Out of the Black (Odyssey One, Book 4) (58 page)

Swenson glowered. “And it’s gonna take nuking Dallas to kill them?”

“It’s going to take a lot more than that,” Eric snarled, turning away for a moment. “After the blast clears, we have units ready to come in and clean the rubble out.”

“You think any of them are gonna live through a blast like that?”

“I can almost guarantee it.”

Swenson shook his head. “Nothing’s that tough.”

“Ranger, in 1945 a man survived being at ground zero Japan . . .
both
times,” Eric said. “Nuclear weapons aren’t magical brooms to sweep the enemy away, especially not an enemy like this. Even one survivor is too damned many.”

The ranger snorted, clearly unconvinced, but that didn’t bother Eric. He wasn’t here to convince one man. He was here to get as many people out of the city as he could.

“This is what you’re going to do,” Eric said flatly. “Contact every group you can, then tell them to spread the word.
Anyone still in Dallas is to get
out
today. Minimum safe distance is twenty miles, but they’d be happier at fifty.”

“They’re really going to nuke Dallas, Captain?”

Eric turned to look at the man who had spoken, shaking his head. “You don’t get it, son. They’re nuking
everywhere
.”

“Jesus Christ,” Swenson swore, not even bothering to keep his voice down. “It can’t be that bad.
Nothing
can be that bad!”

“You never saw what these things have done to other planets, Ranger. I have,” Eric said, “It’s worse than that. Now do what I told you, damn it. Every minute you waste is a minute someone could be using to get clear!”

They stood, clearly looking to Swenson for instructions, and Eric began to get a sense of just what had been going on in Dallas over the last month. If he had to bet, he’d say that Swenson probably took over at a bad time. Whatever happened, that man was the person the Guardsmen were looking to, and that meant that he had to convince him.

“Look, Ranger,” he said, trying now to sound earnest, “there’re no reinforcements coming. These things hit the entire planet. Everything we’ve got is tied up somewhere else. Those things are going to eat your city . . .”

He sighed, and continued. “They tried to eat my ship, Ranger. My command, my
Odyssey
. Her hull was in pieces, the habitat modules scattered around New York, she’d never fly again . . . but those things swarmed her and tried to eat her. You know what I did?”

Swenson didn’t say anything, so Eric went on determinedly.

“I blew my own ship to shards of scattered steel and took as many of them with her as I could,” Eric said. “Right now, Dallas is the biggest attractant for five hundred miles. We don’t know why, but you guys sure as hell got more than your share, and right now that means we’ve got a huge number of
these things sitting right here, waiting to be wiped out. Do you really want to let them
eat
your city?”

“Hell no,” Swenson grumbled, “but I sure as hell don’t want to see it burn in nuclear fire either!”

“Better to burn it yourself than hand it over to those things,” Eric countered.

He could see the ranger being swayed, see the decision being made behind the man’s eyes, and Eric just waited. He’d worked with men like this before, and when they were making a decision it was better to give them a chance to come to the right path on their own. Push the wrong way at the wrong time and they’d dig in and you’d never get anywhere.

He could just take over, pull rank on the Guardsmen around them, but they’d resent that and drag their heels on him. And that didn’t count on how any civilians or police personnel would react. No, it was better to get the ranger on his side now, if he could. In either case, however, Eric knew that he couldn’t waste much time if things started to go against him.

Swenson grimaced before speaking grudgingly. “There aren’t many people left in the city. We had to get everyone out when those things took down the first few office buildings. The dust was choking people out. We had a lot of folks die from respiratory problems.”

Eric nodded. “We knew that the populace was light inside city limits. We’ve got satellite intel on that, so start pulling out your own people and anyone they know about. I can bring in some evacuation lifters if you need them, but we have to start
now
.”

The ranger clearly didn’t like what he was hearing, let alone what he was about to say, but finally he nodded.

“Fine. You call your lifters.” Swenson poked Weston in the chest, hurting his finger on the armor but not flinching. “We don’t leave no one behind. You clear on that?”

“That’s the plan, Ranger.”

