Homeworld (Odyssey One) (38 page)

Eric made a mild face, but wasn’t shocked by the action.

“Understood. Is Bandit One still on our track?”

“Aye, Captain, One has also lowered thrust, but we’re able to track,” Winger answered.

Eric laughed slightly, a short chuff of amusement. “So that’s the game, is it?”

“Looks to be,” Roberts nodded. “I’m thinking we should be insulted.”

“Depends on if it’s a double trap, I suppose.” Eric shrugged. “The question is, do we take a shot at Bandit One anyway? Almost seems a shame to let an easy target slip past.”

“You have a way to keep Three and Four from jumping us when we do?” Roberts asked. “Because you know they’re flanking him, even if they want us to think they’re stalking us from somewhere else.”

“True,” Eric conceded. “We could take a literal shot in the dark.”

“With what? They’d see torps coming, and our lasers would never be able to adapt at this range,” Roberts said. “I mean, if you want to keep the t-cannons off the table, that only leaves the HVMs.”

“Exactly.”

“Sir,” Roberts said dryly, “that’s just wasting ammo.”

“Not if they’re trying to play fat and stupid,” Eric said, tapping in some numbers as he worked out the math. “Check my equations here, would you? My trajectory calculations go to hell when I start trying to work out relativistic effects.”

Roberts frowned, but ran over the numbers quickly and made a few minor adjustments. “You really think they’ll stay the course that steady?”

“I do,” Eric said, sounding confident. “They’ve learned to respect us, obviously, but they’re still underestimating us.”

“Would be nice if we could keep them doing that,” Roberts said dryly.

Eric shrugged again. “If you can think of a way to look stupid to them without getting the ship shot out from under us, I’m all ears.”

Roberts reluctantly conceded the point. While it would be great if the enemy kept on treating them like they were dumb and dumber, there came a point where acting stupid just became
being
stupid. That was a line he’d really prefer not to cross.

“Targeting solution sent to your stations, Lieutenant Waters,” Eric said, nodding to the tactical officer. “Wake up a brace of anti-ship HVMs and launch when ready.”

Waters blinked, shooting him a slightly consternated look, but nodded and began entering the solution into his computer. A few moments later he nodded, “HVMs ready, launching in three…two…and one.”

The
Odyssey
shivered slightly as the magnetic launchers tossed out the multi-ton kinetic kill weapons into space, their onboard CM winding up as the rocket motors roared into action. The hyper-velocity missiles flickered for a moment on the
Odyssey
’s sensors and then almost vanished as they lanced away from the ship at a significant fraction of light-speed.

“Helm, best change our course now,” Eric said lightly. “Bring us back to the orbital plane.”

“Aye, sir. Changing course.”

Eric checked the clock on his screen and then did some quick calculations. Another three minutes and they’d see if he had been right.

Hyper-velocity missiles were really just large slabs of iron fitted with powerful yet short-lived CM generators and equally powerful solid rocket boosters. By warping space-time around the mass of metal, it was possible to disconnect it slightly from the local Higgs field and thus reduce its apparent universal mass.

When the rocket motors kicked in, they were pushing almost nothing compared to their power rating and they accelerated at speeds generally considered impossible in the relativistic universe. They still maintained some mass, however, so were unable to break light-speed.

Even with that limit, at significant percentages of the speed of light, even very lightly massed objects could pose a threat to some of the heaviest of armor.

That was before the last two systems in the HVMs came into play.

A forward sensor tracked objects ahead of the missile. At the speeds the HVM moved at, no computer would be able to make decisions before impact, so the fuse was hardwired into the system. When a mass was detected within its terminal range, the missile’s fuse triggered the final of the two systems.

When terminal guidance was initiated, the onboard CM field blew itself out and momentarily inverted its effect. Instead of disconnecting the missile from the local Higgs field, it sank the whole slab of iron and steel deeper than it naturally existed in the field and caused many times the normal number of bosons to drag on the material.

