there,” The young woman said, pointing at the screen.

Rael looked at the screen where she was pointing for several seconds, wondering what the woman was talking about and he saw it himself. There was a black spot in the middle of the screen where the ship was supposed to be, one that moved against the background of stars as it orbited the world.

“Fascinating,” he whispered, a touch of a smile showing on his lips.

“Admiral?”

“They’re still there, Ithan,” he said absently, pointing out the screen. “Watch the stars.”

With that comment, Rael turned away, heading over to another console.

“Casa,” he said to the young woman seated there. “Active scan, if you please.”

“Yes, Admiral,” she replied, tapping out a command.

*****

“We’re being scanned, Captain,” Waters said, looking up from his console. “All across the spectrum, very high power.”

“Source?”

“The planet, Sir.”

Weston nodded. “Good. That means they noticed something when we shifted. Let’s hope our signal is low on their systems.”

“Aye Sir.”

“Lamont?”

“Sir,” Susan Lamont responded.

“Have all decks made ready for acceleration drills,” Weston told her. “We’ll have a rough ride for the first hour or so.”

“Aye Sir.”

“And in the meantime,” he turned back to the front of the Bridge, “put me through to Milla and the Admiral.”

“Aye-Aye, Captain.”

*****

“Incredible,” Admiral Tanner said in a low voice. “They really are there, aren’t they?”

“Yes Admiral, but their signal has dimmed considerably. Even knowing where to focus our sensors, all we get is a marginal return,” the technician told him. “Admiral… if they wished to sneak up on any of our ships…”

“Our Captains would have to know that they were coming, to have a chance of spotting them,” Tanner finished for her. “Let us hope that the Drasin are the same.”

“Yes Admiral.”

“Admiral…”

Tanner turned and saw that Milla was approaching in her impressively-sized armor. He smiled crookedly, “May I assume that Captain Weston wishes to make contact?”

“He does, Admiral.”

Tanner took a moment to straighten his clothing stepping into the full view of the armor.

“Captain Weston,” he nodded gravely.

*****

Eric Weston hid a smile as he watched the Admiral adjust his clothing before stepping around to the front of the armor and wondered briefly if he should inform the man that Infantry Special Warfare Armor had three hundred and sixty-degree sensor coverage.

Maybe another time, he thought as Tanner spoke.

“Captain Weston,” the small man began gravely.

“Admiral Tanner,” Weston permitted himself a slight smile. “May I assume that you noticed a change in our current stance?”

“You may,” Tanner replied simply.

“Might I enquire as to the effect?” Weston asked softly.

“Your vessel vanished almost entirely from our passive sensors,” the small man replied, his lip twisted slightly as he went on, “and even though we knew your location, our active sensors were unable to uncover more than a shadow of your previous signature.”

There was a low breath of relief that passed through the Bridge, but Eric ignored it in favor of masking his own low breath of relief. He nodded, “that was what we were hoping for, Admiral. Now, if only the Enemy finds us equally difficult to see.”

“One can only hope.”

“Indeed,” Eric replied. “We’ll be leaving Orbit shortly, Admiral.”

“May I enquire as to your plans?”

“Wouldn’t do you any good, Admiral,” Weston replied, “and I’m afraid that we don’t have the time.”

“I understand, Captain,” Tanner replied. “In that case, I wish you the very best and…”

“And?” Weston blinked, hearing… something in the other man’s tone.

Tanner paused, looking like he wanted to say more, than shook his head. “It is nothing, Captain. May the Maker journey with you.”

“And you,” Weston replied automatically, as he always did when someone wished him well in one way or another.

The signal was dropped and Commander Roberts leaned over.

“Just as long as we don’t have to meet our ‘Maker’ before he journeys with us.”

Eric stifled a snort and shook his head, glancing at the normally reserved Commander. “Why Commander Roberts, I do believe, you just made a joke.”

Roberts looked evenly back at him, “I wish I had.”

Eric shivered slightly, but nodded. “Right. Sound General Quarters.”

“Aye Captain. General Quarters.”

“And get me Major Brinks, if you please.”

“Aye-Aye, Captain.”

*****

“Brinks,” the big man rumbled into the comm, keeping most of his attention on the squad that was working on clearing out a large promenade or something similar.

“Major, how are things?”

“They’re coming along, Captain.”

“Good. I’m calling to inform you that we will be leaving Orbit shortly.”

“Understood,” Brinks paused. “Godspeed, Captain.”

“And you, Major.”

“Yes, Sir. Brinks out.”

*****

The lights across the ship flickered, came back in muted red, as the ship-wide inter-comm began speaking over the commotion.

“General Quarters. This is a call to general quarters.”

“You heard the lady!” Chief Corrin yelled over the ruckus. “Get movin ’fore I have your hides pinned to the bulkheads!”

“All stations, secure for acceleration. This is no drill. I say again, this is no drill.”

Corrin paused in mid-step, slapping a crewman on the shoulder. “Strap that PDA down, Rickman! You want it to bat you upside the head!? And do up that restraint good and proper!”

She grabbed the seat restraint and cinched it tight enough to bruise the man, growling the whole time. “I swear to God, all of you, if I catch you in the medical bay with a broken leg because you fell out of your damned chair, I’ll wring your necks good and proper!”

There was no verbal response, but before she moved onto the next station, they had all triple checked their belts.

*****

“All stations report ready, Captain.”

“And our current Orbit?”

Daniels looked up, “we’ll pass the meridian in two minutes, Sir. At that point, we’ll be completely behind the planet and should be shielded by its mass.”

“Very well,” Weston nodded. “Mr. Daniels, you may execute when ready.”

“Aye-Aye Captain,” Daniels tapped in a command and watched the course change. On the screen, a diagram of the system ticked by, moment by moment, until the navigator leaned forward with an eagerness that amused Weston, mildly. “Firing thrusters Now!”

The big ship began to vibrate, a low rumble filling the air around them and they felt the force shove them back into their seats. For the first few seconds, it was a gentle pressure, then it climbed until the acceleration on the Bridge had equalized with the centrifugal force of the habitat and they all felt like they were half laying down as the Bridge angled upwards.

“One Gravity Acceleration,” Daniels announced. “Increasing power in fifteen seconds.”

The countdown was silent, but poignant, as the Odyssey poured on the power. The big ship looped low around the planet, almost skimming the atmosphere as the ship followed the course Daniels had laid in, using the planet’s gravity, as part of his calculations.

Then the second stage thrust kicked in and they all felt the Bridge flip end for end around them, as the force slapped them back even harder.

“Crossing the second meridian in forty-five seconds,” Daniels’ voice was strained this time, but he managed to speak clearly as his hands worked the controls. “Main thrust cut off in forty.”

Eric didn’t say anything as he watched the numbers on the Captain’s personal display, noting that the entire ship’s company was currently pulling over three Gees due to the firing of the powerful main engines, without full compensation from the Cee Emm generators.

“Main thruster cutout!”

The sudden lack of acceleration was like being thrown forward in a braking vehicle, but the seat restraints held everyone in place as the heavy rumble faded, leaving only a bare hint of its former glory in the air, as everyone started breathing a little easier.

“We’re clearing the Meridian…, now,” Daniels said, a hint of satisfaction in his voice as the Odyssey whipped around the planet and flung itself out into the depths of space once more.

Chapter 31

“Well that’s it, gentlemen,” Major Brinks said as the connection to the Odyssey blinked off. “We’re on our own from here on out. I hope everyone packed their underwear.”

A few muffled chuckles greeted his words, but for the most part, the men on the Link were too busy fighting, running, or hiding to respond.

Brinks checked his HUD before leaping the forty-meter gap to the next building, where he landed with a single solid smack the nano-servos in his armor absorbing the energy as he flexed his legs. The situation wasn’t as bad as all that actually, for the most part, the drones were being mopped up whenever they stuck their disturbing little mandibles out to be seen.

That was the good news.

The bad news was that fewer and fewer of them were sticking their disturbing little mandibles out to have them shot off. Brinks might have considered that a good sign, that perhaps they were cleaning the last of them out, but judging from the reports he was getting back through the Link, it was obvious that the survivors were still numerous. They were just getting smarter.

Nothing worse than an enemy who’s a quick learner, the Major grumbled as he stepped over to the edge of the Scraper he was standing on, and looked down at the public promenade below.

*****

The firefight was raging all around him, as Sean Bermont held the trigger of his rifle down and poured the last of his magazine into the maelstrom. The whining crack of the bullets was joined by the pure white contrails, as they accelerated across the huge promenade, twisting and turning as they locked in on the heat sources on the other side and adjusted their courses.

He kept moving, as the now empty magazine hit the ground at his feet. He didn’t flinch, or even notice, except in a visceral way, when a ray of energy blew up a stone column only a few feet away.

Sean slapped the mag into the receiver, as he and the others continued to approach through the enemy fire. Bermont lifted the weapon to his shoulder and held the trigger down again.

It wasn’t a firefight as much as a rout, when it came to dealing with the drones that came out into the open. The enemy weapons were technically impressive, their whining power enough to actually cause solid stone to explode when the beams intersected it, but the M-112’s were their equal in effectiveness, if not technical prowess and the battles between the two were short, furious and final.

The guided ability of the M-112 gave the humans the advantage however, since they didn’t have to be perfectly on target, with every shot. A near miss without guidance was a bulls-eye with even the minimal course corrections that each bullet was capable of. If the admittedly minimal intelligence of the scramjet propelled round was capable of seeing the enemy, the enemy was already dead.

The problem was when the drones hid within building and alcoves and forced the humans to approach too close for the guidance system to be effective.

The heavy little rounds were lethal killers at any range of course, but the M-112 was designed for the modern battlefield, not the sort of close quarters, room clearing that this fight was starting to turn into. At short range, the weapon’s effectiveness was less than half what it could do at its optimum engagement range.

Of course, the fact that each round was explosive armor piercing tended to compensate for any shortcomings from a lack of a kinetic kill.

In short, it was a good thing that the squad was wearing full environmental body armor.

An explosive blow back and incidental shrapnel from your own bullet was a bitch of a way to die.

*****

“All right, Boss. Looks like we’re clear.”

Savoy nodded, “thanks Mehn. Burke…, you’re up.”

“Yes Sir!” Burke said eagerly.

“Could you at least TRY to not sound so happy about it?” Savoy groaned.

“Sorry Sir.”

Bullshit, Savoy thought, but didn’t comment. “Mehn, get those locals over here and under cover!”

“On our way, boss.”

Good. One less thing to worry about, Savoy thought as he looked around for a likely spot.

There was a solid looking building a short distance away that looked tough enough, so he jumped over to it and checked the area behind it.

“This’ll do. Hey Mehn, those locals got one of their ray guns?”

“Sure do, Sir. What’s up?” The response came back.

“Bring ’im here,” Savoy grinned.

Mehn acknowledged the order so Savoy turned his focus to Burke, as the explosives man finished up the last minute preparations.

*****

Nero Jehan grumbled as he listened to the reports that were coming in.

Less than half of them were from his soldiers, the rest were being routed to him from various other sectors and were almost entirely composed of complaints from the civilians.

He didn’t have time for this!

The big man’s fist cracked the obsidian surface of the console in front of him and half his staff shrank away in fear, as he growled in his annoyance.

The rest were more used to him, it seemed and didn’t do more than jump a little, but it was enough for Jehan to calm himself and turn back to his work. He grumbled as he wiped the complaints from his screen.

Let someone else handle that idiocy.

“Reassign Fourth Squad to the Promenade in Calisma,” he growled, glancing over at one of his staff.

“Make sure that they are careful to announce their arrival. I don’t want them killed by our allies.”

“Yes Sir.”

“Are you all right, Nero?”

He looked around to see Rael approaching. “Shouldn’t you be busy?”

“I have no fleet to command and the alien ship has left orbit…, to fight for us.” The small man completed, his tone a little bitter.

“Welcome to my hell Rael,” Nero growled.

“Why, I wonder, does it feel like we are paying the price for millennia of peace?” Rael asked, mostly rhetorically.

Nero just snorted.

“You don’t agree?”

“I’m from the outer colonies,” the big man responded. “My people left the inner systems because we couldn’t handle the ‘peace’. I’m probably not the best person to ask.”

Tanner nodded, “I understand that… This is why you are in charge of our ground forces…”

“Ground forces!” Nero snapped voice laced with disgust. “Is that what you call them? Tanner, my friend, they are no more ‘ground forces’ then your ships were a ‘navy’. They are, at best, police playacting at being soldiers. If the Drasin were parking their ships illegally, or perhaps stealing trinkets on the street, then they might know what to do. They aren’t soldiers, Rael. No matter how well you dress them up.”

“I think you are letting your frustration get the best of you, Nero,” Tanner told him mildly. “And it is bothering your staff.”

Nero looked around and grimaced.

Tanner had a point. If nothing else, he should be keeping his mouth shut in front of the others. There was no reason for them to lose hope, as he was.

Nero Jehan nodded, “You are right, my friend. Perhaps I’m just tired.”

Tanner nodded, but stiffened as the big man moved past him and leaned down to whisper.

“How can they be soldiers, old friend,” Nero asked in a whisper as he moved past. “When the person they look to for leadership, doesn’t even know what a soldier is?”

*****

Sean Bermont threw himself up against a wall, as he checked his gun’s status in the HUD and grimaced.

“I’m out!” He said over the Link, taking a few deep breaths to relax as a few stray ray gun blasts whined around him.

“Hold for reload,” Brinks’ voice came over the Link, but all Sean could do was nod his head uselessly.

The powered armor increased a soldier’s endurance practically exponentially, but Sean always seemed to get winded in combat, just the same. Something about the adrenaline rush, perhaps, or maybe it was the fear, plain and simple.

He didn’t know what it was, but when he started to come down from the battle rush, it was like he’d run a marathon, even when it was the suit taking up most of the slack.

A scraping hiss startled the former JTF2 Soldier into action, as he turned against the wall and fell into a crouch, with his empty rifle braced against his knee. He poked the muzzle around the corner, linking his HUD into the rifle’s camera and swept it around in an attempt to locate the source of the sound.

When he found it, all thought of a post battle ‘crash’ was gone, as another surge of adrenaline that struck him.

“Oh fuck.”

*****

Savoy looked up as the group of local military came around the corner at a dead run, Mehn’s easy loping ‘jog’ placing him at their rear, as his rifle swept their ‘six’.

“Here,” Savoy snapped, slapping his rifle into the arms of the closest of the locals, startling the man into grabbing for it as he appropriated the man’s laser rifle.

“What…?” The man blurted, but Savoy ignored him.

The Terran Lieutenant stepped back away from them and examined the rifle for a moment, comparing it to the log recordings of Bermont’s ‘experimentation’. In a few seconds, he had the controls more or less figured out and, if he was right, it was already set to maximum power.

That done, he levelled the weapon at the ground and triggered the firing stud.

The rifle whined in his hands and its beam cut into the ground. Savoy held it steady for a couple seconds, and began to play it along the ground in a straight line. Acrid smoke rose around him, but he ignored it, as he watched the glowing of the heated ground through his thermal overlay.

He was finished with the test a few seconds later. Savoy shouldered the rifle easily and walked back to the group, even as he thumbed in an order for one of the ‘chutes’ that was floating above them.

“Here,” he tossed the rifle back to the man he’d taken it from, and nodding to Mehn who had come to the front of the group.

Mehn reclaimed Savoy’s weapon from the startled man and glanced skyward as one of the Cee Emm packs descended. “You doing what I think you’re doing, El Tee?”

“Yup.”

“Cool.” Mehn smiled easily under his armor as he held both rifles against his shoulders and leaned back against the building.

Savoy didn’t respond as he settled the pack over the still glowing trench and walked over to it. The heat coming from the superheated ground was searing, but his suit could handle worse if it had to, so he ignored it and pulled a panel off the ‘chute’ so he could access a couple of its controls.

In a few seconds he’d shunted the power circuits to the Cee Emm field and stepped back as he tapped in a command.

The resulting burst of energy slapped him like a fist, actually sliding him back along the ground a few inches, but he’d been expecting it. It also drove all the air molecules back for twenty feet around, leaving the entire area engulfed in a miniature vacuum.

The ground at his feet cracked, though he could only feel it through the suit and not hear it, as it cooled under the sudden chill. A short while after, the Cee Emm pack failed and the air rushed back with an impressive thunderclap.

Savoy checked the ground temperature and nodded. “All right, everyone get into the trench and keep your heads DOWN.”

*****

The heavy smack sent Bermont’s M-112 flying before he could pull it back, leaving the soldier barely enough time to roll clear before the heavy blow cleaved into the structure where his head had been.

The drone gave an odd hissing whine as it rushed around the corner, striking again at Sean as the armored soldier rolled desperately, then slapped his right hand down into the ground with a full powered strike.

The slap cracked against the smooth, glassy material of the promenade floor, its force lifting Sean off the ground, as another cleaving strike landed where he had been. He tucked his arms into his torso as he spun in the air using his feet and legs to control his spin as he landed back on his feet.

The move left him facing the wrong direction when he landed, but the three hundred and sixty degree panorama the suit afforded him kept him informed of what the enemy at his back was doing, just in time to sidestep another strike and spin as he pulled his carbon steel Kukri from the sheath in the thigh of his armor.

The blade was curved and honed to a fine, though not razor, edge and it actually hissed as it parted the air, as the armor-assisted strike went through. The blade bit into the drone’s mandible, causing it to jump back reflexively, before it hissed again and lifted its leg up over twelve feet, above Bermont’s head.

He saw the blow coming, his mind already running at that insane speed combat seemed to induce, but his own motions felt as sluggish as the fluid motion of his foe. He let go of the Kukri, bringing his right hand up to block the blow, as the leg came crashing down into his shoulder with force enough to rupture the carbon fibre armor and dig deep into his shoulder.

His HUD went wild, but Sean didn’t hear it except on a visceral level, as he screamed both in pain and outraged exertion. He kept his right arm moving, by some force of will and locked it onto the carapace of the leg that had impaled him.

He screamed at the drone, anything to distract himself from the torturous pain he felt, as he began twisting the leg away and to the side. The leg gave way slowly but surely, as his armor enhanced muscles continued to pressure it down in a twisting motion like one might use when breaking off a lobster’s claw at a fine meal.

There was a sickening crack as the leg gave way and the drone hissed and squealed in shock or pain, Bermont didn’t know or care which. He ripped it loose, twisting his entire body back and yanking until the leg burst from the main body in a spray of steaming fluids.

Then the two combatants fell apart, the human collapsing to the ground, and the alien staggering slightly as it tried to balance itself on a limb that was no longer there.

Sean screamed wordlessly yet again, as he pulled the impaling limb from his shoulder, while feeling the cooling hiss of the suit’s automatic foam systems sealing the wound.

For a moment he looked at the limb in his hand, especially the tip where it was coated in his own blood, giving the carapace a sinister oily appearance. It was shaped like a spear point, with jagged edges that he assumed were to aid it in climbing, but also knew had done a wicked job on his flesh.

Then his attention was brought back to the real world, when the creature hissed and charged at him again.

He growled, covering his pain with sound, as he drove upward and flipped the alien limb over in his wounded hand, then passed it to his good one.

He met the charge like a pikeman from some long forgotten war, grunting in pain and exertion as he drove the alien’s own leg deep into its guts.

It screamed this time and Bermont grunted in satisfaction, as he gave the limb a twist and fell back. The steaming and sizzling fluid that filled the aliens hissed around him, bubbling against his armor and the ground, but he didn’t have the strength to get up, so he fell back where he was and lay on the ground.

“One…, this is Five. Scratch the rearm and send me a medevac” he grunted into the net.

“Confirmed, Five. You all right, Sean?”

Bermont grimaced as a rough chuckle echoed through him, “I’ll live. Probably.”

“’Chute’ is coming in now.”

“Good.”

*****

Savoy and Mehn had finished herding the locals into the makeshift trench he’d cut, when Burke made his appearance again.

“We ready?” Savoy asked glancing up as the other man approached.

“On your order Boss,” Burke told him, glancing at the trench.

“This good enough?” Savoy asked simply.

Burke eyed the cut in the ground with a critical glance. It was deep, as such things went, over four feet down, in fact and was coated with a glassy substance he’d never seen, but it looked like it would suffice to keep everyone clear of the worst of the blast.

He nodded, “it’ll do, Boss.”

“Good,” Savoy said, making a notation on his battle log to state that he had cleared the four GBU-98s for immediate deployment. “You’re clear to launch.”

“Best get your head down,” Burke told him, and Savoy grimaced at the grin he heard in that self-satisfied voice.

“Everyone - down!” Savoy ordered, reaching out and hauling a couple of the locals down as Mehns’ did the same.

The rest got the idea and they all hunkered down, as deep as they could in the still warm trench, while Burke stood up above with a silly smirk plastered across his face, where no one could hope to see it.

*****

Above them the two armed Carnivore Recon Drones orbited lazily at over thirteen thousand meters, the target below them, nothing more than a mere spec to the human eye. But it wasn’t a human eye that they relied on, so the two weapons of war could see with crystal clarity as their systems blinked to life and they prepared to launch.

Power fed into the GBU-98’s from the drones, charging the superconducting capacitance coils that encircled each weapon’s interior, until the tell-tale LED’s all went green. Then the four weapons, two to a drone, fell free of their shackles.

Four fins snapped out a quarter second after release, pulling the rear ends of the weapons up until their noses were pointing at the desired location, the relatively small rocket motors whined to life and the bombs leapt to life.

Downward they rushed, entering terminal attack mode, only three seconds after they were released, their onboard computers making final adjustments in the last instant, before the point of no return, activating the weapon’s terminal program.

Designed late in the so called ‘terror’ wars, the GBU 98 carried a payload sufficient to destroy any bunker ever built, assuming it could penetrate it. That problem, in particular, had been a plague on the forces of the so called ‘civilized’ nations, early in the terror wars because many of their targets were effectively proofed against even nuclear attacks, by a simple insulating layer of earth.

Initial designs had depended on an ‘Earth Penetrating’ Steel casing, to get the weapon deep enough before detonation.

The GBU98’s used that in addition to a more… refined approach.

The powerful, though short-lived, lasers built into the nose cones of each weapon whined to life as the weapons went terminal, cutting into the ground where they were aimed like an industrial drill, opening the door, so to speak.

And then it was done. The lasers burned out, under the powerful energy pulse released through them, and the weapons slammed into the ground right through the holes they had cut and kept on boring down on pure kinetic power, until they blew through into the caverns below and came to a sudden, jarring stop.

*****

The earth under them heaved, throwing the men in the trench into the air, from the sheer force of it. Savoy and Mehn had been expecting something along those lines and landed easily, but the others just slammed back down to the ground, as four pillars of fire rose up from the strike zones and huge gouts of flame and dust erupted from the tunnels the Drasin had carved.

Burke dropped back into the trench, whistling happily over the network as he threw himself over three of the locals, “incoming!”

Mehn and Savoy followed his example, covering as many of the locals as they could with their armor, as dirt and debris came raining down around them and a stiff wind whistled over their heads. There wasn’t as much of it as one might expect, since the vast majority of the blast had been directed downward by the shaped detonations of the GBU-98’s.

When it stopped, the three soldiers climbed back up to the lip of the trench and looked out over the damage.

Savoy whistled appreciatively when he saw the impact sites.

The ground was burning there now, four deep craters spewing flame and smoke, as the ground caved in further, hopefully crushing anything that might be left in there.

“Nice work, Burke,” Savoy said, already accessing the Carnivore drones and bringing them back around for another look with their ground penetrating RADAR. “Let’s make sure we got them all.”

*****

“What in the Maker was THAT?” Tanner asked incredulously as the ground stopped shaking and quaking around him.

“And explosion in the Corinth sector, Admiral.”

Tanner cast a glance at Milla, “Your friends don’t believe in doing things lightly, now do they?”

Milla tried to shrug helplessly, but the effect was mostly wasted in a suit.

“Never mind,” he shook his head. “Damage?”

“That is my concern, Admiral,” Jehan told him firmly. “My people are there and the area was evacuated. We’re trying to get confirmation on the elimination of the Drasin now. Leave it to my people.”

Tanner grimaced, but nodded grimly. “Very well, Nero.”

Tanner turned back to his own people, “do we know where the Odyssey is now?”

“I’m afraid not, Admiral.”

He sighed and nodded, than sat back in his chair.

Then what good am I, I wonder?

Chapter 32

“Kill the thrusters.”

“Aye Aye Sir,” Daniels responded, hitting the command on cue.

The background rumble went dead and the deck seemed to tilt back to a level keel, as the acceleration died off. Eric Weston leaned back in his seat, partly to keep his head from spinning from the sudden change and partly in an attempt to think.

The Odyssey had spent the last hour at one Gee subjective acceleration, meaning that with the eight percent Cee Emm field, they had been able to pull approximately fifty gravities. With the initial full burn they’d used at the start, that left her current ballistic speed at just under seventy-five thousand kilometers per second or roughly one quarter light speed.

“Enemy status?”

“Still on course for the planet, Captain,” Waters responded. “No sign that they’ve seen us.”

Eric nodded calmly, trying not to think about the risks he was taking, or the dangers ahead. He could see from the display that they’d reach the interception point, in just under an hour. Their crossing velocity would be such that the Odyssey would get one round of shots free of charge, no more.

After that, it all depended on the enemy.

And that, Weston knew, was a bad way to plan your action.

“Relief crews to the Bridge,” he ordered no sign of his thoughts on his face.

“Aye Sir,” Roberts replied, nodding to Lamont, as she issued the order.

“Commander, take first watch,” Eric said, standing up. “I’ll be back in twenty minutes to relieve you.”

“That’s not necessary Sir, I don’t need any time,” the Commander told him.

Eric half smiled, “in twenty minutes, Commander, you will go down to your room. You will take a quick shower, then go and get a light meal. When this is done and only when this is done, will I allow you to return to the Bridge. Am I understood?”

“Understood Sir.”

“Good,” Weston turned, stepping toward the lift, as it arrived with the relief crew. “Then I’ll see you in twenty minutes.”

“Aye Captain.”

*****

“Doctor… I…”

“What is it, Nurse?” Rame asked as he took a packet of antibiotics from a cooler and carried it across the medical lab, to one of the operating tables. He loaded the packet into a pressurized pump designed to deliver the drugs, even if they lost rotational gravity.

“What’s going to happen?”

Rame paused, glancing back at the young woman. He took a breath, let it out in a sigh, and crossed back to the cooler, for a supply of morphine.

“We’re going to receive injured personnel,” he said as he worked. “If we’re lucky, we’ll receive a great many of them.”

“Lucky??”

“Sandra…, if we’re not lucky, they’ll be dead before they get here,” Rame said quite seriously. “You’re too young to have served in the war, right?”

“I served on the Enterprise in the last few months,” she said defensively.

Rame nodded, “this will be worse.”

She nodded jerkily, “I almost wish something would happen… The waiting…”

“I know,” Rame said seriously, his voice soft. “Go check the portable power modules and see that they have a full charge. I don’t want to lose instruments or the InfraReds, if we take a bad hit.”

She nodded, “yes, Doctor.”

Rame watched her go, a grimace twisting his lip for a moment, and then he sighed and checked the plasma supplies one more time.

*****

“Hey Steph, you up for a few more kills?”

Commander Michaels nodded to the crewman as he approached Archangel Lead. The kills from his last fight had been tallied just under his cockpit already, but he ignored the new alien silhouettes that had been painted there. They had always been more for the ground crews than for him, anyway and he didn’t like to look at them before a fight.

The crewman took his silence as a warning and left him some space, as he caught the edge of his cockpit and slowly lowered himself into the fighter. Once he’d settled in a bit, he flipped on the primary power to the computers and opened up the diagnostic windows.

They’d already have been run of course, but Stephanus was old school. He didn’t go out in a plane he hadn’t checked for himself.

Around the bay, the Archangels were mostly following the same ritual, though he knew that some of them were less interested in diagnostics, just taking a few minutes to communicate with the Gods that watched out for crazy aviators.

“Got another one coming up, girl,” he whispered softly to the plane, as he ran a hand along the molded control stick. “You up for it?”

He closed his eyes, letting his mind drift a little, until he could almost hear the voice of the fighter speaking back to him. Then he smiled slowly, nodding as the voice told him what he wanted to hear.

*****

“Chief.”

Chief Corrin glanced up, startled by the calm greeting. “Captain.”

Weston waved his free hand as he stood there, “Don’t get up, Chief. You mind if I join you?”

She glanced at the tray held in one hand, then at the food in front of her and nodded. “Please.”

“Thank you,” he said, taking a seat across from her. “I wanted to congratulate you on the repairs you pushed through earlier. Good work, Chief.”

“We’ve got some good people on this boat, Sir,” she told him with a crooked smile. “They’re rough ‘round the edges, but I’m knocking the corners off.”

The Captain smiled at her as he took a bite of his sandwich, “I’m sure you are, Chief.”

