Into the Black: Odyssey One (48 page)

*****

Above them the two armed Carnivore Recon Drones orbited lazily at over thirteen thousand meters, the target below them, nothing more than a mere spec to the human eye. But it wasn’t a human eye that they relied on, so the two weapons of war could see with crystal clarity as their systems blinked to life and they prepared to launch.

Power fed into the GBU-98’s from the drones, charging the superconducting capacitance coils that encircled each weapon’s interior, until the tell-tale LED’s all went green. Then the four weapons, two to a drone, fell free of their shackles.

Four fins snapped out a quarter second after release, pulling the rear ends of the weapons up until their noses were pointing at the desired location, the relatively small rocket motors whined to life and the bombs leapt to life.

Downward they rushed, entering terminal attack mode, only three seconds after they were released, their onboard computers making final adjustments in the last instant, before the point of no return, activating the weapon’s terminal program.

Designed late in the so called ‘terror’ wars, the GBU 98 carried a payload sufficient to destroy any bunker ever built, assuming it could penetrate it. That problem, in particular, had been a plague on the forces of the so called ‘civilized’ nations, early in the terror wars because many of their targets were effectively proofed against even nuclear attacks, by a simple insulating layer of earth.

Initial designs had depended on an ‘Earth Penetrating’ Steel casing, to get the weapon deep enough before detonation.

The GBU98’s used that in addition to a more… refined approach.

The powerful, though short-lived, lasers built into the nose cones of each weapon whined to life as the weapons went terminal, cutting into the ground where they were aimed like an industrial drill, opening the door, so to speak.

And then it was done. The lasers burned out, under the powerful energy pulse released through them, and the weapons slammed into the ground right through the holes they had cut and kept on boring down on pure kinetic power, until they blew through into the caverns below and came to a sudden, jarring stop.

*****

The earth under them heaved, throwing the men in the trench into the air, from the sheer force of it. Savoy and Mehn had been expecting something along those lines and landed easily, but the others just slammed back down to the ground, as four pillars of fire rose up from the strike zones and huge gouts of flame and dust erupted from the tunnels the Drasin had carved.

Burke dropped back into the trench, whistling happily over the network as he threw himself over three of the locals, “incoming!”

Mehn and Savoy followed his example, covering as many of the locals as they could with their armor, as dirt and debris came raining down around them and a stiff wind whistled over their heads. There wasn’t as much of it as one might expect, since the vast majority of the blast had been directed downward by the shaped detonations of the GBU-98’s.

When it stopped, the three soldiers climbed back up to the lip of the trench and looked out over the damage.

Savoy whistled appreciatively when he saw the impact sites.

The ground was burning there now, four deep craters spewing flame and smoke, as the ground caved in further, hopefully crushing anything that might be left in there.

“Nice work, Burke,” Savoy said, already accessing the Carnivore drones and bringing them back around for another look with their ground penetrating RADAR. “Let’s make sure we got them all.”

*****

“What in the Maker was THAT?” Tanner asked incredulously as the ground stopped shaking and quaking around him.

“And explosion in the Corinth sector, Admiral.”

Tanner cast a glance at Milla, “Your friends don’t believe in doing things lightly, now do they?”

Milla tried to shrug helplessly, but the effect was mostly wasted in a suit.

“Never mind,” he shook his head. “Damage?”

“That is my concern, Admiral,” Jehan told him firmly. “My people are there and the area was evacuated. We’re trying to get confirmation on the elimination of the Drasin now. Leave it to my people.”

Tanner grimaced, but nodded grimly. “Very well, Nero.”

Tanner turned back to his own people, “do we know where the Odyssey is now?”

“I’m afraid not, Admiral.”

He sighed and nodded, than sat back in his chair.

Then what good am I, I wonder?

Chapter 32

“Kill the thrusters.”

“Aye Aye Sir,” Daniels responded, hitting the command on cue.

The background rumble went dead and the deck seemed to tilt back to a level keel, as the acceleration died off. Eric Weston leaned back in his seat, partly to keep his head from spinning from the sudden change and partly in an attempt to think.

