Homeworld (Odyssey One) (59 page)

Ambassador LaFontaine sat heavy in her office, looking out over a rather spectacular view of the old monolithic city that existed around the enormous pyramid in which she was. Admiral Tanner had just left, and the news he’d brought with him, while not entirely unexpected, was as staggering as an axe handle to the face.

The worst of it was that there was nothing she, or anyone, could do. Earth’s fate now rested surely on the shoulders of men and women several light-years away, men and women who were almost certainly outgunned and outnumbered.

She locked the door of her office with the touch of a button, put her face down in her arms, and cried.

Jeremy Reed’s fingers were numb, barely holding onto the slate that had delivered the news to him. He had enough control to keep from shaking, but only just, and suddenly found himself deeply in need of a place to sit down.

He staggered across his office, away from the window that overlooked the base and training grounds he had helped design and build for the locals, and finally collapsed into his chair.

Those God-forsaken
things
found Earth. I don’t believe it.

He stared at his desk, sick inside, and lowered his face into his hands. He had a family at home, though he and his wife weren’t on the best of terms. He was a better husband when he was a long way from home, he’d learned a long time ago, but she didn’t deserve what was coming. He felt ill. He had two sons at home that he hadn’t seen in too damned long, and now….

He didn’t know what. He just didn’t know.

Reed reached across his desk and hit a button.

“Sir?” The soft voice of a local secretary rang clear as day through the room.

“Please contact my team and have them meet me in my office, as soon as possible.”

“Yes, sir.”

He didn’t know how he was going to tell them, but he knew that they were likely to take it even worse than he was.

THE HIVE

IVANTH CLENCHED HIS fist to keep his hand from shaking as he turned off the recorder.

He’d just watched the entire Imperial battlefleet taken apart, piece by piece, by their own weapons. It didn’t make
any
sense! The safeguards, everything they did to ensure that those things were under control…none of them stopped the assault. They didn’t even
slow
it down!

He felt sick deep in his stomach…the lives gone, the ships annihilated! If it weren’t for the numbness, he suspected he might actually
be
sick.

The time imprint made it clear that it happened at the same time as the drones under his command rebelled against him, but those didn’t turn on Imperial control. They went after the enemy, granted not in the fashion he would have ordered, but even still….

Something had changed in them, something vital and deep inside the little monsters, but until he knew what it was, there was nothing he could do to resolve the issue.

More important than what changed them, where in the singular abyss did they
go
?

There had been thousands of space combat drones in the Hive, more than any dozen campaigns should have needed. Millions of soldier drones that, despite what happened to the
Immortal
, appeared to be mostly missing as well. What was left was the self-assembled Hive facility itself, not that he would remain within those uncertain platforms now that it was clear the drones had turned on the Empire.

So where had the rest gone?

The closest Priminae world is only a few lights away. We should do a fast scout, see if they’re in the area. If not, then….

His mind drifted back to his own experiences with the rebelling drones. They hadn’t gone for
his
ships. No, they’d focused instantly on that lethal little star and its enigmatic populace.

If they’ve returned there, at least that will be one world out of the way,
he supposed, though in all honesty he still saw drones exploding in open space for no reason anyone or anything could detect. A small sliver of him wondered if the drones hadn’t chosen to chew off more than they could process this time.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

N.A.C.S.
Enterprise

“HERE THEY COME, Captain.”

Captain Carrow nodded, standing in front of his station as he looked over the bridge and the main display. The enemy fleet was close enough now that even their shipboard sensors could track them, and that meant that they weren’t far beyond Sol’s heliopause. Carrow rubbed his shoulder as he watched the numbers countdown, remembering another day and another battle.

Eric Weston was a decorated veteran of the air war that raged across the Pacific theatre, but Carrow had been a carrier commander from start to finish. He’d taken his task group through hells that he never wanted to think of again, and now it seemed that he’d have to do it again.

I just wish we had time to put together a proper carrier group.

His task force consisted of the
Enterprise
, his space wing, and four of the Marauder class irregulars. It was a far cry from an American carrier group, even if it did currently pack several dozen times the firepower.

Conservative estimates, at that.
Carrow knew that numbers were meaningless, however, not when compared to what their
best guess for enemy ships was. The computers kept refining the guess, but the new numbers weren’t good news compared to the old. As the fleet slowed, the FTL particles that preceded each ship were becoming less pronounced, but they were also closing together and turning the signal of the fleet into what almost looked like a single mass coming their way.

It was a single mass over one light-
day
across, but a single mass just the same.

“I hope Weston knows what he’s doing.”

Carrow glanced to the side, nodding slightly as Andrea Parker stepped up beside him, her uniform as perfect as ever. Parker was his first officer, and one of the best pilots to come out of the Block war that couldn’t take a NICS device.

“He has more experience than anyone else.”

“Doesn’t mean he knows what he’s doing,” she countered. “Just means he’s bumbled through this situation before.”

“Bumbled through this situation and
survived
it,” Carrow corrected dryly. “Twice. We don’t have anyone better.”