The Heart of Matter: Odyssey One (7 page)

“A few more weeks and we can have the
Enterprise
fitted and ready for service,” McGivens objected, but only by rote.

“That’s a few weeks more than we can really afford, Larry,” Gen. Howard Sullivan told his junior colleague. “The ambassador has been getting, understandably, concerned about the progress of the war and his people.”

McGivens scowled. “I still think we should have made him wait. He came here with hat in hand; we don’t need any of his toys.”

“Perhaps,” Gracen smoothly slid into the conversation. “However, we wanted a good many of them. You do realize that the medical advances alone will effectively eliminate death from 80 percent of cancer cases over the next three years? That’s to say nothing of the rejuve treatments, which I believe you have scheduled for next month?”

“A few weeks won’t change anything on the war front.”

“No, but it would mean sending in an untested ship, an untested crew and captain, and expecting them to work themselves up in a potential war zone,” Gracen replied. “Besides which, Captain Weston and his people enjoy a certain…
popularity
among the Priminae people, if Corusc and his aides are any example to judge by.”

“Precisely,” one of the politicians spoke up. “And that’s a reputation that we can take advantage of. My god, General, Ambassador Corusc practically considers Eric Weston to be his people’s savior! You can’t buy that kind of influence, and it’s priceless leverage.”

Admiral Gracen and the two generals all rolled their eyes at that comment. Though they were often on different sides of arguments, they had much the same opinion of some of the civilian counterparts.

Of course, the civilian politicians had their own opinions of their military colleagues as well.

TEMPORARY COLONIAL EMBASSY
Washington, DC

▸“ELDER?”

“Yes, Ithan?” Corusc said softly, looking up as Coar Sienthe spoke.

“Do…Do you believe that the colonies will have held the line against the Drasin in our absence?”

Corusc sighed, setting down the work he had been doing. He’d often wondered the same thing himself, but had never really been able to answer that question.

“I don’t know,” he told her, finally, shrugging slightly. “The Forge had eight more vessels nearly built before they threw all their available resources into finishing the
Cerekus
. The other central worlds will have been able to produce at least some warships of their own, though the Forge is the largest and best protected of our facilities.”

He tilted his head, then extended his hands to either side with palms up. “Whether it was enough, I do not know. However, it doesn’t matter so much as you might think, I’m afraid.”

“What?” She looked up sharply, confused.

“Our presence could not have changed the tide of war, not if we had stayed home,” he told her. “By coming here, perhaps we will have that chance. And a few weeks is meaningless in the scheme of the universe, even on the scale of these events.”

She nodded, looking fairly miserable. “I understand. I just…”

“I know, Ithan,” he told her, hiding his own pain behind a false formality. “I, too, wish I knew how the war went at home, but we have served here better than we could have hoped to at home.”

He paused, considering his words. “These…
Terrans
have provided us with the concepts, if not the actual plans, for weapons that could easily turn the tide if we can get them integrated into our ships. The idea of a multifrequency laser is so simple it really should have been obvious to our designers. Their energy defense is also a brilliant concept, much simpler and less power intensive than our own energy shields, yet far more effective.

“If nothing else, Ithan,” he said, “the ideas themselves may well save our worlds.”

She nodded, then looked out the windows at the night sky. “I will be glad to see home again.”

“As will I.”

NACS ODYSSEY
Sol System

▸CAPT. ERIC WESTON settled back behind his command console as the powerful ship hummed under power and made the long climb out of the gravity well of Sol. They were running a course toward Saturn, same as their first trip out of the system, and would rendezvous with the NACS
Indigo
for refueling before they made the last leg out to the heliopause.

Lieutenant Daniels had plotted their course through four hops, taking them across just over one hundred light-years of space before settling the
Odyssey
down in the Ranquil System, their ultimate goal, so there was little for Eric to do but wait. Even so, he found himself going over the ship’s manifest again, eyeing all the stores they had taken on in preparation for the mission.

In addition to the prototype weapons, which Eric wasn’t certain he was happy about, they had also picked up a number of new life detection software (LDS) modules, which were supposedly calibrated to detect the Drasin as living beings. That would be handy, he supposed, though, for the most part, it had been easy enough to detect them before, even if the computer software liked to insist that they weren’t alive.

“
Indigo
is hailing, Captain.”

Eric straightened, then nodded. “Put them through.”

“Aye, sir.”

The screen flickered and the captain of the tanker
Indigo
glanced up at them from the large screen. “Hello, Captain.”

Weston smiled. “Good day.”

“On time this time around, I see.”

“We try on occasion,” he returned. “Are you prepared for fueling?”

“It is what we do,
Odyssey
,” the captain of the tanker replied. “Though, we don’t usually have to come out this far to do it.”

Eric made a motion to the helm. “We’ll be matching your course in the next…eighteen minutes.”

“We’ll be waiting.
Indigo
out.”

The screen flickered back to a starscape as Eric made a few notations on his panel, then pushed the computer interface away. “By the numbers, Mr. Daniels.”

“Aye, aye, sir.”

Weston relaxed back into his chair as he listened and felt the living ship rumble comfortingly under and around him. No matter what they found out there this time, it was good to be back where the
Odyssey
was built to exist. The black of space felt so bizarrely comforting when he compared it to dealing with the brass of the NAC.

Rachel Corrin was in a good mood, too.

She loved being on a ship under way, though it had taken a little time to adapt to the significant differences between the
Odyssey
and the naval equivalents. Now, though, the nearly imperceptible charge that the CM (counter-mass) generators
sent along her skin and the soft rumble of the ship’s reactors through the deck felt good to her.

They felt like home.

The
Odyssey
had been something of a mess when she’d first come aboard, almost nine months earlier. Her crew had been the scattered sprinkling of individually great people, with none of the sense of family that existed in a truly great crew.

Egos and conflicting habits had made true integration difficult, but they’d lucked out with Captain Weston, she believed, and when the chips came down, they’d pulled together and sailed through real history in the making. Something to be proud of on every level, she supposed. A lot of captains would have called it quits after the first contact with the Drasin, and possibly with excellent justification.

Certainly, they wouldn’t have stuck it out to the end while on the wrong side of the six-to-one odds for a people they didn’t know and had no responsibility toward.

And they probably would have been right to leave.

However, it wouldn’t have felt right.

Captain Weston had made a moral decision to override what was perhaps his legal responsibility. There were damn few men who would have made that stick, and even fewer who could come out of it with their career intact after making such a stand.

The chief petty officer felt pretty smug about it all.

A good captain was one thing, and important, to be sure, but a
lucky
captain, well, that was something every crew could get behind.

“Hey, Jackson!”

Lt. Jackson Crowley paused in his work and glanced back around toward the voice. “Yes, Sergeant, what can I do for you?”

Sergeant Greene and three others were approaching in the distinctive walk of people wearing magnetic boots.