The Heart of Matter: Odyssey One (80 page)

“Maintain current evasion course.”

“Aye, sir,” Waters said. “Maintaining course.”

With the ranges still closing, the
Odyssey
continued to twist through its corkscrew path in space. They were in the closing phase of the engagement, and would be for almost twenty minutes before the
Odyssey
would begin to draw clear. Eric knew that the worst of it would be when the
Odyssey
was pulling away, not while they were closing.

Once the
Odyssey
was showing its tail to the enemy, they’d lose more and more of their maneuvering depth. Every time they dodged, they would be moving
away
from their goal, wasting velocity and distance, while their enemy gained on them. That was when they were at their worst disadvantage, and that was coming from a ship looking at the wrong side of twenty-one odds.

We have no chase armaments. They’re going to rip the ever-living holy hell out of us before we can pull clear.

Eric frowned, then reached for the comm panel and flipped a switch.

“Flight Deck, here.”

“Weston, here. I have a task for you.”

“Sir, we don’t have any birds left. You know that, you ordered them off.”

“I need something else this time,” Eric said. “Listen very carefully.”

“Yes, sir.”

A few minutes later, on the flight deck, there was only a skeleton crew left; most of the men and women normally assigned there had been sent off with the shuttles back in Ranquil. Those who remained, however, were in a flurry of motion as they raced to fill the captain’s orders, just glad for the most part to have something to do that would contribute to the coming fight.

Eric, on the bridge, was just starting to relax a little as his plan began to firm up in his mind.

Then the universe exploded, the ship bucking like none of them had every felt before, throwing Eric hard into the side of his console and dropping several others to the ground.

“Laser strike!” Roberts called from where he was manning the damage control station. “Forward stations, lost contact with half the stations in the bow!”

“What the hell was that?” Eric demanded as he gripped the other side of the chair. “I’ve never felt that kind of impact while the CM fields were fully powered!”

“The blast vaporized a chunk of our hull right at the edge of the field!” Roberts snapped back. “Blew out like a reactor jet!”

“Helm!”

“Adjusting course to return to previous heading!”

“Belay that!” Eric snarled. “Execute bravo maneuvering!”

“Aye, sir. Bravo maneuvering!”

“Winger, what do you have on your sensors?”

“We were bracketed, sir,” she responded. “Eight laser strikes, all within coronal range of the
Odyssey
. That one was just the lucky hit, and it was only a glancing shot.”

Eric swore under his breath, but nodded.

All right. They didn’t predict our path; they just shotgunned the space they knew we’d be in and got lucky. I can work with that.

“Damage control teams are responding, Captain,” Roberts announced. “Our primary laser array is out, however.”

Shit.

“Can they get it back online?” Eric demanded.

“Unknown.”

“Tell Corrin to ride their ass, Commander. If we can’t get that laser back, we’ve lost a lot of our closing armament.”

“That’s not the end of it, sir.”

Eric winced. “What else?”

“HVM control rooms are not responding,” Roberts replied. “Teams have to cut through a lot of damage to see if anyone or anything survived.”

“Goddamn it,” Eric swore some more. “Tell them to hurry.”

“Aye, sir.”

Eric blew out an annoyed breath, but had to keep his mind in the game despite the damages to his ship. “Winger.”

“Yes, sir?”

“Do you have coronal IDs on all eight lasers?”

“Uh…sir?”

“You heard me.”

“No, sir, I can’t separate them. Not soon, anyway,” she replied, befuddled.

“That’s fine. I want to adapt our armor to best deflection across those
combined
frequencies,” he told her. “So compile
the combined frequency from all eight coronal blooms and send that over to Waters.”

“Sir”—Waters twisted around—“that won’t be ideal for any given laser.”

“Noted, Ensign,” Eric told him. “I’ll take best deflection across all the enemy lasers.”

“Aye, Captain.”

Winger nodded. “I’ll get it done.”

“Expedite, Lieutenant.”

“Aye, sir.”

The main screen still showed the plot as the
Odyssey
and the squadron of alien ships continued to close on the oblique angles. They had another four minutes before the closest pass, and already, Eric felt like he’d been personally shot in the gut after that last strike. He’d known that they were going to take some hits, there was no way to avoid that, but he had believed that they’d be able to get a lot deeper into their escape before the enemy landed the first blow.

It would only get worse from here.

The
Odyssey
was now twisting wildly, its arc tighter and faster. That would give it less time on any given firing arc from the enemy ships, but it also limited their range depth. Once the enemy got an idea of what their new pattern was, it would be easier to bracket the
Odyssey
despite the lesser exposure their current pattern would allow.

