Homeworld (Odyssey One) (25 page)

Kian nodded, satisfied. They might not be able to hold a conversation with the Terrans, but that obviously didn’t mean they couldn’t send information to them.

What an odd mix of technologies on the
Odyssey, Kian mused.
Trans-light detection, yet extremely minimal transmission. A trans-light drive that makes a mockery of every computed method in Priminae history, yet barely enough power to show up on a threat assessment scan.

Though, she had to admit, that last example seemed more like an advantage in some ways than anything else.

Still, the point remained. The
Odyssey
was a confusing mix of technical capacity that made no sense to practically anyone in the Priminae fleet who took the time to examine it. Some day she hoped that some sort of real exchange of ideas and technical knowledge would occur, because the drive technology alone was beyond revolutionary.

For the moment, however, it was beyond her grasp.

Whatever the Drasin are doing out here must take priority. At least so long as they stay away from the core systems, things are better than they have been.

With the Central worlds having finally run up production of warships and defense, things had improved on the home front. But she didn’t want to see what would happen if the irresistible force of the Drasin came to bear on the ultimate defense of the core planets. She honestly feared that “ultimate” did not mean what it once did.

“Can we intercept the signals we’re tracking?” Kian asked, shaking her mind loose from those thoughts.

“At maximum velocity, we might intercept them before they leave the galactic arm.”

Kian sighed, having half-expected that much.

“They are not
going
to the edge of the galactic arm,” she said. “Inform the
Nept
, we are going to maximum velocity.”

“Yes, Captain.”

P.L.A.S.F.
WEIFANG

SUN LOOKED OVER the reports that had been filed from every department, listing all the work that had been accomplished over the past few days. It was a long list, long enough that he was proud of his people, but the list of work left to do was longer still.

The crew had managed several small miracles in the time they’d had, but it was plenty clear that the
Weifang
was in dire need of a full refit. Almost half of their engineering deck was exposed to hard vacuum, which made the repairs they’d managed to pull off all the more miraculous. To be frank, it wasn’t the mission he’d envisioned when he was presented with his assignment.

They’d learned that, if anything, the Confederacy had downplayed the dangers of the alien species they’d identified as “Drasin,” and it was clear that those same aliens were encroaching closer and closer to Earth. Gliese 581 was only twenty-two light-years from Sol. That was frighteningly close by any standard.

It was close enough to have detected transmissions from early television signals many times over, though thankfully in
recent years and decades those signals had been curtailed significantly due to satellite signals being more precisely targeted.

I wonder what odds we beat that they didn’t home in on Earth by watching old signals before we learned to better insulate our equipment and focus our beams?

Sun decided that he probably didn’t want to know the answer to that question. He was going to have enough problems sleeping at night as it was.

On Earth at the moment, largely thanks to the
Odyssey
, Sun knew that xeno-anything was all the rage. He himself had become at least conversant in xenobiology as well as several leading theories of cosmology as they applied to the possible existence of extraterrestrial life. Up until the
Odyssey
’s return from its first voyage, one of the leading theories held that humanity just might be one of the first intelligent forms of life to appear in the universe.

It seemed a little absurd, but once the math had been broken down, he had been able to understand just from where the theory was coming.

The universe was around eighteen billion years old, the Earth about six billion years. Humanity weighed in somewhere over ten thousand years, but probably under one hundred thousand years, depending on how you measured things.

The idea was that it took time to evolve sentience, society, technology, and so on. Billions of years, at least. Almost six billion on Earth, to be precise. The universe itself was measurably only three times older than that, and was probably very inhospitable to any sort of life in its formative years.

Therefore, the theory had held, it was entirely possible that life didn’t have much chance to even begin until six billion years ago—and, further, could not have evolved into anything complex enough for sentience until very recently.

The
Odyssey
’s discoveries had put an end to that theory, of course, but the math was still reasonably sound and it still applied.

He hoped it did, anyway, because it might mean that no one out in the black of space had an insurmountable lead on humanity. Certainly so far the enemy, while certainly more advanced in some areas, was at least still more or less in the same league. They had more power, but seemed to still be vulnerable to munitions designed for use in space combat.

He didn’t want to face off against an enemy as potentially advanced as other, worst-case theories predicted.

Reality was bad enough.

Sun looked at the dark screen, wishing that the
Weifang
’s sensors could see beyond the gravity warp of space-time that was driving them forward through the stars. Flying blind was not calculated to soothe his nerves, and at the moment he needed something to do just that.

We’ll be home soon. I only hope that my report is enough to get those in charge to reconsider current policies. I believe that it may be time to stop counting coups against the Confederacy.

The universe felt so much larger than it had just a few days earlier.

Larger, and far deadlier.

CHAPTER NINE

N.A.C.S.
Odyssey

ERIC FOUND IT hard to keep his lunch down as the ship normalized after transitioning to their current location. He had grown largely accustomed to the transition process but, like most of the crew, multiple high-speed jaunts were hard on his system.

He’d heard that there were a few people on board, one ground pounder in particular, who seemed to get some sort of thrill out of the process. To be frank, he thought they had to be a little tweaked in the head. Transition wasn’t something to be looked forward to. It wasn’t something to enjoy. It was something to endure and, having endured, hope fervently to put off for as long as possible in the future.

Recovery time, however, was not optional. On alert—hell, even when not on alert—it was absolutely vital that key members of the crew were at their stations and ready for literally anything the very second that transition was completed. He’d been forced to institute a policy of having multiple backup people in place in key areas, including the bridge, though that had thankfully been one area transition sickness had been mild in.

This time he was gratified and pleased to see people already at work as his own eyes cleared. The odds of running into anything in space were literally astronomical, but given that they were in a potential warzone and that the
Odyssey
had already beaten the odds more than once, it just didn’t pay to be slack.