Homeworld (Odyssey One) (62 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

P.L.A.S.F.
Weifang

THE ENTIRE SHIP felt like it was ready to come apart on him, but all that Captain Sun could think was,
Please, whatever power exists in the universe, do not let me foul this up.

Captain Weston’s plan was both simplicity and insanity, as it relied on harnessing the power of the warp drive and unleashing it in a way that was intentionally engineered to be as close to impossible as possible. The compensation systems were fully disabled on the
Weifang
, much to the ire and extreme displeasure of his engineering staff, and now as they dumped power from the drive back into the normal systems, it was quite clear what those usually did.

Normally, when dropping from FTL, the compensation systems on the
Weifang
’s drives pulled in high-energy particles trapped in the space warp used to propel the ship. These high-energy particles were used to regenerate the reactor mass or add extra power to the ship’s systems. Or sometimes the particles were converted into waste and emitted safely through various onboard systems.

Without those compensators and regenerative systems in play, the sum total of the energy in those particles was being
dumped out in front of the ship with roughly the force of a localized nova. Individually each particle, while high energy for their normal state, was of little consequence. But the
Weifang
had been circling Sol for more than thirty-six hours now, at maximum warp, accelerating the whole while.

They’d sucked in a lot of particles from the surrounding space, the nature of the drive charging them to dangerously high levels. And now their forward warp in space was something akin to a gas tank filled to overflowing with a lot of very
volatile
material, all of which was now being dumped out ahead of them at roughly the speed of light.

One side effect of this was unexpected, though he supposed he should have seen it coming. Like it or not, some of Newton’s laws still operated, even when you were moving at or beyond light-speed. The explosion of energy was having the effect of actually slowing the
Weifang
enough to be dangerous to her crew, since they weren’t protected from the inertial force of this particular reaction.

They were quickly able to compensate by applying forward movement with the conventional thrusters, but it was going to screw up their reentry point by a fair margin. Sun just hoped that it didn’t mean that they were going to completely miss the mark.

“Breaking the light-speed barrier!”

“Screens, full forward view!” Sun ordered, leaning forward.

The
Weifang
’s screens flickered, the exterior imaging sensors and other detection tech coming alive as the ship dropped below light-speed.

“Reverse thrust! Full reverse!” Sun screamed, eyes bulging wide as he found himself looking down the maw of hundreds of alien ships.

“Warp generators are blown, Captain! We have no power!”

“Thrusters then! Full reverse burn, fore port thrust as well!”

“Yes, Captain!”

Sun was slammed forward as the thrusters went to full burn, the old-style reaction thrust falling completely under Newton’s Laws of Motion, the alien ships growing larger and larger in the unmagnified screens. It was clear that they weren’t going to stop in time, nor even be able to shift to one side, and he tried to steel himself for the impact from which nothing could prepare nor protect him.

Sun’s eyes widened, however, as the ship directly ahead began to
bubble
visibly on screen, and then abruptly burst into flames as it seemed to literally
boil
away before his eyes.

I cannot be seeing what I am seeing. It is surely too unreal to exist in a sane universe.

PRIMINAE WARSHIP
POSDAN

“BY THE INFINITE abyss,” Kian swore, unable to believe what she was seeing.

On the screens, the Drasin ships were exploding in gouts of flame by the dozens, possibly by the
hundreds
, superheated by the sudden blast of energy that erupted from almost literally nowhere less than thirty light-seconds from the
Posdan
’s own position! She was seeing it, but couldn’t believe it.

“They intentionally blew out their own space-warp drive,” she whispered, heart pounding in her chest as she watched the scene of horror in front of her.

A blown warp generator was something from horror stories, right up there with the Drasin themselves, she supposed.

To do so
intentionally
, and so deep inside the gravity well of a star, the very
thought
was anathema. People of the Priminae would throw their own lives into the singular abyss to prevent it.

And yet….
She trailed off, staring at the gouts of fire erupting in a widening beam ahead of the Terran ship.
I believe that I will never again see so many Drasin ships destroyed at once.

“Damage reports! How bad is the local radiation?” she demanded. “And someone get a count of how many ships they just annihilated!”

“Radiation is elevated, Captain, but within our safety parameters. Most of it was directed safely out of the system!”

That didn’t surprise her much, Kian supposed. This particular Terran drive, while clearly based on the same underlying principal as the drives of the
Posdan
or
Nept
, just as clearly didn’t have a fraction of the available power on tap as either of the Priminae vessels. They’d run scans when possible, and it was clear that local power was derived from nuclear sources on the Terran ship. Powerful enough, she supposed, but nothing compared to the Singular Drive System.

For that, she supposed, she should be grateful. An SDS-powered ship would have quite possibly exterminated a rather large chunk of the solar system pulling a similar stunt, including itself, of course.

Kian didn’t bother wasting any time wondering why no Priminae had considered the move as a solution to the Drasin. She was well satisfied that the answer was simple. First, the Drasin had never assaulted the colonies in numbers that would make such an attempt feasible. It was practically a miracle that the Terrans had managed to aim the blast as well as they did, and that was against a mass of ships that could have blotted out the star itself. Against a small handful of ships, there was no way to be sure you’d hit even one of them.

Second, however, and
far
more important-…no Priminae in the
universe
was this
insane!