The Heart of Matter: Odyssey One (32 page)

At that moment, those sensors were telling one hell of a story.

“Five…six…six contacts, Captain,” Winger announced after a moment. “One of them is inbound on the system; the others are moving in this direction—but they’re not coming in a straight line, sir.”

“Thank you, Michelle, excellent work.” This time Eric acknowledged her statement verbally and nodded in her direction.

She bobbed her head quickly, not speaking, but instead just blushed a little.

Winger was probably the best hand with the sensors that he had, and Eric knew that he didn’t acknowledge her nearly enough. She was also able to read patterns when chaos was all that Eric saw on his tactical repeater, which made her just one step shy of a miracle worker in his opinion.

“Plot us an interception course for the inbound contact,” Eric decided, idly tapping in a course calculation and then
double-checking it through the computer. “Bring us up along their southwest bulkhead at…ninety light-seconds.”

Eric pushed his tactical board away then, shifting himself back comfortably into his command chair, and looked over at Commander Roberts. “I think we should strike the main arrays in…two hours? Sound about right to you, Commander?”

Roberts nodded. “Aye, sir. Two hours would be just about right.”

“We shouldn’t be reflecting anything back at them, anyway—not with the Primary at our back. But no sense taking any chances,” Eric went on. “In the meantime, Commander, take our adaptive armor to the black hole stealth settings.”

“Aye, aye, Captain.”

Eric glanced over his shoulder, looking for the person he knew would be standing just against the back wall of the bridge. “Yeoman, I think the bridge could do with a round of coffee, if you please.”

The young man nodded briskly before leaving the area. “Yes, sir. Two minutes, Captain.”

Eric smiled, glancing over at Roberts. “Two minutes.”

“Must have caught him by surprise,” Jason Roberts suggested, amused. “Between brews, maybe.”

“Maybe.”

PRIMINAE VESSLE VULK
Interstellar Space, Ranquil Region

▸JOHAN MARAN WAS sweating, though he’d been able to mask it from the sight of his command staff up to the present. His hands were slick, his hair matted against his skull, and the cloth of his uniform clung to the length of his spine as he sat ramrod straight and continued to work the projected controls.

The battle had been raging for the better part of an hour now, contact almost constant as the two sides flashed through space at eighty times the speed of light, each trying to nail the other with clever maneuvers and traps built using light-speed weapons. Neither side having much luck at it.

The
Vulk
had fired a heavy barrage of lasers about thirteen minutes earlier, lancing the lethal beams of radiation across the depths of interstellar space, then raced along on a ragged course that eventually brought them back across the beams’ path, thirteen light-minutes farther along. The Drasin, hot on their tail, had been raked by the lasers, but the hits were scarce, just the same, and at thirteen light-minutes, the beams attenuated beyond lethal focus when dealing with the hardened armor of the Drasin cruisers.

The
Vulk
itself had almost been caught in a fiendish cross fire when three of the four remaining Drasin had tag-teamed them while the last kept up the pressure from the rear. They’d just evaded that by dropping briefly out of dimensional drive and letting the enemy overshoot.

Overall, Johan had come to the conclusion that fighting in dimensional drive was even more insanely difficult than it had been implied on the old files. The attacker in this situation was fighting at a massive disadvantage as he pressed the fight. One practically had to be suicidal to take on a prepared enemy and come out victorious.

“Two of the Drasin are breaking off, Captain!”

Johan growled under his breath as he examined the vectors involved and spotted their destination easily enough. He felt it like a physical blow, even though it was something he’d been expecting. They were heading for Ranquil.

“How much time have we bought the
Heralc
and the refugees?” he demanded quickly.

“They should be several light-cycles into the system, Captain.”

Johan nodded.

It would have to do.

“Redirect our course for the Ranquil System. Inform the admiral to have all defenses brought online and readied for use,” Johan told his crew. “Time to see if they’ll be stupid enough to drop into the gravity well.”

“Yes, Captain.”

The signal went out then, and the
Vulk
arced away from its frenetic battle and made a run for its home system. With the Drasin just slightly in the lead, Johan knew that he’d be playing a game of catch-up when the war continued in normal space.

NACS ODYSSEY
Ranquil System

▸“HERE THEY COME, sir! Five contacts, beelining for us like bats out of hell.”

Eric’s lip twisted at the unnecessary color commentary Michelle had added to her report, but he didn’t comment on it as he ordered, “Strike the sails!”

“Striking sails. Aye, Captain,” Michelle Winger replied instantly, tapping in a command.

Outside, and around the big ship, the massive reflectors of the
Odyssey
’s huge passive sensor arrays rippled, then began to roll up as the material was withdrawn within her hull on command. Each sail took several minutes to withdraw, eventually leaving the matte-black surface of the
Odyssey
’s black hole stealth mode floating almost invisibly against the backdrop of stars.

While that maneuver was ongoing, Eric Weston was looking over the last information that Winger had shot over to him from the sensor array, the vectors of the incoming ships.

As he’d expected, they were coming in solidly on the same course as the refugees and the sixth contact had, and unless they maneuvered wildly, they would wind up coming right across the
Odyssey
’s firing arc at less than three light-minutes.

“Any update on contact six?” Eric asked, looking up.

“Aye, sir.” Winger nodded. “It looks like one of the Primmy ships, sir. Beat up pretty bad.”

Eric raised his eyebrow at the nickname but, again, let it pass. He’d have to see if that was starting to spread, though. Somehow he didn’t think he wanted to slip up and call Commander Jehan a “primmy.”

For the moment, though, he had other things to worry about.

“Do we have visuals?”

“Aye, sir.”

“On-screen,” he ordered.

The screen flickered then, and a dark shape blurred out the stars in the center of it, occasional flashes of light jumping from its surface. Eric grimaced as he looked at the lousy optics, but knew that it was difficult at best to get truly clear images at long range in space.

“Clearing it up now, sir,” Winger said in response to his unspoken thought.

The image wavered, then brightened as Winger applied light amplification, then abruptly jumped into near-perfect clarity as she used the computer records of Priminae warships to fill in the lost details.

Like the
Vulk
and the
Cerekus
, this one was a large, uneven cylinder that had blunted ends. The laser tubes were visible on the screen composite, bristling from the “front” visible section of the ship in something that would flash a warning light up for any military man despite its alien origin.

“Jesus,” Daniels cursed quietly.

Eric didn’t blame him, either. Whoever was over there was in pretty lousy shape. The ship was partially obscured by venting gases, and large chunks of the misshapen cylinder were missing, burned away by the heavy lasers of the enemy.

If the
Odyssey
had taken a quarter of that level of damage, Eric knew, they’d be nothing but expanding gasses.

“What’s their vector?” he made himself ask, no hint of his thoughts in his voice.

“They’re going to pass just over two and a half light-minutes from our position, sir,” Jason Roberts said quietly. “Would you like to send a couple shuttles with medical teams?”

“Negative.” Eric shook his head. “We’re running silent, Commander. Let them slip past. They have help not too far away.”

“Aye, sir,” the commander replied with equanimity.

“Weapons,” Eric said softly, his voice carrying just the same.

“Sir?” Waters stiffened, glancing back.

“Status on the pulse capacitors?”

“Fully charged and waiting, sir,” Waters replied with a grin.

“Excellent.” Eric took a breath. “It’s a waiting game now.”

INTERSTELLAR SPACE, RANQUIL REGION