The Heart of Matter: Odyssey One (63 page)

These people are going to give me nightmares
, Eric realized as he listened in.
As if I don’t have enough reasons to lose sleep already!

“They must be using the power for something, though,” the lieutenant said, shaking his head.

“It could be as simple as life support for the entire species,” Sears offered halfheartedly. “That was the original idea behind Dyson’s concepts. You could create huge habitats for massive populations using any of the constructs. The swarm is the most efficient overall design when you have to balance power versus practicality.”

“If they used local materials to build this thing, then they’re likely here for the long haul,” Master Chief Grear spoke up, quieting the room.

The engineering noncom was one of the most experienced men on the ship, and when he spoke, everyone listened. Even officers.

“I think that what we have to determine is whether these plates are locally produced,” Grear said carefully, his eyes not leaving the display. “Because if they’re not, then we have a real problem.”

“These things built something that should be impossible to build”—the lieutenant rolled his eyes—“and you think it’s only a real problem if they can move it?”

Grear just turned to pin the young man with a stare that could curdle milk. “Son, if this is a habitat, then it’s a sitting target out here now that we know where it is. I’ll grant you, we don’t have any weapons that could do squat to it now, but I also know that it’s always easier to break things than it is to make them. We could figure out some nastiness to do here,
if we needed to. If they can fly those plates around the galaxy, however, we have a real problem because that implies that they were able to move in here, then clean the entire place out of all raw materials in under a hundred years. Any species that can do that, and that
does
do that, is a menace to all life everywhere.”

And that is the real issue here
, Eric thought as he continued to watch the debate unfold. The Drasin were rapidly showing themselves to be a threat, not just in terms of making war on another species, not even just in terms of engaging in the act of genocide, but they were actually beyond all that. Beyond every measure he could mentally call up to judge them against.

This is more than poisoning the well; it’s annihilating everything a living species might ever again use to gain a foothold. Even without the mobility of an Alcubierre drive, that’s what they did here. They moved in, less than a century ago, and now no species will ever develop in this system again. It’s been permanently sterilized.

Forget everything else, technical prowess be damned, that was what counted. On its own, Eric could see the pro arguments for creating a construction like the swarm beyond the
Odyssey
’s hull. It was extreme, certainly, but had a lot of benefits going for it. However, when combined with the speed in which it had been built and the Drasin’s preferred war fighting strategies to date, it was an ominous thing to be considering.

Capt. Eric Weston turned and left the cartography lab without a word. He’d heard what he needed to hear for the moment and had too much to consider as it stood. To Weston, it felt a little like he was drowning. He had to break it down, turn it into pieces he could handle, otherwise he knew that he would sink into the situation and be swallowed up by it.

TEMPORARY AIR FIELD, RANQUIL

▸“ARCHANGEL ONE, THIS is Control.”

“Go for Archangel One, Control,” Stephanos said as he opened his eyes and blinked away the sleep.

“We have confirmation of inbound ballistic targets. ETA to upper atmosphere…eight minutes. Archangels are go to scramble.”

“Roger that. Archangels are scrambling. Hold one,” he said, his right hand reaching out to swipe the bank of switches to the on position. As the twin reactors began to whine in his fighter, Steph swapped over to the squadron channel. “We are go for scramble. I say again, we are go for scramble. Light the fires, and get off your tires, people. We have incoming.”

Before most of the squad could do more than groan or moan out a reply—at least half of them had been asleep like he was—Steph swapped back over to the command channel. “Command, Archangel One.”

“Go for Command, Archangel One.”

“Send the plot to our computer net. We’ll be in the air in two minutes.”

“Roger that. Wilco.”

The channel went dead as Steph completed the preflight and glanced out to see his crew chief waving at him. Steph flashed the man a thumbs-up sigh, but got crossed arms in return. He nodded and settled in to wait while the crew cleared the field. It didn’t take long. Another few seconds later and the man waved at him again, then flashed him the thumbs-up. Steph returned the signal as he tapped the throttle up with the palm of his left hand.

The fight whined some more as the power multiplied, shaking slightly until the two counter-rotating turbines got back into sync, and finally settled down as everything flashed green in his HUD.

“Control, Archangel One,” he said finally.

“Go for Control, Archangel One.”

“This is flight double-A-dash-zero-zero-one declaring liftoff.”

