Out of the Black (Odyssey One, Book 4) (44 page)

Eric got up, pushing the sleep out of his body by reflex. “I’ll take it in the command area.”

“Yes sir.”

Eric took a few deep breaths after the runner had left, then grabbed for his field uniform. He checked the time as he got dressed, surprised that he’d gotten a whole forty minutes worth of sleep.

Must be my lucky day
.

Dressed and kitted out, he headed for the command bunker, which was really nothing of the sort. It was more of an inflatable building covered in concrete and sand, but it was secure, solid, disposable, fit in the back of a jeep, and only took twenty-four hours to put into place.

He walked into the bunker and looked up at the presidential seal on the screen, glad that he wasn’t keeping the man waiting, then turned to where Lyssa was sitting at the station and tapping into the terminal.

“Hey,” he said, straitening his battle dress. “What’s going on?”

“Oh, Captain!” She jumped. “I didn’t hear you come in.”

“I walk quietly,” he said. “Now what’s going on?”

“I don’t know. We were told to wake you up. Something important.”

“Well, wake them up now. I’m here.”

“You got it.”

Eric turned back to the main display, waiting while Lyssa sent in the orders. He’d known that picking up a Marine Corps intercepts and communications specialist would pay off.

The screen flickered and Eric was mildly surprised to see the President already sitting there. He saluted instantly as the man on the display waved off the gesture.

“Relax before you break something, Captain,” Mitchell Conner said. “You’re making my back twinge just looking at you.”

Eric shot the Commander in Chief a more than slightly dirty look, something he’d never have done if he’d gotten more than forty minutes sleep, but the President just chuckled at him. That raised his eyebrows more than a little.

He’s in a good mood. Something’s changed
.

“What’s happened, Mr. President?” he asked with half a smile. “I assume that the aliens are still in orbit, but something has made you pretty damn happy.”

“Hope is a wonderful thing, Captain. I’ve been running so long without it that I forgot what it felt like,” Connor said, relaxing back into his chair.

Oh, something
big
has happened. He hasn’t sounded this calm since the first week of this mess
. “Am I cleared to know the good news, sir?”

The President laughed at him,
laughed
. Eric revised his earlier opinion. The man was giddy. Something good had happened, no doubt, but it was likely that the President was also suffering from sleep deprivation and a host of other things to bring out a reaction like this.

“You’re right at the center of it, Captain. Didn’t my staff tell you?”

“Sir? No sir.”

“I’ll have to have a word with them,” Connor shrugged. “I told them to let you know. No matter. Have you secured the Gamma site?”

“Yes sir. Only Epsilon remains unsecured,” Eric said. “We’ll move on it in the morning.”

“Never mind that. I’m redirecting heavy lifter transports to your location, along with full crews. A National Guard division will be on your doorstep in an hour. I need you to get your men to pack up everything in the warehouses at Gamma and get them ready to be loaded on the transport,” Connor ordered. “Then pack yourselves into the transport. Your team is flying security on this one.”

“What are we transporting?”

“Shells for a tachyon waveguide cannon.”

Eric expected that he could have been blown over by a stiff breeze upon hearing that.

“Sir? What ship are we loading them onto?”

So far as he knew the only ship on the planet, or in the Solar System for that matter, with waveguides was currently sitting in scattered pieces across Long Island Sound and Manhattan Island.

“No ship, Captain. Don’t worry about that. You’re just to concern yourself with protecting the shipment. Orders will follow,” the President said. “We do have some good news for you, personally, however. As of oh three hundred twelve hours, Admiral Amanda Gracen reported back in system with seven starships crewed by, among others, former members of the NACS
Odyssey
crew. Congratulations, Captain, your people have come home.”

Eric reached out, a hand grabbing the table to steady himself.

“A . . . are you sure?” He shook his head. “Of course you are. How did she get the ships, sir?”

That dulled the President’s humor just a bit. “Don’t worry about that, Captain. She did what she had to do, you do what you have to, and we’ll all pull through this one way or another. Admiral Gracen is currently commanding her squadron from the
Odysseus
.”

“
Odysseus
. . .” Eric whispered, tasting the word. A smile played at his lips as he nodded slowly. “Fitting.”

“Yes, I thought so. They’re currently running silent, but her intention is to scout the system and begin thinning the ships in orbit of Earth. Your job, our job, is to provide her with whatever aid we can. So get those shells on that transport, Captain.”

“Yes sir,” Eric snapped. “We’ll be in the air by dawn.”

“That’s what I wanted to hear. Go to it, son.”

The moment for indecision had passed.

The ship minds consulted, considering the new data available to them. More arrivals in system, new configurations, but clearly built by the same people who built the anomaly that had plagued them on this crusade already. One of the ships matched, or came close, but the others . . . the others were larger, and the power curves were . . . dangerous.

The swarm had doubted from the beginning that they were up against just one planet, but now there was confirmation. There had to be an infestation in this region, something that spanned possibly the entire arm.

It was a tragedy that so many systems would have to be cleansed, but that was the way things were.

The immediate issue was that there was no prior information that might tell them just how dangerous the new ships were. Unknown configuration, unknown weapons, but there were two things about them that the swarm knew.

First, they arrived using the same signature as the anomaly ship. That made them dangerous, more dangerous than anything in this swarm’s memory. Second, unlike the anomaly ship, six of
these
vessels had power curves that marked them as vessels of
war
. Those two items of knowledge made the situation very, very dangerous.

That meant that they had to eliminate the planet now. There was no more time for finesse. Whether it crippled the swarm or not, this world
must
be cleansed.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

“PASSING THE ORBIT of Saturn, ma’am. No sign of activity from the Drasin fleet.”

Admiral Gracen nodded, trying to look calm even as she felt the nervous tension crank up. She knew that the Drasin had to know they were in the system, so she had expected some kind of activity before this point. The Drasin were alien by nature, however, so she supposed she might be judging them on human expectations, which would be a potentially lethal trap.

“Keep them under the eye,” she ordered. “Let me know if anything changes.”

“Aye ma’am.”

With the
Odysseus
taking the vanguard position, the squadron had begun a spiraling drop into the solar system about five hours earlier, and it would be another two days to Earth’s orbital path once deceleration time was accounted for. That left a long time for them to act, she supposed, but the lack of motion still bothered her.

What if they’re up to something?

That was just stupid, though, since she knew damn well that they were up to something. It was just exactly what that was that escaped her.

“Admiral, we’re getting the first high-resolution images of Mars.”

Finally, something to distract me
.

“Put them on the display.”

She wished, a moment too late, that she’d not given that order.

The surface of Mars, such as it was, was broken up and drifting away from the central mass. Though that was something she wouldn’t have thought possible upon consideration, seeing was believing. In the closer shots she could see that the pieces floating away from the whole were unmoving Drasin drones, having completed their task.

They’d torn the red planet asunder, somehow getting right to the core of the world, leaving it nothing but rubble flying in loose formation around the Sun. She supposed that, eventually, it would collapse entirely back into one world again, but she was certain that nothing would ever live on it no matter how much time passed. The red planet had never been a particularly hospitable world, but now there was more chance of a human living on a barren asteroid than on Mars.

Her thoughts turned toward Earth and she shuddered, thinking of what it would be if they didn’t step up and end this situation,
now
.

“Clear that,” she ordered, not wanting to look at the pictures any longer.

The screen blanked, then returned with the tactical map of the system that showed the Drasin locations unchanged. The orbital track of Ceres was highlighted as the point at
which the squadron could begin a long-range engagement of their targets using the waveguide cannons, but that was yet a long distance off.