“I have to admit, I didn’t think it would work so well, what with all the different branches tossed together,” she admitted, as she ate some of her soup. “But they pulled together tight in the pinch. Good swabs, all of em…, even the Air Force pukes.”

Eric chuckled softly, nodding, “that’s how they got here, Chief. Best of the best, across the board.”

“Now, I wouldn’t go that far,” Corrin grinned back. “They’re good swabs, yeah, but they’re not up to my old crew on the Tico. Not yet.”

“I have no doubt that you’ll find a way to get them there,” Weston told her.

She nodded glancing around the cafeteria, “they’re good kids, Sir. But they’re nervous.”

He nodded, “yeah. I figured they would be.”

“You might want to have a talk with ’em, just a few words before we get started,” she suggested mildly.

Eric cocked his head slightly, and shrugged, “maybe I will at that, Chief.”

“Might do you some good too, Cap’n,” she told him evenly. “If you don’t mind my saying.”

“I learned a long time ago, not to argue with a Chief,” Weston smiled. “Saves time.”

Corrin grinned ear to ear, “sounds like you had a good teacher somewhere along the line, Sir.”

*****

“Doctor…, what are you doing!?”

Palin looked up, confused, into the wide eyes of one of the lab techs, “I’m refining the translation matrix. Why?”

“Doctor…, we’re about to go into battle!” The lab-coated young man blurted out.

“So?”

“So… So? Doctor Palin, what good is that going to do us??”

Palin shrugged, “I’m not a soldier, Evan. I’m a scientist, who happens to be quite good with languages. My skills are unlikely to affect the outcome of this battle, but should we survive it, they might have an impact on our future relations with these people. So why shouldn’t I continue to work?”

The lab tech just stared, still wide-eyed.

Palin sighed and shoved a chair over to the young man, “here. Sit. Unless you have something more pressing to do.”

The young man sat down numbly and Palin passed a PDA to him, with a translation algorithm displayed on it. He looked at it for a moment, the looked back up at Palin. “What’s this?”

“That’s the sole transmission we’ve detected from the enemy ships,” Palin told him. “Our best guess is that it’s a request for reinforcements. Why don’t you run it through the computer and see if we have any historical analogues for it?”

“Historical analogues for an alien combat cipher??”

Palin shrugged, “One never knows, Evan. One never knows.”

*****

Lieutenant Jennifer Samuels tried to make herself relax, as she sat in the cockpit of the fighter. She couldn’t quite make the pre-flight jitters go away, something she hadn’t experienced in years. Not since her first shuttle flight.

Come on, Sam, she chastened herself, this is what you wanted. What you trained for. Don’t lose it now.

The words sounded nice, but they didn’t make her any calmer, as she sat there.

Archangel One was parked alongside the other ’Angels and she could feel them staring at her by times, as they checked their own fighters. She felt them wondering if she was up for it, just as she was wondering the same thing.

She’d already heard how Commander Michaels had cornered the Captain and all but risked Court martial over her assignment to the Flight. The worst thing was, at that moment, she wasn’t sure she blamed him. Michaels was a legend, he’d been with the ’Angels almost from the beginning and had tallied up a long list of victories, flying under the command of Captain Weston.

The Captain, even more so. Between the two of them, they had been responsible for some of the greatest victories of the Block War, and on Earth their names were synonymous with the Archangel Flight Group, even as the flight group had become synonymous with victory in the post War World.

Powerful images to live up to, yet that was what she’d wanted to do, ever since the first reports of Archangel missions filtered out through the news. In a world wired for sight and sound, it had still been a riveting image of the war, when the government public relations people began releasing the unedited mission records of the flight group.

For a nation struggling with the first devastating defeats of the World War and the oppressive weight of the Block’s troops pushing in from all sides, the ’Angels had been one of the symbols that turned things around.

Jennifer Samuels had to wonder, now that she was confronted with what she had wished for, how well was she going to stack up against those giants?

“Nervous?”

Jenny jumped. Or, rather, she jerked and went flying off the seat in the null gravity. Her quick reflexes let her hook the cockpit canopy with her fingers and push herself back, as she looked back to the source of the voice, but she almost wished she’d just kept flying off when she recognized Commander Michaels.

“No Sir,” she told him evenly.

“Bullshit,” he snorted in response. “Lieutenant, let me clue you into one thing, something Eric told me, before my first flight.”

She swallowed at his tone, but nodded.

“You can bullshit yourself all you want, I don’t care. You can lie to your mates about how scared you are, ‘cause Lord knows, they’re going to lie to you,” he flashed a crooked grin, then looked serious again. “But I’m the Honcho of this circus, and if I ask you a question…, any question, you can damn well bet I have a good goddamn reason for asking. So when I ask, you give me the truth. We clear?”

Jenny nodded. “Crystal.”

“Good.” He nodded once, “Nervous?”

“Yes Sir,” she told him evenly.

“Also good,” he told her evenly. “Don’t lose those butterflies. They’ll keep you alive, long enough to become an old timer, like me.”

She risked a smile at that, since Michaels wasn’t even twenty-eight, yet.

“But when we engage the interface, watch out for your nerves,” he told her. “You can mess up your stabilizers pretty bad if the plane can’t figure out what direction you want to jump. So nerves are okay, just don’t let them screw up your flying.”

Jennifer nodded. “Yes Sir.”

“Good,” he clapped the canopy with his hand. “Then I’ll let you get back to communing.”

“Sir?” She looked confused.

“Talking to your plane,” he smiled. “We all do it, Lieutenant. Stark raving lunatics, the lot of us.”

“Yes Sir,” she grinned in response. “I think I’ll fit in fine.”

“I’m sure you will, Lieutenant. I’m sure you will.”

*****

Captain Weston stepped back on the Bridge twenty minutes to the second, after he’d left it and shot Commander Roberts a look, as he crossed the deck to the central chair.

The Commander rose without comment, nodding respectfully as Weston sat down, then excused himself and left the Bridge.

“Enemy status?”

“Still on the predicted course, Captain,” Waters replied. “We’re now within one AU of the task group.”

“Understood,” Weston replied. “Lamont, inform all decks that we’re going to drop all nonessential power consumption, until further notice.”

“Aye Captain. Powering down all nonessentials,” Lamont replied, tapping the order.

The lights dimmed immediately, as did many of the displays that littered the Bridge and in a few moments, they were sitting in near darkness, as only the low powered red lamps joined the dim glow of the combat displays, as they slowly counted down the time to intercept.

Weston reached down to the arm of his chair feeling out the controls by touch toggling the ship-wide communicator.

“This is the Captain speaking,” he said firmly, looking ahead at the display. “I’d like to say a few words to everyone, so if you can…, take a moment to listen.”

*****

The cafeteria hushed, everyone looking up at the speakers that were built into the walls and ceiling.

“In…, a little over thirty minutes, we’ll be going into battle once more. The enemy has proven himself to be ruthless, having destroyed at least two entire worlds that we know of, and has obvious designs on a populated planet in this system.”

Faces darkened, even in the shadows that covered the room, some of the people looking down at ground.

“I… We won’t stand by and simply allow this,” the Captain’s voice said. “I don’t know if we’ll be able to stop it, but I do know that to let it simply… happen… would be a crime in itself.”

*****

Commander Roberts looked up as he finished stripping off his uniform, hand a few inches from the shower controls.

“We’ve already become more involved in this war than I would have liked,” the Captain said. “But each time we have proven that we are not playing out of our league, as many might have believed. Further, and more important, we… you have proven that you are exactly what the Earth believed you to be, when they assigned you to the Odyssey…”

*****

“… that you are the very best, that the Earth has to offer.”

Jennifer Samuels let out a long breath, laying her head back against the seat, as the Captain’s voice filled the deck around her and the other Archangels.

“You’ve proven that, and proven yourselves beyond all doubt so far as I’m concerned, and I am honored to be serving with each and every one of you.”

She smiled slightly, and the nerves dimmed a little as she felt herself nodding in agreement with the Captain’s sentiment.

“So, in this last battle before we go home, with one of the greatest discoveries ever made by man, I want you all to continue doing just what you have done and know that you have all secured your places in history.”

*****

Doctor Palin glanced up disinterestedly at the speakers, and reached over to shut them off. He stayed his hand when he saw the awed look on the technicians face and sighed, rolling his eyes and let the Captain drone on.

“Just one more fight,” Weston said over the speaker. “One more fight against an enemy as ruthless as any we’ve seen. Then we’ll be heading home.”

*****

Eric Weston took a breath, glancing around the Bridge to where everyone had turned to look at him.

Then he continued to speak.

“So if this is our last battle, for a while,” he let his voice grow a little harder, “let us make it their last battle… ever.”

“I want to go home with a victory painted on our bow, ladies and gentlemen,” he said sharply. “It’s not every day that we get to save a world. Let’s make sure that the name Odyssey is one hell of a challenge to live up to.”

He reached for the controls to the ship-wide communications again.

“That is all. Weston, out.”

Chapter 33

Commander Roberts stepped onto the Bridge twenty-five minutes after he’d left and noted that the rest of the senior staff had already manned their stations.

“Ensign, what’s the current status of our friends out there?” Captain Weston asked as he nodded in greeting. Roberts returned the nod and stood at his station as Waters looked up from his board.

“Our soft lock has been upgraded to a seventy percent solution, Captain. Our current estimates have them right…, here.”

Roberts looked at the board, as the section Waters pointed to was highlighted in red, while the Odyssey’s current position, glowed a steady blue. The two points in space were closing rapidly, as the icons and spatial reference points were constantly updated to include the latest ranging estimates.

“How long to our outer engagement range?”

“We’re looking at five minutes to extreme Pulse Torpedo range, Captain,” Waters replied, but frowned and shook his head. “But without a real time lock, we’d probably just give away our position for nothing.”

The Captain nodded. “Understood. Give me a range chart with incremental adjustments to our probable targeting solutions.”

“Aye Captain,” Waters replied instantly, tapping in a comment.

The screen lit up again, this time with a time-line, counting up from zero to one hundred percent in increments of five light-seconds, across the board.

“When we launch, we’ll be giving away our position anyway,” Weston said as he frowned at the board. “So I don’t want us too close. Lay in firing commands for one hundred light seconds.”

“Aye-Aye Captain,” Waters replied, leaning back down again as he went back to work.

“Commander,” Weston motions slightly, beckoning Roberts over.

The Executive Officer went over to the Central Command chair and came to stop at Weston’s right hand. “Yes, Sir?”

“I’ll want you manning the auxiliary Bridge again, Commander,” Weston told him seriously. “It’s vital that we don’t lose the chain of command, in the event of a ship board strike.”

Roberts nodded. “Aye Sir.”

The Captain looked down for a moment, before looking seriously at Roberts again, “you and I both know that the Auxiliary Bridge is a lot more vulnerable than here, so I appreciate your willingness, Commander.”

“It’s for the best, Sir,” Roberts responded. “As you say, we can’t afford to lose the chain of command, if worst comes to worst.”

Eric nodded, “I know that Jason, which is why I’m also going to attach an addendum to your orders.”

“Sir?”

“In the event that the main Bridge is incapacitated, under no circumstances are you to close with the enemy,” Weston said firmly. “I don’t believe that this is a necessary order, given your thoughts on our situation, but I want it on record. If you lose the ability to engage the enemy from a distance, you are to abandon the defence of this world and return to Earth via a circuitous route. Is that understood?”

“Aye Sir,” Roberts nodded, and frowned, “Sir… the troops dirt-side?”

“If you can get them out without risking my ship, do so. Otherwise, they’re on their own.”

“Aye-Aye Captain.”

Weston and Roberts looked at each other for a moment and Eric nodded his head. “Now get off my Bridge and do your duty, Commander.”

“Aye-Aye Captain,” the Commander repeated grimly, turned on his heel and marched off the Bridge.

Eric leaned forward, looking into the eyes of the young man handling the big guns of the NAC Odyssey. For a moment he held Waters’ eyes after the Captain just nodded. “All right, Mr. Waters. Let’s have a look at your combat programs. I want to see what you’ve put together from the data we gathered on these bastards.”

“Yes Sir. I’m sending it to…”

“No, put in on the main screen.”

“Aye Sir.”

*****

Commander Michaels watched as Paladin flipped a card across the twenty foot gap between him and Lieutenant Gabrielle ‘Racer’ Tracey. The Lieutenant caught the card easily and palmed it, as Paladin flipped the next one from the deck to the next player in the circle.

“Hey, Sammy baby!” Paladin yelled across to Samuels, smacking his gum as he did, “you in?”

“What?” Jennifer Samuels looked up, confused.

“You in?” Paladin repeated.

She saw the cards in his hands and stared for a minute before looking back at her instruments.

“Don’t look at those,” Paladin shook his head, a crooked grin on his face. “If you ain’t got it together by now, you’re checking out, anyway.”

“For Christ sakes, Alex!” Racer snapped, her face flaring.

“Hey, I’m just saying, is all,” the cocky pilot shrugged defensively. “You know it’s true.”

“Yeah, and I also know that, that’s the Captain’s plane, Paladin.” Racer glared at him. “It’s fuckin’ ready to fly, so don’t spook her.”

Paladin just shrugged again, still chewing the gum that had replaced the cigar that would normally be clenched in his teeth, while looking back at Samuels. “So? You in?”

Jennifer looked at him for another minute, and shrugged as she pulled herself up and out of the cockpit. She settled down on the nose of the fighter, straddling it in the zero gravity to hold her place and nodded. “Sure. What’s the game?”

“Five card stud?” Paladin smirked, flipped a card. “We’ll keep it simple for ya. Deuces wild. Five buck ante and the table limit is a fifty dollar bet, fair ’nuff?”

The card spun easily through the air in the zero gravity compartment and Jenny snatched it easily from the air as it twisted past.

“Sure,” she smirked. “We gonna float the pot in the middle of us all?”

“Nah,” Paladin flashed a toothy smile. “That’s the fun part. You gotta keep tally in yer head. Up to it?”

“Keep dealing the cards.”

*****

“We’re entering the engagement envelope now, Commander.”

“Thank you, Ensign,” Roberts said, not looking up.

He knew that the Captain wasn’t going to engage at extreme range, so there was no rush. “What’s the disposition of enemy forces?”

“Still continuing on course to the planet, Commander. They don’t appear to have changed their formation.”

Running fat and slow, Roberts hoped. He’d been looking over the reports from the ground fighting, as well as comparing the after action reports filed from each station concerning the alien ships. They weren’t too bright, when it came to combat maneuvers, but they seemed to learn fast.

That bothered him, perhaps more than anything else, because there was something about that fact that was itching at the back of his skull.

Something, he was missing.

Something important.

A warning buzzer sounded, interrupting his train of thought and he looked up sharply. “Ensign?”

“The Captain’s set all stations to action alert,” the Ensign said tensely.

Roberts looked over the board, noting that the scale of the battle zone was rapidly dwindling, as the range closed. He nodded shortly, “the Captain will open the engagement shortly. Stand to for battle-stations.”

“Aye-Aye Sir.”

*****

“What’s our lock status?”

“Soft lock Sir, but we’re approaching sixty-five percent.” Waters responded.

“Charge even tubes, two through twelve.”

“Aye Captain. Charging tubes.”

In one of the old submarines, or any Navy ship, that order would have sent people on the weapons decks scrambling to load torpedoes into the tubes, or even double check all the systems involved, but on the Odyssey, the military had been forced to bow even more to the Gods of automation.

The Pulse Tubes charged from the capacitor banks that circled the habitats of the Odyssey, draining the charge in mere seconds to bring themselves up to full battle ready status. They could only hold that charge for a mere eight minutes, before they would lose the power needed to generate and fire one of the lethal bursts, but Captain Weston didn’t plan to hold them that long.

Not that long at all.

“Lamont, have Engineering begin recharging the coils.”

“Sir… but…, Aye Sir,” Lamont caught herself, and tapped in the order.

Down in the bowels of the ship, cold reactors hummed back to life in response, while on the Bridge, the senior staff watched the range tick down, while the lock slowly firmed up.

“One hundred fifty light seconds, Captain. Lock is now seventy-five percent.”

Weston nodded, but said nothing.

The tension slowly began to climb as the numbers fell, until Waters spoke up almost a minute later.

“One hundred, twenty light seconds.”

“Prepare for firing sequence,” Weston ordered.

“Aye Captain. Firing sequence entered.”

“Lock it into the computer.”

“Locked.”

“Engage the sequence.”

Waters nodded, “Sequence engaged.”

With that command the Ensign sat back, watching as the computer took over.

His program was in control now, and all he could do was watch the data it was throwing back and step in, if something changed drastically. The actual firing would be up to the computer because at the ranges they were dealing with, any minute variance in timing or arc would result in a miss of spectacular proportions.

The Odyssey had to close another eighteen light seconds, before the program would open fire, which translated into another seventy seconds of waiting. Give or take.

*****

An audible hum distracted Jennifer, as she tossed two cards back across the thirty feet of open space to the dealer, forcing Paladin to dislodge himself, to catch the cards. He scowled at her, as he pulled himself back into place.

“Be careful, would ya? I don’t feel like swimming all over this hold looking for the cards,” he growled, thumbing another pair from the deck and sending them back to her.

She caught them, still looking around.

“Relax,” Michaels said looking up from a PDA he was working on. “That’s just the secondary generators coming online. We’re getting ready to fire.”

She nodded, taking a breath. “I knew that Sir. Just…”

“First time you heard them from the nose of an Archangel,” Paladin smirked. “Everything sounds just a bit more dangerous, don’t it?”

“Well, I know that your voice keeps sending chills down my spine,” she said sarcastically as she settled back down. “That count?”

Racer laughed, “nah. Trust me girl, his voice scares all of us anyway.”

A few of the pilots chuckled along with them; even Paladin himself and the card game went on, as the feeling of life started returning to the big ship.

*****

“Firing in ten seconds, Captain,” Waters said, unnecessarily.

“Understood, Ensign,” Weston replied. “Lieutenant Daniels?”

“Yes Sir?” The Navigator glanced over at him.

“Prepare for evasive maneuvering, Lieutenant. Thrusters only.”

“Thrusters only, Aye Sir.”

“Lamont?”

“Yes Sir?” Susan Lamont stiffened.

Eric Weston looked at the clock, then nodded, “sound battle stations, Ensign.”

“Aye-Aye Cap… Captain,” Susan stumbled over her words slightly, as the deck transmitted the high frequency pulse of the tubes, firing through her feet. “Sounding battle stations.”

*****

From the outside of the NAC Odyssey, no sound is heard when the brilliant flashes of light mark the launch of the six bursts of charged energy.

The Pulse Torpedoes just flash into existence in front of the proud ship and then flashed off through the black just as quickly, until they were nothing but another star in the wasteland to the unaided human eye. Though they were not light speed weapons, they were very close, as the total mass of each of the weapons actually approached zero, give or take a few nano-grams.

They left the Odyssey at just over .9c and would take about ten seconds more to cross the gulf, than the light they cast.

Which would give their targets ten seconds to see what was coming, and marginally less time to react.

*****

“Thrusters!” Weston called. “Take us below the system ecliptic, relative to the enemy!”

“Aye Sir,” Daniels said, entering the pre-coded maneuver with a single tap of his fingers. “Engaging thrusters now.”

The Odyssey shivered as her maneuvering thrusters, usually intended for low velocity maneuvers while under port speed restrictions, kicked into action and flared hotly as they strained to shove the big ship, out of the line of any likely fire.

“Keep an eye on passive sensors,” Eric ordered tensely. “I want to know if we get pinged.”

“Aye Captain.” Waters responded.

*****

Jennifer tightened her grip on the fighter’s nose with her legs, as the deck seemed to pitch slightly and a wail of steel and groan of metal echoed through the deck.

This time she was ready for it and didn’t miss her throw, when she sent her card back to the dealer. The Cee Emm field was marginally less effective at muffling sharp maneuvers below decks, due to the absence of any sort of gravity, so the stress on the ship and the littler inertia her body and everything else had, relative to the real universe, was pushed a little bit more in null gravity.

“Captain’s got Daniels standing on the stick,” Racer said with a half-smile.

“That’s what you get, when you put a fighter pilot in command of a ship,” Paladin returned the grin continuing flipping three cards to another pilot. “One seriously neurotic ship.”

Low chuckles passed around the deck, the pilots willing to take any chance to burn away unneeded stress.

“Say,” Jenny spoke up. “Where did you guys pick up the poker thing? I mean, I get the game and all but…”

“How’d we get the idea to try it in null?” Paladin asked with a smirk.

“Well… Yeah,” she admitted, “I mean, this is your first tour in space, right? I mean…”

“We know what you mean,” Racer replied, with a small smile. “The poker game is traditional. Goes back a lot of years. The Null deal, well we figured out how to manage that during our null grav training.”

Another pilot laughed, “Yeah. We almost went bonkers that first week. Took us forever to decide that there just was no-good way to float the pot, between us.”

“Yeah,” Paladin grinned, “Remember the zip-lock incident?”

Several more laughed, but Racer looked more than a little chagrined.

“Hey, my wristwatch got caught in the bag, all right!?”

“Says you,” Paladin returned, not missing a beat in his dealing. “I still think you were trying to palm the pot.”

Racer rolled her eyes disgustedly, “Oh yes, like I really needed twenty-two bucks in loose change.”

Commander Michaels watched the banter with a half-smile, remembering the game himself. As he recalled Gabrielle had won that hand anyway, on a straight flush, so any accusations of ‘stealing’ the pot were more than slightly due to sour grapes.

*****

“Time?”

“Weapons will be TOT in thirty-two seconds, Captain.”

“Keep us moving, Lieutenant,” Weston ordered, rapidly making in calculations in his head.

If the torpedoes were going to strike in just over thirty seconds, the enemy forces would be picking up the first light speed evidence of their strike, in just over twenty. Given that the Odyssey was now altering its course to a slightly more divergent tack, they were still over ninety light seconds from the target ships, and about two minutes from being able to read any solid reactions in the enemy fleet.

Unless he ordered the active sensors back online.

The back of Eric’s knuckles itched, as he contemplated the satisfying influx of data that would follow that order.

Targeting solutions, enemy positions, full course vectors and even weapon energy signatures would be at his fingertips, if he could only give that order.

However, it would also give the enemy a positive lock on his position and even though they might have it already, they may well not have it, yet.

So he kept his peace and watched as the Odyssey’s course continued to drop under the system ecliptic, as her thrusters sought valiantly to shove the big warship along a new path.

*****

Across the reaches of space that lay between them and the alien task force under an alien Commander was thinking many of the same thoughts, as Captain Eric Weston.

They didn’t know their enemy, their weapons and tactics didn’t match the target, they had been sent to eliminate.

The ship profile was unknown.

Its power signature absurdly weak.

And yet it was ripping through warships with an ease that was…, disturbing.

The Masters would not be concerned with the loss of a few ships, or even all of them, if the task was accomplished. However, because of this one ship, five warrior ships had to be diverted from other priority targets, in order to take this system according to plan.

That wasn’t an acceptable situation, even if it was a necessary one.

The Alien Command of the ship was grimly considering the impact the diversion would have on the extermination, when the first warning sensor went off. It was just a minor alert, but the response was quick, just the same. In three seconds, it had been determined that the alert wasn’t tripped by any natural satellite of this system, as this alert was wont to do.

Two seconds more were required to confirm that it didn’t match any known configuration in the target species inventory.

Another four, identified the source of the alert positively as weapon fire from the unknown ship.

Three more seconds would have been required to mount an attempt at defence.

However, two seconds shy of that limit; all hell broke loose across the small armada.

*****

The Odyssey’s pulse torpedoes carried a very small electrical charge, designed to prevent the weapons from accidently intersecting the position of another torpedo or, obviously, the walls of the launching tubes.

This tended to cause the weapons to spread slightly as they flew, which made the targeting calculations that much more important, especially at long ranges. So by the time this spread of torpedoes reached their target location, they had spread enough that three of the weapons were outside positive lock range of any of the enemy ships and kept on flying past as their three identical siblings went into terminal guidance, their very nature causing them to be attracted, to any matter in their path. They corkscrewed suddenly as they came into range, and slammed into a ship apiece, sending plumes of plasma into space as they annihilated huge chunks of matter, with their explosions.

The three damaged ships faltered in their course, shifting slightly under the impact, then slowly returned to their place in formation, as their power came back.

By that time, they had calculated the direction the attack had come from and had turned their sensors outward, pouring more and more power in the search for their unseen foe, as they altered their course to intercept.

*****

“They’re coming around, Captain!” Waters snapped as the changes in the enemy task force finally were shown on the plot.

“All of them?”

“Aye Sir, all of them,” The young man’s tone was a little grimmer now.

Weston frowned, the thermal bloom on the sensors a few seconds earlier had confirmed at least three separate strikes, which seemed to tally with their track of the pulse torpedoes they had launched. A fifty/fifty hit-miss ratio wasn’t great, but if his luck held through, Eric would take it and be glad.

“Course?” He asked tensely.

“Looks like…,” Daniels frowned, tapping out a confirmation. Finally, he let out a long breath and half smiled, not in amusement, but in relief. “Heading for our previous position.”

“They haven’t seen us yet…,” someone whispered, but Weston ignored them.

If that was true, they still had the advantage. They knew, more or less, where the enemy was, and the enemy didn’t have a clue where the Odyssey was lurking.

“Kill thrusters!”

“Killing thrusters, Aye Sir,” Daniels responded, instantly killing the thrusters with a tap of his fingers.

“Mr. Daniels, adjust our stance…, one percent thrust only…,” Weston ordered. “Put our nose in line with the enemy’s projected position in…, one minute.”

“Adjusting stance. Aye Captain.”

And outside, in the cold silence of space, a tiny series of puffs silently and slowly pushed the nose of the Odyssey around until they were pointing almost back in the direction they had come.

“Waters, calculate targeting coordinates for odd-numbered tubes, one through eleven.”

“Aye Captain. Calculating for tubes one through eleven.”

“Lamont,” Eric half turned. “Charge status on tubes two through twelve?”

“Two and four are now charging, Captain. We’ll be ready to fire in five minutes. Six through twelve will take another ten minutes.”

Eric nodded turning back to his displays. Having all the capacitors charged and ready, and not drained by a recent transition, meant that he’d get a second round of shots from all tubes in this battle.

It might be enough.

Probably not, but it might.

*****

Once again the unknown enemy was proving to be an unforeseen obstacle to the Plan. The ship was not along the projected path that its weapons had followed and the fleet had wasted time, in the search.

The vessel had to be of unprecedented technology in order to deploy as much power as it held and yet register so low on the threat rating system.

This was disturbing on many levels of course, but mostly because the weapons and warriors the fleet had been deployed with were intended for use against the target. This new enemy was not in its database, and there were no appropriate counter actions it could take.

Reluctantly, it ordered the fleet sensors to full spread.

*****

“We’re getting heavy spikes all through the EM range, Captain!”

“Have they spotted us?” Weston asked tensely, watching the countdown to firing. It was too soon, they needed another few seconds to fire, then almost a full minute and a half for the shots to land.

“I don’t think so, Captain,” Waters answered first. “I think…, it looks like an omnidirectional burst and we’re far enough out that the pulse density is under our detection threshold.”

“But is it under theirs?” Eric muttered under his breath.

“What was that, Sir?”

“Nothing, Lieutenant. Hold our course.”

“Aye-Aye Captain.”

The tension continued to mount as the timer counted down, then the odd-numbered pulse tubes opened fire.

“Thrusters! Half power, Lieutenant,” Weston ordered. “Take us up above the enemy this time, but maintain our current horizontal heading.”

“Aye Aye Captain. Firing thrusters.”

The Odyssey groaned again, though quieter this time, as she tipped her nose up and began to climb back toward the ecliptic. This time the big ship only fired thrusters that were pointed more or less away from the enemy, as she sought once more to evade detection.

*****

In a conventional battlefield, one minute was a lifetime, ninety seconds a lifetime and a half. But in space, such time felt like eternity, especially when waiting on information that has to travel that distance just to get to you before you can make any choices based on it.

The Torpedoes were the first legs, of that ‘data transfer’, though the only message they carried was death. They crossed the expanse, blazing a trail across the black with the impunity that belonged to single-minded things and came flashing right in on their targets, just as calculated.

The Alien Command noted their arrival, nine seconds before impact and began standard countermeasures against projectile attacks less than one second after that. The ships maneuvered away from each other, spreading out as they targeted the incoming weapons with lasers and opened fire.

Each of them scored direct hits within four seconds of firing, and yet not one of them had the slightest effect on the incoming energy pulses.

The reported failure came as a shock, but no more so than the slamming impact as five of the six slammed into the fleet and more plumes of destruction rose up.

Then the second leg of the ‘data transfer’ began as the energy from the attack was transmitted back to the Odyssey.

*****

“Hit!” Waters fist clenched a tight grin on his face. “They spread their formation at the last second, Captain.”

Eric Weston grimaced automatically, though it was good news. Against a pulse torpedo attack your best defence was to tighten your formation, presenting a smaller target for the charged weapons to lock onto. You would probably still suffer a strike or two, but the spread of the weapons was likely to push at least some of the shots out of range.

