Homeworld (Odyssey One) (19 page)

Five minutes after they dropped from FTL, Sun gave the order to accelerate once more, and the
Weifang
flashed from existence and vanished into the black of space.

IMPERIAL WARSHIP
DEMIGOD

“THEY’VE ALTERED COURSE and returned to trans-light, Commander.”

What are these people doing?

Ivanth had never seen maneuvering quite so chaotic and haphazard. The ship they were watching was jumping from one course to another like a scalded animal and showed no intent to settle. It had to be some kind of evasion course, but they had to know that trans-light scanners could read them easily at the velocity changes they were making.

The warping of space-time built up several types of harmful particles that got caught in the pseudo gravity fields that propelled starships. At speed, they were relatively difficult to detect because the local warp fields captured them while preventing ships from being thrown out to the universe. But when you dropped the fields, or radically altered them, it was like throwing up a pulsar flare to the eyes of anyone who might care to see.

He didn’t even have to shadow them as closely as he was. He could order his ships back several times further and still
follow easily. If they continued as they were, he might be able to follow them from a hundred times further. More perhaps.

He wouldn’t give those orders, however, if only because Ivanth feared that they were playing games with him.

I won’t lose you to some foolish little dance tricks, whoever you are,
he thought as he glowered at the screens.
You will have to do much better than this.

“Continue pursuit, same lag range,” he ordered. “Do not let them from your scopes.”

“Yes, Commander.”

PRIMINAE WARSHIP
POSDAN

“CAPTAIN, WE’VE SPOTTED high energy spikes across several FTL vibrational bands.”

“Where?” Kian asked, walking over to the long-range detectors station.

“Here.” The man at the instruments pointed to a holographic map.

Kian looked at the location, noting that it was close to the sector they had been dispatched to investigate. “Inform the
Nept
, we are changing course to intercept.”

“Yes, Captain.”

“Helm. Bring us about. Settle us in on a course for sector three-one-nine and bring our drives to full power.”

“Yes, Captain. Course to three-one-nine, full power.”

The warship of the Priminae people turned slowly in space as its big power cores began warping local space and time. It seemed to lumber off as it headed along its new course, but that was only because the ship was so very large. It broke the light-speed barrier within a few moments of power reaching full potential, and flickered away.

Only instants later, the
Nept
followed suit.

P.L.A.S.F.
WEIFANG

THERE WAS A tremor that Sun could feel through the deck of the
Weifang
, something that he knew shouldn’t be there. He wished he had time and the facilities to have the ship properly torn down and refitted, but that wasn’t in the tiles.