Homeworld (Odyssey One) (10 page)

Nothing we have could get within range of such a facility unnoticed, and it would take a fleet to get out again if the Drasin attacked.

For all those concerns, though, the tensions resting on his shoulders were mostly self-made.

“The war goes well.”

Tanner didn’t look over his shoulder to the speaker. He knew that the bull of a man behind him was standing stiffly, hands clasped behind his back, and with a stern expression on his craggy face.

“Yes. I know,” Rael Tanner said, eyes still on the maps.

“You worry it goes too well,” Nero Jehan said.

It wasn’t a question.

“The last time they backed off like this was merely a moment of evaluation. It was not long before the Drasin were back, in significant numbers.”

“Numbers are all they seem to have.”

“Numbers are all they need,” Tanner growled. “We know from the
Odyssey
that they have far more than they need merely to overrun
us
. Why haven’t they come for us yet?”

“You complain?” Nero asked, a hint of amusement in his voice. “Be grateful for the time to prepare.”

“An opponent who acts unpredictably….” Tanner hissed out. “There are only so many things that could mean.”

“Oh?”

“Yes. Either they’re too stupid to know how strong they are compared to us, or I’m too stupid to see something they know intimately, or….” Tanner slowly shook his head.

“Or what?”

“Or they have another agenda entirely.” Tanner growled. “None of this makes any sense.”

“The Drasin are beasts,” Nero said flatly. “Everything agrees on that. The ancient records and our own experiences. They don’t plan, they merely swarm.”

“The
Odyssey
’s information makes something quite clear, Nero, something that contradicts everything we know about the Drasin,” Tanner said tiredly, running his hands through his hair. “They’re allied with someone.”

“The Drasin have no allies.”

“No. The Drasin do not, do they?” Tanner asked rhetorically, cocking his head and examining the maps again as if from another angle. “So…are these truly Drasin then?”

“I…do not understand,” Nero said uncomfortably.

“They look like Drasin, they act like Drasin,” Tanner said. “Yet…are they Drasin?”

“Admiral?”

Tanner waved a hand as he turned. “Ignore me, my friend. I’m tired and I need to think on this. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Nero watched the slight man walk out, confused by his sudden shift in thought.

The big man, commander of the ground forces of an entire star system, turned back to the strategic maps and glowered over them. Like his friend, Nero was certain that the worst was yet to come. They’d survived the initial motions of the enemy, more by luck than skill, but they had plenty of evidence to show that the real wave of assault was still building.

Out there, beyond the black, they were coming.

CHAPTER THREE

N.A.C.S.
Odyssey
—L-Point, Earth Orbit, Sol System

“HOW’S THE POWER state looking?” Weston asked as he walked across the bridge.

“Nominal on all connections. No power drains we can’t account for.”

“And the ones you
can
account for?”

The young woman flushed slightly. “Mostly minor.”

“Lieutenant,” he sighed, “if you insist on making me drag every little piece of information out of you, you’ll be on this ship a very, very, short time.”

“Sorry, Captain,” Lieutenant Kathy McReady mumbled. “We still have a high level drain in the tachyon generation systems.”

Weston nodded, walking over to the command station and taking a seat. “And what does the Chief have to say on the matter?”

“Sir?”

“You’ve spoken to Chief Corrin, I presume?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And so I ask again”—he looked at her pointedly—“something I’ve already told you I’m not particularly pleased with doing, what did the Chief say?”

“She said that it would be settled before we crossed Pluto, sir.”

“Excellent. Thank you.” He glanced over to where Daniels was standing, hunched over the crewman at the helm station, probably trying not to laugh. “Helm…lay in our course out-system and engage when we get cleared by Liberty Station Control.”

“Aye, sir.”

Eric glanced back to where McReady was uncomfortably looking like she wanted to say something. “Yes?”

“Sir. The tachyon drain is significant,” she swallowed. “Regulations are clear that we can’t leave the L-Point with that much of a power drain.”

“Lieutenant,” he said, forcing himself to be a little more pleasant, “if the Senior Master Chief says it’ll be fixed, it
will
be fixed.”

“Um…yes, sir. Sorry, sir.”

“Liberty has issued clearance, Captain.”

“You know what to do, Lieutenant Commander,” Weston said, then smiled. “And congratulations again on the promotion.”

“Thank you, sir. Course laid in and engaged. Port speed.”

