Out of the Black (Odyssey One, Book 4) (63 page)

The entity known as Gaia listened, watched, and roared impotently at the universe around her. She was beyond frustrated at this time, beyond angry, beyond reason most likely, and she knew it all
.

Omniscience was not always a gift. It could be a curse that tore at your soul . . . to be forced to watch, to hear, to observe so many things pass before her and fundamentally be all but unable to intercede
.

She could use agents, humans who were able to hear her in their subconscious like Eric Weston, or she could even appear herself and issue command edicts . . . yet neither seemed likely to accomplish anything at this point, and in all honesty neither ever had
.

So now she observed her final end through the eyes of those who would prevent it, and found herself as helpless as they against the coming wave. Her world, her people, they were
herself
, and she couldn’t even save herself
.

Gaia felt a bitter swell of emotion, centered where her heart might be had she had an actual human body. It was a copy of what she’d experienced vicariously through others uncountable times, but this was the first time she knew it firsthand. It was unpleasant, a knotting sensation that made her feel like the heart she didn’t have was physically shutting down
.

“Heartache. Panic. These are not my feelings. I don’t feel these things,”
she thought desperately as she tried to regain her calm, the distinctive separation from her humans that she’d first achieved thousands of years earlier
.

It was something that would not come. This wasn’t an event she could watch from the outside. She was
part
of it, and that was a frighteningly new experience in itself
.

It took a cosmic event to truly impact on her, and her memory of the last one at that level was fuzzy to say the least. She had badly formed memories from before humans, so long before, but she almost didn’t feel like they were hers. They felt alien in some ways, like they were part of someone else and only rested in her by some quirk of cosmic fate
.

She could remember flashes of a rock from the sky, a meteor impact that changed the face of the world. That changed the her that made that memory, maybe into the her that existed today. She didn’t know, she didn’t
want
to know. It was painful to think about and she normally tried very hard not to dwell on the flashes of those times
.

Now, however, it was happening again
.

Not a cosmic rock this time. This was a cosmic plague. The virus would finish what it had already begun, tearing into her body the way a hemorrhagic fever could tear the organs of its victim to shreds, leaving nothing but infected fluids behind. That was what would happen once the Drasin succeeded in digging into her. This she knew with no doubt
.

Parts of her wanted to selfishly slip into the minds of those she could affect, force them to keep the protectors here. Those ships could eliminate many of the enemy, so very many
. . .

But she knew that it would be futile, and unlike humans, Gaia was not prone to panic
.

No, that wasn’t quite true. She had already panicked. In the second it took to understand the situation, she had panicked. She had denied. She had raged. There was no one to bargain with, and in the end she had no choice but to accept the inevitable
.

It was better to see to the survival of some of those who made her what she was than it would be to see every last aspect of
herself
vanish
.

“I wonder if there is something beyond existence?”
Gaia wondered, almost idle now that she had chosen her path
.
“Will I follow the
survivors, some small piece of me? Or is blackness all that awaits, an end to all things, even she who would be Goddess?”

Admiral Gracen looked at the numbers, the silent stares of the crew around her screaming louder than they could have if they were all cursing her at once. They’d come so far, rushed so very much, and in the end it came down to this.

Her ships were damaged, though not so much as to cripple any of them, and her stores were low. It was the munition stores more than anything that were the deciding factor, of course. Here they were, with standoff weapons the likes of which she doubted
God
could have faced, and of course they were opposed by an enemy that would simply fly in and take everything they had right in the face until the guns fired dry.

Against any sane enemy, the waveguide cannons were the ultimate strategic weapon. You couldn’t run, you couldn’t hide. Against the Drasin, however, they were nothing more than a tease. A hope of victory dangled in front of her face, right before the final crushing defeat.

She slumped slightly, knowing that it was wrong and she shouldn’t show that much emotion to those around her, but she couldn’t really care just then.

“Susan . . .” Gracen said, her voice worn and tired, “issue the order. Begin evacuations.”

Susan nodded slowly. “Yes ma’am. Issuing orders.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

“WATCH YOUR SIX, Kieren,” Bermont ordered, keeping a close eye on his Priminae troops.

They were a peculiar mix of eager, timid, and green as fresh-mown grass. It was endearing at times, but not a particular good mix for a soldier on a battlefield. Bermont had been through enough fighting, though, to know talent and potential when he saw it, and that was something that was present for most of them.

They’d do well if they lived through their first few days of fighting, which was his job to ensure.

The Drasin in Dallas were dug in, numerous, and apparently dead set on keeping the crumbling city they were all fighting in. That was fine with Bermont. As a Canadian he’d always had the sneaking suspicion that Americans were crazy in more than just the good ways, and Texans were all that and a side of loco in his experience. Getting a kick in the teeth like losing Dallas to some aliens would do things to them that Bermont didn’t want to think on too hard, but really wanted to watch.

From a safe distance.

Preferably a different solar system, now that he thought on it.

He leveled his Priminae gravity rifle, discharging a carbon crystal projectile into a Drasin that was lumbering in his direction. He didn’t like to think of them as diamonds. It made him shudder at using something that valuable as ammo, but hell, if it was his life at stake, he supposed that anything he could use would ultimately be worth it.

Besides, he wasn’t footing the bill for the fight.

Speaking of
. . . Bermont paused, ducking back as his tactical comm flipped to the background and the command channel came to the front. He keyed into it as soon as he was clear of immediate danger, and smiled when he saw Susan Lamont’s face looking out at him from the overlay.

“Hey mon cher . . .” He grinned, laying it on a little thick. “Not that it’s not always lovely to see you, but I am a little busy.”

“Cute, Bermy,” she told him flatly, making him cringe a little. He hated it when she called him that. “But this is business.”

“Alas, love, you never call just for fun.”

“Admiral’s orders,” Susan told him, “fall back and stand by for evacuation orders.”

“That’s what we’re doing, love,” he told her, quizzically. She had to know that. He’d put the
Odysseus
into the loop. It was standard procedure.

“Not from Dallas. We’re pulling off world,” Susan told him, and he suddenly noticed that her face was more pale than normal, and her tone was grim. She wasn’t just trying to be professional in the face of his flirting. She looked downright ill.

“Off world? Susan, we just
got
here,” he protested.

“Those are the orders, Lieutenant,” she told him. “Fall back with your unit, and stand by for evacuation orders. We’ll need you to run security while we pick up some people.”

“Pick up? Susan, what the Christ is going on?”

“It was a trap, Lieutenant. There are more Drasin coming. A lot more.”

“Oh merdre,” Bermont swore, thinking furiously. “I need to get the captain.”