Out of the Black (Odyssey One, Book 4) (81 page)

“W . . . what happened?”

Eric didn’t know who spoke. He didn’t care.

“Carrow blew his reactor, the Tokamak,” he said. “Probably had a couple pulse torpedoes held in reserve just for that.”

Even the Drasin seemed stunned by the action, and for a moment the attacks slacked off. Only for a moment, however, and it was clear that the aliens had no interest in giving them time to grieve for the fallen.

“The swarm has regrouped. They’re turning entirely on us again,” Winger said softly.

“Let them come,” Eric announced. “They couldn’t take the
Enterprise,
and they’ll not take the
Odysseus
.”

The words were dark, but his tone was almost lighthearted, and for a brief moment those who heard him speak felt like they’d just watched a victory instead of a crippling loss.

“Miss Chans, continue firing, please,” he said, breaking the moment.

“Y . . . yes Capitaine,” she mumbled, returning to her task.

“Commander, bring us around to cover the Vorpals,” Eric ordered. “Let’s team up.”

“You’ve got it, sir. Coming about.”

With the
Odysseus
now covering for the Vorpal fighters that had survived this far into the battle, and they providing a fair amount of cover in return, the battle almost instantly raged back to that of a full-blown war. The Drasin were slowly cutting away at the
Odysseus,
however, leaving her crippled piece by piece.

Eric knew it was now just a matter of minutes, likely, before he was forced to do as Carrow had. He rather hoped he would be able to take more of the enemy with him when it came to that.

He couldn’t go into the next life letting Carrow upstage him, after all.

Those morbidly amusing thoughts were thrown from his mind by a yell from Michelle Winger.

“What the . . .” She rose up from her seat, staring at her board like it had just bit her.

“What is it?” he twisted, looking over.

“Tachyon jamming is clear, Captain,” she said.

That couldn’t be what she was swearing about, could it?
Eric shook his head. “Fine. Send the message FTL, Susan.”

“Yes sir,” Lamont answered.

Winger broke in quickly, however. “Sir, we have a tachyon event!”

“Bow shock?” he asked, cringing. More Drasin they did
not
need.

“Negative. Transition.”

Eric blinked.
The only people who can do that are on Earth and
. . .

He smiled. “Well, good. Hopefully that’ll be enough. Send a message. Inform any Priminae ships of what’s happening and request . . .”

“Captain, it’s not outside the system. They’re coming
here!
”

“Impossible!” he uttered.

“On screen!” Winger countered simply.

Eric looked over, the tachyon disturbance clear on the screens. He saw something for the first time then—the appearance of ships from transition with his own eyes.

Two appeared, then four, and then eight, and finally sixteen.

Sixteen Heroic Class ships reformed from transition before his eyes, and Susan’s board instantly chimed.

“Message from the
Atur,
Captain.”

“On screen.”

The screen flickered, and Eric found himself staring at the slight build of Admiral Rael Tanner. The Priminae officer grinned cheerfully at him. “Captain Weston. It is good, and somehow entirely unsurprising, to see you on the
Odysseus
. Please maintain course and speed. We will cover you.”

“Y . . . you heard the admiral, Commander,” Eric stammered a bit.

“Aye sir . . . maintaining course and speed.”

“Get the Vorpals in tight, Susan,” Eric ordered.

“Yes sir.”

The Priminae Heroics turned in space, and they watched as the big long guns pivoted out and came to bear on the battle. The tachyon scanners surged as they fired, and space was lit up by dozens of balls of plasma erupting all around them. The Priminae ships continued to fire their transition
cannons, not stopping until the very last of the drone ships was nothing more than dust on the solar winds.

Eric slumped a little, closing his eyes.

“Stand down from combat alert. Make sure all damage control teams have everything they need,” he said. “Susan . . . get me the admiral again. I have to offer my thanks.”

“Our thanks, Captain,” Gracen said softly. “All of our thanks.”

EPILOGUE

THE DRASIN HAD come and gone from the Earth.