“Captain…, I think we got one of them.” Waters said a moment later, looking at his boards. “In fact, I’m almost certain that I’m looking at a catastrophic failure of a reactor here.”

Weston called up the information and found he had to agree. It looked that the odds were down to five to one.

“All right, lock in firing coordinates for…”

“Captain!” Waters interrupted him, “They’re up to something! Fleet formation is breaking up…”

“He’s right, Captain.” Daniels added. “It looks like they’re spreading out… It might be a search patter…”

“Shit!”

“Waters!” Eric Weston snapped.

“Sorry Sir,” The young man blinked. “But Captain… I think they just engaged whatever stealth systems they’ve got… We’re losing them, Sir.”

Weston glared at the young man, but finally flipped his display up again, looking at the information as the hostile red icons faded, then finally vanished one by one from the plotter screen.

Shit.

“Hide and seek,” Eric Weston said out loud.

“Excuse me, Sir?”

“Hide and seek,” he repeated. “And they’re ‘it’.”

Chapter 34

“Where are they, Ithan?”

The young woman started as Tanner stepped up behind her, glancing back in surprise, then quickly caught herself and turned to the board she was watching.

“We’re not certain, Admiral,” she said tensely. “We think that there are Drasin ships, at these points…”

Rael saw three fuzzy and indistinct symbols appear on the projection, separating quickly at the scale, the system map was set at. “The others?”

“We don’t know,” she said reluctantly. “They must have some sort of cloaking systems, Admiral. They’ve vanished from our sight. We only catch intermittent signals from them now, and it’s not reliable.”

Tanner grimaced, but nodded as he gently patted the woman’s shoulder. “And the Odyssey?”

“Gone from our scanners,” she said simply. “We lost them after they fired the second time.”

Rael Tanner, Admiral of a nonexistent fleet, nodded grimly as he took a step back. The Odyssey had eliminated one ship that they could tell, its reactor explosion illuminating its death for all the system to see. That on its own was a feat unmatched by any ship, in the Colonies ‘fleet’ to this point.

Two others were possible kills, though they had not been able to confirm those. And that left three of the Drasin still out there, looking to kill the men and women of the Odyssey.

And the entire people of the planet on which he stood.

Tanner hissed in frustration, fists clenched and nails biting into his palm. “Very well, Ithan. Thank you.”

*****

“Find them for me, Mr. Waters.”

“Aye-Aye Sir,” the young man said, eyes staring at his displays, as he tried to ignore the feeling of dread that had begun to mount.

It had been over a half hour since the enemy had gone to stealth, their last vectors indicating that they had broken up their formation, in a possible search pattern. In that time, Captain Weston had brought the Odyssey above the system elliptic and slowed her to a relative stop with an asteroid belt that floated under her keel, only a few thousand kilometers away.

With luck, even if they were spotted, they’d appear to be a rogue rock that had been knocked from the Trojan point, by a comet or other stellar event.

“Pulse transmission!” Lamont yelled as the event was communicated to her from the Electronic Warfare people.

“Locate it!” Weston ordered, even though they were already doing so.

“They’re working on it, Sir,” she told him tightly, waiting.

Always the waiting.

Finally Lamont shook her head, “couldn’t do it, Sir. We’ve got a tangent, but it’s fuzzy.”

“Damn,” Eric muttered, then nodded. “All right… Helm, I want our nose pointed down that tangent…, softly.”

“Aye-Aye Sir. Softly, Sir,” Daniels responded, taking the controls lightly and tapping out a few puffs of the propellant.

The big ship came around on its axis slowly pointing its nose along the direction they’d been given.

“Anything on the main passives?”

“Negative, Captain,” Waters shook his head. “It’s all quiet.”

“Ahead, dead slow, Lieutenant.”

“Dead slow. Aye Captain,” Daniels repeated, easing the thrusters on.

A low rumble shook the ship, as it fought against its own inertia to start moving, then slowly died out as they came underway.

“Keep your eyes on those sensors.”

“Aye Sir.”

“Yes Sir.”

Eric sighed softly, leaning back in his chair and wished that he was back in a fighter, where things were simpler.

*****

“Damn it, I wish we were out there, doing something.”

“Shut up, Paladin,” Racer said curtly, checking her cards before tucking them into the oxygen hose of her flight suit. “We go out when we go out, you know that.”

“I know, I know,” the sharp-faced man said with a wry smile. “It’s just the waiting, it gets to me.”

“Gets to everyone, Alex,” Stephen Michaels said, looking up. “Don’t worry, we’ll get our shot, soon enough.”

Alexander ‘Paladin’ Kerry nodded in agreement glancing over at Jennifer Samuels. “You betting or folding?”

Jennifer glanced down at her cards frowning as she tried to remember the pot total. Let’s see…, Paladin opened with a two-dollar raise, everyone went in, and Racer saw him and bumped him up another three. Crys and Ice folded, Paladin stayed in… So that brings the total up to. . , . Hmmm, carry the three… forty-one bucks.

“I’m in,” she said. “I’ll see the three and raise you five.”

“Ooo, big spender,” Paladin grinned.

“I’m out,” Racer shrugged, slipping her cards from the hose and setting them spinning in front of her.

“It’s you and me, coal baby,” Paladin smirked. “You got the assets to back up your play?”

“You wanna see ’em, you gotta pay the toll,” Samuels smirked.

The deck rumbled around them again and they all looked around for a moment.

“Those were the secondary thrusters,” Racer said, looking back. “We’re moving, again.”

They all nodded, taking a few moments to wonder what toward, Paladin looking back toward Jennifer and tried to gauge her face.

“Screw it,” he muttered. “I fold.”

“I’d say come to ‘mamma’ while chortling and grabbing the chips, but…,” Jennifer smirked and shrugged as she flipped her cards back.

Paladin caught them, glancing briefly at them as he tucked them back in the deck. His eyes widened and he looked up, “you were fucking bluffing!”

“Hey! You don’t pay, you don’t peek, boyo!” She growled, stabbing a finger at him.

“Yeah… but!”

“No buts, ‘Paladin’. Try that again, you’ll eat the deck,” she told him in no uncertain words.

“Yikes…” Racer grinned, “Don’t wanna mess with this one, Pal. She’s a cardsharp.”

Paladin pursed his lips and grinned, “Yeah. I think she is. Howzabout it, ‘Cardsharp’? Another hand?”

Jennifer Samuels stared for a moment, and then smiled as she realized that she’d just been pegged with a call sign. “Deal ’em, Pally.”

*****

“There’s something on the passives, Captain,” Waters said, his voice uncertain.

“What have you got?”

“An intermittent signal, twenty degrees left declination from our course. It’s almost directly on the elliptic, but I can’t… quite… see it.”

“Visual spectrum?”

“A shadow, Sir,” Waters replied. “I keep losing it in the background.”

That could be anything, Weston thought grimly. Only there was a signal in this direction.

“Adjust our heading to intercept,” he said, making his choice.

“Aye-Aye Captain,” Daniels responded instantly, making the changes in his board.

*****

On the Auxiliary Bridge, Commander Roberts watched the same displays that were available to his Captain, dark eyes narrowed as he tried to fathom the immense game of the hide and seek game, they were currently engaged in.

Out there, somewhere in the immensity of space, there were five ships, trying to kill them. In here, five hundred people turned everything they had to destroying those ships, in turn. It was an old game, the Commander knew, just being played on a brand new playground.

“Anything on that bogey, yet?”

“Nothing, Sir,” the woman at the tactical slot shook her head. “It’s just a shadow.”

The Commander nodded eyes boring into the screen as the tension around him became palpable.

It must be what the submariners felt, he decided, when hunting a surface fleet, or even more so, when they hunted one of their own. This feeling of vulnerability that wouldn’t go away, like the only defence they had, was a fragile silence that could be pierced, at any moment. That, somewhere, there was someone who was watching them, even now.

The skin between Jason’s shoulder blades itched as he tried to shake the feeling.

*****

“This is impossible!”

“Nothing is impossible, lad,” Palin retorted mildly to the young technician’s outburst, not bothered in the slightest by it. “Just improbable.”

“Easy for you to say,” the young man muttered. “I can’t make heads or tails out of this.”

“Nor can I.” Palin shrugged. “But that’s not the point. Sometimes all it takes is one block falling into place, everything else will just…, come together.”

The tech just shook his head and tapped a command into his computer.

Palin stiffened when a new sound played over the speakers.

“That’s not the same signal,” he said firmly.

“What? Of course it is…,” Evan, the tech, replied. “I’ve been playing it for an hour now…”

“The pitch is different, and the pattern…,” Palin turned and pierced the young man with a glare. “Where did you get that?”

“I’m telling you, doctor, it’s the same signal…,” Evan replied, exasperated, calling up the folder. He pointed to the screen, “There? See it’s…”

Palin waited for a moment, and then prompted him. “What? What is it?”

“It’s a new file,” Evan muttered, staring at it. “Where did this come from, now I wonder…, Oh!”

“Oh?”

“It was just received. A pulse signal came in over the forward spires…”

“Play it.”

“Doctor it’s probably just…”

“Play it,” Palin repeated, voice hard.

“Uh… as you wish, Doctor,” the technician replied, hitting the play key again.

*****

“It’s one of them, Captain,” Waters said softly. “Lying quiet down there, but it is one of them.”

Eric nodded, leaning forward, “how many tubes do we have?”

“All but two are charged, Captain.”

“Prime tubes one through four for sequential fire.”

“Aye-Aye Captain.”

“Range to target?” Weston asked softly.

“Eighty-three light-seconds,” came the reply.

“Hold our course. Fire on my command.”

The tension mounted as the light-seconds slowly counted down, each tick of light as the display changed, sent an imperceptible shiver down the spines of each man and woman present.

As the range dropped to under seventy-five light-seconds, Eric nodded his head to Waters and gave the command, “fire.”

This time, the computer had less time to plot a course prediction for the enemy, but the ship was also flying more slowly than before and the range was closer than either of the previous shots. The tubes fired sequentially, according to the Captain’s orders, each Pulse of energy being blasted clear of the ship and given a full half second gap, before the next shot followed.

When all four shots had been fired, Eric immediately snapped his next command to the helm.

“Alter course, four-one-one-mark-positive-twelve. Thrusters only, Lieutenant. Keep us above the ecliptic, this time.”

“Aye-Aye Captain. Course to Four-One-One-Mark-Plus-Twelve. Thrusters only,” came the automatic repetition.

Around them the rumble of thrusters and groan from the ship itself, as they once again shifted course.

“Stick and move, Lieutenant,” Eric told Daniels. “Stick and move.”

“Yes Sir.”

*****

“I think we just registered the Odyssey, Admiral!”

“Where is she?” Rael came over.

“The green icon, Admiral.”

Tanner looked up at the display, noting the information appended to the icon, “what are they shooting at, Ithan?”

“We have a soft reflection in that area, Admiral, but I’m not certain. We’ll have to wait for the light-speed return.”

Tanner grimaced, but nodded in reluctant acceptance.

*****

Seventy-five light-seconds was a long distance for anything to travel, even light itself, when you consider that most cultures take centuries or longer to realize that it even did travel. For anything substantially slower that distance was a prohibitively long way.

For the four Pulse torpedoes from the Odyssey, however, it took just over eighty seconds to cross the void and arrive at their target. The range meant a relatively shorter gap between their arrival and the light and energy they projected, which to the alien warship meant that much less time to react.

The Alien Command saw them coming, though, and opened fire with lasers again, only to have much the same effect. Firing light at an energy weapon was very nearly pointless, and this reaction had been expected, so the order went out at the same time and fighters began to pour from the big ship.

The problem, such as it was, was that the reaction time had been calculated on a ten second period in which they could react. In each previous time, that was what the enemy weapons had given them.

This time, they had a little less than eight.

The first of the fighters were just sliding into place as a screen, when the initial strike smashed into their formation, obliterating the formation and the vast majority of the fighters, and opening a hole in them for the remaining three.

Fired sequentially, the Pulse Torpedoes exhibited much smaller degrees of variance in their course while in flight, their like charges not being able to push them apart in a ‘shotgun’ like spread affect. Instead, they flew straight and true, which is why a sequential attack is preferred against single targets, at any range.

The remaining three shots slammed into the ship, even as its fighters scrambled to leave its decks, ripping the alien war craft to pieces in an explosion of light and energy as its reactor containment was annihilated.

*****

Seventy-four seconds after they had struck, the Odyssey’s Bridge surged with the exhilarated rush of the kill, as the catastrophic display of light and energy etched itself on their sensors.

“It’s a kill, Sir!”

Eric nodded grimly, eyes already watching the screens for the next one, “we’ve got four more out there, people. Find them before they find us.”

“Aye-Aye Captain,” they said together, the energy of the moment carrying their enthusiasm.

That enthusiasm, however, wore thin as the minutes turned slowly to an hour and still there was nothing on the screens, as they gently cut through the system, on a ballistic course.

The empty space of a star system made the battlefields of Earth look like a child’s playpen, by comparison. Even discounting all the, rather large, solid objects that one could hide behind, it was impossible to scan more than a small percentage of the skies. And, even if you could, there was every chance that you wouldn’t know what you were looking at, when you saw it.

It made for a very ironic way of literally being ‘bored to death’.

*****

“That’s two,” the Ithan breathed in near disbelief.

Tanner didn’t blame her; it was beyond belief that any one ship could stand up to the force that had ground the best fleet his people had been able to mount, to dust. The Odyssey and Captain Weston were marvels beyond marvels, as far as he was concerned.

Now if only the Forge would finish their work, so HE could do something productive.

Anything productive.

The Admiral gritted his teeth, a decidedly uncivilized snarl showing them to anyone with the courage to face him.

Had it not been for the Odyssey, fighting a war that was not theirs, this planet would be dead, before the Forge could have become a factor at all.

On such whimsical flickers of the universe, rested the fate of an entire world.

*****

“Radio pulse!” Waters’ voice was excited as he looked at the signal.

“Tracking its source now, Captain,” Lamont answered the question he had yet to formulate. “We got a clearer bead on this one. The Electronic Warfare department is narrowing it down to a tighter tangent.”

“Thank you, Susan,” Eric said clearly. “My compliments to them. Mr. Daniels, bring our bow around, if you please?”

“Aye-Aye Captain, coming around. Thrusters only.” Came the answer.

The Odyssey rumbled and moaned as she came around again, her nose dipping down into the gravity well of the red giant star, toward the source of the last transmission.

“We’re lined up, Sir.”

“Very well, Lieutenant. Take us ahead…, dead slow.”

“Dead slow, Aye Captain.”

*****

A chirp sounded through the lab, startling the young tech as he looked around for the cause.

“Relax,” Palin told him. “I inserted a command into the system to alert me, if we detected another radio transmission. Call it up, would you please?”

“Ah… Yes Doctor,” Evan replied, tapping out a command.

A new signal, audibly identical to the others, as far as Evan was concerned, filled the room and Palin frowned and leaned back as he closed his eyes.

“Doctor?”

“Shh…,” Palin said softly. “Place it on a continuous loop, if you please?”

“Uh… Yes Sir.”

The file played, over and over again, as Evan watched Palin rock in his chair, with his eyes closed.

“It’s very close to the last one, but quite different from the first,” the linguist said, frowning. “There are three sequences that repeat in both. But they have slight differences from each other…, something familiar there…, but it escapes me at the moment.”

The technician shrugged helplessly, not knowing what he could possibly say.

“Play all three…, no, just the last two. Continuous loop.”

“Yes Doctor.”

*****

The tension mounted again as they Bridge staff found themselves all staring at the displays that constituted everything that their passive arrays could feed them. In this game of cat and mouse, or hide and seek, the first side to see the other would be the victor and they were determined that they would not miss the enemy for the lack of a pair of eyes.

“Nothing yet, Captain,” Waters said unnecessarily, eyes glued to the board.

Eric just grunted in response, his own eyes watching the Captain’s displays. The enemy had to be there somewhere, though perhaps they learned from their last mistakes.

He expanded his display’s range to look outside the cone, the RDF tangent had indicated, looking for anything suspicious.

“Damn it…,” Waters cursed under his breath. “It’s all the interference from the star, Captain. It’s making it damn near impossible to see anything.”

“I know that, Mr. Waters. Just keep looking,” Weston said calmly, though he noted that the young man had a good point.

Whether on purpose or by accident, this one had managed to set itself between the system’s primary and the Odyssey. Normally this might aid them, by providing a bright background in which to look for a dark ship, however, the interference generated by the star was wreaking havoc on the delicate reception systems.

Something about that just wasn’t sitting right with Eric, either. What were the odds of the enemy just happening to appear there, at that angle?

Slim to none was Weston’s guess and he opened his mouth to order them to break off, but then frowned and held his peace. Sometimes you went with your gut, but usually the numbers were the best path. Knowing when to draw the line was the hardest skill one could master, and Eric didn’t think it was the time, just yet.

Their best bet was purely visual-based sensors; however those were relatively easy to spoof in this situation, as the Odyssey herself had proven, with the ‘black hole’ settings on their adaptive armor.

“She could be right there…,” Waters whispered. “Right out there, just waiting…”

Eric Weston was about to respond when the comm went off, blaring, as someone dialled into the bridge. He slapped the controls, cutting the noise off and snarled into the device. “God dammit, whoever this is I’m a little busy right now…”

“Captain! Captain!” A very excited voice came over the speakers, causing Weston to frown.

“Doctor Palin?” He asked. “How did you get access to this line?”

“Yes Captain, I just made a discovery…!”

“Doctor, if you don’t mind, I’m in the middle of a battle up here…”

“What? Oh, yes, yes… but you see it’s a coordinate system!”

Eric closed his eyes, rubbing them with his right hand. “What?”

“The transmissions, Captain! They were reporting a series of coordinates!” Palin babbled on. “It’s fascinating, you see they use a trinary numbering system and…”

“Doctor! I’m busy up here…, Wait,” Weston trailed off, frowning. “Coordinates? Are you sure?”

“Yes Captain. Quite sure.”

“I’ll have to talk to you, later. Weston out,” Eric cut the line as he looked around, trying to make a choice as his gut and his mind argued two different courses.

Slowly he lifted a hand, his mouth opening and closing, finally he straightened in his seat, slapped open a ship-wide channel, and started snapping orders.

“All stations, this is Captain Weston. We are about to go to full military power. All Stations, I say again, Full Military Power.”

“Lamont, contact engineering. I want all systems to full power,” he ordered. “Waters, do we have enough for a full power tachyon pulse?”

Waters blinked, checking his controls, “yes Sir, but only if we kill recharge on two of our tubes.”

“Do it,” Weston ordered. “And for God’s sake, kill the black hole settings! Bring the armor back to maximum general deflection!”

“Aye-Aye Captain!”

*****

The big ship began to hum as her core leapt back to life, power feeding into previously dormant systems, as she gave up any pretext at hiding, her dull, black exterior suddenly shifting and changing, until she was visually an almost pure white.

At the same time, her running lights came online, casting out the shadows that had covered up her name and numbers, causing the NAC Odyssey, to roar to life even as she announced her resurrection with a sudden blast of tachyons.

The massless little particles jumped out from the ship, spreading far and wide as they went out in every direction, looking for things to bounce off of. Omnidirectionally, her detection range was limited, as the Odyssey simply didn’t have enough power to generate that many tachyons, but this time it didn’t matter.

*****

“Mother of God.”

Roberts didn’t look up to see who had said that, in fact, he nearly seconded the statement himself.

“How’d they get so close?” Someone else demanded.

That was a good question, Roberts knew. One that he couldn’t answer, though to be honest, he was more interested in how Captain Weston had guessed they were there.

On the screen, previously blank, there were now three icons in hostile blood red, all closing on the Odyssey, from less than sixty light-seconds.

Chapter 35

“Hostile contacts, port and starboard!” Waters yelled out automatically as the lights came back to full power, from their minimal status. “They’re moving dead slow, Captain!”

“That won’t last!” Weston snapped. “Ahead, All flank!”

“All Flank, Aye Sir!” Daniels snapped, slamming the controls hard forward.

“Sir! We have another one along our course!” Waters warned his Captain.

“I’m aware of that, Mr. Waters,” Eric told him. “Bring all forward weapons online and give me a narrow arc tachyon ping, as soon as we have power.”

“Aye-Aye, Sir.”

Weston gripped the arms of his chair tightly as the numbers started to drop, the Odyssey racing against the enemy to see who would get their ship to full power first. If he was lucky, he’d taken them by surprise, with the sudden surge to full military power, but there was no way to tell how quickly they could respond. If they were on the ball, or if their technology was faster than his, the Odyssey was in a seriously bad situation.

“The enemy is accelerating,” Waters sounded calmer now, which was good.

“Trying to catch us in a pincer, Ensign,” Weston said, calmer than he felt.

“Aye Sir.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Eric said after a moment, looking at his displays. “Our acceleration curve is almost as good as theirs and we’ve got the jump on them. Just pay attention to the one in front of us.”

“Aye Sir,” Waters said looking up. “Captain, if they hit us with their lasers, even our best general armor setting isn’t likely to…”

“I’m aware of that too, Ensign,” Weston cut him off. “Don’t forget, they’re still sixty light seconds out and they don’t know our acceleration curve. No way can they predict where we’re going to be when their lasers strike.”

“Aye Sir,” Waters sounded relieved.

Weston decided not to remind him that the craft down angle, from them was staring at an essentially stable target and wouldn’t need to do much prediction. The tense look in the man’s shoulders told him that he didn’t need to; Waters had figured that out on his own.

Eric’s eyes glanced to the clock.

Thirty seconds.

*****

“Move your butts, ladies!” The engineering chief snapped as he swung himself through the compartment, catching a grip on the wall, to arrest his flight, as he landed near the control for the Tokamak, “the Captain’s gonna need this puppy online in a hurry, Jenks.”

“Working on it, Chief,” the young man growled, not looking up. “We’ll jump start it cold, just as soon as I clear the tubes.”

“Just get it done.”

“Go bother someone else, you do NOT want me missing something here,” the man replied, his head stuck down, inside part of the system.

Normally the Chief would have torn his head off for a comment like that, but it was true. The last thing they needed, were stray matter particles in the Tokamak stream.

*****

Commander Roberts’ face was ashen as he watched the plot, but his voice was steady and calm, while snapping out orders.

“Contact point defence and make sure that they’re on the ball, Lieutenant,” he said, taking up his primary duties of handling the secondary systems, so the Captain could focus on the situation on hand.

“Aye Commander,” the Lieutenant nodded, turning to her controls and opening the appropriate channels.

“PD, this is X-Com. What is your status?” She demanded tersely.

A few seconds later she nodded, turning back. “Point defence reports ready to fight, Sir.”

Roberts nodded eyes still on the plot. The Odyssey had leapt forward, hurtling itself out of the snare that the enemy had prepared for it, but in doing so, they were flying into the teeth of the tiger.

*****

“Enemy ships are adjusting their courses. They’re going to try to intercept.”

“Of course they are,” Eric said, still watching the clock.

Ten seconds.

“Sideslip, Lieutenant. All thrusters to port,” he ordered. “Ten second burn.”

“All thrusters to port, Aye Captain,” Daniels said, activating the commands. “Ten seconds.”

The ship rumbled and complained, but followed the command as its starboard thrusters burned hot and shoved the ship off to port.

Ten seconds later, the rumble died out a little, though the big engines pushing them along still filled up the background with its incessant roar.

“Energy flare!” Waters snapped suddenly, “They shot at us, Sir!”

“Of course they did,” Weston smiled. “Analyse and adapt our forward plates to deflect. Helm, random course alterations along our current path, if you please.”

“Aye-Aye, Sir,” both men answered as one.

*****

Rael Tanner’s mood was growing grimmer and grimmer as the waiting game wore thin, and then vanished into nothing, but one nerve grating against the other. If only he had a ship, even one of the old converted freighters, anything at all to…

“Admiral!”

Tanner spun around, “what is it, Ithan!?”

“Look, Sir,” the young woman pointed.

Tanner looked up, blanching white as he saw the board lit up with four blazing icons, bright as a noonday sun.

The Odyssey’s green flash was blazing brightly now, they had obviously dropped any pretence at hiding and he could easily see why. Three hostile red icons surrounded it on the plot and his stomach twisted, as he easily read the trap, in the image.

“The Odyssey is accelerating, Admiral,” the Ithan said calmly, eyeing the threat board as well as her own instruments. “We are reading all four on the actual time sensors now… Weapons fire from the Drasin ship!”

The screen lit up a bit more, as a blast from the Drasin ship was traced across the stars, obviously in response to the Odyssey’s sudden appearance. Tanner grimaced as it closed on the Odyssey, perfectly aligned with its target.

Someone groaned, Tanner didn’t know who and he didn’t care. It was all he could do not to groan himself.

And then, less than ten seconds before it struck, the Odyssey calmly slid aside.

Tanner stared, eyes widening, as people gasped at the clean miss the board showed. How did Captain Weston know? The Admiral grimaced as he understood. Weston didn’t know that the enemy had fired. What he knew was the time it would take, to the second, for a shot to reach his position from the Drasin’s lasers.

Would I have thought of that?

Somehow, Tanner doubted it.

*****

While the Odyssey bucked and wove its way along the course it had charted across the sky, Captain Eric Weston waited impatiently for news from Engineering on the Tokamak status. They’d need its power contribution in order to bring the full power of the ship to bear. Now that hide and seek game was over and done with, Eric wanted as much punch as he could get when he ‘tagged’ the bad guys.

“The chase ships are gaining on our acceleration advantage,” Waters told him, calmer now.

“And the bandit ahead?”

“We’re waiting for the return from the targeting Laser, Captain,” he replied. “If we managed to paint her, we’ll have a firm lock.”

“Very well,” Weston nodded, saying nothing more.

The seconds ticked by, seeming to pass like hours as they waited for the return bounce from the laser. Finally the moment passed and Waters muffled a curse.

“Sorry Captain,” he shook his head. “They’ve begun evasive maneuvering.”

Weston nodded, eyeing the closing rates.

At less than fifty light-seconds now, the evasive actions on either side would begin to have limited usefulness in about two minutes. However, until the range closed enough, to achieve a good laser lock, the only weapon that Weston had for useful engagement was the Pulse Torpedoes and he’d rather save them for the chasers.

“Understood,” he said out loud. “Keep an eye out for fighters, Mr. Waters.”

“Aye-Aye Captain.”

Weston reached down and thumbed a switch, “Archangels, proceed to ready one launch stations. I say again, Archangel Flight is to proceed to ready one positions.”

*****

“Whoop,” Paladin grinned as the voice boomed around them, tossing his cards into a bag at his side. “Duty calls.”

“Saved by the bell,” ‘Cardsharp’ Samuels smirked as she kicked back and grabbed the edge of her cockpit.

Paladin just smirked as he executed a perfect back flip in the zero gravity, hooking his hands around the lip of the cockpit and slid right into his seat. “That’s how the chips fall!”

“Right,” Samuels grinned, pulling her restraints down, as one of the flight crew floated into place and handed her, her helmet.

She accepted it, as the man took a hold of the restraints and yanked them tight. The pressure seals locked with a twist and she felt the rush of cool air hit her face, then flashed a ‘thumbs up’ to the crewman.

“Good hunting, Ma’am,” he grinned at her, finished checking her restraints, and pushed back off the plane, while he waved the loader in.

Jennifer nodded curtly, not answering as the plane shuddered from the loader’s kiss and thumbed the cockpit sealing command.

The clamshell, front and back of the armored shield slid down over her, locking solidly into place and engulfed her in a darkness that was lit only by the soft glow of her backlit controls. Jennifer ignored the dark, thumbing her systems online, one by one, until the full surround HUD lit the cockpit back up, making it appear that she was sitting in a glass bubble with a near-perfect view of all angles.

“Archangel Thirteen…,” her lips twisted at the number, wondering if it was going to haunt her, or make her haunt someone else. “Online, all systems check.”

*****

The Odyssey and its prey were locked in a deadly dance across his screens, and suddenly Tanner found that the waiting hadn’t been so bad, after all.

His sensation of helplessness was a hundred fold now that he was watching men and women with no allegiance to him or his, preparing to fight and die for them all.

If he could only send them the details that he could see from here. Let them know what their enemies were doing…

Tanner grimaced, suddenly wanting to slit his own throat.

Stupid, Stupid, Stupid! You could have sent a transceiver to them. It would have been a matter of a few seconds work to set it up for them; he berated himself, cursing his stupidity.

“Admiral…”

Tanner ignored the voice. There was nothing they could do from here, anyway. It was all pointless.

“Admiral.”

All he had to do was think! Dammit. Wasn’t that what he was entrusted to do?

“Admiral!”

“What?” Tanner snapped furiously, turning on the voice.

The young woman flinched back, paling, but managed to keep her voice, “Sir. It’s the Forge. They say that it’s ready.”

*****

Someone once said that war was an interminably long stretch of boredom, punctuated by seconds of pure terror. In this battle, at least, that statement had been stretched and distorted beyond all recognition, as the hours of boredom gave way to an almost equal stretch of terror.