The
Odyssey
rumbled low and powerfully as the big reaction burners wound up, CM coming up to full cruise. She began to slowly pull away from the Lagrange point and Earth orbit. Eric smiled, satisfaction seeping into his bones as he felt the gentle slope of acceleration pull at him again, knowing they were once more heading out into the black.

Climbing out of the gravity well of a star took time, particularly when you started from a dead stop. Well, relative stop, Eric supposed. All things were relative in space and time, and all that rot.

They met with the fueling tanker just past the orbit of Saturn, standard procedure on outbound jags. Of course, besides the
Odyssey
the only other outbound ships were generally comet miners and research ships. They all used the same fuel, however, so the procedures held.

He’d received a briefing package concerning the Chinese outbound ship, the
Weifang
, and had to admit that he was a little jealous of their propulsion tech. Apparently they’d really cracked the Alcubierre equations, something the West hadn’t managed to pull off in several decades of trying.

I’m sure someone just got a billion-dollar grant to make it happen, though.
He supposed, though, there was an excellent chance that the External Intelligence Bureau had gotten their marching orders to capture that research and bring it home.

He wished them luck, even though he figured that Gordon was probably an EIB agent and would be a pain in his rear end sooner or later. A reaction drive had some advantages, in theory at least, over the Alcubierre equations, but to have a reactionless drive? The sheer savings in propellant mass
alone
staggered the imagination.

Probably why the
Weifang
is a third the size of the
Odyssey
. I wonder how her weapons and defenses stand up?

“Approaching the heliopause, Captain.”

Eric looked up to see the newly minted Lt. Commander at the door to his office and nodded. “Thank you, Daniels. How are the new trainees handling her?”

“No real complaints yet, Captain. I’ll let you know when I see them under some stress.”

“Good,” Eric said. “Just remember to step in if things get hairy. I’d rather trust your hand over anyone else’s.”

“Wilco, Cap,” Daniels said, flipping a casual salute as he stepped back from the door that connected the office to the bridge.

Eric sighed and set about putting the rest of his paperwork into order. There was an awful lot of it, even more now that he had to sign off on every new and modified system since the refit. He was just lucky that everything seemed to be working, more or less; otherwise he’d be filling in reports from now to doomsday.

With the last of the immediate requirements having received his official stamp, Eric made his way back out into the bridge and took a seat at the central command station.

“Ah, Commander, good to see you up from the darkest recesses of the ship,” he said with a mild grin as he looked over to where his executive officer was sitting. “I understand we had some power issues?”

“Contractors didn’t know how our reactor was wired and apparently had trouble reading a schematic,” Roberts answered dryly, the former U.S. Army Ranger clearly not amused by the whole situation. “Chief got it all squared away. We’re good to go.”

“Excellent. I knew that she would,” Eric said as he relaxed.

While he hadn’t wanted to wait around in Earth orbit—it would have looked questionable on later reports if the ship hadn’t been deemed fit to make her scheduled departure—Eric had dreaded the possibility of having to turn around and go back for repairs so soon. The Chief was good at her job, or she wouldn’t be on the ship she was on, but there was always Mr. Murphy to consider, of course. He was happy that he’d been right in his earlier assessment.

He stepped out on the bridge and glanced at the main repeater displays as he walked by. “Time to T-point?”

“Three minutes, Captain,” Daniels said from where he was hovering over the ensign at the controls. “Calculations laid in for Ranquil system.”

“Good.” Eric took a seat, his stomach already roiling. “Signal all hands, transition is imminent. You may engage the system at your discretion.”

“Aye sir. Transition in T-minus…two minutes, thirty seconds. Mark.”

The lights shifted on the bridge and through the ship, showing an amber color as Daniels leaned over his trainee’s shoulder and accessed the ship-wide comms.

“All hands, all hands, stand by to transition. I say again, all hands stand by to transition.”

As the count wound down, Eric forced himself to relax. It was a habit now. Calm his breathing, look authoritative and at ease. There were few people on the
Odyssey
who liked the transition drive. It was one of the most terrifying and visceral modes of transport ever devised and generally just freaked people out.

Being converted to a single coherent burst of tachyons and flung across the universe wasn’t calculated to put a man at ease. When you factored in the relative time dilation of the jump, which made the instantaneous event seem to last just short of forever to some minds, you got to see things you didn’t ever want to see.

The hull ablating away into the vacuum was the simplest and easiest with which to deal. Your friends and crewmates doing the same was somewhat more difficult. There was a brief period when Eric was certain he’d seen the initial layers of his own eyeballs ablate away, and that was something he tried very hard not to think about.