The Odyssey had spent the last hour at one Gee subjective acceleration, meaning that with the eight percent Cee Emm field, they had been able to pull approximately fifty gravities. With the initial full burn they’d used at the start, that left her current ballistic speed at just under seventy-five thousand kilometers per second or roughly one quarter light speed.

“Enemy status?”

“Still on course for the planet, Captain,” Waters responded. “No sign that they’ve seen us.”

Eric nodded calmly, trying not to think about the risks he was taking, or the dangers ahead. He could see from the display that they’d reach the interception point, in just under an hour. Their crossing velocity would be such that the Odyssey would get one round of shots free of charge, no more.

After that, it all depended on the enemy.

And that, Weston knew, was a bad way to plan your action.

“Relief crews to the Bridge,” he ordered no sign of his thoughts on his face.

“Aye Sir,” Roberts replied, nodding to Lamont, as she issued the order.

“Commander, take first watch,” Eric said, standing up. “I’ll be back in twenty minutes to relieve you.”

“That’s not necessary Sir, I don’t need any time,” the Commander told him.

Eric half smiled, “in twenty minutes, Commander, you will go down to your room. You will take a quick shower, then go and get a light meal. When this is done and only when this is done, will I allow you to return to the Bridge. Am I understood?”

“Understood Sir.”

“Good,” Weston turned, stepping toward the lift, as it arrived with the relief crew. “Then I’ll see you in twenty minutes.”

“Aye Captain.”

*****

“Doctor… I…”

“What is it, Nurse?” Rame asked as he took a packet of antibiotics from a cooler and carried it across the medical lab, to one of the operating tables. He loaded the packet into a pressurized pump designed to deliver the drugs, even if they lost rotational gravity.

“What’s going to happen?”

Rame paused, glancing back at the young woman. He took a breath, let it out in a sigh, and crossed back to the cooler, for a supply of morphine.

“We’re going to receive injured personnel,” he said as he worked. “If we’re lucky, we’ll receive a great many of them.”

“Lucky??”

“Sandra…, if we’re not lucky, they’ll be dead before they get here,” Rame said quite seriously. “You’re too young to have served in the war, right?”

“I served on the Enterprise in the last few months,” she said defensively.

Rame nodded, “this will be worse.”

She nodded jerkily, “I almost wish something would happen… The waiting…”

“I know,” Rame said seriously, his voice soft. “Go check the portable power modules and see that they have a full charge. I don’t want to lose instruments or the Infra-Reds, if we take a bad hit.”

She nodded, “yes, Doctor.”

Rame watched her go, a grimace twisting his lip for a moment, and then he sighed and checked the plasma supplies one more time.

*****

“Hey Steph, you up for a few more kills?”

Commander Michaels nodded to the crewman as he approached Archangel Lead. The kills from his last fight had been tallied just under his cockpit already, but he ignored the new alien silhouettes that had been painted there. They had always been more for the ground crews than for him, anyway and he didn’t like to look at them before a fight.

The crewman took his silence as a warning and left him some space, as he caught the edge of his cockpit and slowly lowered himself into the fighter. Once he’d settled in a bit, he flipped on the primary power to the computers and opened up the diagnostic windows.

They’d already have been run of course, but Stephanus was old school. He didn’t go out in a plane he hadn’t checked for himself.

Around the bay, the Archangels were mostly following the same ritual, though he knew that some of them were less interested in diagnostics, just taking a few minutes to communicate with the Gods that watched out for crazy aviators.

“Got another one coming up, girl,” he whispered softly to the plane, as he ran a hand along the molded control stick. “You up for it?”

He closed his eyes, letting his mind drift a little, until he could almost hear the voice of the fighter speaking back to him. Then he smiled slowly, nodding as the voice told him what he wanted to hear.

*****

“Chief.”

Chief Corrin glanced up, startled by the calm greeting. “Captain.”

Weston waved his free hand as he stood there, “Don’t get up, Chief. You mind if I join you?”

She glanced at the tray held in one hand, then at the food in front of her and nodded. “Please.”