The Odyssey bucked and wove, spinning along the axis of its course, while it registered energy leakage from the immensely powerful lasers that were flashing around it. Each punctuating moment, brought its own thrill of terror, adding to the general chaos of the battlefield.

The sheer distance involved only served to heighten both the boredom of the hunt and lengthen the time of terror, as the battle raged across distances unprecedented in the history of the Odyssey’s crew.

Oddly enough, in the very midst of the terror time, Eric found his mind wandering dangerously and he forced himself back into the moment, with sheer force of will.

“We painted her, Captain!” Waters yelled out eagerly.

“Refraction data?” Eric demanded tersely.

“Aye Sir. We’ve got it!”

“Send the word to the Laser crews! Make her ready for war, Mr. Waters.”

“Aye-Aye Captain.”

As Waters sent out the command, with the information from the laser return appended, Weston tapped out a few calculations of his own. “Mr. Daniels. Prepare to steady our course for a controlled fire.”

“Aye Captain,” Daniels responded, shifting the evasive program over to automatic, while he prepared the new course corrections.

The chase ships were still over fifty-five light-seconds behind the Odyssey, Weston noted, which meant that even if they had a real time lock of the Odyssey’s position, it would take more than fifty-five seconds for any weapon’s fire to reach her position from the rear, not counting the Odyssey’s own current acceleration, away from them.

That coupled with the fact that they had a clear reading on the waste energy from the forward ship’s lasers, led Weston to his next move.

“Forward Laser Array has been adjusted, Captain,” Waters reported.

“Thank you. Helm,” Weston said softly.

“Yes Sir?”

“Prepare to abandon evasive maneuvers and initiate an attack run.”

“Aye-Aye Captain.”

*****

“Captain Tianne,” Admiral Tanner glared at the screen. “You are late.”

“My apologies, Admiral,” the tall woman looked embarrassed and more than a little frustrated. “The Forge only just completed the basic systems on the Cerekus.”

“We have allies in system, currently doing battle with three Drasin warships,” Tanner said grimly. “They have eliminated five others already and are being hard pressed. I would appreciate it, if you could arrange that they survive this battle.”

The woman gaped at him for a moment, not that Tanner blamed her, in the slightest. There was no ‘ally’ in known space that could stand up to the Drasin, one on one, let alone eliminate five of the warships and fight a three to one duel, with even the remotest chance of survival.

“Allies, Admiral?”

“I will explain as you move, Captain,” Tanner cut her off. “My staff is sending you the pertinent data, as we speak.”

The woman glanced to one side and nodded, “received. We are laying in our course, now.”

“Excellent.”

“Admiral…,” Captain Tianne frowned. “Our sensors have the battle in actual time as we speak. Who are these people?”

“That, Captain, is a question that I too, wish to have answered,” Tanner said with a grim half smile. “But for the moment, they are the saviors of our planet. I would prefer that they do not become its martyrs.”

“As you say, Admiral,” Tianne stiffened to attention and saluted.

Tanner nodded with some satisfaction, as the Captain of the newly-commissioned, Cerekus battleship turned to her duties. One ship did not a fleet make, but it wasn’t just any ship, either. The Cerekus was the first in a new class, or it might be said, a very old one, a class of warships that the central computer had ordered, spitting out designs for, when the Drasin first appeared.

Only the Forge could have built one so fast, the shipyard facility was one of the most advanced in all of the Colonies. And the one most perfectly hidden, Tanner permitted himself a slight smile. Even should all the colonies fall, Maker forbid, the Forge would never be discovered.

And from that one port, a fleet would arise, like none Rael Tanner had ever imagined, in his worst nightmares.

*****

Eric Weston held his order as the clock counted down the range, watching until the numbers dropped to under twenty light seconds between the two onrushing ships.

“Now, Mr. Daniels,” he ordered. “Initiate our attack run.”

“Aye-Aye, Sir,” Daniels ordered, snapping the Odyssey out of the evasive roll and steadying her into a headlong rush, at their enemy.

“Paint that ship, Mr. Waters,” Eric said as the Odyssey’s course stabilized.

Waters didn’t respond right away, his shoulders already bent to the task as his fingers sent out a dozen low powered targeting lasers, all seeking the enemy ship, as they closed on it at a madman’s pace.

Twenty seconds out, eighteen back and the Tactical Officer’s face flushed with pleasure. “I’ve got him, Captain.”

“Hold him,” Weston ordered. “HVM banks, prepare to fire.”

“HVM’s are ready.”

“Flush the banks. Pattern Trafalgar Twelve!”

“Aye Captain. Trafalgar Twelve away!”

The Odyssey shuddered as the forward High Velocity Missile banks were flushed, the Cee Emm powered death dealers, leaping from the ship and into space, accelerating to their maximum speed of .789c in the nearly thirty seconds it took them to cross the gap between the Odyssey and her foe.

The spread pattern they used, Trafalgar Twelve, was a statistically-based pattern designed to engage opponents at extreme range and had never been used in combat before. The think tank that had come up with it were mostly just shooting blind, as they tried to figure out how to engage threats against the Jovian research platform or, more likely, Earth-based satellites and the Demos repair station that overlooked the site of the Martian Colony Project.

They certainly hadn’t envisioned it being used against an alien attacker in a different star system, over a hundred light years from Earth.

So when the impact plumes went up across the enemy ship on their screens, almost seventeen seconds after the impact had occurred the Bridge Crew of the NAC Odyssey felt a surge of elation run through them.

“Got him!” Someone shouted, but was generally ignored.

“Status, Mr. Waters,” Weston said over the general buzz of relief.

Waters too, was quiet, watching the numbers carefully. Each of the HVM strikes would have carried the equivalent kinetic energy of a nuke strike, when their full mass returned after the destruction of the Cee Emm generator on impact. In theory, the solid core missiles could deliver considerably more energy than any nuke ever devised.

In reality, Waters was no longer certain of that.

“Enemy vessel stabilizing, Captain. She’s still coming,” he reported a moment later.

A dark silence fell over the Bridge, but Eric just nodded calmly. “Prepare a firing solution for the main Laser Array.”

“Aye-Aye,” Waters responded instantly.

Eric was busy watching the numbers as they fell. Thirteen seconds, now, was all that lay between them and the ship ahead. Behind, the chasers had managed to gain another fifteen light seconds on the Odyssey and it was clear that she’d lost her brief acceleration advantage. She would shortly be facing those two behind, assuming she survived the deadly duel, she was already engaged in.

“Laser strike!” Waters snapped. “Solid hit on the forward armor!”

“Status?”

“Holding, Captain.”

“Hold course.”

“Captain?” Daniels blurted in shock, half turning.

“If they’re firing at us, Mr. Daniels, they aren’t trying to dodge. Mr. Waters, open fire with the main Laser array.”

“Aye-Aye Sir.”

*****

Captain Tianne of the Warship, Cerekus watched the duel as it played out on her screens, not quite able to believe the one-sided reports that had been sent to her from the ground. If they were to be believed, this ‘ally’ of Admiral Tanner’s was a giant. On the battlefield at least.

However, on her sensors, it looked more like a gnat.

Its power curve was practically flat; the generation levels she was reading were so low that she had seen freighters that could out power it. Its weapons were barely detectable on the Cerekus’ energy traps, at least the ones it had used since her arrival.

It has to be some kind of trick, she thought in confusion. Stealth systems perhaps, masking their energy signatures… Something…

Her own ship was now hurtling toward the battle at best speed, which was impressive enough, but the war was being fought over eight rotations away, which was going to take some time to cross, even with the Cerekus’ drive.

This meant that the Admiral’s ‘allies’ were simply going to have survive on their own for a while longer.

*****

The heterodyne-generated Laser from the Odyssey’s main array, adjusted and fine-tuned by its operating crews to the best absorption frequency of the enemy’s armor characteristics, took a little less than ten seconds to cross the gap when the order to fire, was given.

It found, upon arrival, a target that was still busy pouring radiation several hundred times its own meager amount back along its own course toward the Odyssey, and bathed it in fire as it returned the favor.

A few seconds of exchange later, the alien warship began to bubble as nearly one hundred percent of the Odyssey’s energy was absorbed into its hull material and turned it to magma.

Within ten seconds, the ship suddenly folded in on itself, as the energy carved out a hole along its beam, striking the power core and turning its own reactor into a nuke.

*****

“Got him!” Waters grinned darkly, as the enemy went critical on his screens and at almost the same moment the warning lights went dead.

“Status of our forward armor?”

“Badly ablated, Sir,” Waters said after checking it. “We’re intact, but I wouldn’t want to take too much more, not on those plates.”

“Understood,” Weston replied. “Prepare to bring us bout, Mr. Daniels. We have to bring our Pulse Tubes to bear on the Chasers.”

“Aye Sir,” Daniels nodded. “On your order.”

“Captain!” Susan Lamont’s head snapped up, “Report from the Electronic Warfare Station, we have fighters inbound!”

“She must have launched, as a precaution,” Weston growled. “I would have.”

He considered it, nodded and thumbed open a channel. “Archangels… Scramble.”

*****

Tianne stared at her screens in disbelief, unwilling or unable to quite grasp what she had seen. The Drasin ship had the advantage, all of the advantages. It had the more powerful weapons, armor that could defeat lasers that were intensely more powerful than those of the unknown vessel. It was faster, with a greater acceleration curve. It had been the superior vessel, the more powerful warship.

So why was it dead, while the oddly configured ship still lived?

Chapter 36

What should have been a deafening roar was nothing but a brilliant flash of light and a sudden rush of motion, as two more fighter craft hurtled themselves off the flight deck and out into the black beyond. Jennifer Samuels waited her turn, the purr of the fighter charging her as the deck crews moved about, clearing the ground, in front of her.

She checked her system status one more time, as the last checks cycled and looked up when a light caught her eye.

The deck crew didn’t talk to her directly, they didn’t have to. The figure ahead of her, his bright white and yellow Vac Suit identifying him as one of the Handling Officers waved the okay to her and signalled the all clear.

She gave him a ‘thumb up’ back, keyed in the final release on the twin reactors she was riding on and waited for the final okay.

The handler dropped to a crouch, waving his hand in a sharp arc and pointed for the black.

Jennifer slid the throttle forward all the way, feeling the sudden lurch that slammed her back into the seat, despite the Cee Emm field that was already surrounding her and the flight deck around her just became a blur, as she was catapulted out into space.

“Archangels,” Stephanus’ voice came through clearly just then. “Form up on me… Give me a tight wedge, while we gather some intel on the opposition.”

The fighters automatically came together, the bulk of the Odyssey dropping back away from them, as they turned on all of their advanced sensor systems and activated the full suite of Electronic Warfare devices, in preparation for the battle to come.

Behind them, just as the last of them cleared the spires and moved completely out of range, the Odyssey’s front control thrusters burned solidly, lifting her nose up and flipping the big ship end for end, until she was on a ballistic course, her nose pointed back, toward the enemy.

“All planes, engage the interface,” Stephanus ordered a moment later.

Jennifer’s hand reached forward, hesitating for just a moment in painful memory while she flipped up the safety catch and pushed the switch forward.

The sharp bite of the needles digging into her neck caused her to hiss in irritation, then it was gone and she forced herself to relax. With the needles in, she felt herself shifting the plane almost by thought alone as she fine-tuned her place in formation and smiled.

This was what she trained for.

*****

“Do we have Tokamak power yet?” Weston growled, watching the star-field change radically, as the Odyssey completed its end for end flip.

Computer magnification brought the enemy ships into focus as they hurtled on, their faces lit by the light of the star that was now at the Odyssey’s back. Two of them, glinting darkly in the reflected light, at forty light seconds now and closing fast.

“Spinning up now, Captain.”

“Good,” Eric said with some satisfaction, though he knew that the power wasn’t yet there.

The Tokamak should have taken a great deal longer to bring fully online, but once again what the chief promised, was delivered. For now, he’d do what he could, with what he had.

“Pulse Torpedoes,” he ordered calmly. “How many are in our banks?”

“Ten, Captain,” Waters answered.

“Prime them all. Standard spread, fire on my mark.”

“Aye Sir. Priming tubes one through ten.” Waters reached out and toggled a series of commands.

“Fire.”

*****

Now those weapons registered on the traps.

Captain Tianne stared at the data, the computer was providing for the sudden barrage of energy the small ship had flung at the Drasin. Whatever those were, they weren’t the product of a ‘flat’ power curve, which meant that there was something exceedingly deceptive about that ship.

“Track those shots,” she ordered calmly. “I want a full profile of that weapon.”

“Yes Captain,” a young man at the weapons station said seriously.

“What is our arrival time?” She asked, glancing over at the helm controls.

“Ten rotations.” Came the answer back.

She nodded, watching the screen and the estimations for enemy contact with the ship designated ‘Odyssey’. They would have to survive at least four rotations of direct contact with the enemy, before the Cerekus arrived.

*****

The spread of torpedoes had left the Odyssey almost a full minute earlier and the sensors were tracking their terminal flight, when the enemy ships began spewing fighter craft, like angry bees from a hive. The screens became a mash of conflicting signals, just as the first pulse torpedo struck home.

The spherical white blooms of energy lit up the sky, unleashing devastating energy all across the enemy formation, dying out slowly as the burning of secondary fires continued to blot out information on the sensors.

A low whistle was heard on the Bridge, but Eric couldn’t tell who did it. He didn’t look too hard either, though, as he was leaning forward and willing the screens to clear up.

Then the screens darkened, the energy dying off as the last of the secondary explosions died away and a curse died on his lips, as he saw the two enemy warships still coming.

“Their fighter wing absorbed the damage, Captain,” Waters reported, though Eric had already guessed that.

“I can see that,” Weston replied, his voice grim. “Get a count of their remaining fighters.”

“Aye Sir.”

In the meantime, Eric pulled a display to him and grimly shook his head.

It was going to be bad, that was certain. The problem was that he didn’t see a way to make it any better.

*****

“Team two. Break formation and engage the lead elements.”

Jennifer Samuels watched as the four fighter group, broke away from the man group at Stephanus’ order, accelerating out and away, forming up into a tight, staggered diamond formation as they did.

The alien bandits were coming in from the sun and it was lousing up all their sensors, as they tried to get an accurate count of the opposition.

Coming out of the sun was one of the oldest tricks in aviation, largely because it worked. Even in the latter days of flying, when radar and LIDAR turned even that most venerable of maneuvers, into a trickier proposition, there were still times when the slight edge it gave a pilot was all that they needed.

And that was in the atmosphere of Earth, where the worst of the solar radiation had been filtered out by the layers of protection that made the planet habitable.

Out here in space, there was nothing to protect the fighter’s sensors from the charged solar wind and the intense radiation and it showed. The best Jennifer was getting was an intermittent group of bandits that were fading in and out, seemingly at will.

“’Angel Lead, this is Racer,” Gabrielle’s voice echoed over the tac-net, “Fox Three.”

And the battle was joined

*****

“How many HVM’s do we have left in stores, Ensign?” Weston glanced over to Susan Lamont.

She had to check quickly, but she had put the munitions list on one of her quick call commands before the battle and had the data quickly. “We’ve expended about eighty percent of our standard load, Sir.”

Weston nodded, noting with some amusement, despite the gravity of the situation, that her voice was almost apologetic. “Thank you, Ensign.”

It wasn’t her fault, of course. There was no way for anyone to know that they’d be in a situation that was anything even remotely like this. Had they planned going into an actual war zone, the load would probably have been ten times that, what she had taken aboard.

This meant that they had about half of a full salvo left, totally discharged Pulse Tubes, and their Laser array left to fend off two of the enemy warships.

It could always be worse, Eric smiled grimly, the Block could have succeeded in getting Miss Lynn assigned as an observer.

He briefly considered the order he had given the Commander Roberts. The order to recall the Archangels and make a run for it, but he knew that would be pointless, now. The acceleration curves on the alien ships were superior to the Odyssey’s, though not by as much as first thought and that would permit them to run her down long before she reached the heliopause.

So, as instinct and nature did so command, when flight was no longer an option, the human animal had one more option remaining.

Fight it was.

*****

“I… I think we got a hit!” Racer’s voice called over the net. “It’s hard to tell… There was a thermal bloom, but it was masked by the sun!”

“All Archangels,” Stephanus’s voice smoothly slid over the net. “Increase velocity, spread formation.”

Jennifer pushed the thrust controls forward, as the fighter roared at her back. All around her, the others did the same. The fighters spread out, still accelerating as they closed distance with the enemy and leapt ahead into the brilliant, yet decidedly ghastly red glare, coming from the system’s primary.

“Keep your eyes peeled, ‘Angels,” Stephanus ordered. “They’re coming.”

Jennifer did as he ordered; eyes wide open as she stared into the sun, looking for the enemy. They were still fading in and out, like before, until suddenly they weren’t. Then they were there, screaming in from the brilliance of the star, but too large, relatively, to hide completely and she yelled in surprise.

“That’s it! Stay sharp!” Stephanus said a moment later as the enemy began to fire. “Make sure your combat computers are automatic adaptive settings and continue to accelerate.”

The needles in Jennifer’s neck felt like they were itching, though she supposed it was all in her mind. They weren’t supposed to feel anything once they were inserted.

The computer suddenly began wailing around her, as one of the enemy fighters singled her out for some special attention and a glancing laser strike tripped her combat computer’s automatic adaptive armor. The Cam plates that surrounded her shimmered, changing their base color to the best reflective surface for the enemy beam, then settled in as the wail died down.

Minimal damage, she thought as she looked over the reports. The surface of her right wing was a little scorched and probably wouldn’t take another direct hit too well, since the brief flash had ablated away most of its armor, however, it was only a small surface.

She would survive it. Probably.

“Almost there ’Angels,” Stephanus said tensely, the sounds of damage reports from other fighters chattering over the net. “Hold on course… Hold… Hold…”

Then the Archangels interpenetrated the enemy ranks, the two forces slamming together at unimaginable speeds, as both sides started to turn and burn, trying desperately to claw themselves, fist over fist, into the position of best advantage.

And in that moment, all across the wing, the largest amount of solar interference was gone as the Archangels dropped behind the enemy lines, circling around in tight maneuvers and got the sun at THEIR back.

*****

Admiral Rael Tanner’s knuckles were bone white as he gripped the board in front of him. “What is he doing? By the Maker and all he has made, what is that insane fool doing?”

The Odyssey had stopped accelerating away from the remaining two ships, flipping end for end on the scanners and, while she wasn’t accelerating toward the ships, the distance between decreased quickly. The Odyssey was merely coasting now as energy discharges roared around them.

“Turn and run!” Tanner hissed, wiping sweat from his face with one stiff hand. “The Cerekus is here now you damned fool. Run.”

“Maybe they don’t see her?” Someone said.

Tanner shook his head, “That’s not possible. A ship the size of the Cerekus would be visible on any sensors that weren’t absolutely blinded.”

“The sun, Admiral,” A quiet voice spoke up.

“What?” Tanner spun, looking back at Milla, who was standing pale, in her borrowed armor.

“The sun. The Cerekus is straight from the Forge that means that Okana is directly behind them and the Odyssey’s passive sensors are…”

“Blind,” Tanner grimaced, fist slapping down in realization. “Even the best sensor systems would be overwhelmed by staring right into a star the size of Okana.”

“They don’t see the Cerekus, Admiral,” Milla said softly. “And, even if they did… They would as likely believe it to be Drasin, as anything else.”

Tanner’s curse echoed across the pit, making the ratings go pale white and bringing a booming laugh from the army control pit.

“Oh shut UP Nero!” Tanner growled in response, staring at the displays again.

There had to be a way.

*****

The form fitted seats kept him from bouncing around as Stephanus pushed the limits of his fighter’s capabilities, even with the Cee Emm cutting into his persona inertia. He snapped his plane around, not changing his velocity, as he first penetrated the enemy line and yanked his finger down on the forward auto-canon.

The gimbal mounted eighty millimeter, locked onto the first target he haloed, its roar lost in the vacuum of space, but not on Steph himself. The vibrations shaking the big fighter wrapped around him, as it sent out a shot burst.

Forty rounds found the enemy fighter, the explosive ordinance they had loaded in preparation for just this mission, ripping it to shreds and sending shrapnel flying along its previous course.

Steph twisted the throttle hard, slamming it forward at the same time and his plane spun on its axis, as its twin reactors opened up full and his minimized personal inertia slammed him back in the seat again. The fighter darted off in another direction in seeming defiance of all the laws of physics.

Around him the old dance had begun again, the dying over a completely unimportant section of space, merely a repeat of an age old ritual of which Commander Michaels was intimately familiar.

The Archangels were acquitting themselves well, as he knew they would, but there was already one emergency beacon blaring on the Search and Rescue frequency, so they’d taken their hits as well.

His mind wandered briefly, wondering how the new kid was doing, but he didn’t have time to focus on her, so he brought himself back to the moment.

“Angel Two, this is Lead… Make your run, I’ll cover,” he ordered.

“You got it, Boss.”

Stephanus tapped his controls, coming up behind ’Angel two and prepared to jump back into the fight.

Same old dance, he thought wryly. Only a different partner.

*****

“Ranging bursts,” Weston ordered firmly. “Paint them if you can, Mr. Waters.”

“Aye Captain. Ranging bursts,” Waters responded instantly.

The firing of the ranging lasers was silent, of course and did nothing to provide the crew with the same level of comfort or satisfaction that the hum of the main array did. There was something to be said, psychologically, for the noise of a real weapon.

After the bursts were fired, Weston had nothing to do but wait for the return, something that would take just under one minute now.

The waiting is going to drive me out of my mind, Weston groaned silently, watching the numbers fall. He felt like his mind was going to crack under the pressure, something he’d never felt before. In the Archangels, there had been waiting of course, but it had always been waiting for the order to fly. Not this…, this unending battle.

That’s what it was.

Once battle was joined on earth, it generally ended in minutes. The winners won and the losers died. Or some of the winners won, at least.

The distances involved here was just dragging it on and on, into a never-ending war.

Eric blinked, rubbing his eyes and glanced at the clock.

Then he winced.

Over six hours since the first shots had been fired, more than eight since they had left orbit of the planet. He was getting tired, he could feel it and the ebb and flow of the fight wasn’t conducive to maintaining a healthy alert.

“Return fire!” Waters snapped.

Weston bolted straight in his seat, spotting the sweep of the energy signature coming from the starboard, “turn us to port and fire all keel thrusters!”

“Aye Captain!” Daniels snapped.

The Odyssey twisted away from the sweeping beam, catching only a glancing shot along the rear habitat, before Daniels had the big ship climbing over the beam.

“Damage to the rear habitat!” Lamont snapped. “Teams en route. We’re venting air, Captain.”

“Lock out the sections,” Weston ordered grimly. “We can’t afford to lose too much atmosphere.”

“Aye-Aye Captain,” Lamont checked some of the readings, then nodded. “Sections are now closed off.”

“That was just a glancing blow, Captain,” Waters informed him, “We’ve got a reading on the laser…”

“Adjust our plates to compensate,” Weston ordered, frowning. “Which ship fired that?”

“The angle indicates Bandit One, Captain.”

Eric grimaced, and nodded. “Very well. Maintain general settings on our port side and adjust all armor to starboard, to the new settings.”

“Aye Captain,” Waters said, but hesitated before speaking again. “The general deflection settings just aren’t going to do the job.”

“I think, Mr. Waters, that you may rest assured that you have just made an understatement of epic proportions,” Eric told the young man calmly. “Have we managed to paint either of them yet?”

“Uh… No Sir. Sorry Sir.”

“Keep trying.”

“Aye Captain.”

*****

“Move it, you monkeys!” Corrin growled as she and her team roughly shouldered their way through a group that had been evacuated from their section before the doors slammed down. “Get your butts to your secondary stations and out of our way!”

The crewmen and women scattered and started moving out, as Corrin and her team setup by the bulkhead that led to the damaged section.

“We’ve got a vacuum on the other side,” one of the team reported.

“All right, check your seals, lock this section off. We’re going in,” Corrin ordered grimly. “Have an E-Med team standing by.”

“You got it, Chief.”

They sealed the room, each man checking his own suit seal and then the seal of the man next to him.

“We’re good to go, Chief.”

“Clear the room,” Corrin ordered, features setting under her helmet.

*****

“Damage Control Teams are on the site, Captain,” Lamont said quietly. “We’ll be getting reports back shortly.”

“Very well.”

“And Engineering reports that we have full power coming off the Tokamak.”

Weston smiled, genuinely, for the first time in quite a while. “Excellent. Mr. Waters, narrow focus ping. Give me a real-time targeting solution.”

“Aye-Aye Captain,” Waters replied. “Single Ping.”

The surge went out, a single low ping of sound announcing the signal across the Bridge and the display in front of them, all snapped into suddenly clarity as enemy positions and formations were suddenly available to them.

“Main Laser Array, adjust for best general absorption against enemy materials,” Eric ordered.

“Aye Captain,” Waters replied, calling up all the previous examples of enemy armor and ordering the computer to average them out and devise a new beam frequency. In a matter of seconds, it was ready and he nodded, “Coded, Captain.”

“Give me a sweeping beam, right across their fighter escort,” Eric ordered.

“Aye-Aye Captain.”

*****

The Tachyon Traps sent a signal through the Bridge of the Cerekus, bringing Tianne’s attention back to the present. “What was that?”

“The ‘Odyssey’ just registered a light tachyon pulse and we received a return off the Drasin, Captain. Probably a sensor system.”

Tianne nodded, glancing at the time to arrival.

Six rotations.

She wondered if they’d be able to hold out. Normally she’d doubt it, however this ship was obviously more than it appeared. Perhaps they would survive.

Perhaps.

“Send the details to Admiral Tanners ordered calmly. He may find it interesting.”

“Yes Captain.”

*****

The low hum of the main laser firing had died out seconds earlier, and now the waiting had started again. Though the time was now dropping, the wait was no-less tense. The fact that it was becoming shorter by the second only meant that the battles were taking up a higher percentage of their time.

“Contact,” Waters whispered, drawing Eric’s eyes back to the screen.

For a moment, nothing, then a few of the fighters went up like matches in the darkness, flaring brightly under the sweeping gaze of the eye of the Odyssey’s main laser. Then, a few more went up and soon an entire formation was blazing ahead of the oncoming vessels.

Finally Waters nodded, “That’s it, Captain.”

Eric nodded. “Very nice shooting.”

Another glance at the board and the distance was down to under twenty-five light seconds now. Eric glanced at Daniels, “change evasive action, Mr. Daniels. Move to pattern Troy.”

“Aye Captain. Initiating Pattern Troy,” Daniels replied, initiating the command set.

The Odyssey shifted and groaned as they changed course on thrusters keeping themselves, hopefully one step ahead of the enemy attacks.

Chapter 37

“Jesus Christ,”

Chief Corrin didn’t say anything as she led her crew through into the damaged sector. The decompression had left the section in massive disarray, items as large as chairs and desks scattered around the room.

“Jason, you better see if we’ve got any survivors,” she ordered, looking around grimly. “Brian, you and your team follow me. We’re going to check that breech.”

The two men nodded and split off, as Corrin just kept walking.

The breech was three rooms over, but either the energy from the laser or the explosive decompression had apparently blown out the automatics on the heavy doors. Corrin growled as she looked over the place.

“What in the fuck were those doors open for anyway?” She bitched, kicking a chair out of the way. “We’re on a Goddamned battle stations alert. That’s a mandatory lock down!”

“Yes Chief,” Brian Kreuse agreed from behind her. “Someone must have overridden them.”

Corrin cursed again, shoving through a door that had half swung closed. Inside the next room she spotted the deep gash, the enemy laser had cut in the Odyssey and the moving starscape beyond it.

“Careful now,” she said, walking closer to the gash in the floor. “Don’t want the spin to toss us right out the hole.”

“No ma’am.”

There was a desk jammed in the breech, one of the big aluminium jobs that the scientists liked to use, twisted into a useless hunk of metal that was most certainly going to be in their way.

“Ah shit,” Corrin muttered. “You’d better get that cut away, Brian. I’ll secure the rest of the compartment.”

“You got it, Chief,” Brian nodded, then waved behind him. “Bring up the laser cutters!”

“Hey,” Corrin looked around. “What’s this section for anyway?”

“Don’t know Chief. This is eggheads’ country,” Brian glanced back pulling a computer from his pocket. “Let’s see… Deck eight, Habitat B… Looks like the Linguistics lab, Chief.”

“Check with the computer, see if anyone was in here.” Chief Corrin ordered, glaring at a section of the bulkhead that had been decorated with scribbled writings.

Scientists, she muttered. If I ever caught one of my boys writing on the fucking walls…

*****

“Fifteen Light seconds, Captain.”

“Thank you, Mr. Waters,” Eric replied, cocking his head slightly toward the Helm. “Daniels, prepare for hard maneuvering and call up attack pattern Nimitz.”

“Nimitz, Aye Sir,” Daniels responded.

