Out of the Black (Odyssey One, Book 4) (32 page)

For all that, however, here in the middle of an alien facility, situated
inside
the photosphere and near the radiative zone of a giant type A star, she found that her patience had worn thin within the first few days of arriving.

The Priminae facility was . . . amazing, astonishing, impossible, and any number of other descriptive words that failed her every time she looked out of the shielded viewing areas to the solar storms happening a few hundred thousand kilometers away in every possible direction.

Situating a construction facility
inside
a type A star was pure insanity, even if they hadn’t originally planned it that way. The fact that the Priminae had
done
just that, and then made it work for them, had completely blown her mind.

For about two days.

Since then, all she could think of was what was beyond the roiling flames of plasma, beyond the gravity well of the Priminae star, a few hundred light-years away and either dead or under siege.

Gracen knew that she wasn’t the only one either. Every human on the station, plus the crew of the
Big E,
the NACS
Enterprise,
felt the same. This wasn’t their place, but there wasn’t a damn thing any of them could do about it as things currently stood. They didn’t have the ships or the firepower to do anything productive to help Earth.

That knowledge just made things all the worse.

She was the highest-ranking authority of any type from Earth, and that put every decision on her shoulders. With the security situation at home—that is, there being
no
security at home—she’d made one of the hardest decisions of her career. She had agreed to a technology exchange that would never have happened, not in a million years, if not for the fact that the Earth was facing genocide.

Transition technology was classified so top secret that outside of the ships themselves, there was no single place you could steal it. Technically, she was now a traitor to the Confederation for giving it to a foreign power. That alone could conceivably get her shot, but handing over tachyon waveguide technology as well?

If she were wrong about how serious the situation was, if the Confederation somehow pulled their own bacon out of the fire, well then, they’d invent a way to shoot her
slowly
.

Intellectually, she knew that wasn’t likely. The sheer number of Drasin that had flooded the scanners of Liberty Station made it entirely possible that the Earth was nothing but a cooling chunk of rock slowly breaking apart in space. It had
been thirty days already, a full month during which she and her people could only pray that their loved ones and their home had hung on.

The
Odyssey
’s report on the effects of a Drasin assault were starkly clear, however. From day one to the end of a world could be counted in days, not weeks.

The Priminae flatly refused to send anyone back to scan the system. It was clear that their ranks were terrified of the sheer number of aliens that had swarmed the Earth, and she couldn’t honestly blame them.

She’d dispatched the
Enterprise
herself a little over two weeks earlier, but they hadn’t reported back yet, so for the moment she and her people could only throw themselves into their work.

Gracen’s heels clicked on the ceramic flooring as she walked through the corridors of the Forge, stepping into the large viewing area that overlooked the construction slips.

So this is what treason buys, I suppose,
Gracen thought as she looked through the clear ports and over what rested beyond.

It was held in place by magnetic tractors, one and a half kilometers of flat steel blue. The color was a result of the chemical composition of her ceramic armor, but Gracen liked it. The
Odysseus
was one mean-looking ship, considering that her primary builders were pacifists to an almost obscene degree.

She wasn’t the only ship in the slips, and of the fourteen currently being constructed, six were earmarked for Gracen and her people. That was six ships, armed to the teeth, and equipped with the best weapons and technology of two civilizations.

She hoped to hell it was going to be enough and not just another case of too little, too late.

Admiral Rael Tanner had spent much of the last few cycles in a fog. Since hearing of the fate of the
Odyssey,
nothing had quite felt the same.

He suspected that it was much the same for many of his people, since the Terran ship had brought them the light of hope during their darkest time. But few others knew Captain Weston, and that was probably why Rael felt that he’d lost something personal—a bit more, really. Perhaps it was just his hubris in thinking that, but that was the way he felt.

The Elder Council had locked down his fleet, largely keeping him from doing his duty in the aftermath of the loss of the Terran homeworld. Nothing but escort missions between colonial systems. No scouts, no raids, nothing.

It was insanity, but he was locked down by the council and left with nothing to do but sit, stew, and wonder at what might have been.

“Admiral,” a voice called, “tachyon event, outer system.”

“Signature?” Tanner asked immediately.

“Terran transition.”

Tanner slumped a little more. There had been a time that those words would have brought him a certain lightening of his day. Now, however, there was just a little relief and a lot of apprehension. Officially he didn’t know where the Terran starship
Enterprise
had gone, but unofficially he knew that the ship had been sent out by Admiral Gracen to scout their homeworld and see just what had happened to it.

Rael had advised the admiral not to get her people’s hopes up, but in the end even he had a sharp-edged desire to know the fate of the Terrans.

“Inform me when they reach Ranquil orbit,” he said, standing up. “I’ll be back shortly.”

“Yes sir.”

Tanner went back to his office and keyed in a command.

“What do you need, Admiral?”

“Give me a line directly to the Forge,” he said. “Admiral Gracen’s comm.”

“One moment, Admiral.”

Captain Ethan Carrow was known as a by-the-book sort of officer. He didn’t take chances. He didn’t have to. And he didn’t fly by his gut. But he was solid and knew how to keep his cool in a clinch. That put him at the head of the list to command Earth’s first starship. Back in the day, the media had loved Eric Weston, however, and Carrow was bumped down a notch.

His day came when the NACS
Enterprise
was commissioned, however, and he was justly proud of his ship and crew, remaining so to this day. They’d been through hell, literally and figuratively, in the last month and they’d held it together. He couldn’t have asked for more.

Now they were almost down-well to Ranquil, and some much deserved and needed rest, while he had some intelligence to deliver. Ethan wasn’t surprised when he received a message an hour out from the planet that Admiral Gracen would be arriving to meet with him upon his arrival. In fact he was relieved and grateful.

The news he had to deliver would be better done face-to-face.

“Admiral on deck!”

The crew on the flight deck were lined up for presentation and they all snapped a salute as Gracen stepped down the stairs of the Priminae shuttle, her magnetic boots locking into place on the deck.

She paused, looking over the ranks of men and women who were holding their salute, then returned it crisply.

As her hand fell to her side, so did theirs, and Captain Carrow nodded to his first officer.

“Dismissed!”

The men and women broke ranks as Commander Briggs herded them out.

“Shore leave will be by the numbers. If you’re part of the first groups to the surface, meet at the shuttle in fifteen . . .”

Carrow dropped the commander out of his attention, focusing on the admiral as she approached. “Ma’am.”

“Captain.” She nodded, stepping in that precise clipping manner of a magboot wearer. He matched her pace and they headed for the elevator, not speaking again until the doors closed.

“What of Earth, Captain?” Gracen asked softly as they headed for the command module, rotation spinning up to match the habitat speed.

“It’s still there,” he said, causing her to slump in relief.