Into the Black: Odyssey One (57 page)

The Odyssey groaned under their feet, pitching hard, as its thrusters tipped it up and over. Kreuse grabbed for the wall, catching himself and just hung on as the ship swung over.

“That’s just the tip!” Corrin yelled, sailing across in a practiced leap that nearly slammed her into the far wall, as the ship spun crazily around her. She caught herself professionally though snagging a desk that was bolted down and joined two others that were hauling in a welder.

“Heave!” She yelled, and the three of them pulled hard, yanking the man back in against the spin induced gravity.

They had two more men out there, she knew and the rumble in the decks told Corrin, that they weren’t going to make it.

Aw shit,
she groaned to herself, reaching for another security line.

*****

“We have men still doing EVA, Captain,” Lamont said suddenly, spinning Eric around.

“What?” He spun back. “Hold on acceleration!”

Daniels paused, hand just millimeters from executing the order. “Holding, Captain.”

“Get those people inside, Ensign,” Eric ground out.

“Already being done, Captain,” Lamont swallowed, closing her eyes briefly.

*****

“Corrin to the Bridge,” she croaked out, laying back against the floor with one of the men beside her.

Across the gash, she could see Kreuse with the other.

“We’re secured for acceleration.”

*****

“All clear, Captain,” Lamont said, sounding a little shaky.

“Thank you, Ensign,” Weston said, taking a breath. “Mr. Daniels… All ahead flank.”

“Aye-Aye Captain, All ahead Flank.”

The rumble in the decks grew and the deck pitched slightly, despite the full application of the Cee Emm generators. The big ship began to accelerate through space again.

Eric Weston eyed the numbers for a moment, but didn’t spend too much time on them as he opened another channel.

“Archangels, we are moving to rendezvous with another contact. Do not engage the enemy, break from your current vectors and form up on the Odyssey,” Weston ordered calmly.

Only then, did he turn back to the board and look at the ‘contact clock’.

Twelve light seconds and still closing, although the closure rate was dropping off slightly.

Eric didn’t have to do the math in his head to know that it wasn’t going to turn out in his favor this time.

Maybe I should have stood and fought,
he thought grimly, shaking his head with an ironic song suddenly filtering in through his head.

And the race is on and here comes…

*****

“The Odyssey has altered her course, Captain.”

“Thank you, Ithan. What is their arrival time?” Tianne asked coolly.

“Four rotations.”

“And the Drasin intercept?”

“Two rotations.”

Tianne scowled, shaking her head. “I suppose that we may as well become somewhat… proactive in this situation, before Admiral Tanner comes up with another brilliant plan.”

The men and women around her shifted nervously, but there was no reply.

“Calculate a targeting path for our lasers.”

“Yes Captain.”

Tianne watched the plot, eyeing the shrinking line between the two ships. “And do give the Odyssey some space to breath. It would be ludicrous to do all this, and then kill them ourselves.”

“Yes Captain.”

*****

“The Odyssey has completed their maneuver and are accelerating away from the Drasin and toward the Cerekus, Admiral.”

“Thank you, Ithan,” Admiral Tanner replied, watching the board. “Has Captain Tianne made her combat plans?”

“She has begun calculating for weapons fire.”

“Let us hope that this new class is everything Central claims,” Tanner said grimly, pacing slightly before he caught himself and forced his body down into a chair.

“Yes Admiral.”

*****

“Calculations are in, Captain. We are prepared to fire.”

Tianne smiled thinly. “Excellent. Engage the Drasin ships.”

“Engaging.”

A whining roar vibrated through the deck of the big ship, as power was routed directly to the lasers and the powerful weapons unleashed themselves across the vastness of space.

*****

“Message from the Archangel Lead, Captain,” Lamont half turned. “Commander Michaels is asking if you want them to come back in.”

“Negative,” Weston shook his head. “Tell them to keep clear. Something tells me that this isn’t going to be…”

“Thermal Bloom!”

Weston stiffened, “Where!?”

“The new ship, Capt… Holy Mother of GOD!” Waters let out a curse eyes bugging out as every warning buzzer on the Bridge seemed to go off.

“What the hell was that!?”