“Do we have paint on either of the bandits, Mr. Waters?”

“Yes Sir. Laser return off of the port side bandit is confirmed.”

“Very Good. Have our Laser frequencies adjusted to match.”

“Aye-Aye Captain.”

Eric watched the preparations as they were made, noting with some degree of pleasure that the crew wasn’t fumbling over any of them, nor making any of the fatigue-induced errors that he had been worried about.

This was the end of a marathon battle and while they were no longer fresh, it was obvious that the people he had been assigned were up to the challenges they’d met.

Now they had just one more challenge to surmount.

Or, rather, just two more.

“Laser Control reports adjustments prepared, Captain.”

“Mr. Daniels… Engage Nimitz Maneuvering.”

“Aye Sir. Engaging.”

“Mr. Waters. Fire at Will.”

*****

Admiral Rael Tanner watched the board, eyes watering as he practically refused to blink. The battle being carried out in clean, sterile, three-dimensional graphics in front of him was a riveting as it was utterly pointless.

He had to get word to the Odyssey, just to tell them to run. They didn’t have to do this, to die fighting for a world not their own. Not now, when the Cerekus was here and ready to defend her people.

“Milla!” He snapped, turning quickly.

“Admiral,” she stiffened, her armored form whining as it responded to her body’s demand.

“Contact the Colonel Brinks you mentioned. I wish to speak with him.”

“Yes Sir. One moment,” her eyes unfocused as she looked at something much closer to her then he was.

*****

“Colonel Brinks?” The hesitant voice came softly through the tactical network, catching Brinks attention as the whine-crack of his rifle died down.

He’d just sniped a stray drone that had evaded the main cleanup teams and didn’t see anymore, so he relaxed a bit and swung his weapon up onto his shoulder. “Yes Miss Chans? What is it?”

“The Admiral wishes to speak with you,” she told him.

Brinks wondered briefly why the word ‘Admiral’ translated properly, but Milla’s rank or whatever it was, didn’t seem to. He shrugged it off a second later as none of his concern, for the moment. “Very well.”

An instant later, an image of a very grim man appeared on his HUD and Brinks noted that the man looked like he was fraying on the ragged edge. Man needs some bunk time in the worst way.

“Admiral” he said out loud, nodding. “Colonel Wilhelm Brinks, at your service.”

“As you have been,” The Admiral replied with a weary smile. “However, just now I wish to be at the service of your Captain Weston.”

“Is there something wrong with the Odyssey?” Brinks asked with a frown.

“Your ship is currently in combat with two Drasin warships and is sustaining damage. I’m afraid that I can’t say how badly she has been hurt, however what disturbs me is that it is no longer needed.”

“Pardon me?” Brinks blinked. If there were two ships, at least, still out there, he didn’t see how it wasn’t needed. One ship had landed enough drones that they’d been hard pressed to cull them back. If two more dropped ground forces, it would be all over, except for the dying.

“Our own Warship, the Cerekus is approaching the battle. If the Odyssey would drop back, she could handle the enemy,” the Admiral replied. “Or, at least, they could engage together. However, the Odyssey does not see her.”

“Can you generate Tachyon particles?”

The Admiral blinked, frowning and Brinks knew that the translator had muffed it. He tried again, “Can you broadcast faster than light particles?”

The Admiral’s face cleared up, and he nodded. “Yes, however, so can the Drasin. And if your Captain thinks that they have reinforcements…”

“He might do something desperate,” Brinks’ lips twisted. “All right, I think I can help you out there.”

“That would be most acceptable,” the Admiral smiled tiredly.

*****

“Archangel Eight, bank hard to port, on my signal.”

The acknowledgment came through a moment later as the Drasin twisted in between them, looking for the sweet shot.

“Now!”

‘Angel eight spun on his axis like a top, her twin reactors flaring as the plane suddenly shot away, in apparent violation of various iterations of Newton’s Laws and Jennifer Samuels tightened her finger on the trigger.

“Archangel Thirteen, Fox Three.”

The Havoc dropped from its internal pylon hesitating that brief instant while it massed a full ‘normal’ amount, then flickered away in an unreal sort of pseudo-motion. It crossed the gap between human and alien in a flash slammed into its target.

The first thing destroyed was the Cee Emm generator and then the fully massed weapon bored right though the enemy fighter at .6c, turning it into an expanding fireball.

“Nice shooting, Cardsharp,” Archangel Eight called. “Thanks.”

“No problem, Paladin,” Jennifer smiled. “But you owe me another hand.”

Paladin chuckled slightly as they brought their fighters back together while looking around the mess of the battleground around them.

“Looks like we’re doing clean up,” Paladin said, tallying up the wrecks around them.

“Yeah,” Jennifer replied, glancing over her shoulder. “But the Odyssey seems to have stepped in it.”

The two fighter pilots checked their HUD’s and noted that the Odyssey and the Alien cruisers seemed to be getting more than a little, too close for comfort.

“Archangels,” Stephanus broke in to the chatter, “Form up on me. We’re going to give the Odyssey a little support.”

*****

“Kick it loose!” Kreuse ordered, slamming his foot down on the smoldering desk that was still jammed in the breach.

The other men found themselves a hand grip and followed suit, finally kicking the mass out of the breach and into the void beyond. For a moment, they all watched as it floated out, away from them, then the Odyssey shifted its course and the desk vanished from sight.

“All right, let’s spec this out,” Brian growled. “And for God’s sake people, check your lines!”

The team did just that before anything else, making sure that all the safety lines were in place, and they began the delicate and dangerous work of crawling out through the thick mesh of armor and insulating materials that made up the outer hull of the NAC Odyssey.

“How bad is it, Brian?” Chief Corrin called from where she was checking the rest of the lab.

“Nasty rupture here,” Came the answer. “The laser strike was pretty small. Most of this was caused by explosive decompression.”

“Great,” Corrin muttered grimly.

“The laser must have weakened the structure,” Brian Kreuse said after a moment. “This isn’t supposed to happen in real life. Looks like some Goddamned movie set.”

“Just fix it, Kreuse.”

“I’m on it, Chief.”

Corrin let the man get to his work as she came to a sealed door. The electronics on it was busted all to hell and it didn’t register whether there was atmosphere or not on the other side.

“Great,” she muttered, pulling a wrench from her belt.

“What’s that, Chief?”

“Nothing,” she replied, then lay her helmet against the door in question and rapped hard with the wrench three times.

Bang Bang Bang.

Then she waited and repeated the action.

Bang Bang Bang.

Each hit vibrated through her helmet contact, rattling her teeth. Corrin grimaced while turning down the pickups as she waited.

Rap rap rap.

Three soft hits came in response.

“I’ve got a live one in here!” She yelled out. “Get me a portable lock and some evac suits!”

*****

“Pardon me, Admiral,” Captain Tianne pursed her lips as her eyes widened. “But did I hear you correctly? You wish me to what?”

“Send a message to the Odyssey,” Admiral Tanner replied. “We have a code you can use that they should be able to decipher.”

Tianne waved her hand. “Again. Pardon me Admiral, but that is a lunatic idea.”

“Excuse me?” Tanner glared at her.

“The Drasin have not yet detected us. To follow this… idea of yours would be reckless to the point of criminal behavior.”

“Captain Tianne, there are only two Drasin remaining. If you are able to recall the Odyssey from a potentially suicidal confrontation, your two vessels would be able to deal with them, together. Should the Odyssey lose its current battle, you will be forced to deal with the two Drasin, alone. Are you that confident?” Tanner asked mildly.

“Yes,” Tianne growled instantly. “The Cerekus is unprecedented…”

“Not quite, if you’ll recall. Its designs did come from the Central Computer and Central isn’t known for designing warships in its ‘spare time’.”

“Be that as it may,” Tianne growled, “The Cerekus is more than able to deal with two Drasin warships.”

“Good. Then you have no reason not to warn the Odyssey of your arrival,” Tanner told her, “After all, if the Cerekus is as able as you say, what difference will warning make?”

Tianne glared at the screen, mouth opening for another objection.

“This is an order, Captain,” Tanner cut her off. “I want that ship intact.”

There was, of course, only one answer to that.

“Yes Admiral. I will transmit the code,” she said, each word grating on her as it passed her teeth.

*****

“Thermal bloom, Captain!” Waters announced as a section of the threat board was briefly whited-out, by an overload in the infrared spectrum.

“Analyse,” Eric replied in clipped tones.

“Working on it…”

A moment later the image stabilized and Waters visibly flinched.

“Sorry Sir. We got a hit, but it wasn’t enough. She’s still coming.”

“Very well. Secure from Nimitz.”

“Aye-Aye, Captain,” Daniels responded, adjusting his program. “New Pattern?”

“Evasive. Fractal generation.”

“Aye-Aye, Sir.”

Eric called up more information on his personal board, eyeing the distance grimly.

Fifteen light seconds and still closing.

“Mr. Wat…”

“Captain! Tachyon Surge!”

“Pin it down!” Weston ordered, “Where did it come from!?”

“O… Directly astern, Sir!” Lamont was the first to reply, paling. “It’s coming from…”

“Tachyon Surge!” Waters announced again, “We’ve been pinged again, Captain.”

“What the…,” Weston stiffened again, half twisting in his seat. “That does not make any…”

“Again!”

“What the hell is going on?” Eric Weston thundered, fist striking the edge of his seat.

*****

“Tachyon Surge!”

“I can see that, Lieutenant,” Roberts said mildly, eyeing the screen with a bizarre sort of morbid curiosity.

“Commander, we’re getting pinged all over the place.”

“Same source?”

“Aye Sir.”

“Huh,” Roberts said, not quite believing what he was seeing.

“Sir?”

“Nothing Lieutenant,” Roberts keyed an open channel.

*****

Weston shifted, when the communications network pinged for his attention. He glared at it momentarily, contemplating simply cutting it off. However, Palin aside, those who had access to it were the ones who were supposed to have access to it.

He sighed, slapping the channel open.

“Weston here,” he growled as the return chirp was heard.

“Captain,” Commander Roberts voice came over the line.

“Commander, I’m a little busy here.”

“I can see that. It’s concerning the new target, Captain.”

“The one with enough power to generate Tachyon pings like we turn on cabin lights?” Eric asked, still growling.

“That would be the one, Captain. The Pings are organized into a code, Captain.”

“Like Morse?” Weston glanced back at the signals, his frown slipping.

“More simple…, and at the same time, complicated, Captain,” Roberts replied. “It’s Ranger ‘Chirp’ Code, Captain. I’m guessing it’s from Colonel Brinks.”

“What’s it mean, Commander?”

“Rangers Lead the Way, Captain,” Roberts replied with a hint of humor in his voice. “That usually means that the cavalry is coming over the hill.”

Eric looked at the plot, now showing one big, honking blimp, coming right up their stern. “Are you certain, Commander?”

“I don’t joke about the Rangers.”

“Very well,” Weston said. “Thank you for the information. Weston Out.”

Eric stared at the plot again and mechanically turned toward Daniels. “Helm… Roll ship. Take us toward that bogey, all flank.”

“Aye-Aye Captain,” Daniels replied. “Preparing to roll.”

Weston keyed open the ship-wide, “All hands. This is the Captain. Prepare for full military acceleration. I say again, prepare for full military acceleration.”

Then he keyed the channel closed and leaned back, letting out a breath. “Rangers lead the way indeed.”

*****

“Goddamn it, you pukes! Pull!” Kreuse yelled at the top of his lungs, grunting as he grabbed a man’s arm and hauled him back inside. “Get those men back in here before we start to…”

The Odyssey groaned under their feet, pitching hard, as its thrusters tipped it up and over. Kreuse grabbed for the wall, catching himself and just hung on as the ship swung over.

“That’s just the tip!” Corrin yelled, sailing across in a practiced leap that nearly slammed her into the far wall, as the ship spun crazily around her. She caught herself professionally though snagging a desk that was bolted down and joined two others that were hauling in a welder.

“Heave!” She yelled, and the three of them pulled hard, yanking the man back in against the spin induced gravity.

They had two more men out there, she knew and the rumble in the decks told Corrin, that they weren’t going to make it.

Aw shit, she groaned to herself, reaching for another security line.

*****

“We have men still doing EVA, Captain,” Lamont said suddenly, spinning Eric around.

“What?” He spun back. “Hold on acceleration!”

Daniels paused, hand just millimeters from executing the order. “Holding, Captain.”

“Get those people inside, Ensign,” Eric ground out.

“Already being done, Captain,” Lamont swallowed, closing her eyes briefly.

*****

“Corrin to the Bridge,” she croaked out, laying back against the floor with one of the men beside her.

Across the gash, she could see Kreuse with the other.

“We’re secured for acceleration.”

*****

“All clear, Captain,” Lamont said, sounding a little shaky.

“Thank you, Ensign,” Weston said, taking a breath. “Mr. Daniels… All ahead flank.”

“Aye-Aye Captain, All ahead Flank.”

The rumble in the decks grew and the deck pitched slightly, despite the full application of the Cee Emm generators. The big ship began to accelerate through space again.

Eric Weston eyed the numbers for a moment, but didn’t spend too much time on them as he opened another channel.

“Archangels, we are moving to rendezvous with another contact. Do not engage the enemy, break from your current vectors and form up on the Odyssey,” Weston ordered calmly.

Only then, did he turn back to the board and look at the ‘contact clock’.

Twelve light seconds and still closing, although the closure rate was dropping off slightly.

Eric didn’t have to do the math in his head to know that it wasn’t going to turn out in his favor this time.

Maybe I should have stood and fought, he thought grimly, shaking his head with an ironic song suddenly filtering in through his head.

And the race is on and here comes…

*****

“The Odyssey has altered her course, Captain.”

“Thank you, Ithan. What is their arrival time?” Tianne asked coolly.

“Four rotations.”

“And the Drasin intercept?”

“Two rotations.”

Tianne scowled, shaking her head. “I suppose that we may as well become somewhat… proactive in this situation, before Admiral Tanner comes up with another brilliant plan.”

The men and women around her shifted nervously, but there was no reply.

“Calculate a targeting path for our lasers.”

“Yes Captain.”

Tianne watched the plot, eyeing the shrinking line between the two ships. “And do give the Odyssey some space to breath. It would be ludicrous to do all this, and then kill them ourselves.”

“Yes Captain.”

*****

“The Odyssey has completed their maneuver and are accelerating away from the Drasin and toward the Cerekus, Admiral.”

“Thank you, Ithan,” Admiral Tanner replied, watching the board. “Has Captain Tianne made her combat plans?”

“She has begun calculating for weapons fire.”

“Let us hope that this new class is everything Central claims,” Tanner said grimly, pacing slightly before he caught himself and forced his body down into a chair.

“Yes Admiral.”

*****

“Calculations are in, Captain. We are prepared to fire.”

Tianne smiled thinly. “Excellent. Engage the Drasin ships.”

“Engaging.”

A whining roar vibrated through the deck of the big ship, as power was routed directly to the lasers and the powerful weapons unleashed themselves across the vastness of space.

*****

“Message from the Archangel Lead, Captain,” Lamont half turned. “Commander Michaels is asking if you want them to come back in.”

“Negative,” Weston shook his head. “Tell them to keep clear. Something tells me that this isn’t going to be…”

“Thermal Bloom!”

Weston stiffened, “Where!?”

“The new ship, Capt… Holy Mother of GOD!” Waters let out a curse eyes bugging out as every warning buzzer on the Bridge seemed to go off.

“What the hell was that!?”

“Laser fire! Five… Ten… No, Fifteen beams!” Waters swore. “They bracketed us, Sir!”

“Relax, Ensign,” Weston advised him grimly. “If they were meant for us, we’d have felt them by now.”

“No Sir. We wouldn’t,” Waters corrected him in a shocked voice. “We’re reading intense corona flares… Ten times the Drasin weapon levels.”

“What!?” Weston blurted, “That’s insane!”

“Sir…, I think we’d better secure for a radiation alert,” Waters advised. “These guys are tossing around some serious power.”

Waters nodded, “Susan… Issue the alert.”

“Aye Captain,” Susan Lamont turned back to her board. “Warning. Warning, the Odyssey is now under radiation exposure protocols. I say again, the Odyssey is now under radiation exposure protocols.”

*****

“… say again, the Odyssey is now under radiation protocols.”

“Ah fuckin hell!” Kreuse cursed, looking up at the ceiling, though the voice had come through her suit headset. “Now what!?”

“Doesn’t matter!” Corrin ordered, “Forget trying to repair that breach, we’ve got to throw a few sheets over it and get the hell out of here!”

“You heard the Chief!” Kreuse spun around, “Get those rolls in here!”

While the men were hauling in the huge rolls of Carbon Fiber composite they had been intending to use as a base for the repairs, Corrin turned on the crew working on the sealed closet. “And get those people out of there!”

*****

“Thermal bloom!” Waters announced again. “They’ve got a direct hit on the portside warship.”

“Analyse,” Weston ordered in clipped terms.

“The return signal scrambled the hell out of our sensors, Captain. I’m going to have to reboot the software. Secondary sensors turning into position,” Waters replied, working hard.

On the screen, the visible image of the Drasin warship was still there and intact, though at the moment, it was glowing practically white hot from the energy it had absorbed and for some odd reason, Weston had the impression that it was pissed off.

“Return fire!” Waters called out a second later. “Drasin are firing back.”

“Captain…,” Daniels spoke up softly, “course?”

Weston ignored the helmsman for a moment, staring at his boards. The ship coming toward them was now within two light minutes and it was finally starting to register on their sensors, despite the solar interference. Which actually was bothering Eric, considering that a ship the Odyssey’s size would probably be hidden from visual sensors at up to twenty light seconds.

“Captain?”

How big is that thing? He wondered briefly, and shook his head. “Hold Course Helm. Right now they’re aiming around us. I don’t think I want to bumble into one of their beams by accident.”

“Aye-Aye Captain.”

*****

“They are tough, aren’t they?” Tianne asked mildly, not really speaking to anyone but herself, as she watched the Drasin vessel continue to close, despite the immense amount of energy they had pelted it with.

“Pardon me, Captain?”

“Nothing, Ithan,” She said mildly. “How many beams struck?”

“Two, Captain. We’re adjusting the others now.”

“Good. Fire again when…”

The Cerekus suddenly reeled under their feet, sending one young woman into her console, and another colliding with the wall.

“Report!”

“Incoming laser attacks there are more of…”

Then another three beams stabbed into the energy shields of the big ship, overloading power relays all over the ship and blowing out half their defence grid.

“Return fire!” Tianne ordered, pushing hair up from where it had spilled from the rough jostling.

“Yes, Captain! Returning fire!”

*****

“Thermal bloom!” Waters announced again, “They took a strike, Captain.”

“How bad!?”

“Just guessing, but from the intensity of the bloom, it looks like they reflected most of the energy away,” the young man said. “Too much energy reflected to be a deep strike.”

“That’s something anyw…”

“They’re firing back!”

Weston flinched as the radiation and weapons warnings went off again, throwing the Bridge into Chaos.

“Why do I feel like I’m caught between two giants that happen to be fighting with clubs made of oak trees?” Eric growled, shaking his head in annoyance.

“Umm… Sir?”

“Nothing, Lieutenant. Hold us steady.”

“Aye Sir.”

*****

Lasers criss-crossed the emptiness of space, passing one another through the vacuum, not caring for what the other was doing.

On one side of the raging battle, a trio of beams found their target, unleashing their energy against the hull of an alien vessel. The armor incandescent, as it struggled to reflect back the power as best it could. It’s best, in fact, was quite good, but there was so very much power to be dealt with, so the heat and radiation, inevitably, began to pour into the interior of the ship, as well.

The Drasin faltered in its flight path, it’s engines failing for a moment as parts of its hull began to melt.

On the other side of the line, another two beams intersected the Cerekus, stabbing through its shields this time and cutting through the armor of the human ship, like a pick through soft dirt.

*****

“We’re venting atmosphere, Captain!”

“Seal those decks,” Tianne replied. “And continue firing!”

“Aye, Captain.”

Unlike the previous encounters with the Drasin, Tianne knew that her ship was something that its predecessors had not been. It was a ship built for war, rather than a converted freighter. It had armor to withstand lasers and was built so that the ship could be compartmentalized in the case of massive damage.

The Cerekus could absorb far more damage than could the Carlache, the previous fleet’s flagship vessel.

*****

“Sweet Jesus,” Waters whispered in awe. “She’s bleeding air, Captain.”

“Bad?”

“Bad,” Waters nodded. “But she’s still firing.”

“Status on the alien warships?”

“One of them is going down, Sir. The other seems to be moving to evasive action.”

“What’s the status of our weapons?”

“Laser Array is fully charged, we have a twenty percent load of HVM’s and three tubes are now charged, Captain,” Waters replied instantly, “Our PD weapons are, of course, fully charged and ready.”

“Thank you, Mr. Waters,” Weston replied, thinking grimly.

Their own laser array, while obviously more versatile than that of either their enemies or their possible allies was woefully underpowered compared to either. This, along with other concerns such as their targeting systems, meant that the laser was only useful for relatively close engagement ranges.

The alien warships were already at the limit of that range, and by going to evasive maneuvers the healthy warship had effectively taken the laser out of consideration.

The HVM’s were out for similar reasons as well because the recorded data from previous attacks made it clear that a twenty percent load wasn’t going to cut it.

Similarly, three Pulse torpedoes weren’t likely to take out one of those things, unless they got lucky.

Eric Weston scowled after he flinched as the radiation warning alarms all went off again, and slammed his fist down on the armrest.

“Time to get lucky,” he growled.

“Captain?”

“Helm, Roll the ship. Bring our weapons back to bear on the maneuvering warship,” he ordered, “Mr. Waters… Give me a firing solution on that son of a bitch.”

“Aye-Aye Captain.”

*****

“Holy Mary Mother of God,” Stephen Michaels whispered as he watched the battle through the enhanced HUD, of the Archangels.

The computer was taking data from all across the network, including the Odyssey itself, and was drawing in the paths of the invisible beams based off their corona leakage, and what it was drawing was a lethal fence trapping the Odyssey between a battle of two giants.

“Can you see that shit?” Paladin asked in awe. “They’re tossing around more power than a city could use, in a year!”

“A lot more,” another pilot, with the call sign ‘Centurion’, put in. “Each beam is off the scale… I’m trying to re-calibrate, but I’m betting that we’re way over the Tera-watt range here.”

“Jesus,” Racer muttered. “Anyone else starting to feel like we’re playing out of our league?”

“I might,” Stephanus said dryly. “If we hadn’t been kicking ass and taking names ever since this shit started.”

“You have a point,” Racer conceded. “But just think of what happens if these bozos get their shit together.”

“I’d rather not,” Cardsharp muttered, voice low as her HUD lit up with another computer generated rendering of the criss-cross beams.

“Lord! The Odyssey!”

The pilots of the Archangels, trapped on the outside of a battle, far beyond their tools and weapons, watched as the Odyssey tipped its nose up once more, swinging back around to bring her formidable forward weapons back into play.

“Godspeed, Eric,” Stephanus whispered, then smirked and spoke a little louder. “Godspeed, Raziel.”

“Amen,” the rest of the team replied with low chuckles, recognizing the call sign of their old flight leader. “And pity the poor bastard’s on the receiving end.”

Raziel. Secret of God.

Well, it had worked out that way once, Stephanus thought with a grim smile. Maybe He’ll be smiling on them this time too.

If you believed in that sort of thing.

*****

“Captain! The ship…, the Odyssey is altering her stance.”

“Is she changing course?” Tianne asked, turning her attention to the ship’s section of the threat board.

“Not yet, Captain.”

“Then ignore her,” Tianne replied. “I don’t have time to worry about what some pet of Tanner’s is up to. Continue firing.”

“Aye Captain.”

Tianne eyed the screen for a time anyway, watching as the alien warship complete it’s maneuver and begin charging it’s weapons. The power curve for the ship was still distressingly low and she couldn’t quite imagine how anyone had managed to build effective weapons with so little apparent power.

For the moment, however, it wasn’t her concern.

Ahead of her still lay two Drasin warships, though one was badly damaged now and her own Cerekus was still on the hunt.

*****

“Fire sequence loaded!” Waters said, looking up at the main screen.

“Bow armaments coming around,” Daniels added. “We will be in firing position on the target in thirty seconds. Firing braking thrusters, now.”

Eric Weston looked back to the plot, eyeing the approach of what he knew had to be the ship belonging to the colonies. The massive vessel just kept getting bigger as it closed, but it was still almost a light minute behind them, despite their relative closing velocities.

Given their current vectors, however, the computer had their rendezvous listed as forty-three seconds. At that point, the Odyssey would have been officially out of this fight for quite some time, unless Eric ordered her main reactors to power.

“We are locked on, Captain.”

Time to decide that later.

“Initiate firing sequence,” he ordered, eyeing the board.

*****

“The Odyssey is firing again.”

Rael Tanner looked back to the plot, his own space in the pit was the only part of the Command that had more than minimal elbow room, as people had suddenly found reason to gather here and watch the drama unfold above them.

The first energy spike from the Odyssey was quickly identified as her main laser array, a pitiful trickle of power according to the computer, but as they’d seen earlier, a respectable force, just the same.

The computer couldn’t track the beam, not the way it did those from the Drasin or the Cerekus. The leaked energy from the underpowered beam was well below the systems sensor ability, however, it was able to detect minute fluctuations when the beam crossed paths with stray matter, in its path.

Space was, after all, not nearly so empty as most believed. There was always something out there, somewhere.

The following pulses were more potent, their energy scales quite respectable, even by the Colonies’ standards; however, only three of the blazing white charges were thrown into space this time, unlike the normal salvoes of six or more they had registered.

The computer also noted that they were fired sequentially, this time and the lasers were aimed at the single, healthy Drasin ship.

The final pulses of energy registered, were in between the other two, and was also an underpowered salvo, leaving Tanner to wonder just how badly the Odyssey was hurt.

*****

“All weapons away.”

“Good,” Weston nodded, eyeing the plot. “That’s it, we’re spent. No sense getting wasted in the crossfire, while we’re holding an empty gun. Flip the ship, Daniels.”

“Aye-Aye Captain.”

Without waiting for the results of their attack, the NAC Odyssey fired i’s thrusters once more, flipping it’s nose up and over in a graceful maneuver, taking it around to, once more, point in the opposite direction. Then it’s big main reactors fired again and she began to accelerate down the gravity well of the Red Giant star.

Behind them, their parting shots continued on, unperturbed by the ship’s change of course.

“Launch SAR shuttles,” Weston ordered. “I see we have three beacons from downed Archangels. I want them back.”

“Aye, Captain.”

*****

“All right, we’re going to rejoin the Odyssey,” Commander Michaels said as they watched the ship roll back. “Loop out and around that big mother though. I don’t feel like getting bug-zapped today.”

A few chuckles, mostly very weary ones were heard, but the flight got back under way again very quickly, as the fighters responded to their pilots’ desire to get back home.

Jennifer Samuels, Cardsharp, flexed her shoulder muscles gingerly, afraid in spite herself that she might somehow twitch the sensor needles imbedded in her neck, but unable to keep still any longer. Her shoulders felt so tightly corded that they were made of stone and her neck was on fire from the tension, so all she could think of was heat. As much of it as she could get, in whatever way it was available.

A shower would do, she decided, but a soak was what the doctor was demanding.

Unfortunately, the Odyssey being what it was, she didn’t think that a soak was going to happen.

A shower then, a badly needed one.

God help those aliens, if they started anything before she got her shower.

*****

The Laser was a clean miss, Tianne noted absently as the results of the Odyssey’s final shot registered on her sensors.

Unsurprising, of course, firing with only one beam at distances greater than a few light seconds.

The follow-up strike from those energy bursts, however, didn’t. At first they seemed off course, but at the last moment, they spiralled across her sensors and slammed into the Drasin hard and fast, ripping it’s hull apart.

She had to admit, it was to good effect.

The salvo of projectiles was somewhat less effective, but some of them struck as well and by the time they had thinned out, the second Drasin was limping away.

“Continue firing on our primary target,” she ordered, eyeing the state of affairs and noting with some chagrin that her constant barrage of laser energy was taking almost twice as long to inflict equitable damage, as to the first ship.

It was dying, that was certain, but it was taking its time doing so and now it was grating on her sensibilities, that it should be so.

“Adjust all lasers to target the same point,” she ordered, noting that the Drasin wasn’t maneuvering anymore so a firing pattern would merely be wasteful. “And prepare a pursuit course for the escaping ship.”

“Yes Captain.”

The ‘Odyssey’ slid past them, launching small ships from its bays as it did. Its armor was scored in a dozen places that she could see on the screens and one of the big rotating drums, they used for some unknown purpose had a visible gash in it.

So they aren’t invulnerable, she thought, eyeing the readings on the strange ship with a sceptical eye. There was something truly off about the power readings, but she couldn’t figure out what it was. It was just…, off.

She let the ship pass without comment and watched as two small craft paced alongside the Cerekus, following her back along their mother ship’s previous course.

