Homeworld (Odyssey One) (77 page)

She continued her turn, however, rumbling in the black as her enemies came onward.

“Make the long guns ready!” Eric called, his mind rebooting from the horrified shock.

“Transition cannons swinging to target, Captain!”

“Fire when ready!”

They were at such close range that the transition system didn’t even need a tachyon pulse to acquire a real-time lock, leaving Waters only to give the order and wait for the big guns to swivel into position before they opened fire.

The black of space lit up as a dozen small suns erupted just a few hundred thousand miles away, silhouetting the ships and fighters against the darkness and briefly illuminating the carnage to even unenhanced human eyes.

The
Odyssey
shuddered again, another laser scorching her side and holing through to the interior of the ship before
the armor could properly adjust. The best deflection setting proved all but worthless against the immensely powerful beams of the alien ships.

“Air pressure loss in engineering!”

“Get people down there!” Eric growled. “We can’t lose engineering!”

“Aye, sir, repair teams dispatched.”

In the distance, the big guns spat their silent thunder into the vacuum, the only sound being a slight whine of capacitors charging and a distant “click” of all that energy being thrown out into space just before the cycle began again.

“The
Odyssey
took a hit! Watch for fighters in case her defenses are down!” Steph called over the tacnet as he curled his finger around the trigger on the control stick, turning another Drasin fighter into rapidly dispersing debris.

“Roger, Lead,” Burner returned. “Knight, cover me.”

“I’m with you, Burner.”

Burner and Knight broke contact with the fighters they’d been chasing, throwing open their throttles as they headed back for the
Odyssey
.

Few fighters had made the attempt to get to the
Odyssey
or the
Enterprise
so far, as they’d been more concerned with providing the covering screen that let the Drasin sneak so many cruisers by. That could change at any time now, however, so Steph was looking to break contact himself. But he couldn’t leave Cardsharp, and she was deeper into the muck than the rest of them.

“Come on, Samuels, get your ass out of there,” he growled, edging in a little deeper past the line of the fighter screen,
taking another shot at a fighter that look like it might be coming around to get on Cardsharp’s six.

“On my way, boss.” Jennifer’s voice crackled with interference, something that shouldn’t even be possible on the digital systems they were using. “Things…are…getting a little…hot.”

“Watch your six, Lieutenant!”

“Damn it!” she swore. “
Now
they start to pay attention to us!”

She jinked left, rolling right under a sweeping beam, then had to retro her momentum to the right as another ship pounced on her and started to close the trap. Steph haloed the fighters, switching to guided munitions and let fly as he threw open his throttle, pouring on the speed.

“Hold on!” he called, eyes widening. “Break left! Break left!”

She obeyed without hesitating, but with three more fighters joining the hunt, Steph didn’t think it would be enough.

His missile went terminal, breaking up into sub-munitions, and four of the fighters vanished in short-lived trails of fire and debris. But the Drasin weren’t letting up on the pressure. The three new fighters kept their focus on Cardsharp as she twisted and turned through a series of maneuvers that would kill anyone not in a CM-enhanced craft, staying with her through it all.

Steph got in behind them, going to guns to splash the closest, but before he could close in on number two, Cardsharp’s voice called out in that cold dead calm that told him beyond a doubt that things were screwed seven ways to Sunday.

“Hit. Hit. Hit,” she said. “Lost retros on my left side. I don’t think anything is burning, but maneuvering is shot. You better clear out of here, boss.”

“Like hell! Point your nose to the
Odyssey
and run for it,” Steph ordered. “I’ve got this.”

“Boss…!”

“Look,” he snarled, cutting her off even as he splashed the next fighter. “Either you do what I’m telling you and leave this to me, or you don’t and I still take these fuckers out. Only when I’m done, I’ll have you up on charges for insubordination. Take your pick because dying out here isn’t an option!”

There was a long silence, one that Steph used to line up his next kill. The flash from the fighter dying lit up his cockpit with a satisfying flare, and he was looking around for the next one in line when she came back.

“Roger that, boss. Cardsharp, pulling back.”

Good girl,
Steph thought, grinning viciously as he rolled under a sweeping beam and potted another of the bastards with his guns.

Once she got clear, he figured he’d be about out of serious munitions anyway, and it’d be time for him to make a run for the
Odyssey,
too.

Hope it’s still there when I do that,
he thought, trying not to let that thought dig in too deep.

The
Odyssey
’s too damned good to go down to these bastards. I know it. Don’t prove me wrong, Eric.

Chief Corrin swore as she kicked the remains of the door open, grabbing one of her men who was a little too eager.

“Hold back, dumbass,” she growled. “Watch for jagged edges. You cut your suit and we’ll have one more body for the freezer.”

Engineering was a mess. A gaping gash open to space just highlighted the situation, but she could tell at least that everyone had been in their suits this time around. That was good; they might find survivors.

“By the numbers!” she ordered. “EMTs, get these people checked and cleared out of here. Repair teams, I want a patch on that hole in ten minutes, or I’ll use your lame duck bodies to do it!”

Men and women swarmed through the deck, some maneuvering to check the slash in the hull while others were pulling bodies clear. She nodded to the engineering relief crew. “Get to work. We’ll handle the rest.”

“You got it, Chief.”

It was a mess, no question about that, but Corrin knew that they’d have the deck sealed and back to operating status inside of ten minutes. The only question was just how bad was the
internal
damage. That wasn’t in her purview, so she’d leave that to the engineers.

“Transition cannons reporting that they’re down by half.”

Eric grimaced, hating that he was blowing priceless munitions here when the Earth needed every round he could spare to thin out their assault force. But there was no choice. The
Odyssey
would be gone in short order if they didn’t finish off the cruisers that had snuck in on them.

“Status on enemy cruisers?”

“Still reading three more, sir.”

He considered briefly trying to decide whether to turn and engage them with more conventional weapons, but finally decided not to.

“Pop them.”

“Aye, sir. Cannons firing.”

“Chief Corrin for you, sir.”

Eric glanced at the plot for a second, then walked over to his station. “Give me some good news, Chief.”

“We’ll have the deck sealed in five, sir. We’re spraying the foam into the breach now,” the tough woman told him over the line. “But the engies down here tell me we took that hit right in the bread basket. T-drive is out, sir. We can’t go FTL.”

Eric clenched his fist, his knuckles going white, but he forced himself not to react. “Well that’s fine, Chief. We weren’t running anyway.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Keep up the good work, Chief.”

He closed the connection, looking out over the telemetry plots, mind wandering on its own for a long second.

“That’s the last cruiser gone, Captain,” Waters announced.

“Good.” He snapped back to reality in an instant. “Bring us about and put our PD weapons to work on those fighters. I want them gone from my sky.”

“Aye, aye, sir.”

N.A.C.S.
ENTERPRISE

“THE
ODYSSEY
’S TAKEN a hit, sir.”