Out of the Black (Odyssey One, Book 4) (19 page)

The more rational part of her mind, the thinking brain, told her to watch and to learn. It told her not to look away because knowledge may be the only thing that saved her life, and she wouldn’t learn by hiding her head in the sand.

It was to her shame, perhaps, that the rational side wasn’t the reason she didn’t look away. Lyssa tried to force herself to turn, to move, to do
something,
but instead she just froze there as the first of the alien bugs was joined by a second, and then a third.

The thinking brain wanted her to learn, the primal part wanted her to run, but Lyssa found herself caught by the sheer terror that gripped an even deeper part of her psyche. She froze in place and desperately hoped that they wouldn’t notice her if she stayed very,
very
still.

Getting the doors open without power while at a thirty-degree slant to the stern was a hassle that Eric doubted the designers had ever thought of. If they had, it was clear that they’d discarded the thought as too unlikely to bother with. He managed it, however, and pulled himself into the munitions storage of the
Odyssey,
then took a moment to rest and survey the area.

It was a mess, was the first thing that he obviously concluded.

Cargo pallets had been tossed around, broken open against each other and the deck and walls. The crash had spread their food stores and other general provisions across the decks, leaving most of it entirely unrecoverable.

Thankfully he hadn’t come for any of that.

Eric half crawled up the incline, making his way to the first level armory. There he continued past, ignoring the weapons left locked in their ready-release cases. Those had all survived, but would take more time to get to than they were worth.

Inside the next section, however, was the treasure.

The Museum was intact.

Eric was somewhat surprised, even though he’d counted on it. It was one thing to know how tightly secured the objects in the Museum were, but it was another to see it.

Suits of powered armor lined the walls. Rifles filled fast-deployment cases bolted to the floor. The SOCOM armory was designed to be deployed in a hurry, just not from
underwater
. So while he was gratified that the equipment was intact, he still had some work to do.

The
Odyssey
had been equipped with a War Level SOCOM deployment capability, on par with any aircraft carrier of her day.

Now, let’s see if we still have
. . . Eric half thought to himself and half mumbled as he pulled open an electrical panel and threw a breaker.
Ah, power
.

The lights snapped on, running on battery and capacitors. Without the main reactor he only had a few hours of power, and only where the circuits weren’t shredded. The
Odyssey
had been designed with a decentralized power grid. Batteries and capacitors dotted the hull by the literal thousands, but Eric had no way of knowing just how many he had access to at the moment, or what kind of grounded shorts may be sucking power. So he got to work.

“The ship crawls, my Captain.”

Eric jumped, jolting as he looked around for the voice that had whispered in his ear. “Who . . . what?”

“
Forget me so soon, my Captain?”

The woman’s voice whispered again, sounding amused.

Eric froze, a barely remembered slice of the past surfacing.

“Gaia?” he said softly. “Your name is Gaia?”

“So you remember. I am pleased,”
she whispered to him. “
You had been missing your thoughts, since the crash. Short-term memory has been disrupted, but you recall my name. I am pleased, my Captain.”

“Where are you?” Eric demanded, eyes turning wildly as he tried to pinpoint her location.

“
I am . . . everywhere . . .”
she whispered, her voice echoing from every corner before fading as she laughed away into the distance. “
Hurry, oh Captain, my Captain. Your ship
crawls
.
”

Eric stood still for a long moment as the last whispered echoes faded, and then he forced himself to move again. He still had a job to do, even though he now had a burning curiosity a thousand times greater than the one he felt of the Priminae and their “Central.”

What the hell are Central and
Gaia?

There were more of them on the wreck of the
Odyssey
now, and less of the
Odyssey
for them to crawl over. Lyssa was stunned by how fast the alien things were tearing the ship apart, and it was clear that they were not slowing down. No, far from it. They were speeding up at a terrifying rate.

She drew out her radio carefully, keying open a channel.

“Weston, if you can hear me, those things are tearing the place apart. They’ll be on you in minutes at this rate. I don’t care how deep you are. Do whatever it is that you’ve got to do and get the hell out of there.”

She paused for a moment, listening to the static on the channel. Normally her radio was as clear as crystal since it used a digital packet system, but now it was clear that she was transmitting on an older backup channel.

“Weston, come back,” she demanded a short time later. “You’ve got trouble on that tin roof of yours. Come back.”

With nothing but static on the radio for the next long moment, Lyssa growled and tossed her mic aside, letting it clatter to the bottom of the boat.

“Damn it!” she hissed, eyes still warily watching the remains of the NACS
Odyssey
as she was slowly eaten away in the distance.

Sometimes Eric was truly shocked by the capability of the things on his ship.

The
Odyssey
had always been designed to move under CM fields in order to help counterbalance the effects of acceleration. In the habitat modules this was reinforced by the spinning centrifuge that provided the crew with a gravity replacement, but below decks any acceleration was a problem due to the microgravity environment.

So everything there had to be built to operate not only in microgravity but also under varying degrees of acceleration, including and exceeding one full Earth gravity.

The loader he was piloting was a perfect example, easily using its powerful electromagnetic feet to walk up the inclined deck. The heavy-duty machine had no difficulty picking up deployment crates, armor cases, and everything else he needed. Delivering them up the inclined flight deck was relatively easy at that point, though the
going was slow because Eric had little familiarity with the controls.

The big yellow machine was a chunky bipedal rig with a full-body interface. Not something that moved fast enough to be good in combat, but useful enough for when you had to shift large masses in microgravity or under acceleration effects.

It could handle several tons of material, even under acceleration effects like gravity, and it stomped up the incline with ease. Actually, the biggest problem he was having was that while the machine itself was designed to handle a gravity well, the interface system really was intended for microgravity. It wasn’t impossible to handle, obviously, but in gravity it was awkward to say the least.

Eric had delivered almost all of what he’d wanted to one of the port Cats that registered as still being above the waterline and was about to head back for more when a rumble ran through the deck, through his machine, and through
him
. Eric twisted around, looking for the source, but found it when his stomach lurched and jumped up into his chest as the deck suddenly dropped under him.

Linked and strapped as he was, he dropped with it. The brief sensation of freefall was a sign that it was time to haul ass.

Forget the rest of it. I’ve got enough
.

Eric dropped out of the loader and pulled open the control panel for the catapult launcher he was using, throwing a couple of breakers to patch the system into emergency power. The electromagnets hummed in the background as they began to charge.

“Alright. Load one . . .” Eric mumbled to himself as he pressed the switch, sending a deployment module
accelerating out the port hatch at high speed. “Away. Now . . . load two . . .”