Homeworld (Odyssey One) (17 page)

“Preflight sequences are all green, Captain.”

Eric nodded absently as he walked across to his station. “Thank you, Commander. Has Commander Michaels contacted the bridge?”

“No, sir. Are we expecting anything from the squadron?”

“Maybe,” Eric said, taking a seat. “Have we delivered everything to the embassy and the advisors?”

“Yes, sir. All deliveries were completed on schedule and with no problems.”

“Good. A nice boring mission to Ranquil. That’s a first,” he said with a smile to his XO. “Hopefully the first of many, right?”

Roberts snorted lightly. “Boring missions in a warzone. You have some sense of humor, sir.”

Eric smiled. “Laugh or cry, Commander. Laugh or cry.”

His comm chirped, signaling a text message, and Eric was distracted from the commander’s response as he accessed the system and read it.

“A problem, sir?” The commander asked when he saw the expression on his captain’s face. “We can scrub departure if we have to.”

“No.” He sighed, a wistful smile on his face. “There’ll be no need of that. We leave on schedule.”

“Aye, aye, Captain.”

From his station in central command, Rael Tanner watched the
Odyssey
as the ship began to accelerate away from his world.

The oddly configured vessel had brought many changes to his planet, most of them as positive as he could imagine them being. Tanner had no illusions that they’d have survived the Drasin assault without the Terran intervention, but some weren’t so convinced. And more were concerned by the very existence of another culture so clearly militarized as the Terrans.

He supposed that he couldn’t blame them; one small ship had annihilated several times their number and even more times their tonnage of Drasin vessels. Because Priminae ships were barely a match one on one for Drasin craft, maybe two on one with particularly brilliant tactics, the Terrans’ capabilities were an understandable concern among the elders.

So it was with mixed thoughts that he watched Captain Weston’s vessel receding on his screens.

The presence of the
Odyssey
meant an added layer of security, and not an insignificant one, against attack. With the Terran embassy on Ranquil, and with a man like Weston in command, he had no doubt that the
Odyssey
would defend
Ranquil almost like its own homeworld. But politically, he had to admit that things became rather tense when the alien warship was floating above Mons Systema.

There was a feeling on board a ship under power that couldn’t be matched by anything less.

The power of the thrusters, huge though they were, was dampened and insulated from the rest of the ship, but a thrum of some sort always leaked through. A low vibration, a distant whirr…things just felt right.

Eric had felt the same thing when stationed on the
Reagan
before the war, and he felt it now as the
Odyssey
reached full power and began to race up the gravity well away from Ranquil. Their nose pointed out into the black. It was like sailing into the dark of the ocean at night when they knew that there was action to be had at the end of the trip.

“Course laid in for Gliese 581, Captain.”

“Good. Time to the heliopause?”

“Three hours.”

Eric nodded. “Commander, you have the con. I’m going to turn in. Don’t wake me for transition.”

The last was said with a wry smile and it earned a few chuckles from those who heard him. On the first few trips they made with the transition drive, he had made a professional point of being visibly in command. He thought it important to the crew that he do so. Now he had nothing to prove. They knew him and Eric was feeling confident in his command.

He could pass off sleeping through transition as a confidence in their capabilities without anyone construing it as a shirking of his own duties.

“I have the con, sir.” Commander Roberts nodded in agreement as Eric got up.

He left the bridge and headed for his quarters, mind racing along as he thought about what might have been and what probably was to come.

As always, Eric found that his choice of lifestyle never failed to offer him challenges to keep things interesting.

CHAPTER SIX

“REPORT.”

Ivanth strode onto the command deck of the
Demigod
, eyes to the large plotters and displays arrayed around the center of the ship’s control.

The
Demigod
and the
Immortal
had arrived on station, joining the
Mythic
, who had been acting as duty and control ship for drones dispatched to the area. It was an empty sector of space, according to available reports. No particularly interesting worlds, no life to speak of, yet routine passes by the drone swarm had found a ship that matched nothing of either the People or the Priminae.

“The drones are…becoming erratic, Commander.”

Ivanth grimaced. That wasn’t the report he wanted to hear. The drones were erratic at the best of times in his opinion, though the official reports listed them as reliable. When they began acting officially erratic, he started to sweat.

Never should have woken the damned things up.

Ivanth sighed. The whole reason the drones were out here was so that they could exercise some of their less stable impulses away from worlds that had value to the People.
Instead they located a ship of interest and had to be recalled back to observation status. Because this group of the swarm had already been showing distinctly non-operational tendencies, he didn’t really want to know just how
erratic
they were becoming.

“And the observation target?”

“The alien vessel dropped from trans-light some time ago, likely to make repairs,” the man told him. “We believe it was struck by a drone laser before it escaped the swarm in the last system.”

“Any certainty?”

“No,” the man admitted. “They may be watching for followers. We’ve remained as far back as we could, as the orders dictated. It makes details difficult to determine.”

Ivanth nodded. “Thank you. Return to your duties.”

The man was right, of course. At maximum range they could barely discern that the ship existed. It would take days for light to arrive to their passive gear and they couldn’t use any of their high-detail trans-light devices for fear of giving away their presence.

His eyes moved to the tiny spec of light listed on the displays, almost too small to see even with the full magnification of their very best equipment. They were relying on the minute disruptions in the trans-light fields caused by the small ship, and they were very minute indeed. He couldn’t believe how stealthed the ship was, given that they knew precisely where it was and had all their equipment focused on it.

The power insulation must be incredible for a ship that size. No wonder they don’t register as a threat to the drones, if they are this well insulated. They
must
be insulated. To destroy the drones as they do, they must be more powerful than they appear….

They had to be. He couldn’t see any other option. According to the best scans he had available of the alien ships, they barely had enough power to achieve trans-light.

Ivanth scowled at the displays, settling himself in. It would probably be a long and certainly a tension-filled wait indeed.