The Heart of Matter: Odyssey One (51 page)

“OK. Probably SAR birds. How many?” he asked.

“Uh…I’m thinking all of them,” she answered. “And I think that the
Odyssey
’s signal is starting to Doppler blue again.”

Steph thought about saying that she was reading her instruments incorrectly, but this was Jennifer Samuels. She was space qualified on everything with a reactor; she wouldn’t be misreading the Doppler signal of her gear.

Just the same, he linked into her feed and double-checked against his own gear.

Damn, she’s right. They’re accelerating out of the system again. Why the hell are they doing that? No way they catch that bandit now.
He stared at the numbers as they continued to show an increase in the
Odyssey
’s speed.
What the hell are you doing, Eric?

“All right, change of plans, everyone,” he said over the squadron’s tactical network. “We’re going to sit right here until the
Odyssey
’s shuttles arrive. No way we can catch the
Odyssey
if they’re determined to chase after that bandit, so we’re not flying out of bingo fuel range from the planet.”

The squadron acknowledged the change in orders, not overly concerned. Whatever the
Odyssey
was up to, they’d find out soon enough, and for the moment, they had their fighters strapped on, and that was everything they could ask for. Steph, however, was trying to puzzle out his friend’s actions as he watched the screens.

The
Odyssey
’s blue shift continued to accelerate until, suddenly, there was a momentary surge, and then the ship’s signal was completely gone.

“Holy shit, were you watching that, sir?”

Steph swallowed, acknowledging the signal sent over the private channel from Cardsharp. “I was, Jen. Tell me that wasn’t what I damn well know it was.”

“Had to be. They just transitioned out, Commander.”

“Crap. Well, that explains the shuttles,” he said finally. “Resupply birds.”

“Have to be, but…Why did they do it?”

“I wish I knew, but the cap will have his reasons. He always does,” Steph said. “Hopefully he’ll have told someone on the shuttles what the hell they were this time.”

Steph could tell from a certain hesitation that Jennifer had decided, perhaps wisely, not to comment on her captain’s peculiarities.

Steph swapped over to the squadron channel and checked everyone’s fuel and weapons status. The Archangel Class fighter burned straight liquid hydrogen with pure oxygen as the oxidizer, which was not the most effective fuel under normal circumstances, but it was cheap and plentiful and, with their CM fields, more than handled the job they needed. The constant maneuvering required at high combat levels would kill their fuel levels fast, however, the CM fields notwithstanding.

Everyone had more than enough to have rendezvoused with the
Odyssey
as originally planned, but when calculating the cost to send a wing out to escort the shuttles in, Steph was coming up short on fuel to make it back to the planet. In theory, it wasn’t a big deal. They could easily get picked up by the locals, but he didn’t want to be doing that.

Not that he mistrusted Priminae technology, but it wouldn’t look good to be towed in, and unless he had a damned good reason, he wasn’t going to be making the Angels look bad. So he settled on his initial call and elected to settle in to wait for the approaching shuttles, no matter how much he really wanted to get within network link range of them so he could ask just what the
fuck
was going on.

NACS ODYSSEY

▸JUST OVER TWENTY light-years away, what was going on was a lot of retching and general misery as the
Odyssey
drifted in an empty section of interstellar space following its jump. On the bridge, Eric found himself forcing his light lunch and coffee back down where it was supposed to have remained while everyone else seemed to be doing much the same.

“Is it just me, or was that worse than usual?” he asked, not really aiming the question at anyone in particular.

“Not just you”—Susan Lamont groaned before adding a belated—“sir.”

“Oh, good.” He put a hand to his face, noticing that he was sweating and clammy.
This is worse than usual. God, what the hell? Must be because we were all mentally worn out by the fight.

“Bring us about,” he ordered through the pain. “Extend the sensor sails.”

“Aye, sir. Extending sails,” Lamont responded.

“Coming about, sir,” Ensign Waters chimed in.

The deck shuddered as the
Odyssey
swung slowly around, bringing its most powerful sensors, scopes, and detection
apparatus to bear on the estimated location of the enemy starship.

“Ensure the sails are stealthed.”

“Aye, sir. Black hole settings, as ordered,” Lamont replied calmly as her sails unfurled.

