Homeworld (Odyssey One) (56 page)

“Do we have an arrival period yet?” she asked, not for the first time in the last hour.

“No, Captain.” The same answer was returned. “The size of the signal is corrupting our attempts to pinpoint it. It will be later than predicted, however. The signal strength makes it look closer than it is.”

That’s good news, at the very least.

Kian wasn’t certain what she was going to do when it arrived. When
they
arrived.

The
Posdan
and
Nept
were capable warships. She’d put them against anything the Drasin could offer up…but she knew well enough that they would not stand against
everything
the Drasin could offer.

“Captain, Tsarin on the
Nept
has requested your orders, given the situation.”

Kian nodded. She wasn’t surprised. She was the senior captain and technically in command of both ships, but a situation like this wasn’t even remotely in their instructions from central command. Tsarin was an older man. He’d been in command of frontier excavation before the Drasin invasion had begun, and was noted as a particularly conservative and cautious officer.

That was one of the reasons she had been placed in command of the small group, or at least that was the general consensus. Tsarin was a competent officer, but unlikely to take risks, even on behalf of civilian populations. He would follow orders, even those that risked his ship and himself, oddly enough, but he just didn’t take that sort of initiative.

“Tell Captain Tsarin that I will schedule a conference with him shortly,” she answered. “I am still considering options. You may inform him that, while I don’t intend to retreat ahead of the incoming force, neither do I intend a last stand here over the Terran world. We will provide what aid we can.”

“Yes, Captain. I will transmit your message.”

Tsarin’s concerns were more than fair, she had to admit. Honestly, Kian wasn’t certain what she was going to do when the enemy arrived. There was no providing a defense against an onslaught of that force, but she didn’t feel right leaving the Terrans to their own ends. The
Odyssey
had risked so much for the Priminae people that it felt…an abomination to leave them to drift in the void now.

For all that, however, she knew that she couldn’t commit her two ships to a pointless and fatally doomed venture. The Priminae needed every hull they could scrounge, build, or refit. The two Godan class cruisers under her command represented a not insignificant portion of the total Priminae tonnage.

Sacrificing them here, for no gain, was not an option.

I will remain as long as possible, perhaps transport some few thousand refugees if the Terrans so wish.

That really was the best she could do, Kian supposed. Save a few people, and possibly records so that they would not be forgotten.

It was selfish of her, but she knew that she would also have to ask…to beg, even, for them to share their weapons technology with the colonies. The new capability she had seen might be enough to save her people if they could just buy enough time to build and deploy the weapons accordingly.

That is a topic I wish I did not have to broach.

Somehow, Kian rather doubted that they would take it well, not that she blamed them.

It is a hard thing to look into the singular abyss and know that there is no escape, that even were you light itself, you could not run from your fate. It is a fate that I and the rest of the colonies may soon face ourselves. I wonder how we will acquit ourselves when and if that time comes?

LIBERTY STATION

ADMIRAL GRACEN ENTERED the war room, eyes immediately falling on the long-range plot as she walked toward the center area.

“So, we’ve got confirmation?” she asked, noting the angry red signal showing on the screens.

“Yes, ma’am,” an Air Force tech and the on-duty liaison to the Cheyenne Mountain facility said. “Our Antarctic tachyon traps picked it up first, a little under a half-hour ago.”

Gracen nodded, unsurprised. The Antarctic research stations were some of the key leaders in tachyon research, using the miles of ice as part of their particle traps to detect ever more exotic particles. The entire continent, in fact, was practically a single expansive particle sensor on a scale that dwarfed everything else mankind had devised.

It was the first tachyon detection system, and it was still the best.

“The Prim reports are right, ma’am, whatever is coming…it’s big.”

Gracen hadn’t doubted it, but wished that they’d been wrong. “Has the President issued a directive yet?”

“Nothing official, ma’am.” The tech shook his head. “All Confederation forces have been shifted to DEFCON 4, all leaves canceled.”

“Our allies?”

“Same, ma’am. We didn’t officially tell the Block anything, but the word is that someone slipped a note under their door, so to speak,” the tech said with a shrug and a half smile. “They brought their forces to early readiness shortly after we did.”

“Understood,” Gracen nodded, hoping that someone had indeed explained to the Block that the Confederacy wasn’t spoiling for a fight. That would be one lousy way to end the human race, locked in a nuclear war with the Block while a Drasin fleet came down on all their heads.

Not that there are many good ways to end the human race, I suppose.

She forced herself off that particularly
cheerful
line of thought and set her focus back on her work. She was in charge of organizing system-wide defenses, such as they were, and there wasn’t much time left to accomplish it.

“Someone get me an update on the
Enterprise
refit. If they can’t get those turrets installed in the next twenty-four hours, I want the project scrapped and that tin can welded shut!” She growled, “We’re going to need that ship mobile when the time comes.”

Even if only so we can order them to withdraw. Better some live than everyone dies.

“Yes, ma’am!”

“Do we have ETA reports for the new Marauder class ships yet?”

“Yes, ma’am, to your station, ma’am.”

Gracen nodded curtly and opened her inbox. Finding the report in the midst of all the other priority messages took a bit
longer than she would have preferred, but that was the nature of the times she supposed.

Four of the Marauders were already complete, hacked together from civilian hulls and whatever ordinance the Confederacy had been able to scrounge up. No pulse weaponry, unfortunately, but there was no chance she would authorize the installation of an antimatter generation and containment system on anything less than a fully crewed and maintained starship.

That still left HVM banks, Gen Three Lasers, and old-fashioned nuclear devices loaded into hull-penetrating frames. They knew that nukes were ineffective when detonated outside the Drasin hulls, but she, and the rest of the world, was betting that they could achieve penetration of the hulls with some bunker busters. The trick would be keeping them moving fast enough to penetrate the Drasin armor, but not so fast that they’d vaporize on impact.

Three more of the irregular class Marauders would be ready over the next day, loaded to the gills with whatever they could stuff into the hulls, and then she’d be throwing them against a force that could turn a star system to rubble in a matter of weeks.

Yeah, this is going to work out really well, I can tell.

There were still no directives from the civilian branch other than to do her job, about which she was both gratified by and severely worried. One thing she could always count on was politicians getting in her way when she had a job to do, so the silence was unnerving. None of them could afford a breakdown of leadership just now, but if there had to be one, she supposed speechless paralysis was the best of a lot of bad alternatives.

Her message box showed that the
Odyssey
had reported in, so she quickly glanced that over and then archived the
message. It was nothing more than a general status report, saying that they were ready for action. Comforting, yes, but not useful to her at the moment other than that it was one less thing to panic over.

Don’t panic. Never panic. Be concerned, yes. Cautious, certainly. Even afraid, if the situation warrants…but never panic. I have too much to do to waste my time like that.

Repeating that as a mantra kept her motions calm, even if her mind was anything but. As stressed as she was, the very last thing she could afford was to lose it now. She was determined that, if this was to be the Earth’s last stand, it would be one that would cause their enemies to awake with cold sweats for the next hundred generations.

Gracen set her jaw, eyes drifting up to the angry red dots on the long-range screens.

We will not go quietly into the black. You have no idea what kind of a fight you’re flying your sick, twisted, little asses into…but you’re going to find out, I promise you that.