The Heart of Matter: Odyssey One (54 page)

Eric sighed. “Understood. How long before the affected people come back to duty?”

“The worst? I’m not waking them until we’re going to be stable for a reasonable period,” Palin answered. “Most of the crew will be back on shift by the end of the twenty-four hours.”

“Good. Thank you, Doctor,” Eric said, turning to leave. He paused as his stomach growled just before he exited the lab, however, and half turned back. “What was in those pills?”

Palin smiled. “Hungry, are we?”

Eric nodded, a little wondered at it, actually. A half hour ago, he would have sworn to never eat again.

“Let’s just say that it’s a good thing you don’t have any surprise drug tests coming up.”

“Doctor…” Eric growled, eyes widening.

“Relax, Captain. I was mostly joking.” Palin was in far too good a humor for Eric’s liking. “It was, however, a cannaboid derivative. Civilian drug tests often pop positive for cannabis if you’ve taken it. It has no mind-altering effects, Captain. It’s just a very effective nausea suppressor and appetite enhancer. Go get something to eat and then get some sleep—doctor’s orders.”

Eric left, casting doubtful glances over his shoulder at the doctor until the doors closed. When his stomach growled again, he shrugged and headed for the commissary. Judging from the brisk business being done there when he arrived, he figured that the doctor had been giving a lot of people his little munchy pills.

I hope those things have been cleared by the military board for use
, he thought wryly as he got in line with the rest. He could have had a meal brought to him in his cabin, but there was hardly any need, and by times, it seemed like a good idea to be seen rather than just heard.

A couple of the younger sorts tried to skip him ahead in line when they recognized him and then tried to simply step out of line when he refused. Eric hid a smile when one of the chiefs behind the counter clubbed a lieutenant across the wrist.

“If the captain wants your spot, he’ll take it from you,” the older man growled, reasonably low. “Don’t make a production of things when people are trying to eat.”

The poor butter-bar lieutenant looked honestly caught between wanting to take the NCO to task for smacking him with a ladle and not wanting to gather any more attention than he already had. He finally, wisely, chose to get his food and let the line continue as efficiently as it had before Eric had joined it.

As Eric stepped past the chief, he nodded to the ladle. “You are going to be washing that before you use it again, right?”

“Course I am, sir.” The man looked affronted. “Lord only knows where that officer’s been, begging your pardon, sir.”

Eric laughed softly. “Tell you what, Chief, why don’t you double my serving of the mystery meat, and we’ll call it even?”

“Brave man,” the chief replied as he fetched another ladle and spooned a double portion onto the captain’s tray. “Sounds like a deal to me.”

“Good enough. Thanks, Chief.”

“Anytime, Captain.”

The mood in the mess seemed positive. He’d expected a quieter and possibly even sullen group when he arrived. Multiple transitions were far more taxing than he’d expected them to be, so he’d come in with the worst firmly in mind. He wasn’t sure what it was, over all, but Eric guessed that it was
probably more to do with his having ordered a twenty-four-hour reprieve than the doctor’s munchy meds.

They probably helped, though
, he thought dryly as he took a seat at an empty table and began eating.

He already missed the squadron, he found. Their presence in the mess was a comfort, a place he could sit where there was no awkward question of rank. He was in command, they knew it, but it didn’t make the slightest bit of difference to any of them. Flight leader or captain, he was now and would always be one of the Angels.

Now, though, he sat alone in the middle of the crowded commissary, his thoughts more focused on the current situation than anything else.

The fact that they had, for all intents and purposes, misplaced a star was bothering him. All right, that was more than a little bit of an understatement. He was flat-out terrified by the possibilities that brought to mind.

Did those monsters destroy a star?

It seemed impossible on the face of it, but he’d watched and rewatched the drone data of them dismantling a planet piece by piece. Certainly, they couldn’t have done that to a star, but could they have done
something
? If they’d blown it up, then the
Odyssey
’s sensors would have picked up some sign. Similarly, if they’d somehow managed to cause it to collapse on itself, Eric was familiar enough with stellar phenomena to know that, even then, they’d likely have noticed
something.
A perfect singularity seemed the only possible answer, but why would they fly
into
something like that?

In the end, he couldn’t make any sense of it with the information they had available, so he shelved it and finished his meal. Afterward, he ambled slowly through the ship, taking his time to check on the goings-on at various stations and
generally make his presence felt. He didn’t want to be seen as looking over their shoulders, but Eric felt like it was sometimes good for morale to see the captain involved on the ship elsewhere than merely on the bridge.

He guided his wanderings to end at his quarters, where he finally turned in for the “night.” Actually, he had to check his watch to realize that it was the middle of the afternoon, shipboard time. It hardly mattered, of course. Not in deep space, light-years from a star (the misplaced one notwithstanding), but it was still disconcerting to feel as suddenly worn as he did just then.