What are they…, Tianne thought, then cut off as one peeled away toward a beaming beacon. Ah… Rescue craft.

Tianne nodded, and then put them out of her mind.

She had work to do.

*****

“Prepare a course to planetary intercept,” Weston ordered tiredly, the last ‘hurrah’ dying down on the Bridge as the sensors recorded their hits.

“Aye Captain,” Daniels replied.

“Waters, keep an eye on those two ships, let me know if their status changes,” he said looking over at Lamont. “Susan… How bad?”

“We vented about fifteen percent of our O2, when the habitat was blown,” she replied, “We’re okay on stores, but if the planet can spare us some, it would be helpful.”

Weston nodded, “I don’t think that they’ll mind.”

“No Sir,” a slight smile played on her lips. “I don’t suppose they will.”

“What else?”

“The language lab was badly damaged…”

“Language?” Weston’s voice sharpened, “Any casualties?”

“Doctor Palin and his assistant were sent to the medical bays with Carbon Dioxide poisoning, but they’re going to be okay. We’re doing a head count to see if anyone else was there,” Lamont told him.

Weston nodded, slumping back. “Very well. Tell the Chief… Just tell her good job.”

“Aye-Aye Captain.”

“Course prepared, Captain,” Daniels spoke up softly.

“Engage it then.” Weston ordered. “We have some people to pick up, some others to talk to, and some to mourn.”

“Aye-Aye Captain.”

Chapter 38

His boots clicked against the metal floor of the Odyssey’s hallways, behind him the chorus of similar footfalls announced their passage to anyone within hearing. Crewmen melted away from them as they walked, giving the worn-looking group free passage through the halls, a certain level of awe in the air, the way Stephanus knew that there always was after a battle.

He wasn’t certain that he and his deserved it, but they had it, just the same. The Odyssey itself had probably taken more total damage than the Archangels and had certainly inflicted far more than the small flight had been able to, but there was always that wall between them and the crew of any ship they served upon.

“Lieutenant Commander.”

Stephanus paused, noting that one figure had not melted away, to the sidelines. He smiled tiredly, nodding, “Captain.”

“Good to have you back aboard, Steph.” Weston told his younger friend. “You did good out there. You all did.”

Behind him, he heard the shuffling as the ‘Angels nodded and muttered their thanks, but he could hear that their heart wasn’t in it. Apparently, Weston heard the same thing and nodded to them briefly, “you all go get some rest. I need to speak with your Commander, for a minute.”

“Yes Sir,” they muttered, exhausted mentally and physically and shuffled past.

“Hard one?” Eric asked as he and Stephanus followed, albeit at a slower pace.

“About the same as any other,” Steph shrugged. “Felt like a rush while we were out there, but we’re all coming down now.”

Eric nodded, “SAR shuttles picked up ‘Angel’s two, three, and five. They’re okay.”

“That’s good news, Sir,” Stephanus said, relief in his voice.

Eric nodded, “once we’re in Orbit, I’m taking a shuttle down to the surface.”

“Sir?” Steph paused, frowning.

“It should be safe enough,” Eric said calmly, without stopping and Stephanus had to jog, to catch up. “Brinks informs me that most of the fighting is dying down and they’re just mopping up now.”

“I’ll detail two of the ’Angels to escort you.”

“That’s not necessary.”

Stephanus shook his head, “you’ll take them or you’ll take the entire squad. Your choice.”

Eric chuckled softly, shaking his head, “sometimes I wonder who’s really in charge of this heap.”

“You are,” Steph grinned. “And none of the rest of us want to take your place if you get your dumb ass killed, so bear with us, alright?”

They chuckled softly, the tension making the weak joke seem all the funnier, then Weston nodded. “All right. Two. No more.”

Steph nodded once, and looked up. “What about the bandits?”

“One of them is down, the other is running for the Heliopause,” Weston replied. “We’re running a plot on it and it might make it.”

Stephanus winced, “damn.”

“Out of our hands now,” Eric shrugged. “Nothing to do about it.”

Steph nodded. “All right. I’ll go break the bad news to the pilots… Hey, Raze?”

Weston paused in the middle of turning away glancing back as he heard the more common version of his call sign. “Yeah?”

“You were right about Cardsharp.”

Weston shot him a puzzled look, “Who?”

Stephen smiled, “Samuels. She got pinned with her sign during the poker game.”

“You still play that, huh?” Weston asked with a fond smile, though it was more a statement than a question.

“Of course.”

“Good. And I’m glad that she worked out,” Weston nodded seriously. “I’ve got some work to do… I’ll see you later.”

“Sir,” Stephanus stiffened and saluted.

Eric shook his head, and returned the salute before turning and leaving.

Stephen watched him go for a moment, face blank, and then he turned and followed his team into their bunk rooms.

They were spread over practically every available surface of the common room, none of them, apparently in the mood for actual sleep and all of them interested in what the Captain had to say. He looked them over briefly, smiling as he shook his head.

“I’ve got good news and I’ve got bad news.”

They groaned and chuckled.

“We’re boned,” someone said under their breath and the chuckles increased.

“The Captain wants me to tell you did a good job and that there’s a shuttle coming home with three of our own on it, alive and kicking,” Steph said, smirking. “That’s the good news.”

They laughed, though there was a hint of appreciation in it.

“What’s the bad news?”

“His illustrious pampered backside has decided to visit the planet, in person, when we arrive in Orbit,” Steph grimaced.

The pilots groaned, straightening up and nodding seriously, “when do we go out.”

“We don’t,” Steph replied. “I’ll take two volunteers for the escort run. The rest of you will get some rest.”

“I’m in,” Jennifer Samuels said instantly, though only a few seconds ahead of the rest.

Steph nodded, smiling, “good. Cardsharp and Centurion. The rest of you fall out, shower, and hit your bunks.”

The pilots groaned, but started to move.

“Oh, and one more thing,” Steph said as they paused. He surveyed them again and smiled. “In case you hadn’t figured it out, you did good out there. Now get your butts out of my sight.”

*****

“Captain.”

“Commander,” Weston greeted his first, as he stepped onto the Bridge.

Roberts got up from the Central chair, leaving it to Weston, as the Captain crossed the floor, “We’ll be entering planetary Orbit in three minutes.”

Eric nodded, “excellent. Have the rest of Brinks’ reports finished uploading?”

“Aye Sir,” Roberts nodded, bringing the files up on the Captain’s displays. “Looks like they had some rough times down there.”

Weston winced as he noted the casualty report and nodded. “I can see that.”

“On the plus side, Brinks has a lot of good to say about the medical facilities made available to our people,” Roberts replied. “Apparently they’ve got a lot on the ball, when it comes to patching people up.”

“Nice to know,” Weston said thoughtfully. “I suppose, I should take Rame down with me, if he can break away from our own casualties.”

Roberts shifted uncomfortably, “about this visit, Sir…”

“I believe that the hostilities are dying down enough for a diplomatic visit, Commander,” Weston replied lightly, though his voice was cool.

Roberts hesitated, and nodded. “Aye Sir.”

“Besides, I think I want to speak with this Admiral Tanner,” Eric said thoughtfully. “Interesting man.”

“Yes Sir,” Roberts nodded. “You will be taking an escort?”

“Two Archangels.”

“I meant a personal guard, Captain,” Roberts said firmly. “I’ll assign some men to the job.”

Weston started to object, then let it go. If the Commander wasn’t going to give him a hard time about going down, he may as well reciprocate, “as you wish, Commander.”

*****

“Doctor Rame?”

Rame looked up from where he was checking the blood pressure and oxygen levels of a patient. “Yes Nurse?”

“You have a message from the Bridge, Sir.”

Rame nodded, setting down his tools, and checked the bank of near infrared LED’s set over the patient. When he was satisfied that they were all operating at the proscribed pulse pattern, he walked over to his office.

“Rame here.”

“Doctor, the Captain wishes to enquire as to the status of your patients,” the Commander’s voice came over the comm.

“As well as they can be,” Rame replied curtly. “The ones who survived are out of danger, Commander.”

There was a brief pause before Roberts voice came back. “That’s good news, Doctor. The Captain also wishes to know if you would be free for a visit to the surface? He would like you to tour the local medical facilities, while he speaks with the Admiral.”

Rame almost told the Commander off then and there, but paused and glanced back out over his lab. The patients were out of danger, and he had two other doctors to handle emergencies, as long as the Captain wasn’t on board to drag them off into another crisis at any rate.

“I think I can make the time, Commander,” he said after a moment, deciding that one didn’t get the chance to tour alien medical facility very often. Even if they were human aliens.

“Excellent, Doctor. The Shuttle is being prepped now. You might want to pack.”

Rame stared at the comm as the channel went dead, then started cursing up a storm as he grabbed his ‘black bag’ and began throwing things into it.

*****

Later, on the flight deck, Captain Weston stepped off the lift into the zero gravity to see Doctor Rame walking awkwardly toward the shuttle from another lift. He easily kicked off the ground, ignoring the tacky resistance of his boots and glided along the ground out to the doctor’s position, before dropping his feet and landing with an abrupt stop.

Rame started and almost lost his footing, but recovered enough to glare at Weston a second later.

“Doctor,” Eric smiled.

“Captain.”

“Glad you could make it,” Eric told him as they walked to the ramp of the shuttle together. Four armored soldiers formed up the ranks behind them, as they started walking up ramp.

“Seemed like a once in a lifetime opportunity,” Rame smiled. “In fact, I believe that Doctor Palin is currently cursing his luck for missing it.”

“How is the good Doctor?”

Rame snorted at the idea of Palin being a ‘good’ anything, but he shrugged. “He’ll be fine. He and that boy were lucky. They’ll both pull through.”

“Excellent,” Weston said, checking his restraints as the rating came along and triple checked everyone.

“We’ll be taking off shortly, Captain,” he told Eric as he yanked Rame’s straps tight.

“Thank you, Crewman,” Eric nodded.

The Crewman nodded before he went back to his work while Eric and the Doctor continued talking. Around them, the shuttle slowly wound up, the whine penetrating the deck, as the pilot called for clearance. It was given shortly after and the shuttle pushed them back into their seats, as it roared off the deck and into the black.

*****

Admiral Rael Tanner stood out in the open as the rather large and impressive looking Orbiter slowed for a controlled burn and settled into an easy hover, over the landing area they had directed the pilot to.

Tanner had to admit, he was suddenly wondering if the area they had chosen was large enough.

His worries proved to be groundless a moment later, when the gleaming white ship settled in for a feather-light landing, its lights flashing in a pattern he didn’t know, as its reactors powered down.

Above the Orbiter, two sleek and lethal looking fighters hovered in what Rael was certain was meant to be every bit as menacing a display as it appeared. The nose of each fighter was actually pivoting the barrel of a rather large weapon, giving the craft an angry appearance, as it swept over the field.

His eyes were torn from the fighters as the Orbiter lowered a plank to the ground and two figures in armor that matched Ithan Chans’ marched down and took up positions on either side. Only then did he see his first unarmored human from the Odyssey, though Tanner supposed he hadn’t seen many armored ones, for that matter.

Two men stepped down next, one wearing a white uniform that matched the gleaming surface of the Orbiter, while the other wore a more utilitarian dark blue. Admiral Tanner was suddenly exceedingly conscious of his own uniform, which was the same as every other member of the Colonial Merchant Exploration Fleet.

He forced such thoughts back, throwing back his shoulders, to match the stance of the man in white and looked up at the taller man, when the two came to a stop.

“Captain Weston?”

Eric Weston looked down at the smaller man, he recognized as Admiral Tanner. He hadn’t realized just how small the man was over the screen and it was a surprise that he stood nearly two heads taller than the Admiral. He didn’t let it cross his face, however, and stopped with a click of his boots on the obsidian surface, throwing a textbook salute.

“Admiral,” he held the form for several seconds, then dropped the salute and nodded gravely. “I’m pleased to meet you, Sir.”

“No more than I,” Tanner said, smiling suddenly. “I… My world, we all owe you a debt. Anything you ask, I am certain we can work something out.”

“For the moment, Admiral, I’ll settle for some O2 to top off our supplies and a little help with repairs, if you can,” Weston replied. “In the long term…, well, I would appreciate if your people gave consideration to sending a representative with the Odyssey, when we return home.”

“As to repairs and O… too?” Tanner frowned, “I’m sure something can be worked out… Once I know what O too is.”

Eric smiled involuntarily, shaking his head as he tapped the link on his jaw. “These damn things mess up the oddest words. O2 is Oxygen. We lost some of our air, during the battle.”

“Ah. Air,” Tanner smiled. “That, I believe, we can provide in plenty. Next, as to a representative, I will have to pass that along to the Council, however, I believe that you may be assured that it will be given…, a most serious consideration.”

“I’m glad to hear that,” Weston replied.

“Now, with the preliminaries finished,” Tanner motioned to a pair of immense doors attached to an even larger building, “shall we move this inside, as it were?”

“With Pleasure… Oh, Admiral,” Weston motioned to Rame. “This is Doctor Rame. He is interested in touring the medical facility where our soldiers were being treated?”

“Absolutely, Captain,” Tanner motioned with one hand and a young woman stepped up. “Show the Doctor to the military medical facilities, Ithan.”

“Of Course, Admiral,” she said with a smile. “Doctor, if you would follow me, I will secure transport.”

“Thank you, my dear,” Rame said with a smile.

She gave him a quizzical look, but they went off quickly. Tanner, though, turned to Weston with a puzzled look.

“My ‘dear’?” He asked, frowning.

Eric blinked, and one of the soldiers snorted with laughter behind him. He glanced in irritation over his shoulder, causing the soldier to stiffen immediately. He was going to berate the man, but remembered that the armor HUD had probably given him a text definition of the question.

“What is it, Soldier?” He growled.

“Sorry Sir, it’s just that the translation matrix is confusing deer and dear,” the soldier replied, then winced under his armor as he backpedalled. “I mean…”

“I know what you mean, Sir,” Weston remembered Palin’s similar conversation with Milla and sighed. So he turned back to the Admiral and shrugged with a smile, “another translation problem, apparently, Sir.”

“I see,” Tanner replied, after waiting for the computer to catch up to what Weston’s own, rather harsh, language was saying.

It was difficult enough, Rael noted, dealing with a translation that was far from perfect, but it was made even more difficult, by the fact that the translated words were overlain on top of the original language. He was just as happy that all the Colonies spoke the same language it simplified things greatly despite the occasional dialect issues that occurred.

“Well Captain,” he said finally. “If you’d follow me?”

Weston nodded gravely and the two of them stepped into the large building, their entourage walking or, in two cases, thumping, along behind them.

*****

“Incredible,” Rame whispered, watching as the immense city passed around him.

“Pardon, Sir?” The ‘Ithan’ asked from where she was sitting at the controls of the vehicle they were flying.

“It’s a very impressive City, Ah… Miss?”

“Rache,” she told him. “Ithan Rache.”

“Rache,” Rame repeated. “As I was saying, it’s a very impressive city.”

“Mons Systema is the capital city of three worlds,” she told him, a touch of what Rame recognized as home town pride filling her voice.

“Three?”

“That’s correct, Docteur,” she told him. “Political power is centered here for several star systems, in fact.”

“I suppose that’s why the aliens used so many ships,” Rame said dryly.

She grimaced in response and nodded to a building they were approaching. “Your wounded were brought here for treatment.”

Rame took the hint and shut up.

*****

“A drink, Captain?”

“Thank you, Admiral,” Eric nodded as the small man poured a lightly tinted liquid into a long thing glass.

The Admiral started to hand it across, paused and frowned, “it occurs to me that perhaps we should confirm that there are no poisons in our food or drink, which might affect you…”

“I don’t believe that would be a problem, Admiral,” Weston replied easily, accepting the drink by leaning forward. “Our doctor did extensive cellular examinations when we picked up Miss Chans. We are genetically identical, with the expected minor deviations one would find in any isolated section of the species.”

“I see,” Tanner replied, pouring a second glass for himself. “I must admit, that I find this quite interesting. There have long been legends, of course, concerning other human planets, but I believe that the last time such a thing was found was…, several thousand cycles ago, at least.”

“That’s some history you have there,” Weston said, impressed despite not knowing exactly what a cycle was. “How long have you had space travel?”

Tanner shrugged, taking a drink. “I would have to look up the exact number, but it is just marginally over fifteen thousand cycles.”

“Cycles?” Eric frowned, tapping his induction mic again, deciding that he’d better get that detail cleared up.

“Pardon, a cycle is the length of time this world takes to circle our sun,” Tanner replied.

Eric blinked, pausing with his drink just inches from his lips, “wow.”

“Pardon?” Tanner asked politely, smiling with a look of confusion on his face. “Surely your own worlds have been space faring for some time…”

“Actually, no,” Weston said slowly, weighing his words as he tried to decide what exactly to say. Finally he just decided to go with the truth, “Actually the Odyssey is our first interstellar vessel.”

Tanner set his own glass down, laying his hand against the table in surprise. “What was it you said, Captain? Wow?”

Eric chuckled, nodding. “Yes. That was what I said.”

“Wow.”

“That’s a lot of history you have, Admiral,” Eric said again after a moment. “My own nation, in its current state, actually only goes back about ten years. Until I can get a better comparison, call it ten cycles.”

“So young,” Tanner said, tilting his head slightly as he considered it. “It’s…, incredible to me, I must admit.”

“Makes two of us,” Eric Weston said, picking up his glass again and raising it to his host.

*****

Sean Bermont looked up in surprise when he recognized the familiar form of the Odyssey’s CMO approaching.

“Doctor?” He blinked, his arm itching slightly from where the local med techs had gone to work on him. “What are you doing down here?”

Rame looked over at the young man, taking a moment to place him. “Ah, Lieutenant. I came down with the Captain I wanted to tour the local medical facilities.”

Bermont smirked then flexed his arm, “They do good work, Doc. Patched me up good as new, ’cept for the itch.”

“Oh?” Rame came over, looking for the injury. “Where were you injured?”

“Shoulder,” Bermont informed him, then grinned. “But don’t bother looking. Nothing to see, they cleaned me up, real good.”

Rame examined the bare shoulder on the soldier, but couldn’t find any evidence of an injury other than, perhaps, a patch of pink skin. “Here?”

Bermont rubbed the skin where the doctor had pointed, “yeah. One of those damned buggy bastards cut right through my armor. They’ve got feet like spades or something.”

“Remarkable,” Rame said, looking closer. “And it was as bad you say?”

“Right to the bone. Cut two tendons clean,” Sean nodded. “In fact, if the armor’s artificial muscles hadn’t taken up the slack for me, the bastard would have been able to finish me off, easy.”

“Most impressive,” Rame said, shaking his head. “A wound like that would have lain you up for months at home. Perhaps ended your military career.”

“Would that have been such a bad thing?”

Rame and Bermont stiffened at the new voice, turning to see a woman in green coverall type clothing approaching.

“Yes Doc,” Bermont replied. “It would be. I like my job.”

The woman sniffed slightly, and then shook her head with a hint of disgust in her features.

“Doctor Rame, this is Doctor Brianne,” Sean spoke up smoothly, a hint of tolerant amusement in his voice. “She’s the sawbones that patched me up.”

Rame wasn’t certain what ‘sawbones’ translated into, but the look the woman shot Sean Bermont made it quite clear that it wasn’t complimentary. He placed a careful ‘bedside manner’ smile on his face and greeted the doctor as much to distract her from Sean, than anything else.

“Pleased to meet you, Doctor,” he said. “I’m the Chief Medical Officer of the Odyssey.”

Doctor Brianne cast him a begrudging look nodding more or less politely. “So you are the one who normally…, what was the phrase? ‘Patches them up’?”

Rame smiled, “unfortunately, yes.”

Brianne was about to say something else, but an odd rhythmic thumping caused all three of them to pause and look around. Bermont was the first to recognize it and he grinned when he saw the first smoke black figure approach from over a rolling hill.

“Relax,” he grinned. “It’s just the Colonel and the others. Looks like we’re just about done, here.”

Rame watched the approach of the two ranks of soldiers with interest, not normally in a position to see the powered armor, they wore in action.

The Powered Field Armor had been introduced towards the end of the Block Wars and in his post onboard a hospital ship, Rame generally only saw units that had been shot to hell and back. The operational armor was a good deal more impressive he supposed, though as a doctor, he’d often been grateful for the basic lifesaving systems built into each suit.

In this case, the two ranks of soldiers looked like they’d been through the fire, literally. The Orbital insertion had burned the surface off their armor, resulting in a patchwork of smoke grey colors and the coal black of the base armor. The end result was something similar to what was once considered a dark urban camouflage, though with a more random set of patterns.

His eyes shifted to the Cee Emm packs that floated along between the ranks and Rame stared in shock as he realized that each of the packs was hauling what had to be one of the enemy foot soldiers along with it.

His assumption was confirmed when the two ranks were called to a halt by Colonel Brinks and the packs unceremoniously dropped their cargo to the ground with a thud.

“Good Lord.”

“Doctor?” Colonel Brinks stepped up, his helm visor shifting to a ‘clear’ mode as he looked at the doctor. “What are you doing here?”

“He’s checking out the local med techs, Sir,” Bermont offered. “How’d things go?”

“We got it cleaned up, Lieutenant,” Brinks said. “But the locals are going to have to get some seismic sensors scattered around here, so they can make sure there’s nothing left digging under their feet.”

“I’ll have a report filed with the Captain, in twenty minutes,” one of the other soldiers spoke up, his black helm preventing Rame from identifying him.

“You do that, Savoy,” Brinks said. “And while you’re at it, recommend that the locals get some birds in the air with some real down-looking capabilities. The heat difference will let them spot any on the surface.”

“Got it, Boss,” Savoy replied.

“This is the…, enemy, is it?” Rame asked, staring at the corpse of an unnaturally large insect looking thing.

“Damn right,” another of the soldiers said with an obvious grin in his voice. “This is one of the trophies of our Bug Hunt.”

“God dammit, Deac!” Another growled, “I told you too can that sci-fi shit! I’m sick of you talking like we’re in some damned movie!”

“Come on, Sarge!” The soldier named Deacon whined. “Think about it… We’re on another planet, fighting giant spider things, in powered armor… Christ Sarge, that’s like every sci-fi cliché ever written!”

Low chuckles passed through the group, as well as a couple groans from soldiers, who’d been listening to similar bickering for too long.

“He’s got you there, Sarge.”

“I don’t give a shit!”

“You know… Mr. Deacon, is it?” Rame spoke up idly as he walked around one of the bodies.

“Yeah?”

“One must wonder…”

Everyone shifted, looking at each other as the Doctor kneeled down and examined the body closer.

“What’s that Doc?” Deacon asked, curious.

“Well, if we are living a science fiction scenario…,” Rame said, standing up. “What will the science fiction writers write about now?”

“Uh… . ,” Deacon just stared for a moment.

“Westerns?” Someone else asked, his voice a little hopeful.

“Sacrilege!” Deacon yelled, his voice booming over the speakers of his armor.

Some of the men groaned, but Rame mostly just ignored the comment, as he continued examining the body.

“I can’t believe that I’m associated with these people,” Colonel Brinks muttered under his breath, but only after he made sure that his comments weren’t going out on any frequencies.

*****

Eric Weston and Rael Tanner were still talking through some details when some of the soldiers, Eric had brought with him stepped forward.

“What is it, Evans?” Eric asked, barely glancing over.

“The Colonel reports that the alien ground forces appear to be mopped up, though he advises that the locals place a seismic network around and a decent CAP to keep an eye out for strays. Lieutenant Savoy will be filing a report shortly.”

“Thank you, Corporal,” Eric said, and the young man stepped back.

“What is… CAP?”

“A Combat Air Patrol or I suspect in this case anything that can fly with sensors that can read heat,” Eric said, thinking about the reports already filed. “Those two things should give you a decent warning, if they missed any of the drones.”

“I will forward the recommendations to Nero,” Tanner promised. “It will be his responsibility to organize such defences.”

Weston nodded, “he’ll probably have to devise new weapons, as well. The reports concerning the effectiveness of your laser rifles against the drones weren’t promising.”

“Indeed not,” Tanner grimaced. “Nero has been gnashing his teeth over that very thing for some time. I believe that he even admires your own weapons, though I should not be surprised.”

“Pardon?”

“Nero is from a Colony that purposely maintains its rough wilderness status. As such, survival for him is a slightly more…, hands on approach than most of my people,” Tanner permitted himself a slight smile. “It is why he was asked to join the Army.”

Weston nodded, still trying to get a full picture painted of the culture he was dealing with. “I see.”

Tanner smiled again, “I doubt that you do. Not completely, at least.”

“Touché,” Weston smiled, raising his glass in salute. “But I do believe that I’m at least getting a general idea.”

“Perhaps, Captain. Perhaps.”

Chapter 39

The shipboard repairs took two days just to reach the minimum levels, before engineering was willing to certify the ship as ‘Transition Ready’, which Eric had used to the best of his ability while dealing the citizens of the world they were in Orbit of.

While Rael Tanner seemed a rather sensible type and the big behemoth of a man in charge of the ground forces was also, the politicos were pretty much what one might expect from experience on Earth. Oh, they were a little different in motivation perhaps or at least in experience, but they still impeded the progress of pretty much anything they touched like old hands.

The former UN Council would have been proud.

Of course, it was perhaps a lot to expect for them to make decisions on a forty-eight hour window, but that was all that Eric was willing to give them. Either they give him a diplomat to take home, or he and the Odyssey were weighing anchor without them.

They’d mucked around in someone else’s war long enough, by far.

So it was perhaps no surprise that Eric’s mood was dark as the deadline approached and the planet council still hadn’t contacted the Odyssey.

“Ensign Lamont, how are the repairs coming?”

“The crew is welding new armor segments into place over the habitat breach now, Captain,” she informed him. “They’ve also taken the time to rip up the flight deck and Corrin says that they’ll have it ready, by the deadline.”

He nodded, “I’m sure they will. O2?”

“The shipments from the surface had replenished our supply,” she told him. “As you ordered, we analysed each tank and it’s sterile and pure.”

“Thank you, Ensign.”

Eric fell silent, knowing that he had just been marking time, anyway. He didn’t need to micro-manage his people and he knew it, but he was letting the situation on the planet get to him. He needed some sort of connection with these people when he went home, something the brass could effectively see and touch.

Something more than just data banks.

Or, at least, he really wanted it.

An actual person, preferably people in all truth, would make his reports at lot more believable to the brass. Eric wasn’t worried about being disbelieved, of course, at least not precisely. More, he was worried about his account being given a low priority, comparatively speaking.

So far, by his account, the alien species had committed no less than nine ships to this war of theirs. Along with Milla’s account the number started climbing, even if you assumed that many of the ship’s the Odyssey had destroyed were the ones that wrecked the original fleet the colonials had amassed.

In return, they’d eliminated the planetary populations of a minimum of two star systems, which was a massive breach of all accepted rules of warfare by Earth standards. While Civilian casualties were sometimes unavoidable, they were not to be actively pursued. Of course, the term ‘Rules of Warfare’ was one of the oldest oxy-morons in recorded history, but even so, this was a major change from any conflict that Eric had experience in, even though study.

In some ways, the closest example he could think of was World War Two. On both sides, the militaries involved sought out civilian targets and destroyed them with no quarter given. The German forces actions under the command of the SS and the Nazi party were well documented and the American attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were equally horrific, if somewhat faster.

The Block Wars had never quite reached that level, probably because any attack on a civilian location with modern weapons was largely a waste of modern weapons. A HVM rocket fired from an Archangel could tear a city to shreds, in its terminal approach the shockwave alone could kill hundreds.

Combine that fact with the pervasive and persistent use of cameras and the impact they had on world opinion, and even the most hard core militants on either side weren’t stupid enough to do something that might galvanize neutral countries into taking sides.

However the attacks on the colonial worlds were something different or at least that’s what he felt in his gut. It was true that they were at least possibly similar to the American strikes on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, intended as proof of ability and will more than intent to destroy. However, that thought didn’t sit right with him, and Eric didn’t believe it to be the case.

If that was their intent, then they should have skirted this system with overwhelming force and demanded the colonials surrender. They certainly should never have committed a total of eight ships in an attempt to reach the planet with their drones.

That left option two, but the sort of racial genocide that the other side of the World War II coin showed wasn’t quite what he was reading from the alien attacks either. Why destroy all life in that case? Why turn a world into a wasteland?

No, Eric was certain that there was more to the scenario than he knew. More, certainly than he was being told by the colonials, but probably more than even they knew.

There was something new here.

He could feel it.

“Captain?”

Eric shook off the line of thought, glancing over to where Commander Roberts was looking at him, “yes Commander?”

“A call for you, Sir. Admiral Tanner.”

Eric nodded, smiling. “Thank you.”

He turned back to his controls, accessing the comm channel he knew that Tanner would be calling on. They’d reclaimed the armor from Milla, but Eric had left a portable terminal with a two way holo projector in the Admiral’s keeping. It wasn’t rated for combat, but it was top of the line in civilian communications and provided a nice two-way image.

