Homeworld (Odyssey One) (64 page)

Carrow made a non-committal sound, neither agreeing nor disagreeing with his executive officer. He’d seen Weston’s profile and records once, towards the end of the war. There was nothing in there to indicate that the man actually hated, or even disliked, the Block personnel. If there had been, he probably wouldn’t have been considered for the positions he’d held. Both the Archangels and the
Odyssey
were far too high profile to hand over to a bigot of any stripe, even at the peak of hostilities.

There were also more than a couple odd blank spots in the man’s dossier, periods of more than a year in one spot where everything he did was blacked out.

Like Andrea, Carrow personally didn’t much like Weston for his actions. He was certainly a more-than-competent tactician, but when it came to basic common sense, the man seemed to be a damned hotdog pilot at heart and not the captain of a ship. That said, there was more to him than what he showed the world; otherwise Carrow doubted that he’d still be alive.

Not that this was the time or the place to be debating it, he supposed with a tight smile.

“We have targeting solutions ready and updated, sir.”

“Very good, Andrea. Fire at will.”

N.A.C.S.
ODYSSEY

“TARGETING SOLUTION LINKED with
Enterprise
, sir,” Waters announced.

“Have we adjusted the solution for the
Weifang
’s data dump?”

“Aye, sir.”

“Then fire as she bears,” Eric ordered calmly.

“Aye, aye, Captain,” Waters almost snarled. “Firing as she bears!”

“Winger, have a pair of Marauders come up and put a tow line on the
Weifang
,” Eric ordered. “We can’t leave them out here.”

“Aye, sir.”

The two ships of the Conderation completed their turns, now sailing away from one another as the big turrets swung out and brought their long guns into play. The one-hundred-centimeter weapons spoke silently, yet profoundly, into the depths of space. Among the Drasin fleet, the fires erupted again.

STATION LIBERTY, EARTH ORBIT

“THE BATTLE STARTED well,” a two-star general said over one of the many screens currently filled with faces Gracen both knew and didn’t recognize. “A little surprising, but well.”

Gracen mildly glared at the station’s intelligence officer, Seamus Gordon. “You didn’t report that Weston had made contact with the captain of the
Weifang
.”

“Didn’t know,” the man in the cheap suit shrugged, his face schooled to stoic immobility. “Despite how he acts in public, he was a decent enough operative in his day…short lived though it was. Not great, but decent enough to lose a tail.”

“We have cameras
everywhere
on this station, Gordon,” she rolled her eyes. “There are casinos with less security.”

“Begging your pardon, ma’am, but bullshit,” Gordon said simply. “You need to stop reading the propaganda pamphlets. This station is filled with back corridors and maintenance tunnels that are unsecured, and we lose between ten and twenty cameras a day to normal malfunctions. Sometimes it takes several days to replace them, which means that at any given time….”

“Enough.”

Everyone quieted when that voice spoke, and they all turned to see the man on the screen giving them each a silent glower.

“Sorry, Mr. President.” Gracen had the decency to look abashed. It wasn’t that arguing like children in front of the president was rare, but being called on it wasn’t common at all.

“We have more important things to worry about at the moment,” President Douglas Merryweather said firmly, “though I do want a report on just what the
hell
the Block ship did to those Drasin on my desk in a week.”

There was a silent weight behind that order, most of them knowing that the choice of a week was intentional. If they were still alive in a week, then they’d worry about it. In the meantime, they really did have more pressing matters.

“Noted, Mr. President,” a four-star general said from a DARPA channel at the Pentagon.

Gracen had a general idea of what had happened there, but wasn’t clear on the details. She expected that it would take someone with some in-depth knowledge of some part of the Block drive system to really explain it, but thankfully that wasn’t on her this time.

“What are our chances, Admiral?”

Gracen looked at the president seriously, but couldn’t suppress a sigh.

“That bad, then,” he said, sounding unsurprised.

“That bad, sir,” she confirmed. “Even with this alliance with the Block captain, it’s not likely that we’ll be able to bring the number of invading ships down much to under a thousand, and I don’t believe that I need to remind you that it only takes one of them to destroy a planet.”

“Right,” the president acknowledged grimly. “They sent a little bit of overkill after us, I guess. Weston must have annoyed them more than anyone supposed.”

“I don’t know, sir. Frankly we don’t know enough about either the Drasin or the people holding their reins to say,” Gracen answered. “It’s clear that, for whatever reason, they’ve decided that we’re a thorn not to be tolerated any longer.”

“We should never have gotten involved with this war to begin with,” another general growled, angrily glaring out of the screen.

“That’s not helpful, General Steyr.”

“Sorry, sir.”

“Once they have the orbitals, Admiral, what can we expect?” the president asked softly.

Gracen took a breath, knowing that he was asking not for the worst-case scenario but for what was almost certain to happen. “They’ll launch soldier drones on the planet, if they follow the same procedures as in the past.”

“All armed forces are now reporting at Defcon One, Mr. President, as ordered,” Steyr growled. “They won’t even kiss dirt before we have a division on them.”

“Good. The Block?”

“Same,” Gracen answered for the group. “I’ve been in touch with my counterpart on their station. The Block military is matching our state of readiness.”

“Well that covers at least eighty percent of the planet,” the President said. “Our allies cover most of the rest. Admiral Jerome, make certain that we have carrier groups in place to sortie into any area with weak coverage, particularly the Antarctic.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Admiral,” an aide gestured to get her attention, “we have telemetry coming in now. The
Odyssey
and the
Enterprise
have entered the fight.”