The Heart of Matter: Odyssey One (48 page)

▸CAPTAIN MARAN WATCHED in a shocked kind of awe as the
Vulk
’s main computer had to reduce the magnification into negative numbers as the lead Drasin closed.

“What in the name of the Breaker are they—”

His question was cut off as the final approach vectors came back, and his eyes widened, as the only possible answer suddenly formed in his mind. “All hands! Impact alert! Impact alert!”

His warning came a few seconds too late.

The Drasin fighter slammed into the forward shields at a combined velocity of over 0.7c. It delivered its kinetic impact with a force that surpassed the combined power of the
Vulk
’s onboard nuclear munitions.

The screens, rated to observe the corona of a star, overloaded and went black.

The bridge shook under Johan’s feet and pitched wildly. Johan was hurtled across the deck as his hands flailed out for something, anything, to grab hold of.

Around him, people were yelling or screaming. Some cried out in shock and pain as they were slammed around like straws in a hurricane. Then Capt. Johan Maran hit the far wall, and everything went black.

ARCHANGEL SQUADRON

▸“HOLY…SHIT!” PALADIN cursed, yanking up his stick as he barely avoided being engulfed in the fireball ahead of him, adjusting his vector to skim over the wounded ship. “Pull up! Pull up! Pull up!”

Behind him, Cardsharp was following suit, staying close on him as she inverted her flight profile and put the heavier armor of the plane’s belly between her and the explosion.

“Watch out for the shock wave!” she yelled, watching the eruption reach out for her plane.

“Can’t avoid it! Going through!”

Paladin’s last signal broke up as the flames finally reached up and swallowed his fighter, and a moment later, Cardsharp followed him into the maelstrom.

The enhanced environmental display gave her a look out into the very face of hell as Jennifer fought the stick to keep from being buffeted by the residual shock wave as she rode through the edge of the energy release and tried to get some cover from the other side of the
Vulk
.

Then, as abruptly as it had happened, she broke out into space on the other side, and the stars were clear and unblinking ahead of her once again.

“I’m through! I’m through!” Paladin called as he adjusted his course to skim the surface of the
Vulk
as he whipped past the huge starship. “Coming around in five…what th—Mayday! Mayday! Wind Shear! Wind Shear! I can’t hold it! I’m going—”

His signal broke off as Cardsharp stared in shock as Paladin’s fighter suddenly slammed into the
Vulk
’s shields, caroming off as it began to break up.

“Paladin! Come in! Come in, Paladin!” she screamed into her comm, staring in shock as the fighter continued to fall to pieces before her eyes.

“Wind shear? What the fuck?”

“Cardsharp! Pull up! Get out of—”

Then it had her, too, and her stomach lurched in her belly as her fighter was suddenly yanked from its flight path and plummeted toward the
Vulk
just like she’d run right under a heavy rain cloud at the edge of a hot dry air barrier.

Forewarned, Cardsharp threw her thrusters full out and surged forward, angling her nose up and away from the ship, and managed to turn her plunge into an arcing sweep that skimmed the edge of the shields and then curved back out into space.

“Grav shear!” she yelled, almost before her mind had consciously figured it out. “I say again, gravity shear! The artificial gravity of the ship extends beyond its hull!”

Then she was out and accelerating away from the ship, passing the wreckage of her wingman’s fighter and searching desperately for any sign of life in the twisting scrap metal.

She didn’t find any.

The
Vulk
shuddered, barely even slowing in its lumbering forward motion as the first Drasin fighter suicided right in its face, but on board, the situation wasn’t as easy as it appeared from the outside.

The bridge was a scene of shock and complete disarray as crew members struggled to pick themselves up off the deck and struggled desperately back to their stations.

“Captain! Captain!”

Johan Maran was groaning, fighting the darkness as he struggled back to the pain of the real world, but was somehow already moving, crawling, back to his command station.

“Status report…” he croaked, hauling himself back up into the chair.

The ithan in charge of sensors blinked, tapping in commands as he tried to clear his eyes. “The shields held, Captain. Asymmetric generators are severely depleted, however—”

“What about the other Drasin?”

“One moment…”

“Now!”

“I believe that four were vaporized in the blast. The rest are…still coming, Captain.”

“Fire! Destroy them!”

“Sweet Jesus…”

Stephanos jinked clear as his fighter’s telltales went off, buzzing his nerves directly with a warning he couldn’t ignore.
The
Vulk
’s lasers fired a few seconds later, and suddenly, the area of space they were fighting in got a lot less friendly, indeed.

“Son of a…!”

“Mother fucker!”

“Evade! Evade! Evade!”

Screams of fright and anger were echoing over the tactical network, but Stephanos ignored them as he twisted and turned his fighter through the web of laser light that was even now being drawn and updated by his enhanced environmental display.

The Archangel computers, operating as a Beowulf cluster, automatically shared all data on the lasers as they were detected and drew real-time lines across the sky for Stephanos and his team to see as they flew.

Red beams appeared to slice out from the ship, sweeping the heavens and utterly vaporizing anything that crossed their paths.

“We’ve got to pull back!”

“Negative!” Steph ground out, interposing his will on the squad. “Get closer!”

“
Closer?
”

“Jesus fucking Christ, Commander!”

“Are you nuts?”

“Closer!” he ordered again, then cut his throttle and spiraled his bird around one of the sweeping beams. “I want these genocidal bastards venting whatever the fuck they breathe all over this sector of space! Closer!”

Then he pushed the throttle up and aimed his fighter down toward the big cylinder of the
Vulk
, and Archangel Lead began to chase the closest Drasin in, weapons blazing.

“This is Archangel Lead!” he snapped angrily. “Guns, guns, guns!”

NACS ODYSSEY

▸SOMETIMES EVEN WESTON could register surprise on a large scale. When Winger yelped in shock and reported a major flash point from the
Vulk
, Weston wondered for a second if they were going to make it out all right.

“It looks like a nuke,” Winger said.

“Nuke?” Weston asked tensely, thinking furiously about the nuclear weapons, or whatever they had been, already in use so far in this battle. “Not a laser strike?”

“Negative, sir. Widespread frequency release. Not merely a laser bloom,” Winger confirmed. “Either a nuke or maybe…I don’t know…reactor breach?”

“The Angels?”

“I’m still reading telemetry from…” She trailed off.

“What is it, Lieutenant?”

“I just lost telemetry, sir.”

Eric Weston closed his eyes for a moment, pushing down the worry he felt trying to force his actions. Steph and the Angels could handle themselves. He had bigger issues.

“It…It might be interference, sir.”

“It doesn’t matter,” he said after a moment. “We’ll worry about them after we’ve dealt with the cruiser ahead of us.”

“Uh…yes, sir.”

“Range to target?”

“Two light-minutes now, sir,” Waters replied quietly. “Still closing.”

“Very good. Have the pulse tubes charged to active status.”

“Aye, sir. Activating pulse tubes.”

Eric Weston stared at the screen again, though his mind lay far behind them. Back with the squadron he’d fought and bled with so many times before.

God fly with you, Steph. God fly with you all.

ARCHANGEL SQUADRON