Homeworld (Odyssey One) (73 page)

“Flash Com over the net, Frankie,” the voice of his wingman, Terrance “Thunder” Storm, sounded in his headset. “
Odyssey
’s put out a kamikaze warning, copied it to the
E
.”

“We figured that already,” Frank said. “Stay tight with me. We’ll cover the
Odyssey
on the way by and evaluate whether they’re heading for the
E
then.”

“Right with you, Frankie. Like the villagers are on our asses with torches.”

“Burn them,” Frankenstein said, grinning. “Burn them all.”

On the bridge of the
Odyssey
, Eric was growing increasingly agitated as he forced himself not to lean over Winger’s shoulder and glower at her instruments. The fighters were pressing the ship far closer than he’d like. Shortly they’d enter the
Odyssey
’s “no return” envelope, the point at which the ship couldn’t evade them if they broke through the point defenses.

“Have you got them yet, Michelle?”

“No, sir,” Winger shook her head, her cropped hair fluttering about wildly. “Still nothing.”

“Captain, we’re not a Priminae ship,” Roberts hissed from behind him. “We can’t take even one of those fighters ramming us.”

“I know that, Commander.” Eric grimaced, running his hand back through his hair. “Damn it, I wanted to nail some of those bastards here.”

He turned to Daniels. “Lieutenant Commander, plot us an escape course back out toward the Jovian moons. Let’s try and lure them out and away from Earth.”

“Have it ready, sir,” Daniels said, voice admirably calm.

“Good, get us moving th—”

“Captain! Got them! Cruisers coming in low around the curve of the planet. They’re almost at the same altitude as the satellites. That’s how they stayed hidden,” Winger exclaimed. “Too high for the down-looking optics, too low for the ones looking up!”

“How’d you get them?” Eric shifted, looking over.

“They’re launching pods on the planet, sir.”

Eric nodded. “Bring the Barsoom defense grid online.”

“Yes, sir. Sending command!”

“And you,” Eric turned, patting Daniels on the shoulder, “get us out here.”

“Yes, sir!”

“Signal the
Enterprise
. We are pulling back!”

On the surface of the red planet, guns and missile emplacements rumbled into action, their restrictions removed as the skies above them teemed with targets.

Spartan surface to orbit rockets roared out first, tracing paths of fire to the heavens where they slammed into their targets with the force of arms that would have been the envy of any army. The skies above the desert world lit up in brilliant fashion for the first time in millennia or longer, casting shadows across the dust-covered surface and sending debris burning through the skies.

The high-atmo guns were next, chugging out a rate of fire that sounded slow but was actually more than a million rounds
per minute as they blew descending pods out of the skies with the precision of computers and the vicious malevolence of their human coders. The big metal storm class guns literally punched through their targets with enough force to take out fighters that happened to be crossing behind them, scoring as many as four or five hits with each thousand-round burst.

It was the satellites that the Drasin underestimated, however.

The relatively small HVM launchers had been tracking automatically, waiting for the order to fire, and now that they had it there was no need to wait any longer. Each twenty-ton satellite held five one-ton, high-velocity missiles, and now all forty components of the Martian orbital network opened fire at once.

For the first time in history, so far as Terrans knew, the surface of Mars was lit as though by a midday sun in a nice equatorial section of Earth. The entire red dust surface, from pole to pole and around the circumference, was awash in light as two hundred miles above hundreds of ships and fighters went on to the next world in a cataclysm of light and fire.

Through it all, however, some of the pods got through.

They slammed into the surface of the planet, disgorging their payload, and very slowly, in very few places, the surface of Mars began to
crawl
.

The ship minds were…satisfied.

They were far from happy—happiness would only come with the completion of their mission—but they had landed forces on the first planet infected by the red stain that burned through their senses. It was a small step, but it was a necessary one.

It had been expensive, however. Many had been taken in the brief assault on the red world and many more were critically injured with no nearby source of regeneration.

That was something that would hopefully be rectified in short order, but for the moment it was clear that the ship minds had a quandary to be addressed. Their primary target was climbing out of the gravity well of the star, heading into deeper space, but there still remained the glaring abomination of the next world down-well from their current location.

The primary target had to be destroyed. That was a clear priority to the ship minds, but the world could not be allowed to stand either.

Generally the ship minds of a given swarm preferred the strength that existed in their numbers, knowing that the loss of a few would mean nothing to the success of their endeavors, but this time the situation was clearly calling for a different solution.

N.A.C.S.
ODYSSEY

“CAPTAIN!” MICHELLE WINGER’S voice rose an octave from start to finish, the urgency spinning Weston about. “We’ve got a problem!”

“What is it?” Eric demanded, moving in her direction even as he spoke.

“They’re breaking up the swarm, sir. Sending the bulk down-well to Earth, and the rest after us from what I’m seeing.”

Eric cursed, though he wasn’t surprised.

The longer he’d been able to keep them coming after the
Odyssey
exclusively, the better things would have been, but it had been obvious from the start that at some point or another that strategy would fail.

“How many are going for Earth?” he asked, looking over her shoulder and trying to decipher the garbage on her screens himself.

Technology had come a long way from the early days of RADAR, and computers were far better at analyzing the information themselves now, but when it came to the down and dirty of pulling valuable intelligence out of echo returns from the scanners, a skilled human touch was still king.

Or queen, as the case may be,
Eric thought as he looked down at Winger.

“Hard to tell. They still have their fighter screen creating all holy hell with my scanners, but every indication is that they only broke off a small portion of their fleet to deal with us.”

Eric pursed his lips. “I think we’ve been insulted.”

Winger giggled a little before clamping down on the hysterical urge, a hand slapping over her mouth. Eric didn’t pay her any mind, however. He knew just how high tensions were and was more than inclined to let small slips go.

He turned to Daniels. “Helm, new orders.”

“Aye, sir, standing by.”

“Make our course…” Eric trailed off, eyeing the telemetry feeds carefully. “Three oh nine, mark five.”

“Aye Captain, making course three-zero-niner-mark-fiver.”

The
Odyssey
rumbled slightly as the directional thrusters flared and pushed the big ship onto its new course, no longer heading anywhere near Jupiter.