“Laser fire! Five… Ten… No, Fifteen beams!” Waters swore. “They bracketed us, Sir!”

“Relax, Ensign,” Weston advised him grimly. “If they were meant for us, we’d have felt them by now.”

“No Sir. We wouldn’t,” Waters corrected him in a shocked voice. “We’re reading intense corona flares… Ten times the Drasin weapon levels.”

“What!?” Weston blurted, “That’s insane!”

“Sir…, I think we’d better secure for a radiation alert,” Waters advised. “These guys are tossing around some serious power.”

Waters nodded, “Susan… Issue the alert.”

“Aye Captain,” Susan Lamont turned back to her board. “Warning. Warning, the Odyssey is now under radiation exposure protocols. I say again, the Odyssey is now under radiation exposure protocols.”

*****

“… say again, the Odyssey is now under radiation protocols.”

“Ah fuckin hell!” Kreuse cursed, looking up at the ceiling, though the voice had come through her suit headset. “Now what!?”

“Doesn’t matter!” Corrin ordered, “Forget trying to repair that breach, we’ve got to throw a few sheets over it and get the hell out of here!”

“You heard the Chief!” Kreuse spun around, “Get those rolls in here!”

While the men were hauling in the huge rolls of Carbon Fiber composite they had been intending to use as a base for the repairs, Corrin turned on the crew working on the sealed closet. “And get those people out of there!”

*****

“Thermal bloom!” Waters announced again. “They’ve got a direct hit on the portside warship.”

“Analyse,” Weston ordered in clipped terms.

“The return signal scrambled the hell out of our sensors, Captain. I’m going to have to reboot the software. Secondary sensors turning into position,” Waters replied, working hard.

On the screen, the visible image of the Drasin warship was still there and intact, though at the moment, it was glowing practically white hot from the energy it had absorbed and for some odd reason, Weston had the impression that it was pissed off.

“Return fire!” Waters called out a second later. “Drasin are firing back.”

“Captain…,” Daniels spoke up softly, “course?”

Weston ignored the helmsman for a moment, staring at his boards. The ship coming toward them was now within two light minutes and it was finally starting to register on their sensors, despite the solar interference. Which actually was bothering Eric, considering that a ship the Odyssey’s size would probably be hidden from visual sensors at up to twenty light seconds.

“Captain?”

How big is that thing?
He wondered briefly, and shook his head. “Hold Course Helm. Right now they’re aiming around us. I don’t think I want to bumble into one of their beams by accident.”

“Aye-Aye Captain.”

*****

“They are tough, aren’t they?” Tianne asked mildly, not really speaking to anyone but herself, as she watched the Drasin vessel continue to close, despite the immense amount of energy they had pelted it with.

“Pardon me, Captain?”

“Nothing, Ithan,” She said mildly. “How many beams struck?”

“Two, Captain. We’re adjusting the others now.”

“Good. Fire again when…”

The Cerekus suddenly reeled under their feet, sending one young woman into her console, and another colliding with the wall.

“Report!”

“Incoming laser attacks there are more of…”

Then another three beams stabbed into the energy shields of the big ship, overloading power relays all over the ship and blowing out half their defence grid.

“Return fire!” Tianne ordered, pushing hair up from where it had spilled from the rough jostling.

“Yes, Captain! Returning fire!”

*****

“Thermal bloom!” Waters announced again, “They took a strike, Captain.”

“How bad!?”

“Just guessing, but from the intensity of the bloom, it looks like they reflected most of the energy away,” the young man said. “Too much energy reflected to be a deep strike.”

“That’s something anyw…”

“They’re firing back!”

Weston flinched as the radiation and weapons warnings went off again, throwing the Bridge into Chaos.

“Why do I feel like I’m caught between two giants that happen to be fighting with clubs made of oak trees?” Eric growled, shaking his head in annoyance.

“Umm… Sir?”

“Nothing, Lieutenant. Hold us steady.”

“Aye Sir.”

*****

Lasers criss-crossed the emptiness of space, passing one another through the vacuum, not caring for what the other was doing.

