Out of the Black (Odyssey One, Book 4) (45 page)

A lot can change between now and then, and we still don’t understand why they’re standing there and waiting on us. These things are bestial, yes, but they’ve never been stupid. They’ve seen what the
Odyssey
could do to them. Are they just resigned to what’s going to happen?

Now
that
made no sense. Nothing about them indicated that the Drasin were the type to roll over and play dead. They weren’t even the type to give up in the face of overwhelming odds. They just threw themselves at the danger like the very worst sort of fanatics.

What are you up to?

“We’re seeing movement on the alien forces in orbit, Mr. President.”

Conner groaned, closing his eyes and shaking his head. “What are they doing?”

“We’re not sure, sir. They’re readjusting their formation, but we don’t have any consensus on what they’re attempting yet.”

“Great. Is Captain Weston in the air?”

“Yes sir, thirty minutes ago. He’ll land in New Mexico within the hour.”

The President nodded. “Well, at least we have that. Best put all our units on an enhanced level of alert and make sure that air defense units are stocked and ready for a fight.”

Conner saw his aide wince and didn’t blame the man. “Enhanced” level of alert basically meant wake everybody up, no matter how tired they were, and tell them to be ready for
something that no one could say was actually coming. It was horrible for morale and combat effectiveness, frankly, but there was little choice in the matter.

“Yes sir, Mr. President.”

The dark of the sky was clear, stars twinkling cheerfully above them as Eric looked out through the cockpit of the heavy lifter. He was seated in the copilot’s seat, having temporarily ejected the junior officer so he could get a little stick time while he had the chance. He normally wouldn’t have done that, but then normally he’d have gotten enough hours on a Double A to keep his qualifications.

Granted, he had other matters to concern himself with now, so losing his pilot qualification was a lesser issue than it normally would be to him. But Eric knew bureaucracy too well, and as such he was well aware that if he didn’t record the hours someone would kill his qual, no matter what he was doing in the meantime.

A transporter was a far cry from an Archangel fighter, that was true, but it was stick time and Eric couldn’t sleep, so he was going to take what he could.

“Quiet night,” he heard the pilot say as the man slipped back into his own seat with a cup of coffee in hand.

Eric nodded. “Yeah.”

“Figured you for some sleep, if you don’t mind my saying, sir.”

Eric smiled, adjusting the flight controls as the Doppler radar reported turbulence ahead. “I’m a flyer by choice, Colonel. Give me a choice between sleep and flying, and you know, it’s not even a contest.”

The colonel chuckled. “I know the feeling. Tell me, is it much different up there, in space?”

“The black sky?” Eric asked with a hint of a smile. “It’s . . . like flying in a dream. No up, no down, just an endless black sky. If there’s a heaven, that’s where you’ll find me after I check out.”

The colonel nodded. “I’d applied for a position on one of the new ships before all this, but . . .”

“Yeah,” Eric said quietly.

The coming of the Drasin had put a stop to a lot of careers and dreams, turning survival into the only ambition that could be tolerated. The alien beasts had a lot to answer for, in his opinion, though Eric reserved a fair piece of the blame for himself. He doubted that he would ever forgive himself for exposing the Earth to the Drasin, even if it was merely hurrying the inevitable.

He turned his focus back to the controls, though honestly the computer handled the job better than he could most of the time.

“You’ll get your chance, Colonel,” he said. “We’re not done yet.”

The pilot nodded, eyes looking out over the dark sky and darker ground below.

“I hope you’re right, Captain.”

The orbit of Jupiter was in their rear view as the squadron continued its sunward fall into the Sol System. Gracen had spent the last hours poring over the ever-improving tactical intel they were gathering from the system. FTL sensors were impressive, especially the Priminae-improved ones, but
nothing beat high-resolution light-speed scans, no matter how long it took to compile them.

They were approaching the orbit of the asteroid belt, a sector of space of interest to humans only for the raw materials that could be mined without the added cost of moving the material from the surface of a planet to orbit.

Unlike the movies, the only difference between the asteroid belt and “open” space was the fact that a ship’s radar operator occasionally got a beep from his system inside the belt. Very occasionally. The Trojan points on either side of Jupiter were a little more stocked, but only marginally as a rule.

So she noted the locations of a few of the larger rocks, including the planetoid Ceres, but none of them were in the path of the squadron, so she paid very little attention to them. The things that held her focus were still in Earth orbit, hundreds of them sitting there, circling the planet below.

They were still just buzzing around like an aimless swarm, no sign that they’d registered the entrance of the squadron into the system. That seemed off to her. She knew that the transition in-system would have lit up a tachyon flare that a blind man could see, so they
should
be reacting
somehow
.

A buzzer caught her attention and she looked up from the imagery on her screen and across the bridge.

“What’s that?” Gracen asked softly, mostly just a little curious.

“Small asteroid cluster crossing our bow,” Susan answered professionally. “Too small to detect until now on passive or short-range scans. They’re not a navigation hazard.”

Gracen nodded, looking back down to her screens.

That was how things worked in an asteroid field, she supposed. Lots of nothing punctuated by moments of almost nothing.

“Commander,” she said, “you have the bridge. I’m going to get a cup of coffee and stretch my legs.”

“It will be as you say, Admiral,” Commander Son said stiffly. “I have the bridge.”

She nodded and walked off the bridge, heading for the commissary. She wanted Commander Son to get some time in the hot seat, integrate him better with the crew while things weren’t too dangerous.

Splitting up the crew of the
Wei Fang
had been a difficult decision, but she didn’t have enough experienced spacers, let alone blooded combat spacers, to group them all in the same ship. That spread out the experienced people, but also threw a lot of Confederate officers in with Block officers by necessity.

Actually, she wasn’t concerned about them. It was the enlisted that bothered her most, which was why she’d kept as many of
them
as separated as possible. Still, there would be some inevitable friction. She just hoped that it wouldn’t cost them dearly in the clinch.

The ship minds paused in their preparations as they noted a brief glimpse of their new enemy as the falling vessels passed the orbit of the fifth planet and continued starward. It was clear that they believed themselves unseen and, for the moment, it was best that they continue to believe that. In truth, they were difficult to track, but a few carefully placed ships had spotted them along their path. Since the
enemy vessels were moving almost entirely on a ballistic course, it was no problem to predict their exact location at any given time.