The Heart of Matter: Odyssey One (29 page)

Sergeant Greene was looking over the service reports for his “charges,” the powered armor suits that the
Odyssey
soldiers used as standard equipment, when Ensign Kuboto rushed into the museum with a wild look in his eyes.

The “museum,” so called for the racks and racks of armor that stood up in their charging cradles, was one of the first buildings put to use since the locals had begun construction, and while it was a little spartan, it suited Greene nicely.

“What is it, Ensign?” Greene asked respectfully, or at least as close as he got with any officer who didn’t completely piss him off.

“Message from the colonel, Sergeant.” Kobuto was panting, and Greene had to keep from clucking his tongue at the lack of physical conditioning. “He says to get the armor ready for combat operations.”

That erased any snide thoughts from the sergeant’s head in short order as Greene stiffened and snapped around to give the ensign his full attention. “What was that again?”

“There are ships coming in-system, Sergeant,” the ensign explained. “They might have some pursuers on their tail.”

“Corporal!” Greene snarled, spinning around.

“Sarge?” A buzz-cut head popped up from behind a suit that was lying out on a forty-five-degree angle.

“Pull the training chips from the armor!” Greene ordered, already striding forward.

“Sarge?” The voice was more than a little confused by this point.

The training chips were programmable hardware that bridged a gap in the armor’s circuitry, effectively closing a circuit that was normally isolated from the armor’s main functions. These circuits were directly responsible for things like locking the armor up in training when the unit was struck by a mock shot, as well as other things that were distinctly unhealthy if they occurred in actual combat. Without the physical presence of the chips, those circuits could not be activated by any outside command, which, of course, was the point.

“I said, pull the chips!” Greene snarled. “We’ve got to make these units hot!”

“Yes, Sergeant!” was the next answer.

Greene ignored it as he tapped out a command on the closest suit of armor in order to access the training chip.

INTERSTELLAR SPACE, RANQUIL REGION

▸CAPT. KIERNA SENTHE clung to the hardened projection that made up his combat interface, using its projected solidity to steady himself as he struggled to remain afoot as another shudder ran through the deck of his wounded ship.

His command chair had actually been torn loose days earlier when one of the Drasin attacks had not only holed the
Heralc
’s hull, but struck a secondary reactor that detonated with the force of a small sun. The ceramic decks of the powerful warship were rated to hotter temperatures, but the force of the blast had been conducted through the decks, wreaking unimaginable havoc throughout the ship.

His crew was now a tenth of what they had started with, running on adrenaline and little else as they struggled with the remains of the enemy fleet.

“Coming around twenty marks to vertical twelve!” he called, fighting with his controls as he watched the six remaining Drasin circle around.

It was almost over, that was a certainty, but the
Heralc
had done her duty. The refugees would reach the Ranquil System,
and Senthe knew that Ranquil had more than twice the orbital lasers of the Deice colony, and the
Vulk
would be there as well.

They could handle six Drasin.

Or five, if Senthe had his word in the matter.

“Forward lasers!” he called. “Target the lead cruiser!”

“Targeted!” someone called, and Kierna had to think to remember her name.

Serra. That was it, he remembered. She was a junior officer, far too junior for her current position, but the reactor detonation had killed most of the weapons specialists, and she was the best he had.

The lasers hummed in the background as they fired, drawing his eyes to the projections as he watched the computer-aided images play out.

The action was taking place in dimensional space, but slightly out of phase with the normal “universe.” Each of the ships, the
Heralc
and Drasin alike, were using powerful dimensional drives to phase shift into a higher frequency where light traveled faster than its “normal” pace. Unfortunately, the light from their lasers was not subject to this phase shift when it passed out from their respective dimensional fields, and that meant that the battle was taking place at ludicrously close distances.

So when the hum of the lasers caught his attention, Captain Senthe actually missed the crisscross flash of light on his projection and caught only its aftermath.

“Hit!” Ithan Serra crowed, a little too exuberantly, but Senthe wasn’t going to catch her on it now.

The Drasin’s forward armor flared with the application of energy, holding up for a second under the unimaginable onslaught, but finally folding as the material was ablated away. The rest of the laser gutted the cruiser from stem to stern as
Senthe manipulated the controls at the last second and violently threw the
Heralc
to the side in a last-second attempt to avoid collision.

Faster-than-light speeds and a proximity that would frighten an orbiter pilot were not good combinations, but that was the only way to fight with dimensional drives engaged. Senthe himself would have been more than happy to drop to normal space for the fight, but then the Drasin would be free to catch the refugees, and he couldn’t allow that, so all he could do was wince as his maneuver was just a split second too slow and the belly of the
Heralc
grated in collision with the Drasin ship as they passed.

When the big warship was clear and flying away from the drifting hulk, Senthe called over his shoulder, “Damage?”

“Our shields are almost gone, Captain!”

That wasn’t the answer he wanted to hear. The shields—or distance—were the only defense against the Drasin’s “super-weapon” that they had deployed in the opening battles of the war. No one Kierna knew of could say precisely what that weapon was, of course, but its effects were both immediate and disastrous: the death of everyone on the targeted ship, and total energy drain from all systems, and the repair of all damage previously suffered by the Drasin vessel.

Without the shields, they would have to run because there was no point dying just to rejuvenate the enemy.

“Get me those shields back!” Kierna growled, watching the screens as the remaining five circled around him.

He fought for maneuvering room—and time, as well—opening the distance between the
Heralc
and the Drasin. His move took them well beyond weapons range, given the fact that the ships were currently moving a good deal faster than their lasers could, but stayed close enough that the Drasin
couldn’t risk ignoring him in order to pursue the refugee transports.

“We’ve got another 10 percent on the shields, Captain!”

“Good man!” Kierna replied. “Ithan Serra, prepare for another run!”

Johan could feel the tension slowly climbing as sensing data began to come back, and they all could see just what was happening out there.

“Heavy energy discharges, Captain.”

The bridge of the
Vulk
was calm, though a hint of electric tension rode through the air as her captain nodded mildly in response to the status update.

The word
heavy
was a woefully pitiful description of the flashes of power that were being registered on the
Vulk
’s forward sensors, in his opinion, but Johan supposed that it was adequate enough a description.

“Drive frequencies?” he asked stonily.

“Five Drasin and one Priminae warship.”

The tension relaxed slightly, and Johan leaned forward with a thin smile on his face.

They weren’t too late.

Maybe.

“Target the closest Drasin; prepare for dimensional combat.”

The order set off another series of alarms similar, though distinct from, the combat stations alert that had sounded only shortly before.

“Sensors, get me a reading on the
Heralc
. Communications, try to hail her captain.”

“Yes, Captain,” both stations responded at once.

“And inform the admiral that we have located the enemy and are preparing to engage.”

NACS ODYSSEY
High Orbit, Planet Ranquil

▸“WE HAVE ANOTHER flash traffic from the Priminae Admiralty, sir.”

Eric nodded and just flicked two fingers in the air, telling Lamont to send it to his root drive, where he could read it himself.

The message was short and sweet, as such things went, just an update on the situation as they received more intel from the
Vulk
. The contents of the message, however, were more than a little disturbing.

Five of those things
, Eric though grimly.

Five wasn’t an insurmountable number, certainly not if the reports coming back from the refugees were accurate. The new ships and space-based defenses that the Priminae had begun incorporating into their systems were probably up to it, and Eric knew that, in a pinch, the
Odyssey
could easily take two of them in a standup fight.

More if they had to get creative and had a little luck on their side of the equation.