Because the
Odyssey
’s sails had the combined area of several football fields, they created one of the most powerful mobile telescopes and sensor arrays ever designed by Terrans. There were better ones in Sol, of course, positioned at most of the Lagrange points in the solar system by this time, and a couple sitting outside the heliosphere, but for a system mounted on a ship, the
Odyssey
’s size was unmatched.

“Target spotted.”

Eric turned to the screens, gaze falling on the fast-traveling contact they were centered on. “Any sign of a course change?”

“Negative. Still on their original course,” Lamont said. “They passed within three light-minutes of us, about five minutes ago.”

“Understood, pull in the sails, Ensign. Helm,” Eric ordered, “recalculate for next transition.”

“Aye, sir.”

The cringe in the helmsman’s voice was echoed in Eric’s mind, but he did his best to ignore it. They had a lot to do and surprisingly little time to do it in, and there was no time for squeamishness. Not even when it really was that bad.

Their current task was a great deal more complicated than it appeared, and it was absolutely vital that everyone work to his or her peak despite the effects of the transition drive. Tracking a ship in FTL without using active sensors was tricky enough, since no matter where it appeared to be when you spotted it, it was actually much farther along its projected course.

In order to hop ahead of them, the
Odyssey
’s crew had to calculate the Drasin’s acceleration and course, then make a best guess on where it would be when they transitioned back into real space. Guessing wrong meant either being spotted by the enemy or, more likely, losing them entirely in the expanse of interstellar space.

The situation was further complicated by the need to remain entirely undetected, and so Eric had ordered that they transition far enough ahead that the tacyon burst was completely burnt out before it could reach the projected position of the alien ship. That gave them a very small window to work in and expanded the possibility of a critical fault in their calculations.

Still, there was nothing to be done about it. One way through, and that meant doing the job, doing it right, and doing it the first time, every time.

“Coordinates calculated, sir.”

Eric nodded, thumbing open the ship-wide. “All hands, stand by to transition.”

Whatever happened next, it would be something new…

TRAINING FACILITY/TEMPORARY TERRAN COMMAND AND CONTROL, RANQUIL

▸COLONEL REED STOOD shoulder to shoulder with Major Brinks, their support staff and liaison in behind, as the approaching shuttles and Archangel fighters slowed and circled the hastily cut landing field before firing retrorockets to stabilize their descent. The big shuttles came down on the north side of the field, where there was plenty of room for them to space out their final positions, both for safety concerns and because they had significant loads to disembark.

The fighters came in tighter, showing off, in Reed’s opinion, landing with wing tips practically touching on the south section. It was an entirely pointless display of precision and completely in character for the Archangels.

Reed ignored the fighters—they didn’t have anything he needed, anyway—and headed over to where the clouds of dust were settling around the big shuttles. One of those would hold someone who could answer his immediate question—namely, what in the name of all that was holy was going on?

For some reason, Captain Weston had seen fit to take the
Odyssey
out of the system, leaving him saddled with a ton of people he wasn’t normally supposed to be dealing with. With them at least technically outside his chain of command, being assigned to the
Odyssey
while he was assigned to the Confederation Embassy attached to Ranquil, that could potentially get dicey.

The men and women in the shuttles were fast and efficient; they had already started unloading some of the equipment by the time he’d arrived. He glanced at it and noted that most of it was munitions for the Archangels, so he guessed that they were prioritizing the rearming of the fighters.

Understandable.

Reed came to a stop near a senior master chief who was snapping orders, and simply waited for the man to notice him. It didn’t take long since the chief would have had to be blind and stupid to miss the stares of the men and women he was ordering. He glanced back, saw Reed, and snapped off a couple more quick commands before turning and saluting.

“Sir.”

“At ease, Chief. You have something for me, I’m hoping?”

“Yes, sir. Dispatch from Captain Weston, sir,” the chief said, handing over a data plaque.

Reed accepted it. “As you were, Chief.”

“Aye, sir,” the chief replied before returning to snapping out orders to the men and women swarming off the shuttle.

Brinks approached from behind him, pausing at a respectful distance while Reed finished with the brief on the plaque.

“Huh.”

“Mind if I ask for an elaboration on that, Colonel?”

Reed shrugged. “Captain Weston is trying to follow a damaged ship back to its base of operations. You, the shuttle crews,
and the flyboys over there are seconded to my command, officially, until the
Odyssey
returns.”

“Well, I was already technically there, sir,” Brinks replied with a grin. “But it’s an honor to serve under you and all that rot.”