“Thank you,” he said, taking a seat across from her. “I wanted to congratulate you on the repairs you pushed through earlier. Good work, Chief.”

“We’ve got some good people on this boat, Sir,” she told him with a crooked smile. “They’re rough ‘round the edges, but I’m knocking the corners off.”

The Captain smiled at her as he took a bite of his sandwich, “I’m sure you are, Chief.”

“I have to admit, I didn’t think it would work so well, what with all the different branches tossed together,” she admitted, as she ate some of her soup. “But they pulled together tight in the pinch. Good swabs, all of em…, even the Air Force pukes.”

Eric chuckled softly, nodding, “that’s how they got here, Chief. Best of the best, across the board.”

“Now, I wouldn’t go that far,” Corrin grinned back. “They’re good swabs, yeah, but they’re not up to my old crew on the Tico. Not yet.”

“I have no doubt that you’ll find a way to get them there,” Weston told her.

She nodded glancing around the cafeteria, “they’re good kids, Sir. But they’re nervous.”

He nodded, “yeah. I figured they would be.”

“You might want to have a talk with ’em, just a few words before we get started,” she suggested mildly.

Eric cocked his head slightly, and shrugged, “maybe I will at that, Chief.”

“Might do you some good too, Cap’n,” she told him evenly. “If you don’t mind my saying.”

“I learned a long time ago, not to argue with a Chief,” Weston smiled. “Saves time.”

Corrin grinned ear to ear, “sounds like you had a good teacher somewhere along the line, Sir.”

*****

“Doctor…, what are you doing!?”

Palin looked up, confused, into the wide eyes of one of the lab techs, “I’m refining the translation matrix. Why?”

“Doctor…, we’re about to go into battle!” The lab-coated young man blurted out.

“So?”

“So… So? Doctor Palin, what good is that going to do us??”

Palin shrugged, “I’m not a soldier, Evan. I’m a scientist, who happens to be quite good with languages. My skills are unlikely to affect the outcome of this battle, but should we survive it, they might have an impact on our future relations with these people. So why shouldn’t I continue to work?”

The lab tech just stared, still wide-eyed.

Palin sighed and shoved a chair over to the young man, “here. Sit. Unless you have something more pressing to do.”

The young man sat down numbly and Palin passed a PDA to him, with a translation algorithm displayed on it. He looked at it for a moment, the looked back up at Palin. “What’s this?”

“That’s the sole transmission we’ve detected from the enemy ships,” Palin told him. “Our best guess is that it’s a request for reinforcements. Why don’t you run it through the computer and see if we have any historical analogues for it?”

“Historical analogues for an alien combat cipher??”

Palin shrugged, “One never knows, Evan. One never knows.”

*****

Lieutenant Jennifer Samuels tried to make herself relax, as she sat in the cockpit of the fighter. She couldn’t quite make the pre-flight jitters go away, something she hadn’t experienced in years. Not since her first shuttle flight.

Come on, Sam,
she chastened herself,
this is what you wanted. What you trained for. Don’t lose it now.

The words sounded nice, but they didn’t make her any calmer, as she sat there.

Archangel One was parked alongside the other ’Angels and she could feel them staring at her by times, as they checked their own fighters. She felt them wondering if she was up for it, just as she was wondering the same thing.

She’d already heard how Commander Michaels had cornered the Captain and all but risked Court martial over her assignment to the Flight. The worst thing was, at that moment, she wasn’t sure she blamed him. Michaels was a legend, he’d been with the ’Angels almost from the beginning and had tallied up a long list of victories, flying under the command of Captain Weston.

The Captain, even more so. Between the two of them, they had been responsible for some of the greatest victories of the Block War, and on Earth their names were synonymous with the Archangel Flight Group, even as the flight group had become synonymous with victory in the post War World.

Powerful images to live up to, yet that was what she’d wanted to do, ever since the first reports of Archangel missions filtered out through the news. In a world wired for sight and sound, it had still been a riveting image of the war, when the government public relations people began releasing the unedited mission records of the flight group.