On one side of the raging battle, a trio of beams found their target, unleashing their energy against the hull of an alien vessel. The armor incandescent, as it struggled to reflect back the power as best it could. It’s best, in fact, was quite good, but there was so very much power to be dealt with, so the heat and radiation, inevitably, began to pour into the interior of the ship, as well.

The Drasin faltered in its flight path, it’s engines failing for a moment as parts of its hull began to melt.

On the other side of the line, another two beams intersected the Cerekus, stabbing through its shields this time and cutting through the armor of the human ship, like a pick through soft dirt.

*****

“We’re venting atmosphere, Captain!”

“Seal those decks,” Tianne replied. “And continue firing!”

“Aye, Captain.”

Unlike the previous encounters with the Drasin, Tianne knew that her ship was something that its predecessors had not been. It was a ship built for war, rather than a converted freighter. It had armor to withstand lasers and was built so that the ship could be compartmentalized in the case of massive damage.

The Cerekus could absorb far more damage than could the Carlache, the previous fleet’s flagship vessel.

*****

“Sweet Jesus,” Waters whispered in awe. “She’s bleeding air, Captain.”

“Bad?”

“Bad,” Waters nodded. “But she’s still firing.”

“Status on the alien warships?”

“One of them is going down, Sir. The other seems to be moving to evasive action.”

“What’s the status of our weapons?”

“Laser Array is fully charged, we have a twenty percent load of HVM’s and three tubes are now charged, Captain,” Waters replied instantly, “Our PD weapons are, of course, fully charged and ready.”

“Thank you, Mr. Waters,” Weston replied, thinking grimly.

Their own laser array, while obviously more versatile than that of either their enemies or their possible allies was woefully underpowered compared to either. This, along with other concerns such as their targeting systems, meant that the laser was only useful for relatively close engagement ranges.

The alien warships were already at the limit of that range, and by going to evasive maneuvers the healthy warship had effectively taken the laser out of consideration.

The HVM’s were out for similar reasons as well because the recorded data from previous attacks made it clear that a twenty percent load wasn’t going to cut it.

Similarly, three Pulse torpedoes weren’t likely to take out one of those things, unless they got lucky.

Eric Weston scowled after he flinched as the radiation warning alarms all went off again, and slammed his fist down on the armrest.

“Time to get lucky,” he growled.

“Captain?”

“Helm, Roll the ship. Bring our weapons back to bear on the maneuvering warship,” he ordered, “Mr. Waters… Give me a firing solution on that son of a bitch.”

“Aye-Aye Captain.”

*****

“Holy Mary Mother of God,” Stephen Michaels whispered as he watched the battle through the enhanced HUD, of the Archangels.

The computer was taking data from all across the network, including the Odyssey itself, and was drawing in the paths of the invisible beams based off their corona leakage, and what it was drawing was a lethal fence trapping the Odyssey between a battle of two giants.

“Can you see that shit?” Paladin asked in awe. “They’re tossing around more power than a city could use, in a year!”

“A lot more,” another pilot, with the call sign ‘Centurion’, put in. “Each beam is off the scale… I’m trying to re-calibrate, but I’m betting that we’re way over the Tera-watt range here.”

“Jesus,” Racer muttered. “Anyone else starting to feel like we’re playing out of our league?”

“I might,” Stephanus said dryly. “If we hadn’t been kicking ass and taking names ever since this shit started.”

“You have a point,” Racer conceded. “But just think of what happens if these bozos get their shit together.”

“I’d rather not,” Cardsharp muttered, voice low as her HUD lit up with another computer generated rendering of the criss-cross beams.

“Lord! The Odyssey!”

The pilots of the Archangels, trapped on the outside of a battle, far beyond their tools and weapons, watched as the Odyssey tipped its nose up once more, swinging back around to bring her formidable forward weapons back into play.

“Godspeed, Eric,” Stephanus whispered, then smirked and spoke a little louder. “Godspeed, Raziel.”

“Amen,” the rest of the team replied with low chuckles, recognizing the call sign of their old flight leader. “And pity the poor bastard’s on the receiving end.”

Raziel. Secret of God.

Well, it had worked out that way once
, Stephanus thought with a grim smile.
Maybe He’ll be smiling on them this time too.