The natural, or perhaps unnatural, effect was to suddenly increase the effective mass dozens of times while not affecting its speed even slightly.

The equation that ruled over the impact of the missile with its target was a simple one.

E=mc
²
.

Several tons of metal, massing dozens of times what they normally would, multiplied by the square of the speed of light resulted in one
hell
of a discharge of energy.

“Holy shit,” Roberts swore quietly, but not quietly enough to go unheard.

The flash of light from the impact caused a momentary dimming of their screens as the sensors automatically adjusted the gain to prevent burnout. Even with the filters it was like the whole universe just exploded in their faces, and it was
light-minutes
away.

“Son of a bitch.” Roberts was clearly still having trouble believing what he was seeing. “I can’t believe they held that steady for that entire time.”

“They thought they were baiting us in,” Eric said, a trifle smugly, “so they were playing fat and stupid.”

“They ought to have known better than that. No one is that fat or stupid.”

“Subtlety isn’t their strong suit, from what I can tell,” Eric said conversationally, “though they do seem to be learning.”

“Flash from the blast just lit up Bandits Two and Three, Captain,” Winger announced. “Looks like they doubled back and were flanking Bandit One.”

Eric smirked, amused.

“Oh, wipe that look of your face,” his XO growled. “They may not be bright, but there’s one hell of a lot of them and you know what they said about the Soviets in the Cold War.”

That did wipe the smirk from Eric face, like cold water washing away heated emotions.

“Yeah, I know. Its quality versus quantity, but quantity has a quality all its own,” Eric quoted. “I know the situation, Commander. Let me enjoy the small victories, OK?”

Roberts rolled his eyes, clearly not thinking much on that, but knew better than to say anything further. He was well aware that his CO enjoyed the tactical aspect of his command rather more than he personally considered wise. It made sense in a lot of ways. Eric Weston was a gifted tactical commander and a superior leader. It was his strategic sense that often left Roberts cringing in the background.

He supposed that it was probably related to the skillset that made him an excellent fighter, pilot, and squadron commander. In any case, most of the time Roberts was glad of it and certainly willing to serve under a man from whom he could watch and learn. The rest of the time, well, he would greatly appreciate it once the Confederacy got its act together and had enough ships to qualify as a
fleet and put someone with some strategic sense into a field command slot.

“Any chance the explosion damaged the flankers?” Eric asked, his tone mildly curious.

“No such luck, Captain. They’ve begun maneuvering away from their previous course,” Waters answered immediately.

“No shock, and while I was hoping for some fratricidal effects, I wasn’t expecting much,” Eric said. “Any sign they know where we are?”

“No, sir. I’m reading their current actions as standard evasive maneuvers.”

“Good. Lock up Bandit Two and adjust for an intercept course.”

“Aye, sir,” Waters and Daniels answered almost as one.

“One down, three to go.”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

War Room, Station Liberty, Earth Orbit

ADMIRAL GRACEN GLARED at the screens, features set in stone as they had been since she began watching the events unfolding in the outer system.

The
Odyssey
had gone dark, something that unfortunately included silencing her transponder, so they couldn’t do more than guess at her location for any given moment. The HVM strike had briefly exposed the ship to view when it eclipsed the explosion, showing a clear silhouette to one remote scanner, but by and large the ship was as hidden from them as it, hopefully, was from the enemy.

That wasn’t something that made the brass present feel particularly comfortable, especially given that most of them earned their ranks overseeing battles from very similar rooms and were now informed that a
mere
Captain had effective command of the entire situation.

There wasn’t much any of them could do, however, as there was neither backseat nor armchair from which to command. By the time any orders they gave had made it to the
Odyssey
, the situation would have almost certainly change beyond recognition.

“How the hell did that boy know he could hit a target from that far away?”

Gracen snorted when she heard that, barely glancing at the three-star general who’d asked the question. “He didn’t have a clue. That was a guess and a shot in the dark.”