“Good day, Admiral,” Eric smiled at the image of the smaller man.

“Good day to you, Captain,” Tanner replied gravely. “I understand that you still intend to leave Orbit this day?”

“I’m afraid so, Admiral,” Eric replied firmly. “I understand that your people need to consider what to do, given the situation, but I can’t risk sitting the Odyssey in a war zone for any longer.”

“I understand,” the Admiral replied evenly. “And happily, I have managed to cut through some of the process in order to supply you with the… diplomat you requested.”

Eric sighed, sitting back, and smiled gratefully. “Thank you, Admiral. I had hoped you would.”

Tanner smiled himself, tilting his head slightly. “My people are sometimes slow to move, but even we can tell when perhaps speed is a virtue. In this case, I convinced them that it may be so.”

Eric nodded.

“I must admit, however, that your particular restrictions in this matter have made things more difficult,” Tanner went on.

“I expected as much,” Weston replied, “However there was no real choice there, Admiral. Until we have some sort of official relationship, I can’t tell you or any of your people the location of our home system… They’ll have to come with us.”

Tanner nodded, shrugging “I would most likely do the same, however it was more the problem with scheduling a return that caused serious hesitation.”

Eric nodded. That was a given, he’d known, from the moment he mentioned it. However, there was no way to predict how the politicians, or anyone, on Earth was going to react to this situation. Contact with an extra-terrestrial civilization was one thing, a huge thing to be certain, but only one thing, just the same. Having been involved, however shortly, in an interstellar war, however, was not going to sit well with a lot of people.

And God alone forbid that the Block got a hold of the information, though Eric knew better than to believe that it wouldn’t happen. They would turn the entire event into a three ring circus, just in an attempt to steal a few more points of World favor for their latest position on whatever they were posturing about this week.

There were no guarantees in life, and less in politics.

“I wish I could be more certain when a second voyage would be authorized, Admiral. But I can’t,” Weston replied gravely.

Tanner nodded, “I understand. Thankfully, however, it has been decided that the benefits of potential contact with your people it is worth the risk of having some of our people caught on another world… They will want your guarantee for their safety, of course.”

“They’ll have it,” Weston replied firmly. “While I can’t guarantee that they’ll have free access to… my world… I will ensure that they are received as a diplomatic envoy.”

“That will be acceptable,” Tanner replied. “If you can prepare to receive them, I will have an orbiter bring the party to the Odyssey before… ah… before you are scheduled to depart.”

Weston smiled, noting the hesitation. Establishing a common time reference was turning into a real pain. The locals used a system based on a numbering system that they were still working on deciphering and had apparently created it to establish some sort of common reference point among their colony worlds.

It didn’t exactly distil down into something easily comparable to Earth time units, unfortunately.

“We’ll be waiting for them, Admiral.”

“Excellent. Then I will let you go, and see to their preparations,” Tanner said, “Good day, Captain.”

“Good day, Admiral.”

Eric turned to where Ensign Lamont was sitting, “Susan… have an appropriate reception prepared for our guests.”

“Aye Captain,” Ensign Lamont replied, her thoughts running back to her earlier research on diplomatic protocol.

She’d had to look that up several times over the last couple days, when it first looked like they might get such an animal aboard the Odyssey and found the subject, to be intensely complicated.

So much depending on cultural differences made things tricky and she had been tempted to go with one of the Block ceremonies for their extreme levels of, well, ceremony. In the end, though, she’d decided that simpler was better and had got together with one of the ship’s Stewards and a few others to prepare.

To that end, she opened a channel after acknowledging the Captain’s order and turning back to her console.

“Jackie? Yeah, it’s Susan. It’s on you want to warn the chef? Thanks. I’ll be down in a few to double check. Thanks.”

*****

“Look sharp, we got another batch of locals landing.”

The men groaned as the Chief spoke, thinking about the last time.

“Relax,” he grinned. “After the last time, I think that the Cap chewed their pilots a new one. We might not have to hit the collision alarms this time.”

A few men chuckled, but most of their faces were pretty grim, just the same. Flight deck people had a dangerous enough job when dealing with pilots who took their job seriously and whether the locals realized it or not, most of the men on the deck considered their ‘flying’ to be well up in the ‘hotdog’ category.

On any Carrier, let alone one in the evacuated environment of space, trust was integral to the smooth operation of the flight deck. The Pilots had to trust the deck crew and the deck crew had to trust the pilots. A break anywhere in the line could cost lives, either through bad communication or, in the worst situations, intentional misdirection.

Chief Mackenzie knew that and he knew that his men weren’t anywhere near that point just yet, but he figured it wouldn’t hurt to remind them of one bit of good news.

“This is the last one of these we’ll have to deal with, for a while anyway,” he told them with a wry grin. “So stay on your toes, so to speak and if they rocket the deck… get the hell out of the way and leave them to me. Got that?”

The men nodded and acknowledged his words, so Mackenzie clapped his hands. “All right, get suited up. We’re taking over the deck at Oh-Fifteen-Hundred, and I’ll want it FOD checked by fifteen past. Move it!”

*****

In his cabin, Eric Weston was sitting behind his desk, looking over the proposed course that Daniels had prepared according to his wishes, for the trip home. The dog-legged flight path made fifteen different Transition hops, across almost four hundred light years of space.

The lieutenant had plotted the course to make the best use of the Odyssey’s legs, which were pretty impressive despite the limitations her Transition Drive built into her.

While the Transition effect had, in theory, no limit on distance it did have a practical limit in the case of the Odyssey’s power supplies. They could effect a Transition over a range of less than thirty lightyears at any given jump, after which they had to recharge the massive superconducting capacitors that fed the drive.

The reason, according to the tech boys, was that while a Tachyon could transit the entirety of the universe in an instant, it still required the energy to do so. That was the theory that the Transition Drive was devised to exploit, in actuality.

That and the fact that nature abhorred Tachyons about as much as it abhorred a vacuum.

The universe simply did not seem to like the little buggers and went out of its way to make sure that they didn’t stick around any longer than they had to.

The entire Tachyon Drive was actually little more than a Tachyon based Laser system that actually ‘fired’ itself, along with the entire ship, by forcing every molecule in the Odyssey to jump several energy states in one go while keeping the ‘beam’ coherent over the length of its range.

When the power ran out, the universe exerted its influence on the Tachyons to return to their former energy state, allowing the ship and its people to reform.

Not a particularly fun way to travel, Weston would be the first to admit, but it was fast and, hopefully, untraceable.

Each Transition did have some energy leakage, of course, just like any Laser, had a minute corona of energy particles that could be read with the right sensors. The Odyssey would pulse a Tachyon surge both when she left a system and when she reappeared. The upside to this was that, like lasers, the energy leakage wasn’t much. Calculating it before had only academic value, but recent events had brought that information to the forefront of tactical data.

The ‘corona’ of a Transition jump was calculated as an irrational root of its total length.

Which, to be honest, gave Eric a headache to even consider.

The upshot of it was that they could predict the range at which an observer could ‘see’ their Transition. For a thirty light year jump, it would be almost five light years. This meant that any ship within five light years of their departure point or, more importantly, their arrival point, would be able to detect their transition.

For a ten light year jump, the number was just under two thirds of a light year.

The flip side of that was, of course, if they jumped in too small of a transition then they would increase the risk by broadcasting more tachyons over several smaller zones, rather than over a few larger ones.

Eric had ordered that the last five jumps on their return home would be kept to fifteen light years or less, but no less than eight.

However, it was the first two that interested him more than anything else.

He was looking at the Port Fuielles system map, when the call from the Bridge came through and he reached over and opened the channel. “Yes?”

“Captain, the Orbiter from the planet has lifted off. They’ll be landing in about ten minutes.”

“Thank you, Susan. Have everything prepared for their arrival, I’ll meet you on the parking deck,” Eric said warmly as he closed the channel, then shut down the holo-display of his desk with a wave.

Enough star maps for the moment, he had guests to greet.

*****

“Orbiter One has the ball.”

“Roger. LSO Confirms,” Chief Mackenzie said over the network. “All hands, eyes on the inbound plane.”

The traditions of carrier crews went back a long way and, though many of the procedures had been changed a hundred times since they had originally been drawn up, some terms just didn’t want to die.

Of course, the Chief supposed, calling the hunk of material coming his direction a ‘plane’ would undoubtedly piss off a lot of pilots. It was, however, coming in at a more reasonable rate than the last time and he was relieved to see that no one was going to have to dive for the blast shields, as the craft came to a smooth stop, about two feet off the deck.

He stepped out, and waved it to a lift with his signallers and wished for a moment that he could wipe his brow.

He’d feel a lot better, if only he knew for a fact that these locals were carrier qualified.

*****

On the parking deck, Eric Weston watched, along with Commander Roberts and Ensign Lamont, as the alien Orbiter rose through the deck and was slowly directed to a parking position. There it rested for a time, floating about two feet off the deck like it was nailed there, the disturbing image of its bulkhead melting away happening again.

Eric managed to keep from grimacing again, but he really didn’t like that particular technology. At least not this application for it, he had to amend to himself, a moment later.

He forced that thought from his mind and stepped forward, as three figures stepped off the Orbiter and he was surprised to note that he recognized two of them.

“Ithan Chans,” Eric said formally with a deep nod. “And Ithan Sienthe. A pleasure to see you both again.”

“Greetings, Captain,” the pilot, Cora Sienthe said gravely, nodding. “Permission to set foot on your vessel?”

“Granted,” Weston replied.

The young woman smiled slyly, as she stepped off the plank and onto the deck, and Eric had to smile in return when he heard her boots make a tacky sticking sound, as she remained well attached to the deck.

Milla did the same while both stepped aside for the third person.

Eric turned his attention to this one, an old man who looked quite fit for his obviously advanced age. He stepped onto the deck, his own boots attaching themselves solidly, then nodded gravely to Eric and the other two.

“Captain,” he said his voice oddly gravely in comparison to the fluid soft voices Eric had heard from most of the locals. “I am your… diplomat? I am Benjin Corasc, Elder of the Planet Ranquil.”

You certainly are, Eric thought, carefully keeping it from his face as he returned the nod. “Welcome aboard the Odyssey, Elder Corasc. It is an honor to have you here.”

The old man waved the words away with a wry gesture, “the honor is mine, Captain. I, and my world, am in your debt.”

Eric just shrugged, “one doesn’t automatically rule out the other, Elder Corasc.”

The old man smiled, laughing a little harshly in his gravelly voice. “As you say, Captain.”

Eric nodded, returning the smile, then gestured toward the far wall, “If you’ll come with me, Sir, I’ll show you to your quarters. After that, I’m afraid that I must prepare for our departure from this system, however, I would be honored if you would join my Officers and me for supper this evening?”

“Of course,” Corasc said evenly, “I will need quarters for my Attachés as well, however.”

Eric glanced back at the two women, “Both of them?”

“Yes Captain. This will not pose a problem?”

“No, Elder Corasc. It will not,” Eric told him, then frowned. “However, I believe that Commander Roberts and Ithan Sienthe will need to speak concerning the proper securing of the Orbiter.”

“Excellent,” Corasc said. “Then Ithan Chans and I will come with you while they deal with such things.”

“Of course,” Eric nodded, waving slightly to Roberts as he guided the Elder toward the lift.

Commander Jason Roberts just nodded equally slightly in return, and then turned to speak with the young woman concerning her floating space ship.

*****

It was some time later, when Eric stepped onto the Bridge, a little worn out on the ‘polite-o-meter’ and looking forward to being underway again.

“Captain on the Bridge.”

“Ah, Commander,” he smiled as he took his position. “Did you get the Orbiter secured?”

“Aye Sir. Fascinating piece of technology,” Roberts replied.

“Yes, well, I’m certain that they decided that having some evidence of their tech base might be useful,” Eric replied.

“Undoubtedly, Sir,” Roberts said.

“Are we ready to ‘weigh anchor’?” Eric asked, a wry tilt of his mouth communicating his humor.

“Aye Sir.”

“Good. Helm, take us out of Orbit,” Eric ordered, settling into the seat. “Thrusters only until we clear the debris, then take us up to full acceleration.”

“Aye Sir,” Daniels responded. “Thrusters only.”

The deck rumbled under them as the ship started to break clear of the planet and Eric relaxed marginally. Whatever else happened, they were on their way home now.

Epilogue

“Commodore… I think we’ve got a glitch in that new array they installed.”

Commodore Wolfe frowned, leaning forward, “Pipe it up to my station, son.”

The young ensign standing watch nodded in response and directed the information up to the commander’s pedestal, where Wolfe was overseeing the running of the Demos base. The facility was a hybrid between a ship repair base and a terraforming command center for the Martian Colony Project, which meant that the Commodore had a lot to deal with on a daily basis.

The sensor glitch, however, brought a smile to his face.

“That’s not a glitch, son.” He said a moment later, “That’s a Tachyon Surge.”

“Sir? But… It didn’t match any of the profiles we have in the computer and…”

“It didn’t match the profiles because we don’t have one for a full size vessel transitioning in-system.” Wolfe said with a smile.

“Sir?” The Ensign’s eyes widened, his voice rising just a little as a smile started to form. “You mean…”

“Let’s roll out the welcome mat, boys.” Wolfe said, a little louder so everyone in the large command center could hear. “The Odyssey just came home.”

Wolfe permitted himself a slight increase to his smile as the command staff, the younger ones anyway, let out a bit of a cheer. The Station’s XO let it go for a few seconds, then quickly quieted them down while Wolfe examined the information the sensors had recorded.

His single array of sensors weren’t enough to give him an exact lock on the source of the surge, but even as his base had obeyed protocol and transmitted the data back to Earth, Earth and the other outposts and ships in the area had transmitted their findings to him. It took the better part of a half hour, but by the end of the little storm of signals, he had the transition point pinpointed.

Eric’s gotten cautious in his old age, Wolfe thought as he locked the entry point right down on the Heliopause, the furthest reach of the Sun’s influence in interstellar space. That put the Odyssey about three days out by its fastest cruise, unless Eric planned to use some fancy flying to brake that monster of a ship.

He could have brought it in as close as the Heliosphere and cut a day off that number, at least according to all the numbers Wolfe had seen, but Eric was the one on the gun so it was his call.

That extra day of waiting was going to be one hell of a long time though.

*****

“Wolfe here. This better be good.” Commodore Gregory Wolfe muttered as he thumbed opened the communication terminal in response to the insistent tone.

“Sorry to wake you, Commodore, but we have a message pulse from the Odyssey here.”

Wolfe threw his covers one way, grabbing for his clothing as he hit the deck. “I’ll be right there. Wolfe out.”

As he dressed, he checked the clock and nodded. Almost twenty six hours to the minute, just the amount of time for a signal to reach them by radio pulse. He finished getting dressed, checking his uniform only briefly in the mirror, then headed up to the command and control deck.

Once there he accepted command and settled in to his secure terminal station in order to access the message.

What he had expected to be little more than a greeting from an old friend, with maybe a few bits of fascinating trivia to be shared just between them, turned out to be something entirely different. Wolfe paled slightly at the security encryption notating that the message was coded and tight beamed directly to him, not broadcast to Fleet Command.

He decoded it quickly as the computer could, and started to read through the initial summary.

“Holy shit.” He whispered a moment later, hand slamming down on an alert.

A few seconds later a groggy voice was on the line, “Commodore?”

“Sorry to wake you, Johnson, but I need a secure link to Fleet Command. What’s the latest on the security of the FTL Pulse system?”

“Intel says that it’s still secure, Commodore.”

“What do you think?” Wolfe demanded softly.

The voice hesitated a moment then came back, “Commodore… what kind of importance are you attaching to this stuff? Your mom’s secret recipe for chilli or the plans for the fourth generation adaptive armor?”

“Try something more along the lines of God’s phone number.” Wolfe replied.

Johnson actually gulped slightly falling silent for a long time. “Commodore, I think I’d use one of the laser systems.”

“I was afraid you’d say that. Alright, go back to sleep.”

“Are you kidding me Sir?”

Wolfe just shut the line and punched up another channel, linking him to the communications officer. “Jeff, you’d better get me a coded tight beam to Fleet Command.”

“Ah, Yes Sir.” The answer came back quickly, “The Admiralty Base is behind the Earth at this time, Commodore… Do you want to use a satellite bounce?”

Wolfe hesitated, and frowned. “How long until we can bounce a signal right off of them directly?”

“Four hours, Sir.”

Four hours. As much as he hated to waste the time, four hours just didn’t mean squat in the scheme of things. Wolfe sighed and nodded, “I’ll wait. Thanks, Jeff.”

“No problem, Commodore. I’ll have it queued for you, Sir.”

The channel was cut and Wolfe went back to the report.

“Eric, my old friend, when you step in it, you really step in it.” He muttered softly, opening the file to the first page of the complete report and starting to read.

*****

“Will we arrive soon?”

Captain Weston looked up as the soft words penetrated his thinking. He nodded, smiling to the slim woman. “Yes, Ithan Chans. We’ll be entering Earth Orbit shortly.”

“Earth.” Milla said in return, her lips quirking up. “And you say that this is really what you named your world? It is not… a distraction so that we may not recognize the real name?”

Eric chuckled softly, “I’m afraid not. It’s been Earth for a long time now.”

Milla shrugged, “Better than simply ‘The World’ I suppose, though not by much.”

Eric laughed again, shaking his head. “We like it.”

Milla smiled, noting that the Captain had grown a lot more relaxed since they had reentered his home system. He was smiling a little freer now, and laughing some as well. It was interesting to see the changes wrought, but she thought that there was still something tense underneath it all.

She couldn’t be certain, though, and perhaps it was just her imagination.

“Captain.”

Eric looked up, “Yes Ensign?”

“We’re about to start braking maneuvers, Sir, and we’ve just established a real-time link to Admiral Gracen.”

Eric tensed up, but nodded. “Thank you, Ensign. I’ll take it on the Bridge in a minute.”

“Aye Sir.”

*****

“Captain Weston.”

“Admiral.”

The Admiral’s stern face had grown no softer in his absence, and Eric couldn’t help but note that there was a hard edge of steel in the aristocratic tilt of her eyes.

“Am I to believe that this report you filed is true, Captain?” She asked finally, when it became obvious that Eric wasn’t going to start.

“Yes Ma’am.” He told her, “All accounts in the report are verifiable, and will be attested to by my crew.”

“And these… aliens you have on board?”

“Diplomatic Envoy and his staff, Ma’am.” Eric said clearly. “I’ve accepted their credentials and promised them a diplomatic reception.”

“I see.” Her voice was chilly, to say the least. “And you don’t believe that somewhere in all of this, you might have perhaps overstepped your authority?”

“That’s for you to decide Ma’am.”

“It is indeed.” Gracen replied, a hint of distaste on her lips. “Very well. I will prepare the reception for your guests. Please, transmit anything we should know about them that might be useful in arranging their stay.”

“Will do, Admiral.” Eric said, “Though I’d say that the most important thing would be to avoid taking them to any boxing matches.”

“Pardon me?”

Eric permitted himself a slight smile, “They have a cultural thing about violence, Admiral. They don’t much appreciate it.”

Gracen’s eyebrow went up, “An odd thing for a people under the gun.”

Weston shrugged, “I didn’t say it was a reasonable thing, Ma’am.”

Gracen nodded, “Very well, I’ll be certain that our people know that.”

“Very good, Ma’am.”

“In the meantime, Captain,” Her voice grew a little darker. “You had best prepare for your debriefing… I don’t believe that it will be a simple matter.”

“No Ma’am.” Eric replied, “I didn’t believe that it would be.”

“In the meantime,” Gracen said grudgingly, “I suppose we should make the most of the opportunity you bring us… Certainly, since it may have an incredible cost in the long run.”

“Yes Ma’am.” Eric nodded.

“What would you suggest we discuss with your… Envoy?”

“Power Ma’am.”

“Power, Captain?”

“Yes Admiral.” Weston said firmly. “If you can do it, get their power generation systems. They’ll need information on our Class Three or higher Lasers, and maybe our adaptive armor… Second Gen would do, I’d say.”

“Those are classified technologies, Captain.”

“Those are what they’ll need to mount a credible defence against their enemies, Admiral.” Weston corrected her slightly, “And if we can get their power generation systems… we’d be able to Transition anywhere, Ma’am… Our Lasers would be ten times as powerful… You get the idea?”

Gracen let out a deep breath, “Yes Captain. I suppose I do. Anything else?”

“I’ll draw up a list, but I believe that my CMO would like to ensure that you discuss medical exchange, and they also have the ability to generate asymmetrical energy fields.”

“Indeed.” Gracen said, nodding slowly. “Very well, draw up your list… I’ll be sure that our negotiators look at it very carefully.”

“Yes Ma’am. Oh, one more thing…”

“Yes Captain?”

“If we decide to get more involved, Admiral…”

“That is a big ‘if’, Captain.”

“I understand that, Ma’am.” Eric said, “But if we do… I’d suggest we offer them some Green Berets as advisors. They need help setting up their ground forces…”

Admiral Gracen nodded, “And that is what the Green Berets are trained to do. Very well, I’ll be sure that it’s brought up. For now, Captain… prepare.”

“Aye Aye Ma’am.”

*****

Diplomatic receptions, Debriefings by a board of admirals, and a great deal of work later, Captain Eric Weston found himself sitting in the office of Admiral Amanda Gracen, waiting for one more ‘debriefing’.

“Captain Weston.”

Eric came to his feet, stiffening to attention. “Ma’am.”

“Take a seat, Captain.” The Admiral told him as she circled the room and settled in behind her desk. “This is an informal meeting.”

“Yes Ma’am.” He said, sitting down again.

“I’ve gone over your statements, and those of your crew, as they were given to the board.” She told him, leafing through some loose papers. The Admiral was a woman who appreciated the intangibles of paper, it seemed. “However I’d like to speak with you about it informally, if you don’t mind.”

“No Ma’am.” Eric said immediately.

“A lot of the Admiralty is perturbed that the Captain of our Flagship would involve us in a war, Captain.” She said coolly, looking him in the eye. “In fact, there has been more than a little talk of a court martial.”

Eric felt a chill, but forced himself to nod. “Aye Ma’am. I can’t say that I’m surprised.”

“And yet you did it anyway?”

“Admiral…” He hesitated, and then shook his head. “Yes Ma’am. I did it anyway.”

“Why?” Her voice was cool, yet challenging.

Eric hesitated, and simply took a breath, “Because it wasn’t a war, Ma’am. It was Genocide. I couldn’t stand back and watch, Admiral.”

“Noble.” She told him, lips pursed. “Perhaps not the brightest star in the sky, but noble. I probably shouldn’t tell you this just yet, but you may come out of this better than you deserve.”

“Ma’am?” Eric asked, confused.

Gracen snorted humorously. “The initial conferences have left a lot of the brass… impressed. They want the technology these ‘colonials’ have to offer. Did you know that Mr. Corasc was approaching his second centennial by our standards?”

Eric nodded.

“Well, we have a few politicians that see themselves ‘serving their constituents’ well into the next century.” Gracen said, a little distastefully. “Beyond that, there have already been a few leaks to the press… So, Captain, you’re something of a hero in the Confederation. First Contact and all that junk… The Block has already started a press campaign to discredit you, of course, but it won’t have much effect on the home front for the near future.”

“So,” She went on, “We aren’t likely to be able to Court Martial you… It wouldn’t be good PR, or so I’m told.”

Eric winced, not certain he liked that being the only reason he may keep his career.

“That’s neither here nor there, at the moment however.” She told him flatly. “I want you to tell me about these… Drah-sin?”

“That’s how the Colonials pronounce it, yes Ma’am.” Eric replied while frowning. “To be honest, there’s not a lot to tell. We have some bodies of the soldier drones on the Odyssey, but once they cooled down it seems like they just petrified, Ma’am.”

“Petrified?”

Eric nodded, “Their internal organs… as near as my people can tell… are suspended in a molten solution that’s extremely high in Silicon. When they die, they just turn to rock… We can’t tell the organs from the rest of the body after that.”

“I see.”

“To be honest, though, Ma’am…” Eric hesitated, “The Drasin don’t scare me much.”

The Admiral looked at him, features perplexed. “Aren’t you the one who brought back the images of the planet… what did you call it? Port Fey?”

“Yes Ma’am.” Eric swallowed.

The images from Porte Fuielles were disturbing, as were those from the first planet they had encountered the Drasin on. Days after the attack on Porte Fuielles, the Odyssey had made another sweeping pass through the system, intent on seeing the true aftermath of the Drasin attack.

The world had been stripped clean by then, the Drasin literally erasing all evidence of humanity from its surface, along with most traces of life itself. It was well on its way to being a Martian like landscape by the time they had left the system a second time.

The other, however, wasn’t merely a nightmare. It was a terror of epic proportions.

The Drasin in the first system had used the intervening weeks from their first attack to multiply completely out of control. When Eric had ordered a pass made with Carnivore drones, all that had been left of the planet was a rapidly breaking up sphere of dead and dying Drasin drones. The things had literally eaten up the entire world in their endless quest to propagate, until the remnants of the planet broke up under a series of volcanic eruptions.

In some mindless instinct, the Drasin had destroyed everything they needed to live, at least as far as the drone had been able to tell, When the atmosphere bled off and the heat from the dying world began to cool, so did the drones. While many of the floating, kicking, things were still alive in the orbit that used to hold a planet, the readings indicated that they were rapidly losing their internal heat, and dying as well.

The Admiral cleared her throat, bringing Eric back to the moment.

“Go on, Captain.”

“The Drasin,” He said after a moment, “Are, in my opinion, Bio-weapons.”

Gracen’s eyebrow went up, prompting him to continue.

“The evidence is there, Admiral,” He said, leaning forward. “They were just too perfectly suited to attacking the Colonials. Laser resistant on the frequencies their enemy used both in space and on the ground. They were tailor made for a job, Admiral… And I don’t believe that any species would naturally select for suicide the way these things did. No, Ma’am… The Drasin are just a weapon.”

“I fail to see, Captain,” The Admiral said grimly, “Why you would not be afraid of them for that reason.”

“Because… Admiral, I’ve never in my life been afraid of a gun.” Eric said firmly. “It’s the person with their finger on the trigger that worries me.”

He let that statement float for a moment, and went on. “The Drasin don’t bother me much, Admiral. We can take them, with a minimal lead time to start producing combat ships and defences. But somewhere out there, there is someone who pointed them at the Colonials and pulled the trigger.”

Eric Weston looked the Admiral in the eyes than, “And that person, Admiral, I’m terrified of.”

END

About the Author

Evan Currie is the self-published author of two books, Thermals and Odyssey One. . A long time fan of science fiction, his love of epic storylines led him to put several million words onto the net in the pursuit of fanfiction stories, and eventually led to the novel you just finished.

You can connect with Evan Currie online at :

Twitter: http://twitter.com/tenhawk

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100001444124776

Smashwords: http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/EvanCurrie

Or at his home on the net :

http://www.tenhawkpresents.com

Appendix One

When I wrote the first words to Odyssey One, I began here. It’s the original intro to the story, but by nearly universal agreement it’s also one of the weakest bits I’ve ever written. I left it in place originally because despite everything I tried I was too close to the story to effectively rewrite it.

However, after almost 2000 copies sold, and many people telling me the same thing over and over again, I have to say I goofed. So this version of Odyssey One doesn’t begin with the original prologue, but with the introduction of the Terran characters instead. I’m not sure it’s much better when you step back and look at the whole, but it is an easier bit to start reading.

Still, if you want to see how the book original started, read on.

Desperation has an odour.

It’s a sense of the situation that, paradoxically, can be smelt even in places an odour simply cannot go. Even in the vacuum of space, a place no scream can be heard, the well-tuned nose can smell the desperation of men who have given up all hope.

People bring it with them wherever they go, spread it like flames through a dry field. Sometimes, they even bring it to places no person has ever gone before. Once there, it is a smell that never really goes away.

In this case a system that had been long since sanitized by the searing radiation pouring from its white giant primary, any life that once may have existed within its confines long since passed to the next adventure. Within its deep well, however, the movement of a ragtag fleet of battle-scarred ships raced to escape the sucking pull of the star’s gravity, the sickly odour of desperation clinging to them like barnacles to a sea going ship.

In unrelenting pursuit, three dark battle cruisers slowly gained on the fleeing ships, sharp crackling energy flowing through the pursuer’s multitude of energy canons. In only hours, the system already reeked of desperate men and women, though no life had ever evolved there, and none ever would.

On the lead ship of the running fleet, the scene was one of controlled chaos. Instrument panels had burst with showers of sparks and power conduits erupted in jets of flames. The crew doggedly held their positions, barely flinching as the white hot rain engulfed them. The ship’s Captain, having lost his chair to a particularly violent explosion, gripped the back of his helmsman’s seat, desperately calculating the next evasion as he tried to avoid being thrown to the deck.

“Tiran, try to get us some more speed using the gravity of that gas giant.”

The helmsman didn’t respond beyond a gruff nod of his head and the sudden hunching of his shoulders as he changed the ship’s course vector slightly, gripping the control sticks firmly in his hands. Any acknowledgment would have fallen on deaf ears anyway; the Captain had already switched his attention to another station.