And they’ll know our new pattern in maybe three more seconds, five if they’re a little slow on the uptake
, Eric thought sourly, not really thinking that the enemy was slow in any meaning of the word.

“Daniels, load up pattern Epsilon.”

“Loading now, sir,” Daniels replied as he tapped in the commands.

“Stand by to execute.”

“Aye, sir. Standing by.”

“Coronal blooms!” Winger announced. “Tracking our old course. We’re well clear.”

Eric nodded, having expected nothing else.

The lasers took several seconds to cross the space between the ships at this point, just as those ships were targeting areas of space where they
expected
the ship to be, given what they knew from even farther back. By changing his pattern after the strike, Eric had drastically changed the position his ship was in compared to where it would have been. The enemy couldn’t adapt fast enough to catch him—not yet.

That would change quickly, though, as they hit their closest passing point. The
Odyssey
would be within two light-seconds of the enemy at the closest point, well within the effective range of a laser weapon the likes of which the Drasin fielded. At that range, there was a four-second delay between targeting data and laser strike. Four seconds was an almost insignificant delay for modern targeting computers. There was almost no pattern he could fly that would let him evade fire from eight ships at that range.

Eric turned to Roberts. “I need a status report on the HVM and pulse torpedo control rooms.”

“Aye, sir.” Roberts keyed into the damage control channels. “Corrin, we need those rooms open and operating.”

Rachel Corrin was in the mother of all bad moods when the commander’s call came through. She and her team were crawling through the carbon-scored remains of what had once been an access corridor for the primary laser array.

“Commander, I’m standing in hard vacuum with a really
lovely
view of the inside of this extra-large beach ball we’re flying through,” she spoke sarcastically. “We’ve got about another five tons of shit to move before we can even access the control rooms.”

“In two minutes, we’re going to be crossing swords with eight very motivated bandits, Chief. It would be nice if we, you know, had a
sword
to swing when that happened.”

“Goddamn it, Commander, there’s no way!” she growled. “We’re completely cut off from all the forward stations!”

“Get it done, Chief.”

Corrin cut the channel and started swearing like the sailor she’d been her entire life, causing several of her crew to back off from her for fear of being caught in the splatter of her ire. Finally, after wasting more than fifteen seconds, she sliced her hand through the vacuum she was standing in and called a halt to the work.

“What’s going on, Chief?”

“We don’t have time to clear this chaff. We need those rooms back online,” she growled. “Captain needs the weapons.”

“Chief, there might be no one alive to run anything up there…”

“We’ll have to take that chance,” she said. “Run the patch line. Get the computers connected to the rooms. We’ll clear the chaff after.”

“If you say so, Chief.”

“I do.”

HIGH OVER RANQUIL

▸“ARCHANGEL ZERO ONE, drop to Angels ten to get eyes on the AO below you.”

“Roger that,” Stephanos said as he banked his fighter into a dive that quickly brought him down through the thickening atmosphere, curling into an easy orbit of the operational area marked on his HUD.

With the cessation of bombardment from orbit and beyond, there had been little more the Angels could do with the current load out, so he was glad of the task, as it was getting dull and very tiresome sitting around waiting for the world to blow up under him. At ten thousand feet, he dipped his right wing into a steeper bank and took a look down through the augmentation of his fighter’s instruments.

He didn’t technically have to bank the fighter, really—it just felt more natural to turn his head and look out through the canopy at the site rather than look down through the fuselage using his HUD. The computer automatically filled in what was there to be seen in either case, his way just felt cooler.

“Control, Zero One,” he called a moment later.

“Go for Control.”

He took another few seconds to examine the site from above before speaking. “Looks like Priminae shuttles have moved into the AO and are clearing away the debris. I’m seeing signs that there’s still fighting going on. Check my telemetry for details.”

“Roger. Thanks, Zero One,” Control said. “We needed the overhead view. Our drones crapped out when the Priminae started blanketing the area with CM field generators.”

Steph winced.
Well, that’s not good.
“Roger that. Will remain on station,” he said in return.

“Confirmed, Zero One. Stay at Angels ten,” Control ordered. “We still don’t know exactly why the drones went dead.”

“Wilco.”

No worries there
, Steph thought grimly. He didn’t want to dig his bird into the turf after the fighting was all but over.

“Be advised,” Control came back, “reports from the ground indicate that Drasin resistance is falling off. We may have won this one.”

“Good news, Control,” Steph said, more than a little relieved. Hundreds of billions of civilians notwithstanding, he had no wish to die slowly in space while his air ran out just because the planet was gone and he had nowhere left to land. “Zero One out.”

NACS ODYSSEY, UNCHARTED DYSON CONSTRUCT