“You are cleared for liftoff, Flight Double-A-Zero-Zero-One.”

Steph pushed the CM throttle full open and felt the fighter lift up on its piston springs as the mass of the whole craft suddenly dropped. He could feel the vibrations pick up suddenly as the weight of gravity no longer helped damp them down, his fighter literally shivering as it tensed to launch itself back into the fight.

“Flight double-A-dash-zero-zero-one, lifting off,” he said by rote as he pushed the throttle wide open, then adjusted the vertical vectored thrust downward.

The fighter blasted the field below it with exhaust gases, and Steph was pushed down into his ACESXII seat by the acceleration. As he cleared the field, he redirected the thrust to the back as he lifted the nose and blasted for the sky as the other fighters called for and received clearance behind him. One by one, they lifted into the air behind him, slowly twisting
in place to find their angle, then following in his tracks as they each in turn kicked in their full thrust.

“Command, Archangel One.”

“Go Command, Archangel One.”

“Archangels clear. Proceeding to first waypoint, engagement area alpha.”

“Roger, Archangel One. Good hunting.”

Steph closed the channel and adjusted his heading as his fighter passed hypersonic, still accelerating, and headed for low orbit. His targeting array was running on full power, but the sky seemed unusually clear ahead of him.

That explains why
, he thought as a Priminae laser burned across his HUD, its corona hot enough to show up on his computer overlay as it intersected the upper atmosphere and vaporized something just before it started to burn on entry.
They must be firing on anything that moves. Here’s hoping they have their IFF systems worked out.

“I’ve got one on screen, Steph,” Cardsharp announced as they reached their assigned AO.

“I see it,” Steph replied. “You and Burner break from the group. Take it out, but don’t forget to confirm the kill.”

“Roger that.”

The two Archangels accelerated away from the main group’s orbit, dropping into pursuit of a rapidly descending fireball a few hundred kilometers away. Burner took the lead, locking up the target with his forward guns while on final approach.

“Target locked,” he reported calmly, thumb already finding the firing stud of his gimbal-mounted cannon. “Guns. Guns. Guns.”

The cannon roared in the upper atmosphere, depleted uranium rounds launching fast enough to draw a line of fire
between shooter and target, and the slugs slammed into the falling object with enough force to blow it completely apart.

Cardsharp slid her fighter ahead, catching up with the debris quickly, and paced the shards as they continued to burn through their descent.

“Target destroyed,” she said confidently a few seconds later. “Confirmed kill, Burner.”

“Look sharp, Angels,” Stephanos’s voice interrupted her. “We’ve got more incoming.”

The skies above the Archangels were suddenly alight with shooting stars, their computers scrambling to keep count as the trails of fire raced for the surface of the planet.

“Oh, hell,” Cardsharp hissed as her computer count raced through the double digits, heading for triple in a hurry. “This is gonna suck!”

“Quit the bellyaching and get to work,” Stephanos ordered. “Target assignments are on your computers now. Don’t let them hit the surface!”

The Archangels banked hard and split apart as they began to race across the skies, literally blowing shooting stars out of the skies.

TERRAN COMMAND AND CONTROL

▸COLONEL REED GLARED at the display in front of him, wishing he knew a little bit more about how the damned thing worked. The Priminae had provided them with state-of-the-art command and control systems as part of the training facilities they’d built and had been helpful enough to patch them into the planet’s command network just before the current crisis.

What they hadn’t had time to do was provide full training in how to use any of the systems, so Reed and his staff were moving back and forth between their own Terran systems and the Priminae’s, basically providing a human bridge to try to keep everyone working together. Without Ithan Chans, he was certain they’d have been lost, but the young woman had managed to be part teacher, part bridge herself, and seemed to be everywhere at once when they were pressed.

It was working for the moment, with only the Archangels being controlled by the patchwork system, but Reed had his doubts if things would stay running so smoothly once the ground teams got in on the action.

And it was pretty clear that the ground teams
would
be getting in on the action—and sooner than later, at that.

The incoming contacts were multiplying quickly on their screens, most only becoming visible when they hit the upper atmosphere and began to burn through entry. Orbital defenses were burning through what few they could, either those that got unlucky enough to be picked up on visual sweeps while still well above the atmosphere or those that were in shallow enough entry trajectories to allow the orbiting lasers to track and target them without frying large swathes of the planet below.