Minor variations of the scene were in evidence all across the bedraggled fleet, each commanding officer desperately trying to gain distance from their pursuers. All they needed was to free themselves from the white giant’s gravity well before their pursuers caught up with them, and then they could hop to FTL and be safe for a time at least.

“Drop all Atomics, set them to arm once the last of our fleet has passed,” The fleet commander ordered, his voice firm as it crackled through the fleet wide network.

Across the fleet, ships began spewing small pods from their rear compartments, effectively covering their retreat with a nuclear wall. A short time after the last ship had passed; small lights began ominously activating as the pods were remotely armed, if there had been air to conduct it a quiet beep would have been heard from each of the lethal pods.

One by one the fleet used the gravity of the gas giant to sling themselves to higher velocities, burning their engines beyond the safety limit to gain every precious second they could buy. Mere moments after the maneuver, it was obvious that it had been in vain, the pursuing ships were closing the gap quickly with their relentless pace.

“Put the rear cameras on the screen. Magnify them, I want to see this,” Said the fleet commander.

On the screen the enemy appeared as rapidly growing dots, swelling as they approached the last hope of the ragtag fleet. On the ship’s combat display, the mines were blinking bright white as the enemies ships entered into their range. For a time nothing happened as the mines programming allowed the vessels to enter completely within the field before the warheads armed themselves.

Then the view screen simply went dark, its internal failsafe’s automatically tripped as the blinding light and radiation of the multiple blasts swept through the fleet, fatally irradiating several ships that hadn’t had enough energy remaining to mount an effective defence screen. The screen flickered back to life as the system rebooted, showing the afterimage of the blinding light until the ship’s computer adjusted. Slowly, out of the blob of blinding light, the screen cleared and the crew slumped from their positions of hopeful anticipation.

The ships were still there, damaged to be sure, perhaps even severely, but they were still there - still in pursuit.

A hurried conference was spat, back and forth by the ships communications arrays, the desperation of the situation forcing the hands of those swept away by it. The small, ragtag formation burst apart as each ship began pulling hard for freedom along independent vectors in the hopes that at least one would clear the gravity well and live to report back.

The three pursuing ships likewise split, each vectoring to cover an equal area of space as they managed to catch up to the slower of their targets. As each vessel was overtaken, a fierce, but brief firefight lit the surrounding vacuum. Lasers, particle beams and missiles screamed through the soundless wastes in search of their programmed targets.

The fleeing ships began to slip further out of the grasp of their pursuers, forcing the hunters to let loose their hounds. Swarms of fighter craft poured from the ships, arcing in pursuit of their quarry, closing the distance in mere moments and engaging the fleeing vessels.

On board the fleeing cruiser the Fleet Commander knew that he had lost, and could only hope that one of the other ships would succeed in making the run for freedom as he watched the wheeling fighters come for his ship.

“Fire!”

The cruiser opened up on the incoming fighters, vaporizing several in the first barrage, but there were simply too many for them to handle. If the ship had been in full fighting trim, then it might have been a different story. Unfortunately his ship hadn’t been at one hundred percent, even before they had been ambushed. Among his people, the Captain was an oddity at best, a born warrior from a society of artists and philosophers. His ship had required routine maintenance for months but was too far down the docket to receive it. It was ironic really, they had recently equipped the fleet with the best weaponry they could devise but no one had bothered to simply refit the ancient engines of the ageing cruiser. The attackers had found easy prey and they knew it.

Outside, the battle raged on as the fighters slowly picked the ship apart, component by component. They levelled power nodes, weapons’ emplacements, and sensor pods with methodical efficiency.

He knew when it was time to give in, he was a practical man. Despite how hard it was to admit he cleared his throat and gave the order, “Abandon ship! All hands to the life pods!” The Captain’s voice rang out through the ship, through the areas that still had a minimum of emergency power.

Pods burst clear of the ship as they were blasted away by controlled explosions, their flight being covered by the slow, automatic, firing of the ships guns on computer control. The ship’s command center was rocked as each pod blasted clear, but the Captain paid it no mind. He just stared at the cracked view screen and watched the last wave of enemy fighters wheel toward him. Closer and closer they came, the ship rocking with the first wild shots as they slipped in on a low strafing run, but he waited and watched. Just as the bulk of the fighters slipped along the hull, he jammed his fist down onto an ominous red button and uttered a word that would have landed him in a re-education center back home.

Outside the fighters were just completing their run when their instruments went wild. The pilots craned to see what was happening and were enthralled by the scene below them. The cruiser’s hull simply began to bubble, centered at the stern of the ship at first but spreading like lightning across the ship’s surface. Finally the bubbles exploded outward in a massive rush of energies that even the lead fighters couldn’t escape. One by one they were engulfed in the tsunami of energy, flaring like matches in a blowtorch as they flickered out of existence.

Across the system the scene was similar, not one of the ships had succeeded in their flight and one by one they were disabled or destroyed by their pursuers. The three pursuing battleships visited each floating wreck in turn, gathering fighters, and sweeping each of the floating hulks with powerful energy beams. Occasionally, an eerie glow would encompass a ship here, or a pod there, growing in intensity for a few moments before streaming across the void and into collector arrays positioned across the attacker’s hull.

Hours later the last of the attackers swept from the system, leaving a barren graveyard floating in their wake. Barren that is until, a few hours later, a solitary pod’s beacon raised its voice and cried out into the bleak darkness for help.

Read on for a sneak peak at Heart of Matter, the sequel to Odyssey One, coming Fall of 2011

The Heart of Matter

Being the Second Voyage of the NAC Odyssey

Liberty Station

Lagrange Four, Earth Orbit

Captain Eric Stanton Weston walked along the gently curving corridor that circled the exterior of the immensity of Space Station Liberty. He had to admit that the sensation of generated artificial gravity felt quite different to him after the time he’d spent on the Odyssey, both within the Sol System and without.

It also jarred his sensibilities to be able to look out on space through horizontally mounted ports, so unlike the few sections of the Odyssey that allowed such a personal view of the expanse. He followed the lines that adorned the floor, mapping out the various areas of the station, watching the rainbow idiot-guides drop off as he climbed through the security zones into Officer Country.

He had an appointment with Admiral Gracen, presumably concerning the new orders for the Odyssey. He hoped that the orders weren’t more of the same, since he’d spent the last three weeks since repairs had been complete working the crew up to an invisible standard that no one appeared willing to tell him.

All of that was the result of his current ‘mixed’ esteem within the military and political realities of the North American Confederation, he supposed. He, and much of the Odyssey crew, unfortunately, were currently what one might call ‘odd ducks’. They were too valuable, both politically and experience-wise, to be tossed away. However there was a growing community within the political and military community that harbored ill will toward them for bringing the Earth, at least marginally, into a larger universe that appeared quite willing to kill them all.

“Captain!”

Eric paused, glancing back, and saw a young man approaching from his six. He held his step until the young man caught up to him, than nodded politely. “Lieutenant.”

“Sir.” Lieutenant Walter Daniels came to a stop and saluted, “Commander Roberts sends his regards and wanted me to give you this Sir.”

Eric returned the salute, than accepted the memory chip from the young man, wondering why Roberts had sent him on a gopher job. “Thank you, Lieutenant.”

“Not a problem, Sir.” Daniels responded, “I was heading to the Station lounge anyway…”

Eric smiled slightly, nodding. That explained why Daniels had been tapped for gopher duty, it gave the young man another excuse to visit with a certain young ensign assigned to the Liberty Communications Center. “Very good than. As you were, Lieutenant.”

“Thank you, Sir.”

Eric watched him leave for a moment, than pocketed the chip and turned and continued on his way. He still had an Admiral to meet, after all.

*****

Amanda Gracen looked up as her ‘One O’Clock’ was shown into the office, nodding curtly to her secretary. As the Naval Attache retreated from the room, she eyed Eric Weston for a moment before nodding to a chair across from her. “Take a Seat Captain.”

Eric nodded, stepping forward and sliding into the comfortable chair that was situated across from the Admiral. “Admiral.”

Gracen looked down at the files displayed beneath to hard plastic surface of her desk, idly flipping through them with economical flickers of her fingers. After a moment she looked up again, than leaned back in her high backed chair. “Well Captain, do you have a status report on your ship?”

Eric stiffened, just slightly, than nodded. “Aye Ma’am. The Odyssey is fully repaired and her crew is fully integrated and as good a group of people as I’ve had the honor to serve with.”

A flicker of something floated in the eyes of the Admiral, but Eric couldn’t quite identify it. Amusement, perhaps, but he just couldn’t be sure. She nodded at his words, than flickered through to another file. Eric wished he could tell what she was looking at, but the display in the Admirals desk was designed to be read from the Admiral’s position only.

“Have you followed the developments with the Ambassador’s dealings?” She asked after a moment.

The ‘Ambassador’, Elder Corusc, had been charged by his people with negotiating a treaty with Earth in the aftermath of the fierce battle the Odyssey had waged in their home system against alien invaders the Colonials referred to as the ‘Drasin’. The technology of the two cultures had diverged heavily in direction, leaving the Odyssey with an advantage in weapons sophistication though woefully outpowered on a matter of pure brute force.

Eric had spent a great many nights since than imagining what the Earth technology base could do with all that pure energy. Many of the limitations the Odyssey suffered from were due largely to a lack of power, as opposed to a lack of technology.

Weston shook his head slightly in response to the question though, he hadn’t had time with the make work projects the Odyssey had been forced to endure. “I’m afraid not, Ma’am. I’ve been a little busy.”

The narrow smile on the Admiral’s face told Eric that she knew precisely what he had been busy doing, but that was another matter.

“Pity.” Was all she said on the subject, “You might have found it interesting.”

“I’m sure that I would have.” Eric replied, keeping his tone neutral.

“Unfortunately,” She went on, “Much of the technology won’t be of any use to us for several years at least…”

She let her words drop off, than abruptly started speaking again. “Including, I’m afraid, their power systems.”

Eric stiffened almost at once. That was the last thing he wanted to hear, “Pardon me, Ma’am?”

“The Colonials,” Gracen said, using the term Eric and his people tended to use for the non-terran human’s, “Use a power system entirely different from ours, and I’m afraid that we haven’t figured out a way to generate electricity with it just yet. Not with any real efficiency at least.”

Eric grimaced. He should have thought of that, he supposed.

“We have some designers working on entirely new weapon and ship designs, but for the immediate future we won’t be tapping that particular resource.” She told him.

Eric nodded and sighed, “Understood.”

“Still, that’s not to say that no good came of it.” The Admiral half smiled, “The medical technology, while still not compatible with our own systems, doesn’t really have to be. We’ve already begun integrating a great many of the techniques into our own medical center here on Liberty, and so far the results are promising.”

Eric nodded absently, still mourning the loss of all that power in the back of his mind. It was only than that something about the conversation made him frown.

“Pardon, Admiral,” He said after a moments thought, “But have we reached an agreement with the Elder?”

Admiral Gracen smiled again, this time a little wider. “Yes. We have.”

Eric nodded again, his mind working hard now. He knew that Corusc had been a little frustrated with the pace of Earth born politics, but by the same token the Colonials all seemed to be fatalists in one way or another. Or, rather, most of them were.

He’d met a couple that were the same sort of struggle unto the death types that Eric generally associated with human beings, but those were both military, more or less.

Corusc was certainly a great deal more patient than he would have been, taking over three months from their arrival in the Sol system to patiently bounce from one state dinner to another in the hopes of recruiting some help, practically any help, for his people.

Three months was a long time in any war, but even more so in the type of genocidal war that the Colonials were struggling to defend against. So Eric understood the Elder’s frustrations quite easily.

He looked back at the Admiral, “What kind of agreement?”

“We’ll supply advisors for their ground forces in the form of Green Beret detachments,” Gracen replied, “As well as providing them with the technical specifications on both our adaptive armor and Laser systems. We won’t be giving them either the technical specifications on the Transition Drive system, nor will we give away the coordinates of the Sol System.”

Eric nodded, agreeing with both points.

The Transition Drive was certainly the ace in the hole for the Human, no the Terran forces. It was a rather nerve racking system that allowed effectively instantaneous travel across distances of up to thirty lightyears. Even more if they could generate enough power to do it.

Likewise, the exact Stellar Location of the Sol System wasn’t something to be traded away at any price in the current situation. Eric wasn’t certain if the enemy had any way to learn it from the Colonials, but it was far far better to remain under the RADAR as it were.

At least until a Home Fleet and System wide defense system could be put into place.

However, in order to carry out even this agreement, it would mean sending the Odyssey on another mission. Eric’s eyes narrowed as he considered that. Not that he was opposed to another mission, however at the moment the Odyssey was the single largest accumulation of firepower in the Sol System.

“When will we be returning to Ranquil than?” He asked mildly.

“In two weeks.” She replied, “Your crew will have that time for Leave.”

“Yes Ma’am, they’ll appreciate that.” Eric nodded, but he was still thinking about local defense. “Admiral… Without the Odyssey here, if the Drasin should arrive…”

“That’s unlikely to happen, unless they managed to back track your Transition bursts,” Gracen replied, “But if it does we should be adequately prepared.”

Eric didn’t say anything, so she went on. “The Normandy, and the Enterprise are well under construction by our own crews as you know, they’ll be approaching minimal operational status in the next two weeks, though they’ll need another month to be completed. Additionally, the Soviet Alliance has begun construction on the Gagarin. She’s a light destroyer the Soviets had originally planned to use as a test bed for some new ideas of theirs, as well as a matter of showing their ‘flag’ in the new space race.”

Eric nodded, understanding. The Soviet Alliance was still relatively weak, coming out of the Block Wars with a nasty pounding to their credit from the Chinese forces that invaded from the south. They’d done well enough, considering that their military had been badly outmatched by the newer and more modern Block forces during the war.

Ironically, though, it had done them a lot of good on the economy side of things. Since the end of the twentieth century they’d been struggling to find their footing in a world that was jumping ahead by leaps and bounds and leaving them far behind. The war had forced the entire loose knit agglomeration of nations to face a common enemy on even ground, and to pour a lot of effort into a common goal.

Since the end of the Block War the Alliance had been making great strides to stepping back into the field of Premier powers on Earth, and the Gagarin would be an important prestige point to them.

“The Block, of course,” Gracen said with a mild twist to her lip, “Has the Mao Tse Tung under construction in addition to their in-system freighters and armed shuttles. So I believe that we’re covered.”

Eric nodded, he supposed that was true enough, even though the Mao wouldn’t have nearly the defenses it needed to withstand a strike from a Drasin Laser. If they could out maneuver it, though, they should have at least an effective weapons parity. He didn’t have the slightest clue what the Gagarin would boast in terms of defensive and offensive power, however.

The Confederation was certainly in the lead for the new race to space, having already made it to other star systems and opened negotiations with a non-terran civilization, however that particular coup didn’t entirely transfer to prestige or power within the Sol System itself. The Block had a lot of that in their own feathered cap at the moment, especially since they gave the old United States a nasty kick to the teeth before the war by winning the first leg of the race and beating the US back to the Moon.

Returning his mind to the subject at hand, however, Eric supposed that the orbital defenses would be enough when combined with the ships that were approaching completion.

Even so, a small handful of ships just didn’t sit well with him as the main line of defense for the NAC and the planet as a whole.

They needed Fleets and they needed energy systems to power them to Parity with the Drasin at least. A Power Parity, with the NAC’s sophistication advantage, would let him sleep a lot better at nights.

Of course, some basic Intel on the enemy wouldn’t hurt either.

“Very Well, Admiral,” Eric said aloud. “I’ll inform my crew and begin preparations.”

Gracen nodded, “I hope you’ll ensure that your own name appears on the Leave List as well, Captain.”

“Yes Ma’am.” Eric replied, though he’d not really thought about it.

“Good. Dismissed.”

*****

Temporary Colonial Embassy

Washington DC

North American Confederation

Ithan Milla Chans sighed as she looked out over the parts of the city she could see from the room she had been given upon arriving on this ‘Earth’.

The city was impressive in it’s own way, she supposed, though the buildings weren’t even close to the size of Mons Systema. There were a great many more people visible at all times, it seemed that everyone in the entire city would get out and mill about. The populations in her own city never seemed to be quite as visible as this.

It had taken her several days before she finally asked, and was informed that the people weren’t outside for the pleasure of being outside, but were instead actually commuting. That had come as a shock of sorts since Milla had never gone outside to commute, public transports were integrated throughout the entire city she grew up in.

“It is a strange place, is it not, Ithan?”

Milla half turned and nodded respectfully as Elder Corasc walked up behind her. “Yes. I don’t believe that I’ve ever seen anything quite like it.”

“That is because our cities were planned.” The Elder replied, “This one… grew.”

Milla frowned, eyeing the Elder curiously.

He smiled thinly, “I do not mean literally, Ithan. I mean that they built the city as they needed it, rather than in advance the way we do.”

Milla blinked, her mouth falling open just slightly, than she nodded. “I see.”

“Do you?” The Elder asked mildly, than shrugged. “Perhaps you do.”

Milla turned to ask him what he meant by that, but Corusc had already turned his back and was walking away. She considered calling to him, but worried that he might consider it disrespectful, so she just turned back to the cityscape outside the room she stood in and contemplated what the Elder had said.

*****

“May I help you Sir?”

“Commander Micheals to see Milla Chans.” Stephen Micheals replied calmly, glancing around the office front that had been supplied for the Elder and his two aides.

“One moment please.” The secretary responded pleasantly, thumbing a control on her desk while Stephen waited.

Thee front office was nice enough, he supposed, though it didn’t quite fit with how he had come to view Milla’s people. Of course, a lot of his knowledge of them was largely second hand, so he probably was at least as inaccurate as the office was.

He wondered if the rumors were true, that they were shipping out again shortly. He hoped so, though he knew that if they were than they’d probably be back in the fire before long. Milla’s people were in a bad way, but Stephen had found that he liked the ones he’d met and he didn’t enjoy seeing people he liked get hurt.

The way he saw it, the only way they’d be shipping out was if the brass and the politicians had come to an agreement with the Elder. He hoped that was the case.

“Stephen?”

Stephen shook his head clear of the random thoughts and smiled when Milla appeared from the doors that led to the back offices, and the living areas within. “Good afternoon, Ithan Chans.”

She smiled at his formality, given that they’d stopped using titles a long time ago in a star system fairly far away. Instead she looked a little puzzled, “Why are you here?”

“Well, I told you that when I got leave, I’d show you the city if you wanted.” He replied, than shrugged. “I got leave.”

*****

NAC Odyssey

Geo Sync Orbit, Earth

“Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!” Staff Sergeant Max Greene yelled, waving his arms at the trundling loader that was hauling a massive crate into his hold. “Hold it right there!”

The automated loader immediately rumbled to a halt, it’s lights still flashing as Green looked up at the massive packing crate, than glared at the door the loader had been about to attempt to move it through.

“Awright, who screwed the pooch on the packing dimensions!?” He demanded after eyeballing the offending material. “This ain’t gonna fit in the fucking armory room!”

“What’s going on, Sergeant?”

Greene glanced over, and stiffened as he saw Major Brinks approaching. “Sir, some jackass must have slapped the wrong sticker on this sucker. The Loader just tried to put it in the Armory… and no way it’s supposed to be in here.”

Brinks eyed the crate curiously, than plucked a radio frequency identification (RFID) reader from Sergeant’s hand and queried the crate.

“I already checked that, Sir. It just says…”

“Powered Armor, EXO-12.” Brinks frowned.

“Yeah, that.” Greene replied, “But look at the number of units.”

Brinks glanced down and his eyebrow went up. “One unit? In that??”

“Like I said, Major, someone screwed the pooch when they riffed this puppy.” Greene shook his head, “We’ll have to recheck the entire shipment now.”

“That won’t be necessary, Sergeant.”

Brinks and Green both turned to see a man with Lieutenant’s bars clomping over in their direction, looking distinctly uncomfortable in his magboots.

“What do you know about this, Lieutenant…?” Brinks frowned as he eyed the young man. The kid was wearing the dark green uniform that identified him as a member of the ship’s assault company, but he didn’t recognize him.

“Crowley, Sir.” The Lieutenant, who couldn’t have been more than twenty years old, replied with an eager puppy look on his face. “Jackson Crowley, Major.”

“Lieutenant Crowley,” Brinks nodded, than repeated his question, “what do you know about this?”

“This is a powersuit, just like it says Major.” Jackson said with a grin.

“Bullshit.” Greene snorted.

Brinks spared the Sergeant a glare, than turned back to Crowley. “Lieutenant, that crate could pack twelve powersuits.”

The young man grinned with the air of a kid showing off his favorite toy, “Oh, I guess they haven’t sent you the specs yet, Sir… You’re gonna love this…”

He walked over to the crate, than addressed the loader. “Lower the crate here, and pop the latches, please.”

Brinks heard Greene snort again, and knew that the Sergeant found it amusing whenever anyone was polite to a machine, but ignored the man. He was curious to see what the hell was going on here.

The loader set the crate down, the magnetic clamps locking it down to the floor with a solid thump, than took a step back and pivoted it’s grasping forks to slide them into the latches built into the top of the crate. A simple twist and pull was all it took to open them, and Lieutenant Crowley was there to catch the front of the crate as it floated free. He swung it down, stepping out of it’s way, and let it attach itself to the floor on it’s own clamps.

Greene and Brink stepped forward to look inside.

“Shit on a stick.” Greene muttered.

Inside was about the largest ‘power suit’ Brinks had ever seen, and he’d seen pretty much everything they issued and than some. The ‘armor’ was about twelve feet tall, built like the proverbial brick house, and looked like something out of a bad sci-fi flick.

“Lieutenant, I’m not in the mood for jokes.” Brinks growled in annoyance.

He’d seen lots of similar units, thought most were smaller than this, and had even tested a few in the past. They’d all failed miserably to pass minimum battlefield standards because they were too clumsy to be of serious use, which was why the smaller armored suits were used.

“No Joke, Major.” Jackson said, looking puzzled.

“Lieutenant, I know a little something about armor. And that will fall flat on it’s face the first firefight it gets in.” Brinks said with certainty.

“Sir, no sir…” Jackson insisted, shaking his head. “It’s based on the NICS system. Trust me, Major… it’s battlefield ready.”

“NICS?” Greene muttered, “What the hell is NICS?”

“Sorry, Sergeant,” Crowley said, “That’s still classified…”

“Son, tell us what the hell it is.” Brinks growled in annoyance.

The Lieutenant swallowed, the nodded. “Yes Sir… Nicks stands for Neural Induction Command System. It’s the same stuff they use in the Archangels and…”

“Bloody hell!” Greene exploded, “You want us to stick fuckin needles in our goddamned necks!? Are you out of your fucking mind!? Do we look like those lunatics up on…”

“Sergeant.” Brinks cut him off.

“But, damn!, Major!”

“That’s enough.” Brinks told him, than eyed the suit. “We don’t have anyone checked out on that system.”

“You do now, Sir.” Crowley patted the crate, “This here is my baby. So the Sarge there doesn’t have to worry about needles jammed in his neck.”

Brinks looked at the Lieutenant, than RIFFED his dogtags with the reader still in his hand. A short perusal was all he needed to tell what he wanted to know. “Lieutenant… Have you seen any action at all?”

“Well… No Sir. I enlisted after the war.” Crowley admitted. “But I’m fully trained and certified…”

“Why didn’t they just give us a couple tanks?” Greene asked, “We don’t need this shit.”

“Tanks are too high maintenance.” Crowley responded instantly.

“And that thing ain’t??”

“No, Sergeant, it isn’t.” Crowley replied evenly. “Most of the base technologies in this baby predate tanks by a couple thousand years. Simple hydraulics. Treat it right, it’ll run a hundred years without fault. And those are the only major moving parts… The computer is top of the line, of course, and heavily shielded…”

“Yeah right.” Greene muttered, eyeing the brute and shaking his head. “Battlefield don’t treat nothing right, kid.”

Brinks eyed the unit with a weary eye, than shook his head. “It’s your coffin, Crowley. Can you get that thing out of the crate and… Oh hell, Sarge, find him a place to hide this thing will ya?”

“Too right.” Greene muttered, “Half the guys around here will laugh there ass off at this.”

*****

Liberty Station

Lagrange Four, Earth Orbit

Eric Weston keyed open the door to the conference room where he knew Commander Jason Alvarez Roberts had been sitting in on an informal discussion concerning Military Nomenclature in the modern era. The room itself was huge, it’s centerpiece a single piece table that stretched over twenty feet from end to end. At the far end Eric saw, sitting alone, was the Commander.

“Commander.”

Roberts looked up, nodding curtly. “Captain. Thanks for coming.”

“Something wrong?”

The normally stern man shrugged and actually smiled a little ruefully. “Not really, Sir. I just needed to talk with someone who wasn’t clinically insane.”

Eric chuckled softly, pulling a chair out, and sat down across from the well built black man. “What’s the problem?”

“You ever been cooped up in a room with thirty five representatives of different military branches, all of them arguing that their branch should be the one who’s name and traditions form the foundation of the new Service Branch?” Roberts asked disgustedly.

“Can’t say that I have,” Eric grinned. “And, if I do say so myself, better you than me.”

“Har har.” Roberts said sourly. “You know, it’s insane. It’s not supposed to be this complicated to just pick a damned NAME for a Service Branch.”

“Can’t be that bad…”

“Captain, The Marines are arguing tradition, they want the shipboard troops to be named Marines, of course…”

“Of course.” Eric Weston, Former Marine, smiled slightly.

“Well, the main army representative is arguing that space ships have nothing to do with anything ‘marine’ and the tradition is null and void.” Roberts replied, “His committee, however, is currently stymied by a two way tie between ‘Soldiers’ and ‘Troopers’. To be honest, that’s probably the sanest of them too.”

“Oh?” Eric asked, still smiling as he leaned back.

“Yeah, there was one Colonel in their group that wanted ship board contingents named ‘Rangers’.” Roberts replied with a hint of disgust.

Eric raised an eyebrow. He happened to know that Roberts was a former United States Ranger, so he found that reaction somewhat curious. “You disagree?”

“Me and whoever doctored that idiot’s food.” Roberts replied testily, than smiled grimly. “He came down with a mild case of food poisoning on the day he was to present his argument.”

Eric blinked, frowning in confusion. “And you think someone did it on purpose? Why?”

“Why? Because no self respecting soldier who wears a Tan Beret wants to be known as a freaking Space Ranger, thank you very much.” Roberts growled.

Eric couldn’t help it.

It started with a snicker, but quickly grew into full, powerful, laughs.

Commander Roberts waited, more or less patiently, as his commanding officer laughed at his expense, fingers tapping on the hard composite surface of the desk. When Eric got himself back under control, he just gave his Captain a cool look. “Are you done yet?”

“Yeah, I think so.” Eric replied, snickering a couple more times. “But I have to say that I see your point.”

“Thanks ever so much.” Roberts told him dryly. “I don’t suppose that the rest of the service is having these problems?”

Eric shrugged, “To some degree or another, of course. The Navy and the Air Force went head to head on a lot of things when they were ironing out the command structure of the Odyssey. For the most part, though, the Navy took the arguments on the simple fact that their procedures were easier to adapt.”

Roberts nodded, he’d heard some of that but had generally missed out on the details at the time.

“So what we got was a bit of a hash, but not so much of what you seem to be dealing with,” Eric admitted.

“Thankfully. Or we’d never have survived our first mission.” Roberts replied dryly.

Eric shrugged, “Maybe. But don’t sweat the details is my advice, Commander. Things that don’t work out, we’ll hammer into place as we go along. We’ve got time to work out our traditions ourselves.”

Roberts nodded, “I suppose. It’s just rather frustrating that we can’t even seem to get passed the name.”

Eric half chuckled again, than shrugged. “That’ll be the worst of it. Once you get passed that, it’ll just be the minor details of who obeys who to deal with.”

Roberts glared mildly at the smirk on his Captain’s face, but declined to comment. Instead he just sighed and nodded, “I hope that’s all I have to deal with than. Thanks for coming by, Captain.”

Eric smiled, this time a little less in amusement and more in tolerance. “Not a problem, Commander. I’m sure that you’ll get it all figured out sooner or later.”

Jason Roberts nodded, standing up as Eric did likewise. “I know. It’s just going to drive me to drinking in the meanwhile.”

“Buck up,” Weston hid a laugh, “Space Ranger. You’ll do fine.”

“Good Day, Sir.” Roberts replied through gritted teeth.

Table of Contents

Odyssey One

Foreword

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Epilogue

About the Author

Appendix One

The Heart of Matter

Obsah

Odyssey One

Foreword

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Epilogue

About the Author

Appendix One

The Heart of Matter

Table of Contents

Odyssey One

Foreword

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Epilogue

About the Author

Appendix One

The Heart of Matter

Table of Contents

Odyssey One

Foreword

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Epilogue

About the Author

Appendix One

The Heart of Matter