Into the Black: Odyssey One (37 page)

“How’d you do, Sir?” One of them asked as Steph’s feet clanged to the bare deck, boots locking him in place.

“Chalk five more up, Ben,” he said softly, half smiling at the man.

“Yes, Sir,” The tech saluted him, though Commander Michaels just nodded in return as he walked away.

He moved to the closest call terminal and keyed in a request to speak to the Captain.

Weston must have been waiting for the call, because in a few seconds he was looking back through the terminal screen. “Good to have you back, Steph.”

“Good to be aboard, Captain.” Stephen said tiredly. “How long have we got?”

“That’s the good news,” Eric told him calmly, eyes flicking to something beyond the camera. “The Mother ship you took on has apparently decided that it doesn’t want to tangle with the two of us just now. It’s adjusted its orbit to scale outside ours, about two point three AU out… It’s not going away, but it’s not coming any closer.”

Steph let out a long sigh, and nodded. “Thank God, Sir. My team needs as much time as we can get.”

Weston nodded, “See to them, and get some rest. We’ll call you if we need you.”

“Aye Captain,” the tired pilot saluted, albeit somewhat sloppily, and smiled wearily as the picture flickered out.

He half turned, noting the three other pilots standing some distance behind him.

“Grab a shower and hug your bunks.” He ordered them. “We’re standing down for now.”

They didn’t cheer, or even comment much, which was a testament to how tired they were now that the fight or flight adrenaline surge had started to leave them. Instead, the three pilots just nodded and trudged toward the lifts as Michaels turned back to the airlock as it started to rumble back down to the flight deck.

*****

Eric Weston stood up releasing the restraints that kept him secured to the command chair in case of extreme maneuvers or combat damage, and walked over to where Susan Lamont was talking steadily over her Damage Control channels.

“How bad is it, Susan?” He asked softly, leaning over her shoulder and resting a hand on the console.

“Could be worse, Sir,” she said, tapping in a command. “CPO Corrin’s got the patch underway in the forward weapon control rooms, should be another hour or so, and we’ll be ready to re-pressurize them.”

“Armor?”

“Four more hours, Sir.” Lamont replied, glancing up. “We have a crew outside putting the slab into place, but we’ll have to recall them if that ship heads back in.”

Eric nodded soberly.

They certainly couldn’t leave men out in the black if it came down to combat maneuvers, it would be nothing short of a death sentence.

“The flight deck?”

“That’s a bit trickier.” Lamont told him, calling up a schematic.

The picture on the screen was of the lower flight deck and it showed an immense gash, right up the center of the long deck. The edges were melted down from the extreme heat they’d experienced, and the beam width was over four meters wide, at its worst.

“We didn’t lose much there, since the deck is almost never under pressure, anyway,” Lamont said calmly, “But the enemy beam sliced through the Cee Emm circuits that made up the fighter traps. They’ve got to be re-wired before we repair the deck damage. It’s going to be at least twenty hours, Sir.”

Weston grimaced, but nodded. “Fine. Good work, Susan.”

“Thank you, Sir,” she said, back straightening slightly.

Eric straightened up and moved across the Bridge to the tactical console. “Waters.”

“Sir?” The young kid said, looking up.

“How’d they get through our armor?”

Waters grimaced, shaking his head. “I’m afraid they just overpowered it, Sir. No tricks, nothing fancy, they just burned right through it.”

Eric winced.

That was bad.

The Cam-Plate modifications were capable of reflecting over ninety-eight percent of the beam energy of any class one laser away. That meant that the beam power they were facing was such that less than two percent was enough to kill them.

Eric didn’t want to think of what would happen, if they had to face more than one enemy vessel at once, or if one enemy got a lucky shot through one of the multitude of chinks in their armor where the Cam-Plates didn’t cover.

“Alright!” Was all he said out loud though. “Analyse everything we’ve got on these things, and make sure that our labs are doing the same. And Waters?”

“Yes Sir?”

“Tell the egg heads that they’re on a deadline here,” Weston said grimly. “I don’t want answers two years from now, I want them NOW.”

“Aye Aye, Captain.”

