Homeworld (Odyssey One) (3 page)

“Penetrating the corona, Captain. Internal temperatures climbing!”

Gods, that was fast.

“More laser flares, all around us!”

“Navigation!” Sun called. “We need those plots!”

“Done. Sent to Helm, Captain!”

“Helm!”

“Locking them in!”

“Engage the new course. Maximum thrust, minimum counter-mass!” he ordered.
Let the star do the work for us now.

The
Weifang
dipped its bow deeper into the blistering corona of the red dwarf sun, her armor glittering blindingly to any instruments in the system. Since the only ones that could see them both belonged to the enemy and were already locked onto them, her Captain and crew considered it to be a fair trade for their steadily increasing speed as the tidal force of the star’s gravity snagged them.

Incandescent beams of light erupted around them as laser strikes spiked through the already excited plasma of the corona. The
Weifang
continued its minimal evasive actions, alternating between corkscrew patterns of varying tightness and a flying figure eight.

Behind them, their pursuers relentlessly continued without hesitation, plunging into the superheated corona themselves.

On the Command deck of the
Weifang
, it was becoming obvious that while the maneuver might have been marginally successful in extending their lead on the pursuing ships, it had other significant drawbacks.

Sweat was pouring down the faces of every person on the deck, and Sun had no doubt that the entire crew was in a similar state. A few droplets of sweat floating in the micro-gravity environment struck the metal floor and sizzled into vapor, much to his shock and horror.

“Are the heat shields holding?” Sun demanded, eyes narrowed.

The damage control officer nodded wildly. “Yes, Captain. Temperature up, but within operating parameters.”

Sun swore, something that was fast becoming a bad habit.

If the heat shields were reporting elevated yet still operating temperatures, there was only one reason for the ship to have gotten as hot as it was. The massive electromagnetic interference they were plunging through was actually turning every ferromagnetic surface of the ship into an induction-based heating element.

We’re a flying oven, in other words.

“Ready to break out!” he called.

“Captain, we’re not in optimal position for break out,” the helmsman told him.

“Optimum position is on the other side of the star. We’ll be broiled alive before we get there,” Sun said, shaking his head. “We have no choice. Prepare for counter-mass pulse!”

“Yes, Captain. All capacitors stand ready for full power pulse to the counter-mass generators.”

“Predictive course plot to my screens.”

“On your screens, Captain.”

The displays directly accessible to his eyes lit up, showing their current course in the tight orbit of the star along with a prediction of where they’d go if he initiated break out at that specific moment.

Sun licked his lips as he considered the timing, knowing that he wasn’t going to get a clean escape vector. To achieve that he’d have to stay in the inductive range of the corona for far too long when even just minutes might be enough to literally cook his crew where they sat.

“Break on my command,” he ordered.

The escape line would bring them within range of the second squadron’s potential strike zone, but if he timed it right they would be able to limit the engagement time. That really just left him with one question remaining.

They’ve fired on us. That’s effectively an act of war. If I return fire, however, it will potentially escalate the situation. If I do not, there’s a much higher chance that we won’t survive this encounter.

There wasn’t really much of a choice, in all honesty. So far these ships perfectly matched the stolen intelligence on the
Odyssey
mission, even the line items that most of the Block’s military capacity believed to be propaganda.

“Tactical,” he called.

“Yes, Captain?”

“Arm aft tubes. Ready them to fire.”

Behind the
Weifang
, the alien squadron was beginning to lose their overtake velocity. They were still gaining slowly, but time was now working in the
Weifang
’s favor. Sun looked at the numbers, glad to note that at least the alien ships wouldn’t be able to close in beyond long range. He didn’t want to be on the wrong side of laser cannons that size if they were fired within ten light-seconds.

“Captain, we’re showing unusual interference across all our high band instrumentation…,” Shi spoke up, scowling at his displays.

“That’s probably from the magnetic fields of the corona,” Sun offered.

“No Captain,” Shi shook his head. “These are hardened systems. The interference has to be in the system, but I can’t seem to….”

A building hum took that moment to increase beyond all sense, drowning out the officer’s words as a crackling sound joined in. Everyone looked around with growing nervousness, trying to identify the sound suddenly surrounding them.

“What is it?” Sun asked, eyes slowly moving around the Command deck as he looked for whatever it was he was hearing.

“Unknown. We’ve got interference across all high band instruments, internal and external,” Shi said, his voice pitched high enough to hear yet still sounding hushed as he too looked slowly around.

“Enemy weapon?” Sun asked, remembering that the reports mentioned some kind of close-range weapon that the
Odyssey
listed as “unknown, extremely dangerous.” He would have thought they were well out of range of any “close-range” weapon.

“Unknown,” Shi said again, sounding helpless and irritated by the fact.

Sun didn’t blame him. The idea of something happening on his ship that he didn’t recognize and couldn’t quantify annoyed the ever-living hell out of him. There was something about it that was niggling just at the edge of his brain, something of which he felt he should be aware.

“Aft tubes ready to fire, Captain.”

He shook his head, trying to ignore the feeling as best he could. He had things to do at which he didn’t have to guess.

“Do we have a firing solution for the pursuing ships?”

“Yes, Captain. Solution has been locked and updated continuously.”

