Out of the Black (Odyssey One, Book 4) (77 page)

The call went out, worldwide.

The enemy wasn’t where they thought they were. New missions were scrambled, recon imagery was reexamined, and
operational orders were adjusted. The five Heroes began to move across the continents, the big ships settling into place over rare earth mines and pausing just long enough to vaporize the ground below right to the mantle.

They tried to avoid the
Bellerophon
’s mistake of cutting too deep, but more than once they left a smoking hole behind with a rapidly growing cone of ash and rock forming around its circumference.

In each strike, hundreds of thousands of previously hidden drones vanished into their component atoms and molecules, and the carefully crafted plan of the Drasin ship minds went up in plasma right along with them.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

THE
ODYSSEUS
TORE through space at speeds that made a mockery of Newtonian math. Behind her, over seven hundred alien starships all but screaming in pursuit.

Captain Weston looked around the bridge, seeing some new faces, but many familiar ones as he savored the last few moments before the inevitable happened. A presence behind him caused him to half turn and nod as the admiral stepped up to the command console.

She waved him down as he made to get up. “As you were, Captain. I just wanted to be here for this.”

Eric nodded. He could understand that.

“Best seat in the house,” he told her. “Do you have any orders for me, Admiral?”

Gracen looked around, considering the situation, and finally just smiled.

“Make them regret having caught us, Captain.”

Eric smiled back. “With pleasure, Admiral. Commander?”

“Yes sir.”

“We’re not going to have a wingman on this,” Eric said, “so everything I told you about hotdogging . . .”

“Yes sir?”

“Forget it.”

The man known as Stephanos chuckled evilly. “Forget what, sir?”

“Good man. Milla?” Eric half turned to look at the slim and slight Priminae woman.

“Yes Capitaine?” she asked softly.

“Steph is going to be pushing it. Try and keep up,” Eric advised her. “Once we’re in the thick of it, I won’t have time to give you specific orders. When I give the order to fire at will, use your own judgment until I tell you to stop.”

She nodded resolutely. “Aye aye, Capitaine.”

“Alright then. Let’s show these things what happens when you corner a dangerous animal,” Eric said with a sinister smile. “Prepare to come about!”

“Aye sir! Standing by to come about!” Steph answered.

“Bring us about.”

“Coming about,” Steph said as he leaned into the controls and the stars rushed past them on the screens.

The
Odysseus
swung about hard, putting her weapons on target in just under a second as she began to warp space-time in the opposite direction as hard as she could. Bleeding velocity at incredible rates, the swarm of Drasin ships jumped at them from the black of space as Eric watched the screens light up with augmented data about their foes.

“Milla,” he spoke. “Fire as she bears.”

“Aye Capitaine,” Milla Chans said, eyes gleaming as she looked out at the things that had killed her previous ship, her previous comrades. “All lasers . . . firing.”

The lasers of the Heroics weren’t quite as sophisticated as the ones on his
Odyssey,
Eric noted wryly, but they made up in power for what they lacked in sophistication. The beams
lanced into the lead ships with the force of a hundred focused suns, and four Drasin drone ships vanished into oddly spherical bursts of plasma.

“Evade.”

“Aye Captain,” Steph said, twisting the controls and leaning into his NICS needles. The sharp twinge in his neck was an old friend and he couldn’t help but smile as he shifted the warp field, slamming the ship hard to port.

The
Odysseus
responded impossibly, not even groaning under the sudden strain, and Eric noted in the back of his mind that it somehow felt wrong not to have
some
sort of acceleration effect. The Priminae gravity systems took care of that, however, leaving everything—even his filled-to-the-brim coffee—unfazed by the universe-bending actions they were taking.

“Laser bloom, Captain!” Winger announced. “I have the signature. Should I adapt?”

“No. Maintain best reflective settings,” Eric ordered. “There’s too many of them out here.”

“Yes sir.”

“Milla, fire at will,” Eric said, leaning forward. “Steph . . . take us into the swarm.”

“Aye aye, sir!” Both of them responded, and the
Odysseus
surged forward into the roiling storm that was threatening to sweep them all away.

With the augmented systems fully online, Stephen Michaels had always felt a little like he was in a simulator more than the real thing, but on the
Odysseus
it was exacerbated by the artificial gravity systems. He missed the
feeling
of motion, the sensations that accompanied wrestling his fighting around a tight turn.

On the
Odysseus,
he may as well be sitting in front of a computer screen playing a game. Alright, it was a pretty friggin’
awesome
computer screen, he’d give that to the wraparound system, but it was still just a screen. The augmented views supplied by the computer made that feeling even worse, of course.

As he guided the
Odysseus
into the swarm of enemy fighters, Steph watched the beams as they swept space, curling the big ship around, over, and under them as the enemy continued to try and get a bead on him.

No laser is perfectly focused. There are always stray photons to analyze, just as no vacuum is perfect either, and so the beams inevitably struck dust and particulates as they crossed space. The
Odysseus
computers took that data and used it to draw a vector map across his view, showing him where the lasers were and even where they were heading.

Granted, it was useless if the laser was actually aimed directly at him. They’d be hit before the information could reach them, but it did help to see the sweeping patterns the enemy used to try and box the
Odysseus
in.

He could also see the
Odysseus’
lasers as they flashed outward, guided by Milla’s hand. Unlike the aliens, the
Odysseus
had no compunction about aiming for the kill and, as the attacker, the advantage of the initiative was also theirs.

Five more enemy ships vanished into near-perfect spherical explosions of plasma, but then they were within the swarm and it was the enemy’s turn to retaliate.

“Laser strike! Deck five, section ninety three! Damage control groups are moving to contain the damage!”