The Heart of Matter: Odyssey One (27 page)

He expected that the Priminae would probably learn the same lessons, eventually, though he hoped for their sake that it wasn’t anytime soon.

In the meantime, he had other concerns. Admiral Tanner had taken a personal interest in the development of the naval academy section of the new military training center and had come to him for suggestions. Unfortunately, being a product of the Marine Corps, Eric wasn’t exactly the most knowledgeable person on the vagaries of naval training.

That in itself probably wasn’t a bad thing, of course, since the relationship between starships and naval units was a lot farther apart than people on Earth generally assumed. There were some correlations, of course, and even more with the submarine service, but the fact was that controlling the
Odyssey
required disciplines from a wide variety of sources of which the Navy had only been a relatively small one.

“Captain?”

Eric looked up. “Yes, Ensign?”

“I need you to look these over, sir, and sign off on them,” Lamont said, handing him a chip for his data plaque.

Eric accepted it and dismissed Lamont, sighing.

Sometimes he wondered if the “wide variety” of sources that contributed to the
Odyssey
was really such a good idea. It seemed that they all contributed at least one thing in common—their paperwork.

PRIMINAE VESSEL VULK
On Patrol, Outer Ranquil System

▸“CAPTAIN, WE’RE DETECTING an incoming bow wake.”

Capt. Johan Maran turned to look at the screens that his lead sensors officer had put up at the front of the command deck. “Analysis?”

“Working on it.”

Johan nodded, closing down the analysis he was running on one of the shipboard systems and reluctantly setting it aside for the moment. He believed that they could get far more effective power through some systems if they just got the settings right, but for now, the matter of the moment took precedence.

Bow wakes were caused by faster-than-light craft as their dimensional shift fields impacted with matter in normal space. The energy discharge was impressive—at least given the minute amounts of matter involved—and caused a “bounce” in the matter’s energy state that could last for several light-seconds to over a light-hour, depending on the speed of the ship involved.

The energy state had to be measured in the distance that light could travel because conventional energy measuring sticks were meaningless when dealing with FTL particles. It
was generally easier to measure how long they had the energy to remain in an FTL state than to try to quantify the imparted energy of the collision.

This did, however, make it rather difficult for one ship to determine the exact range to an incoming contact. Two or more could triangulate the energy states and determine a location, but a single ship could only analyze the frequency of the energy and match it to known bow wakes in hope of determining if the incoming ship was friend or foe.

That matching process took time, however, and while it was being done, the contact was hurtling toward you at several factors of light-speed. It could be unnerving for a captain and crew.

“Unknown,” Sensors Officer Jira Kath said after a moment. “The computers can’t make a match.”

“Opinion?” Johan demanded tersely.

“Multiple incoming contacts,” she answered, not hesitating. “Enough variety to scramble the drive frequency.”

Johan nodded, pursing his lips. “Agreed.”

He walked to his command chair, pivoting easily on one heel and sinking into it. “Sound combat stations.”

The alarms went off then, jarring enough that no one would mistake them for anything else, and behind Johan, the rear section of the bridge became a mass of action as people rushed to their combat stations.

“Communications,” Johan said, “please inform the admiral’s command center that we are exiting the system to investigate possible Drasin contact.”

“Yes, Captain.”

“Turn us into that wake then,” he said calmly. “And ahead, full sublight drive.”

“Yes, Captain.”

NACS ODYSSEY
High Orbit, Planet Ranquil

▸WESTON WAS READING when the message came in, indulging in something he rarely had much time for anymore. So he was annoyed by the chirp of the comm, but resigned all the same.

“Captain to the bridge.”

Eric rose from his chair with a fluid motion, scattering a pair of data plaques to the desktop with a casual maneuver, and was around the desk and halfway across his ready room before they’d stopped sliding. He exited to the right side of the bridge a few seconds later, absently brushing his uniform down from where it had ridden up as he sat at his desk.

“Report,” he asked briskly, crossing to his central command chair.

“Priority traffic from the Priminae Admiralty, sir,” Roberts replied smoothly.

Weston raised an eyebrow at that. That meant the source of the traffic was from the single new station on the bridge, installed in the last couple of weeks by Priminae technicians and Master Chief Wilson.

Eric was no slouch when it came to math—a fighter pilot couldn’t be—and he was better than passing fair with all types of communication systems, but the system they’d installed into the
Odyssey
power grid was beyond him. First off, the sheer amount of juice it took to run, which was actually a staggering amount by any Terran measure, was exacerbated by the flawed conversion technology that took the
Odyssey
’s electrical grid and converted it to a compatible form for the terminal.

It was bad enough that Eric didn’t think that it could be run under combat conditions, unfortunately, but at least it gave the
Odyssey
real-time ship-to-shore communications.

“The
Vulk
has detected incoming FTL signatures, sir,” Roberts told him. “They’ve moved out of the system to investigate.”

Eric nodded, checking the numbers. “All right, if they’re hostile, we’re probably looking at the better part of twenty-four hours before they get here, but we’ll assume that they’re in a hurry.”

“Aye, sir,” Roberts agreed.

“Have all stations report in. Make sure that they’re battle ready in twelve hours,” Weston said after a moment.

“Yes, sir.” Roberts nodded again, half turning. “Anything else?”

“No, I…” Eric paused, thinking.

“Sir?”

“Have the Archangels move up to Ready One positions. We’ve been fooled by the Drasin’s stealth technology before,” Eric decided. “And prepare for a tachyon ping of the system.”

Now, this was certainly more interesting than exercises and training, although Weston hoped it didn’t get too interesting…

PRIMINAE VESSEL VULK
Outer System, Ranquil

▸SOON ENOUGH, THE
Vulk
had cleared the minimum safe distance to engage the dimensional drive. Johan Maran tapped a command into the projected interface in front of him. “Power up the converters. All weapons stations stand by on combat alert.”

“Yes, Captain.”

The command deck was a mass of activity as the crew prepared for a micro-jump that would propel them away from the system at forty times the speed of light. The incoming contact was still well beyond the range of their active sensors—only its own FTL radiation giving any evidence of its approach—so Maran had elected to meet them as far from the system as possible.

“All stations report ready.”

Maran gave the order: “Execute jump.”

There was no change in the apparent state of the ship as the power was channeled into the dimensional drives, but the stars outside shimmered and then blinked out as the incoming light shifted out of their detection range.

“Normalizing screens,” someone said from behind him, but Maran didn’t look up.

The screens flickered again, the system being calibrated to the new frequency shift of the light outside. Incoming light on an FTL vessel had to be adjusted to visible frequencies, as the difference in velocity tended to shift light down and out of human frequencies. The screens had to be recalibrated to read the normally higher-level radiation that “replaced” it.

The stars returned, their color being slightly whiter, almost “purer” than before, but showed no noticeable motion as the big ship hurtled through space. They were simply too far away for even the
Vulk
’s impressive speed to create any sort of change over the attention span of the average person.