Rather, they had come and were destroyed to the last, but for the Earth it had been a long and painful war. One that seemed without much of a victory to cheer for. The world was ravaged, with millions dead at least, and the death tolls still to be tallied in most places. Cities had been razed, either by the aliens or by the defenders in an attempt to cleanse them, and infrastructure had been demolished beyond repair.

The governments were a shambles, aside from the Block and the Confederacy and a very few key allies.

President Mitchell Conner suspected that now was the time to unify, if ever there was such a time. He swore to suggest it to his successor, for after the orders he had given he felt no right to sit behind the desk he’d once claimed as his own. New elections would be held, soon, and he’d stay on until then . . . but only then.

He looked out over Washington, and was surprised as he had always been by how untouched the city was.

The defenses around Washington had topped anything almost anywhere else in the world, and they’d served the people there well.

I just wish we’d done the same for other places
.

The President of the Confederacy looked up from the balcony of the White House, eyes on the massive bulk of the ship that was visible even in orbit. It was the
Atur,
the flagship of the Priminae colonies, and the savior of the Earth.

How the tables turn. We save them, they save us. I think . . . I hope, this is the start of a beautiful friendship
.

He’d spoken with the admiral, an approachable man for a flag officer. He rather liked all the Priminae he’d met so far, though he was required by the nature of his office not to trust them entirely. He wasn’t sure it mattered if he did, though. Whatever their intentions, they held all the cards.

They had the infrastructure to build more of the Heroics. They now had many . . . though not all, the key technical secrets of the Confederacy . . . and they had ten more warships in Earth orbit than the Earth had.

He just hoped to God that they were as friendly as they seemed, because it would be some time before the Confederacy . . . or the Earth . . . was ready to meet another foe.

Speaking of foes . . . I have a few duties left to deal with
.

“Welcome, Mr. President.”

Conner just nodded at the greeting, walking forward and making the man in the lab coat walk along with him. “Is it here?”

“Yes sir,” the man said, gesturing. “Right this way.”

He led them down a long hall, through three security doors and a pressure-sealed vault door until they reached a room with a large glass window that opened onto a freezer. Inside, Conner stared at the Drasin soldier drone that was standing there. It appeared dead for all he could tell, but he was assured that it was not.

“How do you know it’s alive?”

“When our teams found this one in Antarctica, it was with a squad. They must have been trying to core through the ice, but it was too thick for them, I believe. We can detect some activity, and it still has a significant body temperature. It’s alive, sir.”

Conner nodded, his lips drawn tight. “What have you learned?”

“A great deal, though how much will be useful is another issue,” the man admitted. “The reason I called you down, though, is this . . .”

He gestured to a screen that made no sense to the President.

“What is that?”

“Sir, are you familiar with the two methods humans have for storing memories?”

Conner nodded again. “Yes. Chemical and neural, right?”

“Precisely . . . watch this.” The man hit a key and Conner found himself entranced as he watched what
had
to be the interior of an alien ship.

There were dozens . . . no, hundreds of drones just like the one in the next room, and they were all moving with military precision. He watched as the perspective moved as well, into some sort of pod, and then everything shook. When it steadied finally, the pod blew open and a roar of snow and wind obliterated the visibility.

He looked between the screen and the drone, frowning. “You can scan its memories?”

“Yes, Mr. President, but that’s not the interesting thing.”

No, Conner supposed it wouldn’t be. It had been possible to do that for decades with humans, to varying degrees.

“What is interesting is that when we located the system for storing memories it was based on silicate atomic bonds, compared to our own chemically bonded memories,” the man said. “But the . . . coding . . . that was identical to humans.”

Conner snapped around. “Say that again.”

The man in the lab coat sighed. “Whoever built these things, and yes we’re sure now that they were built . . . this sort of parallel evolution is only marginally more likely than every star in the galaxy going supernova at once . . . but whoever built them was intimately familiar with human physiology, sir.”