Out of the Black (Odyssey One, Book 4) (62 page)

The enemy assaulted the force overseeing the target world, and the Drasin waited.

The enemy, in something so shocking that there were no adopted plans for the event, totally annihilated an assault force sufficient to take on a small fleet . . . and yet the Drasin waited. They waited and watched, all sensory tracks monitoring the outer system, watching for inbound reinforcements.

Nothing appeared, and it both confounded and disturbed the watchers.

Not only were no reinforcements forthcoming, but they hadn’t been able to detect the ones that had already arrived. It meant that there was a very real risk in springing the trap that had been set, because it could so easily be turned on the watchers.

In the end, however, there was no choice, and the trap that had been set must be sprung. The order went out, across the swarm cloud, and the Black came alive once more.

Captain Carrow was just stepping back onto the bridge when the alarms went off. He quickened his pace until he dropped into the command station, then looked across his domain with a tired but determined eye.

“Talk to me.”

“We’re getting movement on several tracks we believed to be part of the Jovian Trojan rocks, sir.”

Carrow grimaced. “No chance that it’s natural?”

“No sir, definitely movement under power. It’s more of the Drasin, Captain.”

“Damn it,” Carrow cursed.

He supposed that it was too much to hope that they would be all gone, but it would have been nice.

“Numbers?”

Carrow knew that it was bad when his sensor specialist hesitated. He just hoped it wasn’t too bad.

“Unknown. Data is still coming in, sir . . .”

He could hear the hesitation and a note of sheer panic in the younger man’s voice, so Carrow turned and looked him right in the eye.

“What is it, Soher?”

“Numbers are currently . . . one hundred and climbing . . . climbing fast, Captain.”

Carrow was stunned into silence himself for a moment. “That many? Why hold back over a hundred ships?”

“Sir, I don’t think they did,” Ensign Soher admitted, looking ill. “I’m running the extrapolation, based on the fact that we’re only getting the data at light speed . . .”

“And?” Carrow prodded him.

“If my numbers are right, they’ve got over a thousand, sir.” The green-looking ensign finally said, “That’s based on their pattern density and what I expect we’ll get from the other Trojan point, so I could be guessing high . . .”

“You could be guessing low, too . . . so many . . .” Carrow slumped a little.

He had to know, he had to be sure.

“Get me the
Odysseus
on FTL comm.”

“Yes sir!”

Admiral Gracen stared out into space for a moment after Captain Carrow signed off, almost afraid to give the order. It was only a moment, but she knew that it was a weakness that she couldn’t allow. Finally, she sighed heavily and nodded to where Winger was waiting.

“Go full active, across all FTL bands.”

“Aye aye, Admiral. Going full active.”

Michelle swore a moment later, causing Gracen to jerk around. She’d never heard the sensor specialist speak like that in her presence before, and didn’t think it could possibly be a good sign.

“Data . . . on displays now,” Michelle croaked out.

Gracen turned back to look ahead at the forward part of the wraparound display that surrounded the bridge, and she felt her own face turn ashen as well. The augmented display was lit up with angry red icons depicting “hostile” targets,
enough so that even the ship’s prodigious computers were unable to make out one enemy vessel from another.

“How did they hide those?” Gracen asked softly, her voice horrified.

“Admiral, I’m still collating but . . .” Michelle hesitated.

“But what?”

“I think that they ate the asteroids in the Trojan point and just replaced them. With their power down we never could have told them apart from regular rocks out there, ma’am.”

“It was an ambush,” Gracen said quietly.
And I blundered us right into the middle of it
. . .

“Yes ma’am.”

“Ithan Chans, total rounds remaining for the waveguide cannons?” she asked, knowing that the answer almost didn’t matter.

“Fifty-eight shells, Admiral. Other ships in the squadron are similarly outfitted.”

Fifty-eight.

Gracen closed her eyes. To have come
this
close and have it all end like this, she couldn’t stand it. Reality, however, had a way of overriding what she could and could not stand.

“Susan, you’d best get me SPACECOM.”

“Yes ma’am.”

Tachyon detection grids were not supremely common on planet Earth. In fact, there were only a half a handful, and most of them reported directly to SPACECOM. So by the time Admiral Gracen’s request was on the line, that entire organization was in more than a bit of a tizzy, to say the least.

It took only minutes for the general in command of SPACECOM, normally a very quiet and routine position to hold, to find himself on the line with the admiral in charge of the quasi-human fleet of ships and with the President himself.

“We don’t have enough power to take them on, Mr. President. It’s the same thing as last time, sir. I’m sorry,” Gracen said softly, shaking her head.

Conner nodded slowly, seriously. He’d known that without being told. Oh sure, there had been some hope that the alien ships the admiral commanded might hide some sort of ace in their superstructures, but he’d known better than to expect it.

“What kind of lift capacity do you have, Admiral?” he asked after a long moment.

“For an evacuation? We can carry a hell of a lot, sir,” she admitted. “The problem is getting them onto the ships before we have no chance of escaping.”

“So that’s the game, then?” General Alexander asked grimly. “There’s no chance? Nothing we can do?”

“We have a few waveguide cannons and some munitions for them on Earth,” Conner admitted. “However, even assuming a one hundred percent hit rate, which we know from experience is effectively impossible, our combined munitions would only account for half the enemy ships. Is that correct, Admiral?”

“A little over,” Gracen nodded, “which would leave five hundred or so of the enemy ships to handle inside knife range. We just don’t have that sort of capability.”

“The
Odyssey
and the
Wei Fang
eliminated well over a thousand of the enemy ships in practically a single strike . . .,” Alexander objected.

“That was because Eric Weston is a tactical genius, General,” Gracen said stiffly. “He saw a flaw in their approach and realized that he could use a quirk of the space-warp drive Captain Sun commanded to his advantage. The problem now is that they’re not coming in grouped like that. Originally they were in tight formation, but the group has since begun to spread, most likely to counter that very tactic.”

She sighed audibly. “Currently the most we could take out with that move would be a few dozen at a shot, which sounds great until you realize that we would have to sacrifice one of our own ships for each strike. That would still leave more than enough flying around to annihilate everything, and no one would have any way out.”

Alexander slumped, looking defeated. “So it’s over then.”

Neither of the other two could quite manage to gainsay his words. They hadn’t wanted to put it into the open, but there it was and they couldn’t contradict it. It was all over. There was nothing else to be done. Once the Heroics were forced to abandon Earth orbit, all three of them were well aware that there was nothing in the universe that would keep the Earth from being overrun.

It wasn’t even a matter of time, really. They were already losing ground in dozens of places.

“Admiral, we need to begin an evacuation plan,” the President said heavily. “You need to get as many people as you can off world. I’m issuing orders now. I’ll have them sent to you in hard copy, to that effect. Admiral, Amanda, you are to
leave
orbit before they can trap you. Am I being clear?”

She nodded slowly. “Yes sir.”

“Okay, then start by sending your shuttles to Spaceport Earth. I have people working there that you’ll probably need,” Conner said, stone-faced.