Out of the Black (Odyssey One, Book 4) (46 page)

That left the problem of the planet below, as there was a very real chance of the swarm being heavily damaged in the coming engagement.

There was no point saving forces only to lose them in the black of interplanetary space.

The order was given and, as one, the swarm launched their remaining surface drones before turning to leave orbit.

This time it wasn’t a buzzer. It was an alarm, and it had the admiral briskly moving through the halls while everyone else bolted around her.

Must not run. The commander can handle whatever it is until I get there. Don’t panic the enlisted by running
.

That mantra was running over and over in her head as she left the commissary, brushing away spots of coffee from her uniform. She hated spilling anything on her garb. The white that admirals were issued showed off dirt horrendously and was nearly impossible to clean.

Giving it up, she strode onto the bridge, taking just a moment to watch the chaos in action.

“Go full active,” Commander Son was ordering. “They clearly see us. I want to see them.”

“Going active on all scanners!”

The
Odysseus
had some of the most powerful scanners any of the Terrans had heard of, but most of them were still light-speed limited. Going active meant pouring out enough
energy into local space to be mistaken for a small star, but there was nothing larger than a baseball within several light-seconds that they wouldn’t light up.

“Got one! Half light-second and closing!”

“God damn it!” Commander Michaels swore. “How did they get so close?”

“They were lying in wait, Commander,” Gracen said as she walked to her station. “I’m afraid that I’ve badly underestimated our enemy. It would appear that they’ve learned from our Captain Weston in applying their tactics. What happened?”

“The
Bellerophon
took a laser strike, minimal damage so far,” Susan answered. “But they’re engaged in close, and the power they’re throwing back and forth is raising the hairs on my neck from here.”

“Damn it. Can we come around for support?”

“We’re in the lead position, Admiral,” Son answered. “I already dispatched the
Achilles
to aid the
Bellerophon
. We have trouble ahead.”

Gracen tipped her head as she settled into her position. “Very well. Tactical displays up. Ensure that all ships call to quarters.”

“Aye ma’am. Tactical displays on. Call to quarters signal already sent,” Son answered.

The walls of the bridge flickered, showing a full three hundred sixty degrees of space enhanced by computer augmented intelligence. Ahead of them a bright spot was haloed, and an overlay provided data on the ship.

Standard Drasin configuration,
Gracen noted as she read the numbers and capabilities of the ship.
They must have hundreds of the damned things drifting out here, thousands maybe, along likely approach routes
.

She’d been suckered, but it wasn’t as bad as all that, she decided.

They’d spread themselves too far out to effectively ambush her squadron, though they could eliminate a couple of ships easily enough even in knife range. The bulk of the enemy ships were still well outside the standoff range of the waveguide cannons, and as long as that was true, then this mission was still on.

“Lock all weapons onto the Drasin ship ahead. Signal the
Heracles
to follow us in,” she ordered.

“Aye ma’am,” Milla Chans, their Priminae weapons specialist, answered. “Weapons are locked.”

“
Heracles
signals affirmative.”

“Then by all means, cease deceleration and accelerate to engage the enemy ship.”

“Aye ma’am,” Steph said from the helm, as he tapped out a command and laid his hands on the controls. “Reversing warp, increasing speed relative to Sol.”

Stephen Michaels took his hands off the controls for a moment, flexing his grip and cracking his knuckles one by one. He found that he didn’t hate flying a starship, really, though it didn’t hold a candle to an Archangel, of course. There were some nice differences, like the cup of coffee sitting beside his station at the moment, but the ship maneuvered like a pig in comparison.

A pig capable of flying faster than greased lightning, but a pig nonetheless.

The
Odysseus
began to increase speed as it dove toward the approaching Drasin ship, laser nodes powering up along
the entire forward section. Behind them the
Heracles
matched her acceleration and began to power weapons as well. The two split, separating enough to keep their firing arcs apart as they closed.

Michaels locked in the NICS needles and smiled a little as the faint pain scored the back of his neck, automatically reaching into the depths of the ship he was flying and making it
his
.

“Cardsharp, Stephanos,” he said softly, his voice pitched low. “You with me?”

“Cardsharp,” Jennifer responded, from the
Heracles
. “I’m with you.”

“Let me take the lead. You play clean-up as we pass.”

“Roger that, Stephanos. I’ll back your play.”

“Never had any doubt in my mind, Cardsharp,” Steph replied. “Engaging target in . . . three minutes.”

“More bandits lighting up!”

The admiral looked over to the compressed map, eyes noting that three more Drasin were now on the display within two light-minutes of them. She scowled, running the numbers in her head, and realizing quickly that they didn’t make sense.

They can’t have this many ships in system, can they? It would take thousands, hundreds of thousands, of ships to cover this much space with this level of density
.

“Go active with FTL scans,” she ordered. “Maximum available power.”

“Aye ma’am. Full power ping.”

The sonic signal of the burst echoed on the bridge as the blast of FTL particles expanded out from the ship and into the
system. Reflections of tachyon particles were also extremely faint, which made long-range detection from an omnidirectional pulse difficult at the best of times. It became easier by orders of magnitude, however, when the ships you were looking for had lit off their drives and were in motion.

“Holy shit.”

“Commander Michaels, please,” Gracen snarled, though mostly just to keep her own traitorous mouth from echoing the sentiment.

The long-range pulse showed forty Drasin with their drives lit off, all within five light-minutes and closing. The system beyond that also showed a few active drives, closing on the squadron’s location, but it was clear that the enemy’s attention was focused right on the squadron and nowhere else.

Gracen slumped at her station.

How the
hell
are they tracking us?

“They’ll be on us en masse in less than fifteen minutes, Admiral,” Susan said seriously. “We can’t take more than four on one in a straight-up fight.”

“I am aware of that,” Gracen said. “Power to the waveguide cannons. Target those ships still outside knife range.”

“Yes . . . I mean, aye ma’am,” Milla said from the weapons station. She tapped in the codes, shaking her head as her expression creased with worry. “Ten ships are within the minimum range of the cannons.”

“Leave them. We’ll have to deal with them later. Fire on the remaining ships as she bears.”

“Aye ma’am. Firing.”

The big waveguide cannons on the
Odysseus
pivoted out from the ship, locking onto targets as much as several
light-minutes
away as the ship charged the transition generators and prepared to engage. The guns fired into the silence of space,
no flames, no recoil, just barely visible distortions in space time and an imperceptible blast of tiny particles.