*****

“Fire Plan Romeo, Mark,” Wilhelm Brinks said simply as he watched the overview of the fight through his suit’s HUD.

“Romeo, confirmed.” The signal came back an instant later.

“Engage,” Brinks responded, eyes watching the crowd of drones that had gathered at the top of the tubular pyramid that Bermont and his team had just pulled out of.

“Engaging.” The calm answer came back.

From his position it was anti-climactic, at least at first. The single word was spoken in confirmation and a series of lights lit up, as the sniper teams opened fire according to the Plan Romeo schedule.

Their computer network controlled the exact timing, of course, and the fighting was far enough away that the launches were less than nothing to Brinks, even with suit enhancement, had he been inclined to watch for them.

He hadn’t been.

Brinks watched the target zone instead, knowing that when the thermobaric rounds detonated, it would be climactic enough.

*****

Thermobaric weapons, also known as Fuel Air Explosives, were a known quantity in military technology for a long time, before they entered into truly widespread service, in the early twenty first century, moving from weapons that had to be deployed by large aircraft, to forty millimeter grenade versions placed solidly in the hands of individual soldiers.

The Soviet military had actually pioneered the concept as a useful military ordinance in the late twentieth century, but it was the sudden flash of violence, that became the ‘Terror Wars’, of the early twenty first century, that led to the rapid development of the technology into the refined versions used by the Odyssey troops.

Five separate shells were fired at Brink’s command, fins and computer controls guided the little kamikazes along a carefully selected course. As they topped their arc and started to fall toward the Drasin drones, the shells spread out in a geometric pentagon that kept the enemy mass at its center.

When they reached within forty meters of the targets, the first stage explosion, detonated.

The shells ruptured, blowing out their payloads with a sudden massive force, and sprayed aerosol chemicals over the entire region. As the area became laden with the harsh, poisonous chemicals, the second stage ignition, detonated.

The resulting rumble was like a clap of thunder, directly overhead and shook the air for over a kilometer.

A firestorm raced through the air, jumping from molecule to molecule of the harsh chemicals, erupting in an orgy of destructive power that forced the air aside with effects best compared to a nuclear weapon.

The over-pressure wave erupted on all sides, casting out further and further as the chemicals ignited, until it met the Drasin and, by extension, the over-pressure waves erupting from each of the other shells.

*****

“Who is this?” Rael Tanner growled at the screen, looking straight at a face he didn’t recognize, but which matched the computer files they had for one, Ithan Milla Chans.

The figure, clad in alien body armor, stiffened and saluted. “Ithan Milla Chans, Admiral.”

“Ithan Chans died when the Carlache went down, with all hands.” Tanner told her coldly. “I lost a good friend on that ship, and I’m not inclined to be flippant about her fate.”

The woman looking at him paled, eyes widening, but her jaw just locked slightly and momentarily. After a moment she got herself back under control, “Admiral, I survived the loss of the Carlache and was rescued by the Starship, Odyssey.”

“The ship in orbit?” Tanner asked, not willing to give up the chance to identify the ship in question.

“Yes Admiral,” the supposed Ithan Chans replied.

“Why don’t you tell me who they are,” Tanner said coldly, “Assuming that you are who you claim to be.”

“They are. . . . ,” Milla’s face twisted, “I believe them to be of the Others, Admiral.”

Tanner heard a hissed intake of air, but ignored it. “Ithan, I don’t believe in myths.”

Milla looked shocked, but didn’t cross him on the statement.

Tanner ignored her look, “so what I’ll presume you mean is that they are not a Colonial vessel, however they ARE human.”

“That… that’s correct, Admiral.”

“What frequencies do they use?” Tanner asked, “I wish to speak with their Captain.”

“They communicate on radio frequency, Sir.”

Tanner grimaced.

Radio.

That was irritating. He wasn’t even sure that they had anything that would transmit on so low a band.

He glanced over his shoulder, “Find me a way to talk to these people.”

“What? But we…” The technician paled suddenly under a withering look. “Uh… Yes, Admiral.”

Tanner turned back to Milla, “What else?”