Especially when I’ve not been jerking my fighter around in the air for the past forty-eight.

Between the food, the fatigue, and he suspected the doc’s munchy pills…Well, he was beat, so he stripped down and called it a night. So what if it was the middle of the afternoon? He was the captain of the only source of daylight for one hell of a long way. If he said it was night, it was damned well night.

RANQUIL, ARCHANGEL TEMPORARY FLIGHT BASE

▸COMMANDER MICHAELS LET his hand run along the armored skin of his fighter, eyes falling to the large tanks of O2 and hydrogen resting on a pallet nearby. His own bird was due to be tanked up next in line, as soon as they finished fabbing the adaptors to the Priminae gear.

Until then, he felt like he was chained down. Oh, certainly he likely wouldn’t be flying, even if he had more than a couple more hours of fuel, but the lack of the possibility was wearing on him. His bird, now designated Archangel One since Eric had handed his own over to Cardsharp, was rearmed and fully checked. It was ready to fly as soon as it got a drink.

Like more modern fighter craft, the Archangels took several hours of maintenance work for every hour of flight, but Captain Weston knew that better than most and had sent along the people, equipment, and parts to handle the job. The remaining fighters of the squadron were all ready to fly, ready to fight, just as soon as the fabbers finished printing out the new attachments for the Priminae storage tanks.

They were all sitting together, wing tip to wing tip, where they’d landed, but the crews had thrown up some UV reflective tents over the lot to keep any degradation of the armor systems to a minimum. He’d always found it funny how something as simple as sunlight could cause so much damage to some of the toughest, most technically sophisticated armor suits ever devised. The stuff could take military-grade laser strikes with ease, but a month out in the sunlight would fade half the effectiveness from the cam-plate adaptive structures.

It was funny how things worked sometimes.

Stephen couldn’t help but toss the occasional glare over at the fabbers, matched by another at the patiently waiting tanks of fuel. He was feeling a little disenfranchised, he could see that, and knew that most of the other Angels were in the same boat. They should be on the
Odyssey
with their captain, not sitting grounded here on an alien world waiting for some fancy desktop printers to finish building a damned nozzle for a gas pump.

He knew why Eric had taken off, but that didn’t mean he liked it.

“Checking on your bird?”

Steph rolled his eyes as he half turned, amused by the suggestive tone in Jennifer “Cardsharp” Samuels’s voice. “Always.”

“Everything intact?”

“Always,” he repeated, not taking the bait. “What are you doing down here, Jen?”

“Checking on my bird,” she replied, shrugging as she smiled. “It’s a nervous habit.”

“I know. We’ll all be down here a few times today, I expect—until they’re refueled, at least.”

He knew that even though it didn’t actually make any logical sense, Jennifer would feel a lot better about her fighter
once she was certain it wasn’t anchored to the ground. The ability to scramble and get it off the ground would make her feel a hell of a lot better. It wouldn’t actually change anything in terms of the fighters sitting there, but at least they’d be able to get them off the ground if they needed to.

So far, the local officials had been pretty helpful concerning getting them fueled and fed, but most of those who were normally assigned to the
Odyssey
didn’t really feel too comfortable depending on an alien early warning network while sitting in the center of a war zone. It wasn’t that they distrusted Priminae tech, per se, but it had been clear from the get-go that the enemy out here knew all the Primmies’ tricks. They’d come in loaded up with armor, weapons, and tactics all aimed at screwing the Primmies over, which was the only reason the
Odyssey
had such an easy time of it.

So sitting grounded on a world Michaels knew had a big bull’s-eye painted across it, they all really wanted to have the
Odyssey
’s eyes out there watching for trouble.

Tanner strode into the command center for the system defense network, summoned by an urgent chime from the night watch. He could have hoped for a night’s peace after recent events, but was unsurprised to find it denied to him. For all that, he was reasonably satisfied with how things had progressed and might normally be feeling almost happy. It was that, of course, which led him to believe that his doom was hovering just overhead and would soon be falling upon him.

“What is it?” he demanded as he stepped into the center of the room.

“Contact on the first system picket line, Admiral.”

Tanner looked over the projection, his eyes locating the signal the young officer was speaking about. The lights were showing an unpowered object passing the outer line, and he followed the track carefully to see that it was headed on a ballistic course directly for Ranquil.

“Natural track?” he asked, though his voice clearly sounded skeptical.

“No, sir. Nothing that size tracks toward Ranquil without being noticed many orbits in advance.”

Tanner nodded. He’d been well aware of that. “So, they’re trying to crush us under a cometary collision?”

“It seems so, Admiral.”

“Fools, then,” Tanner said. “Dispatch a freight tractor to readjust its course.”

“Of course, Admiral.”

“Make certain that the
Cerekus
is detached to cover them,” Tanner ordered after a moment’s thought, “in case it’s some type of trap.”