Out of the Black (Odyssey One, Book 4)
Read Out of the Black (Odyssey One, Book 4) Online
Authors: Evan Currie
BY EVAN CURRIE
Odyssey One series
Into the Black
Heart of Matter
Homeworld
Out of the Black
Warrior’s Wings series
On Silver Wings
Valkyrie Rising
Valkyrie Burning
The Valhalla Call
De Opresso Liber (forthcoming)
Other works
SEAL Team 13
Steam Legion
Thermals
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Text copyright © 2014 Evan Currie
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by 47North, Seattle
Amazon, the Amazon logo, and 47North are trademarks of
Amazon.com
, Inc., or its affiliates.
eISBN: 9781477867877
ISBN-10: 1477817875
Cover design by Cyanotype Book Architects
Library of Congress Control Number: 2014934825
This, the fourth book in the Odyssey series, is dedicated to the readers who made the continuation of this story possible. Without your enthusiasm and support, this series would never had reached the heights it’s arrived at nor would we clearly only be beginning our climb. Thank you for joining me on this voyage, and I sincerely hope you remain with me as we move further out into the black
.
CONTENTS
PROLOGUE
Manhattan Borough, New York—D-Fall Plus Five Minutes
IT IS TIME
.
The voice was a whisper on the wind, lost in the sound of buildings crumbling, dust and dirt falling back to the Earth, and the wailing of people and alarms. The city was a living thing, but it had been wounded deeply and it was bellowing its pain and rage. Within that a whisper had no chance of being heard.
The day had begun largely as a normal day, despite the announcement of a heightened level of military awareness worldwide. The normality had been shattered when thin burning trails had descended from above, tracking across the sky in an eerie silence that caused millions to not even notice until it was far too late. Those that did see often froze, eyes locked on the blazing trails as they pointed and shouted.
One had struck the edge of the city, a building exploding into dust and debris, and another slammed into the tallest skyscraper of the skyline. Everyone heard it when that monument to freedom from terror came raining down on the streets below. Amid the screaming that began then, some were still calm as they watched the skies, and they saw more and more fiery streaks rain down, bursting through the clouds, heading for their city.
Then they saw something else explode out of the clouds, and for many the nature of their world changed in a second.
It was a silhouette recognized across the world, fires blazing from gaping holes in the steel blue hull as the NACS
Odyssey
somehow leveled out over the Eastern seaboard and opened fire at fifteen thousand feet.
Every shot was like the hammer of the gods across the sky, blowing out the glass in dozens of skyscrapers and smaller buildings as the big ship rumbled past. Each thunderclap of destruction, however, was punctuated by a second explosion in the sky as one of the incoming trails of destructive flame exploded in turn.
The
Odyssey
had not been built to fly in atmosphere, however, and her enemies had held the high ground. Flaming trails of destruction rained down from above the iconic ship and slammed into her hull, making the flagship of the Confederacy shudder with each blow. The
Odyssey
listed to port, slowly heeling over, and with another flurry of hits from above, it dipped down and plunged into Long Island Sound.
That had been the beginning.
Strike Fighters filled the skies shortly after, throwing everything they had at the fire from the sky. It was an impressive show, but they were outnumbered and some of the falling objects inevitably struck the ground and delivered hammer blows of destruction to the living city.
For many that was when the nightmare changed from shocking to surreal, because true horrors rose from the craters, and New York became a battleground unlike any ever seen on Earth.
Amid the fighting, as the National Guard rumbled into the city to back up the local police, few noticed that the
Odyssey
had broken up on impact with the water and was now spread
across much of the area. Some pieces had bounced, smashing into the waterfront properties and causing immense destruction themselves, while others had slowed and sunk deep below the surface of the sound.
The two immense drums of the
Odyssey
’s habitation sections had broken free and skipped along the water as they spun. One went south, crashing through Queens as it skipped off Eastchester Bay, and the other spiraled west. It splashed down just north of Roosevelt Island on its last bounce before it blew through a block of office buildings and came to rest in Central Park itself.