“Admiral, they have soldiers on the ground here and…”

“Yes, I am aware of that,” Rael told her, “They are engaging the Drasin at several key points and have been…”

A sudden explosion of curses erupting from the army control pit startled him, and Tanner looked over. “What the hell is going on over there?”

His naval ratings looked at him in shock, but he ignored them.

“Admiral,” one of the army ratings came running over. “There has been an explosion over the Third habitat.”

“Damage?”

“Minimal, Sir, if any,” the rating replied. “But it was… unexpected… and very, very large, Sir.”

Rael glanced back at Milla, “Your friends?”

“I don’t know, Sir,” She replied, hefting something. “One moment, I’ll check.”

*****

The overlapping compression waves ripped through the Drasin drones like five separate hurricanes of power all tearing and rending in different directions. One drone would be lifted into the air by the front of one wave, and then slammed into a dozen other drones and torn in another direction completely as it intersected the front of a second over-pressure wave.

From the outside, the scene was hellish, the sort of thing one might expect from an action movie, flames and smoke obscuring the deadly consequences of the eruption of power.

Several of the drones were simply thrown clear off the peak of the pyramid, flying out into the air hundreds of feet above the ground, until gravity took over and guided them down to, what Brinks hoped would be, extremely rough landings.

Just in case, he tagged each of them in turn, and sent orders to his outlying units to check on them, as soon as possible.

More often it was parts of the Drasin that flew out of the miniature holocaust, legs here, bodies there, and so forth.

Brinks had those tagged as well, but on a lower priority.

The rumbling sound died out slowly, the crackling thunder softening as he looked over the scene at maximum magnification.

*****

“We counted thirty-eight drones there, Sir.”

Nero nodded, looking at the information. Whatever those other soldiers had done, it had ripped through the Drasin group, like nothing he’d ever seen. Fiery explosions were actually rare in combat, they normally were rather subdued events with a lot of noise, assuming you weren’t in space, but very little else, other than smoke or shrapnel.

This, though, was something else.

The computers had registered at least twelve confirmed kills in that instant conflagration, and the tally was going up as the smoke cleared.

Across in the other control pit, Rael Tanner was looking at the faceless visage that had been Milla Chans, and waiting for information that only she could provide him.

After a long moment, the face nodded slowly and the armored hands came up and pulled the helmet off again.

Milla Chans looked a little pale, which Tanner could understand well enough, but in control as she spoke. “It was them, Admiral. They had managed to group many of the Drasin together in one place… Major Brinks assures me that they analysed the building structure for any danger before he ordered the attack.”

Tanner forced himself to nod slowly, as if it made much sense to him. “Ithan, what are their intentions?”

“Sir?”

“Why are they helping us?” He asked softly.

Milla looked confused for a moment he thought he saw her shrug, but it was hard to tell through the armor she wore. “I don’t know for certain, Admiral. All I know is that their Captain told me that he wouldn’t… couldn’t… stand by and watch an entire planet die… He saw what happened at Port Fuielles, Sir… and at Duorkin.”

Tanner winced.

“Port Fuielles, as well?” He asked painfully.

“Yes Sir.” Milla said. “The Odyssey rescued five hundred survivors… but that was all.”

Five hundred.

Tanner closed his eyes, whispering a few words for the loss of fifty million people.

He shook his head, “Ithan, I think you should come here. We need to communicate with these people and for the moment you are our only method.”

“Of course, Sir,” Milla bowed her head slightly. “I will arrive, as soon as possible.”

“Good,” He told her. “I will await you.”

*****

Bermont hit the rooftop running, letting the ‘chute’ soar up and away from him, as he skidded to a crouch by the edge of the insanely tall skyscraper and looked over at the clearing smoke that was obscuring the place he had just left.

He whistled, the sound audible only to him, as his HUD enhanced and magnified the scene of destruction for him.

“God damn,” he muttered, switching to a thermal overlay.

For a moment, his HUD just went white, as the temperature overloaded its initial settings, but in a second, the computer adapted and altered the sensitivity of the sensors, until it could differentiate through the rapidly dispersing heat of the explosion.