He nodded, checking the numbers briefly himself. As promised, the squadron had been locked in and tracked since he’d given the order. At the range they were dealing with, getting a solid lock was out of the question, but it was firm enough.

And there’s every chance that the corona is interfering with them as well.

“Very well. All tubes go to rapid fire,” he ordered.

“Yes, Captain. Rapid fire on all tubes!”

The ship didn’t shake or rattle as the tubes belched their lethal payloads into space. The
Weifang
was too massive for that by far, but a chime sounded with every shot to let the crew know that things were running according to plan.

“Stand by to go to full counter-mass and break out,” Sun ordered, eyes on the projective plot he was watching.

He barely noticed the acknowledgment, focused as he was on the plot while a portion of his mind was still being distracted by the crackling sound that reminded him of a live wire continuously shorting out. There were no reported drains on any of their trunk power leads, however, so he knew that it couldn’t be that.

A grinding of metal on metal caught his attention, and he turned to see the Command deck airlock slide open. Beyond it his first officer, Kong Sha Tu, was waiting for the door to clear.

“Captain,” he called as the door lock opened fully and he pushed off. “There is unusual electrical interference through the entire ship.”

The word “electrical” clicked something in his mind, oddly perhaps since he’d been thinking it many times once the humming sounds began. Sun’s eyes widened. He wrenched around, fighting his restraint straps, and glared back over his shoulder.

“Kong! Freeze! Do
not
move!”

His warning came a moment too late, however, as the first officer glided through the airlock door and thus between two separate metal poles.

The bolt of lightning that intersected his position was blinding, and in an instant Sun could taste ozone in the air as he released his straps and pushed out of the chair. He lifted his arms, hands out to stop anyone from moving past him.

“Everyone, halt where you are!” he ordered, eyes not moving from the lifeless form of his second in command.

“Wh…what happened?” a rather stunned junior officer managed to mumble out despite his shock.

“The magnetic induction field created a charge in the metal hull of the ship,” Sun said, a bad taste in his mouth. “The entire hull and many of the internal components of the ship have been turned into live electrical capacitors.”

He thumbed open the ship-wide communications. “All crewmembers, this is the Captain. Remain in your acceleration bolsters and do
not
move through the ship until further notice. These are your orders.”

He closed the channel, then flipped over to the engineering channel. “Pan, this is the Captain.”

“Yes, Captain?” the head engineer came back quickly.

“The ship’s hull has become electrified. I need you to work out how to safely discharge the energy,” Sun said. “Be aware that the first officer has been killed by a discharge.”

“Electrified? How?”

“Most likely”—Sun sighed—“via the magnetic fields we’ve been flying through.”

“Ah, same as an induction oven. Yes, I see. I’ll begin immediately, Captain. Will not be possible to finish until we’re clear of the corona, however,” the engineer warned.

“Understood. That will not be a problem. Captain out.” Sun broke the connection and drifted over to the body of his officer.

He couldn’t ask someone from medical to come up for the corpse, so Sun had no choice but to pull the body over to Kong’s station and strap him down into his bolster.

“Well, Kong,” he said softly, “one last mission between us, shall we?”

He patted the dead man on the shoulder and drifted back to his own seat, strapping himself back into place as he quickly examined the displays around him to familiarize himself with the current situation once more.

He thumbed the ship-wide, signaling everyone again.

“This is the Captain. All crew are to stand ready for maneuvering,” he said sternly, masking the ice that had sunk to the pit of his stomach. “Helm, go to maximum counter-mass, all flank thrust, on my mark.”

A glance at the tactical display caused him to glance in another direction. “Status on the missiles?”

“Impact with targets in twenty seconds.”

Sun nodded, examining the plot.
Twenty seconds. Not quite ideal, but close. Yes, that will do.

“Initiate break away in fifteen seconds!” he ordered, eyes on the weapon plot.

The
Weifang’s
missiles were CM-enhanced sub-nuclear guided weapons, a little old school compared to the toys the NAC played with, but very nearly as effective, just the same. They were slower than the speed captured intelligence
indicated that the NAC’s “pulse torpedoes” were listed as and were unfortunately vulnerable to interception, but the shaped charges within were far safer to handle and packed a punch that was nearly as potent.

At ten seconds to impact, Sun knew that the weapons would have entered terminal guidance, locking onto the specific target and accelerating in a last boost phase that burned up the remainder of their propellant. They would strike at a little under point-one lights, a speed that literally boggled Sun’s mind, but his current worry was that it would be slow and they’d be picked off by point defense.

Given the distance between the
Weifang
and its pursuers, however, he would only learn that long after he had already been committed to his maneuver for some time.

The clock ticked down, the last ten seconds passing in an interminably slow fashion until they were gone.

“Break away! Break away!” the helmsman called as he initiated the maneuver. “All flank to thrust, maximum countermass engaged!”

Like a ball that had been spinning on a string and had just been cut free, the
Weifang
erupted outward from the star at high speed. The Chinese ship’s counter-mass generators powered to full actually extended slightly beyond the ship’s hull. So as they exploded out of the corona, they brought some of the plasma with them in a spectacular eruption on par with the most energetic of coronal mass ejections ever recorded by Earth instruments.