Homeworld (Odyssey One) (35 page)

The few ships they had available just couldn’t do it, so he knew that system defenses were relying heavily on the
Enterprise
and the
Odyssey
at the moment. The
Odyssey
had been refit with a new load of munitions—gear that the
Enterprise
was slated to get at her next refit, which Carrow dearly wished they’d already been loaded with—and was now en-route to Saturn to tank up.

“Keep the sails fully extended and monitor the tachyon traps closely,” he told the watch officer. “If we get any decent warning at all, that’s where it’ll come from.”

“Understood, sir,” Lieutenant Fallon told him. “We’ll keep all our eyes open.”

Carrow nodded, knowing that he was just retreading things now out of nervousness.
Best stop that or the crew’ll get the idea that there’s something to be nervous about.

“Alright. You have the bridge, Lieutenant.”

“Aye, sir, I have the bridge.”

Carrow took a last look around, then stepped off and headed back toward the habitat section and his quarters.

Realistically he knew that he didn’t have to worry about being caught off the bridge. He knew the drill well enough from service in the Navy, where the phrase “hurry up and wait” probably originated. Still, the idea that there were hostile aliens looking to invade…well that was a new one on him and privately Ethan could admit that it had him jumpy.

He tried hard not to show it, making his way through the corridors of the big starship, smiling and nodding as best he could to anyone who walked past.

It wasn’t the thought of battle that was driving his nerves, though. No, Ethan was terrified that the enemy would breach from any of the innumerable angles that would allow them to reach Earth before the
Enterprise
could mount an intercept.

A very large part of him wanted to pull back to Earth, or at least to Mars, where they could severely cut back on the possible approach angles that would let an enemy make it to Earth virtually unopposed. Another part, however, understood the reasoning for his current orders. Showing the flag further out in space gave an impression of more strength and, if the enemy did make a slash dive for Earth, the Liberty would be able to hold off a decent-size force more than long enough to allow the
Odyssey
and the
Enterprise
to move in on their flanks and show them the meaning of the word pain.

As far as strategies went, honestly, it sucked.

That said, they didn’t have many strategic assets at the moment, nor did they have a lot of intelligence on enemy movements. With those limits in mind, they really only had two options, and both of them sucked very nearly equally.

Either pull back and turtle up around Earth, leaving the rest of the system open to unopposed strikes, or put on a show of confidence and let the enemy hopefully outthink themselves.

With any luck, they’ll spend so much time wondering where we’re hiding our ships that we’ll have time to build a couple more.

Ethan knew that the chances of that were somewhere between slim and none, but what the hell. He was going to bed for a while. He might as well dream a little.

IMPERIAL DESTROYER
DEMIGOD

MOMENT BY MOMENT, literally incalculable amounts of data continued to pour in through the
Demigod
and the
Immortal
’s gravity lenses. Photons, microwaves, and radiation from every part of the spectrum were captured, analyzed, and sent to the central database as the crew watched and waited.

For most of those watching, the system seemed to be a rather dull one in relative terms. Technical indicators were of a world that had just barely achieved trans-light capability and honestly hadn’t yet worked out what they intended to do with it.

There were no signs of serious interplanetary commerce or trade, no hint of colonial aspirations, so generally speaking the system was just one more fringe world crawling out of its own planetary filth and looking around a much larger galaxy than they’d likely ever realized existed.

For Ivanth, however, the scene was one of dreadful fascination.

For all he was seeing, he couldn’t help but keep two things in mind.

The first was the fact that the ship they followed to this system was responsible for destroying at least five drone ships
and severely damaging several others in a relatively short engagement. That was nothing to scoff at; on the contrary it was something to be very respectful of indeed.

The second thing…well, that was the other ship. The unknown.

Unknown name, unknown configuration. Weapons systems…unknown. Drive system…unknown. Everything about it listed in their database as simply…unknown.

For a ship that had fought no less than three engagements, including one directly
in
the Hive command base for the region, that was not merely unusual. It was thought to be impossible. They should know far more about that ship and crew by now, simply from records if nothing else.

But they didn’t. Despite having detailed records of the battles, there was almost nothing available about the ship’s weapons, defenses, or crew. It was an enigma, a mystery in a warzone, and it was
here.

That made this drab-seeming system suddenly very interesting indeed.

Military technology of this nature doesn’t just appear from nowhere. Who are these people? More important, who is backing them?

It seemed a given to him that someone was backing them. A barely post-starflight culture couldn’t mount that level of military capacity. It was ludicrous. They had to be getting their technology from somewhere, or possibly the ships they were tracking were using the system as a cover base.

That seemed possible, though it left him back where he started, of course.

Almost where I started. At the very least we can eliminate this base from the enemy’s assets; it would be difficult indeed to use this world to resupply if the world no longer exists.

That would be a poor second prize, but it was a prize he was willing to take if that was how things turned out.

In deep space, hidden within what Terrans called the Oort cloud, a short squadron of Drasin lay in wait. Their own scanners watched the system, the red band glaring brilliantly across every sense they had.

The entire system would have to be destroyed.

It was infected beyond redemption. Every world had traces of the band, even those
incapable
of housing the infection. It was the most infected system they’d ever encountered within their very,
very
long memories.

The four Drasin literally shivered in place, their space warps fighting against the encoded orders they had to remain in place.

Engines of destruction, leashed by chains of digital fog.

Across space, light-days away, the remaining ships in the flotilla shuddered as they received telemetry from their kin and saw a world so red that it called across space and time for them to do their duty. A world so brilliantly bathed in the red shifted band of a frequency only visible to the monsters of space that they literally could see nothing but.

It was, without a single doubt, a world that had to be annihilated.

For so long as it remained intact, no Drasin could ever rest.

Silently they sent on the message back to the Hive.