Homeworld (Odyssey One) (30 page)

“Mark.”

The
Odyssey
turned slowly in space, slow being a relative term for a ship that measured its sub-light cruising speeds by
degrees of relativistic effects, bringing her t-cannons to bear on the current targets.

The big guns actually acted primarily as wave guides for the tachyon burst generated by the transition of their one-meter-diameter rounds. The burst of high-energy particles were nearly as focused as a laser, blinking off along their set course only to reform at the point coded into them at launch.

Each gun fired twice at a ship, ejecting another dozen nuclear-fused munitions at their targets. The targeting solutions had been reasonably tight, given the range at which the engagement was being fought, but as was expected not all the rounds scored direct hits. Some were destroyed when they transitioned inside armored bulkheads, reactors, and other various sundries. One missed the target entirely, detonating outside the enemy ship with a force in the gigaton range, but had very little effect as there was no atmosphere to convert energy into force—Drasin ships were well hardened against all manner of cosmic radiation.

At least five detonated on target, however, and the resulting balls of expanding plasma were a testament to the fact that there was a universe of difference between an explosive detonating outside a target and one going off
inside
.

To say that confusion reigned on the remaining ship would be both under- and overestimating the situation. Drasin were, as such things went, relatively simpleminded. They didn’t get confused in the same ways as human type intelligences did; in many ways, they just didn’t have the mind for it.

Neither, however, did they react the way lower-level intelligences might react. Humans bridged the gap between truly higher-level intelligence—minds that considered every detail, worked through problems with logic and intuition, and
came to a solution based on the available facts—and lower-level intelligences that relied more on instinctive reactions. A human mind accumulates all available facts as best as it can, collating them into a form it can understand, and then tries to work through the problem with logic. If and when that fails, instinct is the final recourse.

The Drasin, however, were none of these things.

They had neither the higher-level reasoning capacity, nor the lower-level instinctive ones. More like robots, the Drasin were truly drones in a way that few in the Galaxy understood. When encountering a completely new scenario, the Drasin cruiser found itself locked in the equivalent of an endless loop as it searched for something, anything, to make the situation fall into the realm of its programming.

“Five down, Captain. One left,” Winger announced a few minutes after the firing.

The
Odyssey
was already steaming out of the engagement area, with Eric unwilling to risk his ship against the inbound fleet.

“That’s strange.”

“What is it, Lieutenant?” Eric asked, glancing over.

“The remaining Drasin cruiser, sir. It looks….” She trailed off, unable to figure out the word she was looking for.

“Winger?” Eric prompted.

“Honestly, sir, it looks lost,” she said. “It’s just flying around in circles.”

“Must have hit it harder than we thought.” Roberts shrugged.

“I don’t think so. It’s hard to tell but there doesn’t seem to be much damage visible to our scopes.”

“Log it, file it. We’ll worry about it later,” Eric ordered. “Give me a plot for Earth, Lieutenant Commander.”

“Aye, sir,” Daniels said. “Solution coded. We’re good to go.”

“All hands, stand by for transition.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Priminae Warship
Posdan

“BY THE SINGULARITY that will end us all,” Kian whispered as the
Posdan
sailed through the debris field.

They’d slowed to investigate some unusual energy signals received as they passed the area, mostly residual signatures that resembled Drasin too closely to be ignored. The debris the
Posdan
and her sister ship, the
Nept
, were flying through was clear evidence that they hadn’t been mistaken in their identification.

Chunks and shards of Drasin ships were strewn about the endless depths like so many broken toys of a particularly petulant child.

“Odd.”

Kian turned to where the voice had come from. “Something to say, Lani?”

The officer who had spoken shrugged. “Uncertain. The destruction appears to have been caused by a rudimentary shattering of nuclear bonds. Powerful, but nothing I would have expected to see on a Drasin ship.”

“We know that the
Odyssey
often uses technology we perceive as antiquated, so I fail to see the oddity.”

“The destruction came from
within
the Drasin ships themselves, Captain. If this is a weapon, it’s one I’ve never seen before and
antiquated
is not how I would describe it, except perhaps in terms of the destructive mechanism.”

“So was it the
Odyssey
then?” Kian asked, confused.

“Doesn’t match any of the known weapon signatures they employed in Ranquil,” Lani answered frankly. “Whether they have something they didn’t show or this is someone else, I can’t say.”

“Understood.” Kian sighed, more than a little frustrated.

She’d spent most of her life in the service of the merchant fleet. There, things were ordered and understandable at all times. In ten thousand years of spaceflight, the fleet had had a long time to encounter just about everything one might credibly find in the depths of space. Since the return of the Drasin, however, she found that her world was more often a mass of conflicting information and new problems that she’d never dreamed in her worst nightmares.

Frankly, she missed the peace and confidence.

“Very well. Scan everything. Log it all, and tag it priority for immediate analysis, then send it on to Command. We have a job to do and it’s time to get back on the trail.”

“Yes, Captain.”

A few minutes later the
Nept
and the
Posdan
arced out of the area, flickering into trans-light as they rode the warped wave of space-time around them.

IMPERIAL DESTROYER
DEMIGOD

“WHAT IS
HAPPENING
to our drones!?”