The Heart of Matter: Odyssey One (39 page)

Or not, as the case may be.

The
Heralc
had increased her thrust, at a cost to their reactor mass, and would be entering the battle quite soon as well. They were within effective laser range now, well under a single light-cycle, but Senthe wanted a kill.

He’d wait for it.

“Energy bloom from the Drasin! They’re firing!”

Kierna stiffened, jerking up and around. “At us?”

The young woman stared wildly at her screens, then shook her head. “No…not at us.”

“The
Odyssey
, then?”

“No, sir. They appear to be targeting the weapons fire the
Odyssey
sent at them.”

Kierna blinked. “Are they hitting it?”

“I…I don’t think so, sir…I…no…Mother!”

Kierna stared at his own screen as it suddenly went white with energy discharge. “What was that?”

The torpedoes were a new thing to the Drasin.

Magnetically accelerated to relativistic velocity by the launch tubes on the
Odyssey
, each pulse torpedo traveled a course that was affected not only by ballistic trajectory but by the fact that like charges repel one another. In a four-torpedo burst, such as was closing on the lead Drasin vessel, the firing pattern had to be precalculated according to the spread one wished to achieve at the targeted range.

Firing all four simultaneously at long-range results in a relatively wide “shotgun” spread that could sweep across a fleet, or squadron, and wreak havoc, yet probably not actually kill any given ship. At close range, a similar pattern would strike almost entirely on a single target, the matter/antimatter mutual annihilation rending any armor and hull to shreds. Against the pulse torpedos, there was no effective armor known to Earth-based science unless you had an ungodly amount of it.

It was possible to repel the incoming rounds if one knew their frequency and had a powerful enough field generator, but even that was difficult in the extreme due to the incredibly high velocity they were fired at. The best one could hope
to do would be to deflect them marginally and hope they hit another ship.

And if you didn’t know the frequency of the incoming torpedoes…Well, there wasn’t much you could do about it.

The Drasin saw the four points of destruction approximately twenty seconds before they struck, the light from the weapons traveling a third faster than the weapons themselves, and reacted in the only way they could.

They opened fire.

Beams of impossibly lethal radiation scoured the skies as they panned from one sector to another, attempting to intercept the incoming projectiles, but the Drasin soon learned a hard truth that the American military had learned decades earlier with much slower-moving targets.

That is, when a contact is incoming, even on a predictable path, and you have less than a minute to identify, target, and destroy it…You’re pretty much out of luck.

Eighteen seconds after they opened fire, the torpedoes slammed into their target and erupted in a blaze of pure white flame.

NACS ODYSSEY
Ranquil System

▸ERIC WATCHED THE plot intently, tracking the likely courses the enemy would be following. He’d find out if he were right in just a moment.

“Prepare tachyon active sensors.”

“Aye, aye, sir.” Lieutenant Winger nodded instantly. “Sensors primed.”

“Narrow band, high velocity,” Eric ordered.

“Aye, sir. N-band, high energy,” Winger echoed.

“Mr. Daniels, bring us around.”

“Aye, sir,” Daniels responded, tapping in the commands.

The
Odyssey
shuddered again, swinging around as her main engines continued to thrust on full power. The big ship spun like a bottle rocket in a wide arc across space, its forward thrusters fighting hard to keep it from surrendering to the forces Daniels was putting on her.

“Single ping, if you please, Lieutenant.”

“Aye, sir. Single ping.”

The lights dimmed for a moment as the tachyon generation systems drew inordinate amounts of power from the system, and then the ship’s computer filled the bridge with a
single loud, clear tone to simulate the release of the tachyon ping.

Tachyons were a class of particles proposed in the middle of the twentieth century in response to the study of the Theory of Relativity and the apparent limit that theory placed on the maximum attainable velocity of the universe. Tachyons had no mass and were theoretically unable to travel any slower than the speed of light.

Interestingly enough, the speed a tachyon traveled at depended largely on an inverse relationship with the amount of energy that existed within the particle itself. Zero energy particles, like those the
Odyssey
used for its transition drive, were effectively unlimited in speed and could cross the entirety of the galaxy, even the universe, in the blink of an eye.

Endurance, of course, was another matter. The universe abhorred tachyons, or at least it had no love for those particles of this mysterious class that were generated by human technology. As such, it required immense amounts of power to construct a tachyon matrix that could endure a useful distance, as far as stellar travel goes.

For tachyon echo location and ranging (TELAR), the requirements were somewhat less onerous. High-energy particles with less complex structures could be used, narrowing the range according to how one charged each particle. When a TELAR pulse struck an object of sufficient mass, the tachyons would interact with the materials in question, and a small, almost minute, percentage of the particles would actually “bounce” back.

Which, Weston knew, made for a very difficult job on the part of TELAR operators like Lt. Michelle Winger.

It was a good thing that she was as good at her job as she was, and even better that she seemed to love her job, too.

“Confirmed weapons hit,” she announced calmly, ignoring the short and impromptu surge of enthusiasm around her. “Two…Hold. Three weapons struck the enemy vessel.”

“The fourth?”

“Unknown. I don’t have a tachyon return off of it,” she said apologetically. “It’s too small, sir.”

“Understood. Track on light-speed sensors. Let me know when you see where it went.”

“Aye, sir.” Winger nodded.

“Status of enemy vessel?” Eric asked calmly.

“That’s unknown at present, sir. They appear to be intact and mobile, but severely damaged.”

“Understood.” Eric nodded, and indeed, he did.

TELAR imaging only provided the operator with a single “snapshot” of the universe along its range. What happened before the ping and what might happen after were entirely beyond the scope of the system’s capabilities.

“Send the data to the labs for immediate analysis,” Weston ordered, turning back to the weapons station. “Waters?”

“Aye, sir?”

“Prepare to close with and engage the enemy.”

“Aye, sir.”

PRIMINAE VESSEL HERALC
Ranquil System

▸KIERNA WAS PREOCCUPIED with trying to figure out what had happened. The screens had cleared moments earlier, but the shocked chaos reigned as the crew around him tried to determine what had happened.

“Serra! Status!” he snapped. “What was that?”

“Military-grade explosives, Captain.”

“Nuclear?”

“No, sir.” She shook her head. “The blast was contained. No appreciable radiation or cascading chain reaction.”

“Effect?” Kierna was snapping his questions out, quickly and without relief, but all too aware he and his ship were flying into that war zone.

“Three impacts on the Drasin cruiser…It’s badly damaged, but still mobile, sir,” Serra responded, frowning as she calibrated something. “The fourth weapon missed and is flying free.”

“Where to?”

“Headed out-system, below the planetary orbit.”

“Thank the Maker for that.” Kierna shook his head. “Watch the
Odyssey
, Ithan. Inform me if they fire again.”

“Yes, sir.” Ithan Serra nodded, not looking up.

Kierna eyed his projections, calculating the range to the targets. Interestingly, both of them appeared to be focused on the
Odyssey
now, as if it were the only threat in the sky.

Time to show them the error of that assumption.

“Prepare weapons to fire on the undamaged cruiser,” he said calmly, hanging onto the solid projection of his control interface. “We’ll take them down from behind. If the
Odyssey
fires another round of those weapons, I want to be ready to evade, however.”

“Yes, sir.”

The reply was automatic from his crew by now, and Kierna took a breath as he accepted the instant respect, the confidence, they placed in him. Then he set his hands on the projection controls and pushed the thrust all forward.

“Prepare to engage the enemy. We’re going in.”

PRIMINAE VESSEL VULK
Ranquil System