Homeworld (Odyssey One) (46 page)

N.A.C.S.
ODYSSEY

“FIRING PROGRAM COMPLETE, Captain.”

“Stand by for initial return imaging,” Winger announced almost as Waters spoke. “Ten minutes and counting.”

Eric didn’t say anything. There wasn’t much he could say at the moment. He needed information to act, and that was one thing that he just couldn’t rush at the moment. He noted a motion in the corner of his eye and spotted a Navy steward—technically a “culinary specialist,” now he supposed—gesturing to him questioningly.

He nodded, and the man brought out two more CS personnel with trays of coffee and light snacks, walking them around the bridge. Eric accepted a mug himself, but passed on the pastries. He really wasn’t hungry at the moment.

“If you need to use the bathroom, now is the time,” he said. “Relief watch is standing by.”

Ten minutes wasn’t a ton of time, but it would be considerably longer before any enemy ships could reach a conventional engagement range. Eric considered that for a moment, then went on. “Stand down from action stations.”

“Aye, Captain,” Roberts said, transmitting the order.

A minute later his voice echoed over the ship-wide comm.

“All hands, stand down from action stations. I say again, stand down from action stations,” Eric ordered before sighing and turning to Roberts. “You know what I hate most about space combat?”

“The waiting?” Roberts asked dryly. It was a pretty obvious thing to hate at the moment.

“Well, yes, but more specifically I hate the fact that every battle feels anti-climactic,” Eric scowled. “By the time we know what happened, it’s already been over for longer than I care to think about.”

“Not if they get close,” Roberts said mildly.

“If they get that close, we’re dead.”

“And no more hating anything, then.”

“Bleh! You’re a regular breath of fresh air. You know that, right, Commander?”

“I try, sir.”

Eric rolled his eyes and tried to focus on the job. Patience was a necessity for an officer, not a virtue. He’d learned that lesson a long time ago, but in truth it never got easier. Even on Earth, with intelligence updates available literally at a split second’s notice, often he’d have to wait for someone to analyze the data and then for someone else to tell him what it meant.

Here, he got to make those calls, but now it seemed light itself was conspiring against him.

Hurry up and wait.

Ten minutes later, with most of the watch having taken a few minutes to themselves for whatever they needed, the data was coming in and it was about as good as they could hope for. Eric nodded a lot to himself, eyes on the pictures that showed one ship after another vanishing in a ball of nuclear flame, and tried to tell himself that it would be enough.

They’d have to be crazy to even think of coming in here after seeing this.

Two things kept him from celebrating with the rest of his crew, however.

First, he didn’t think that the Drasin were crazy. He doubted they had enough mental acuity to be diagnosed, period.

And second…well, second was the image of the nigh countless drones it must have taken to assembled that goddamned Dyson Cloud.

An enemy with no thoughts to be considered sane or insane, who had near unlimited numbers? No, he wasn’t in a celebratory mood.

IMPERIAL DESTROYER
DEMIGOD

IVANTH HAD NEVER been happier to be seated solidly in place with something to his back before. The explosions of the drone ships were showing over and over again on a loop as his people searched for some kind of cause, any kind of cause, but to him all he felt inside was some sort of shock, horror, and a spreading numbness.

What have we walked into out here?

It was impossible. There was
nothing
in the known galaxy that treated the drones like that, and the Empire knew a great deal about the galaxy.

Again the readings played, showing a spreading pattern of annihilation overtaking the drones, and he again just stared.

Mines?

He was clutching at straws and he knew it, but it was vaguely possible, he supposed. The drones had approached along the system plane, and it was a common operating procedure among most civilized spacefaring cultures. Not that the drones were in any way civilized, of course. They just liked it when their meals lined up in a nice little row.

That said, if one assumed that sort of approach from encroaching vessels, you might be able to mine the field, in theory. It would take some kind of self-assembling mines, much like the drones that built the Hive modules, but it was possible at least.

His only problem with that theory?

Where are the mines?

There were no signs, no hints of weaponized platforms anywhere in the system aside from the third, fourth, and possibly sixth planet. Atomic fusion weapons, such as the explosions seemed to indicate, were
detectable
. In order to hide them from radiating scanners, you would have to clad them in shielding of significant thickness, and
that
would make them visible to visual scans.

“Commander?”

“Is the analysis complete?” Ivanth demanded sharply, stirring from his shock.

“Yes….”

“What is the outcome?”

The man swallowed. “The same as before. Weapon system unknown.”

“Run it again.”

“Commander, this is the sixth time, without new data….”

“Again!” Ivanth snarled. “Unless you would like to take my place when I explain to the Prohuer just what the hell happened here.”

“Yes, Commander.”

Ivanth glared at the man until he turned away. There had to be some sort of answer in the data, some hint of just what in the singular abyss just happened!

The Prohuer is going to have me ejected into space if I return and tell him I lost my entire complement of second-generation drone
ships without some kind of explanation as to how in the abyss it happened.

In the entire time since the drones were discovered and Imperial scientists managed to re-code their primary objective, there had never been any kind of mass loss that even came close to matching this.

And that includes the incident with the super nova.

“What is the enemy ship doing?” Ivanth asked, hoping to shake his train of thought.

“Nothing, Commander.”

“Nothing?”

“They are remaining directly on station, as they were before. They did not maneuver significantly during the drone ships’ entire charge. They have not even attempted to employ their stealth systems.”

Ivanth grimaced. “A challenge then. They’re
daring
us to enter their territory.”

“Commander, do they even know we are here?”

“They know,” Ivanth said with certainty.

His stomach was knotted up, but there was nothing left to it. He only had one option remaining that wasn’t an outright betrayal of the empire.

“Signal the
Immortal
,” Ivanth ordered. “We are withdrawing to the Hive.”

“Commander?”

Ivanth ignored the incredulous tone, schooling his expression to hide the sickness he felt inside.

“You heard me. We are leaving.”

“Yes, Commander.”