Homeworld (Odyssey One) (31 page)

Ivanth was frustrated. No, far beyond frustrated. He was furious, he was incensed, and, to be perfectly honest, deep down in the back of his mind he was more than a little frightened.

Not as deep down or in the back of my mind as I wish it were.

Granted, the telemetry communication he had with the drones left a lot to be desired. The system had been bashed into the drone’s own communication setup when their internal coding had been re-appropriated by the Empire, and it was a little flighty at the best of times.

For all that, however, the data feeds he was staring at made no sense whatsoever.

Perfectly functional drones did not just convert into debris and expanding plasma for no reason.

It has to be an enemy weapon, but there’s no sign at all of any enemy starships in the vicinity. Mines? It seems ludicrous, but what else could it be?

If it were mines, then he had to consider the possibility that the unknown ship they had been following was leading
them into a trap. More than that, the ship had been wasting their time and resources all along.

That was a stretch, though, because even if it were the case, the level and sheer expanse of any minefield that would effectively take out his ships was mind boggling. He could have come in from vectors that were literally separated by entire
lights
, and there had been no sign whatsoever of any sort of minefield despite intensive scanning.

We know that the unknown ship we encountered at the Hive base utilized extremely effective stealth techniques. It’s possible they utilized something similar to hide a minefield, but the expense would be beyond imagining unless they had control over something very close to the drones’ queen. Unlikely.

No, what was more likely was that the unknown vessel was in the area, stealth techniques and all.

How it was picking off drones with such ease that they didn’t even see it coming? Well, that was another matter entirely, but it was blatantly clear that
something
was.

The problem now was what to do about it?

His first instinct, to simply flood the area with drones until they brought the ship down under the sheer mass of numbers, was unfortunately pointless. For that to work, Ivanth was well aware that he needed to pin the ship against something from which it either could not or, more likely,
would not
escape. At the moment, it would simply vanish into the black and leave him wasting more time and resources on an empty vacuum.

This is rapidly becoming more trouble than it was worth. We’d hoped that tracking the unknown back to its homeworld would give us just that sort of target, but now we’re losing second-generation drone ships for no gain.

That was a big problem.

Second-generation drones were valuable, as they only had one first-generation supplier and the process of multiplying themselves caused bugs and random mutations to appear in later generations. The vast majority of the Empire’s forces in this sector were third- and fourth-generation drone ships, and those were vastly inferior.

That left Ivanth with several unattractive options and no attractive ones.

He could pull back his forces, letting the enemy ship escape and give up all chance of locating its homeworld, or continue to press forward into the teeth of unknown defenses and hope that he had enough power remaining on his side to push through.

If he did and his forces managed to locate the enemy homeworld, assuming it was even in this sector and it wasn’t all some kind of elaborate trap, then it would be worth the temporary reduction in available second-generation drone ships. Of course, if he failed, it would mean the end of his career or, at least, a lengthy period on the blacklist.

I’ll probably spend a little time on the list anyway if I withdraw now. I’ve already lost too many ships.

No matter how he cut it, there was nothing good about his current situation. Forward or retreat—in either case there seemed little upside from his personal perspective and little enough from the Imperial one, as well.

Ivanth looked out over the bridge of the
Demigod
, at the men and women under his command, and tried to find the path that would lead to the best result.
Or, at least, the least bad one.

Finally, he sighed.
Never let it be said that I am unable to be bold.

“Send a signal to the Hive facility,” he ordered. “Request reinforcements. We’re pushing forward.”

N.A.C.S.
ODYSSEY
, SOL SYSTEM

“COMING UP ON the orbit of Saturn, Captain. Close enough now to use a laser comm.”

“Thank you, Lieutenant,” Eric said, nodding, though he wished he could wait for a face to face. “Send my brief to Admiral Gracen, encrypted with a priority flag.”

“Aye, sir. Brief being transmitted now.”

The laser signal would take more than an hour to reach Liberty station in Earth orbit, while the
Odyssey
herself was still a few hours out. By now he was sure that the admiral was aware of their arrival in the system, though she wouldn’t be expecting a message so quickly.

Eric fervently hoped that by the time the
Odyssey
arrived in Earth orbit, the Confederacy fleet would be winding up for a fight. He couldn’t be sure it was coming, but it seemed likely. Hell, it felt almost inevitable to him.

Probably has been inevitable all along, though between the
Odyssey
and the
Weifang
we have undoubtedly sped up the date of the confrontation by a fair bit.

He had little doubt that the forces currently engaging with the Priminae people would have eventually found Earth.
Eric knew that many in the political community and higher ranks of the military didn’t want to believe that to the point of deluding themselves otherwise, but he personally had no doubt.

The Drasin might not have come in a year, or a decade. It just depended on how long they spent cleaning up the Priminae, whether they had been sent against the Priminae specifically, or if that conflict was just the result of an expanding empire growing out of the Galactic core.

Sooner or later, however, the jig would have been up.

The
Odyssey
had at least managed to bring back a warning in exchange for whatever increase in the time table they’d wrought. He didn’t know if it would be much of a consolation in the end, but he was going to take it for what he could now.

Nothing left now but the waiting…and then the screaming and the dying.

STATION LIBERTY, EARTH ORBIT

ADMIRAL GRACEN COULD feel the headache coming on, and the
Odyssey
hadn’t even made Mars orbit yet.