“Fine. Then let’s do this.”

“Mr. President?”

Conner sighed from where he was sitting, but smiled sadly at his wife and got up.

“Yes?”

“Something has changed, sir.”

He lost his annoyance, his expression growing serious in an instant. “Talk to me.”

“Admiral Gracen is approaching NEO, Mr. President. The Drasin threat in orbit seems to have been neutralized.”

Conner wobbled a bit, his knees suddenly feeling more than a little weak.

“Are you sure?”

He could hardly believe it. He knew what the technology Gracen had at her disposal could do, but this was beyond anything he’d ever expected. There had been hundreds of ships in orbit, and only seven in the admiral’s task force.

While it was true that Captain Weston had eliminated well over a thousand with only three ships in his last-ditch defense of the system, Conner was well aware that the man had done things that no sane tactician would try and made them work through sheer guile, literally taking total command of the battle space in ways that no one could have predicted or duplicated.

“Reasonably, sir. The bulk of the enemy ships were certainly annihilated by the admiral’s tachyon cannons, but there may be survivors we’re not seeing.”

“Right,” Conner nodded. “OK. Has she contacted SPACECOM?”

SPACECOM was the old command center, based in Cheyenne Mountain, that had previously handled all extra-atmospheric contacts. It had been superseded by Space Station Liberty, but when Liberty was lost they had reactivated its original charter.

“Yes sir. That’s why we came to get you. She’s asking for instructions on where and how to deploy ground troops.”

“She brought troops? How many?”

Conner racked his brain, trying to think of who she could have brought, but could only come up with a hundred or so people at best. Certainly they were all good, but it seemed pointless to bring them down at this juncture.

“Reed’s team, the
Odyssey
’s complement, and over fifteen thousand volunteers from the Priminae forces trained by Reed,” the aide said, smiling. “The
Enterprise
is dealing with a few remaining fighter drones, but they’re expected to be along shortly.”

“My God. That many?”

It was still a drop in the bucket, but it was a significant drop, and Conner felt the stirrings of real hope despite how strongly he tried to shut it down. Hope was a painful thing to experience at the moment.

Still, he steeled himself.
Maybe I have a few more decisions left in me after all
.

“Alright,” he said, his professional mask falling into place. “I’ll be ready in a moment. We’ll get to the war room.”

“Yes sir, Mr. President.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

“BRAKING IS GOING to be rough, Admiral,” Steph advised from his place at the helm. “We’re moving a hell of a lot faster than the
Odyssey
could have tried this from.”

“Understood. Call all hands to general quarters,” Gracen ordered. “Stand by for combat drop of available personnel according to the priorities list provided by the President and the Premier.”

“Aye ma’am,” Susan said, sounding a little dazed.

Gracen didn’t blame her. It wasn’t every day that you had a conference call with the Confederation President and the Block Premier. She wasn’t feeling all that grounded in reality just then either, but she had a job to do.

“How are the ground forces reporting?” she asked intently.

“All hands in position. We’re ready to launch shuttles as soon as we hit NEO,” Susan responded.

“Good, Commander. I believe that makes it your game.”

“Aye aye, ma’am,” Steph said steadily as he linked into the squadron comm network. “You with me, Heroes?”

The other pilots of the Heroics, former Archangels all, responded quickly and in the affirmative. They’d been waiting
for a chance to get some of their own back, ever since the last fight over Earth ended in such an unsatisfying manner.

“Stand by all hands. This could get a little rough,” Steph warned, adding to the warnings already sounding through the ship. “Initiating gravity-assisted braking.”

The Heroics were plummeting through the Sun’s gravity well at significant relativistic speeds, the force of the solar mass boosting their fall in conjunction with their warp drives. As they swept into cislunar space, however, Steph initiated a full reverse even as he ducked the ship into the Moon’s sphere of influence.

With the other Heroics following, the
Odysseus
skimmed the lunar surface, sometimes so close that her warp drive kicked up a dust plume in her wake, whipping around the celestial object and breaking free on a new course for Earth itself.