Out of the Black (Odyssey One, Book 4) (72 page)

President Conner stared at the long-range scans, more than a little stunned.

“I can’t believe that they’re falling for it.”

“Enemy ships are altering course. They’re laying in pursuit of the
Odysseus,
Mr. President.”

Conner shook his head. “Alright, Weston is buying us time . . .
again
. Let’s not waste it. I want more factories open,
twenty-four-seven production. I want every able body either slinging a rifle or building a nuke. Am I clear?”

“We’re on it, sir.”

Captain Carrow watched the distorted stern of the
Odysseus
as it accelerated away from Earth at incredible speed. His
Enterprise
was pouring on the power as well, but couldn’t hope to match what the Priminae engines were putting out.

The
Enterprise
was the only ship in the system that could come close, however, while maintaining a high level of stealth, so the job was theirs by default.

“Captain, enemy ships are changing vectors to pursue the
Odysseus
.”

“Well damn,” Carrow swore softly. “He was right.”

He wasn’t one of Weston’s fans or even remotely an admirer. In Carrow’s opinion, Weston was a reckless fool with a penchant for dime store heroics and a code of honor that was crafted right out of fiction instead of the real world. The man was also, however, one of the finest tactical minds in the Confederacy, and there was no one who contested that much at least.

Still, even with that in mind, Carrow had never expected the enemy to actually break their march on Earth in order to pursue
one
fleeing starship.

What the hell did he see?

Like the man or not, Carrow had to admit that sometimes he had a way of making anyone else feel a little inferior by comparison.

He sighed. “Contact engineering. I want more thrust, see if they can’t fine-tune the CM fields a bit. The
Odysseus
does
not
get outside our range of flight operations. Am I clear?”

“Aye sir!”

Well damn,
Eric thought, grinning nastily.
I was right
.

“Enemy fleet is vectoring in on our course, Captain.”

“Intercept?” he asked, though he was pretty sure he knew the answer.

“No sir,” Michelle said, a tinge of satisfaction in her own voice. “Pursuit.”

“They don’t want to catch us,” Steph said from where he was sitting at the helm. “They want to flush us, make us run for home.”

“How little they know,” Eric said. “Let’s thin their ranks, shall we?”

“I am ready, Capitaine,” Milla said softly from her position at weapons control.

Eric nodded, eyes on the time. “Stand by to clear our baffles and fire as the targets bear . . . execute Crazy Ivan in three minutes.”

Milla scrunched up her face, clearly confused as to the terminology, but she knew her own part in what was to come and didn’t need to understand what a “Crazy Ivan” was. “Yes Capitaine. We fire in three minutes.”

“Remember,” Captain Roberts glowered over his bridge, “aim
through
the swarm. Target the ships closer to the
Odysseus
.”

“Yes Captain.” His tactical officer nodded. “Targets selected. We’re sharing data with the other Heroics. We’re ready.”

Roberts nodded slowly. He knew that they were, but it was a hard moment and he was on edge. The
Odysseus
was leading the swarm away from Earth, but that still left them with over a
thousand
ships chasing down one Heroic Class vessel that had absolutely zero chance of winning an engagement.

She could outrun them, of course. There was nothing in the universe that matched a transition drive . . . or, if there was, he did
not
want to know about it. Transitions were bad enough, to be frank about it.

Running wouldn’t accomplish the mission, however, so he knew that Eric Weston wasn’t actually going to run.

That made the job of the Heroics all the more important. They had to thin the swarm as much as they could. It was unlikely in the extreme that they could give the
Odysseus
a real fighting chance, but damn it all to hell they were going to try.

“Stand by for artillery assault in two minutes,” he ordered.

“Aye sir. Clock started at two minutes.”

Sirens whined all across the New Mexican field. Men rushed all over the place like angry ants stirred from their nest. All around them the air felt still and dead as if the world itself had held its breath.

All of the activity was centered around a distant part of the facility, one that was locked off by layers and layers of gates, guard towers, and patrols. At the center of all that lay several large hangars that had been hastily converted into something resembling a cross between a mountaintop telescope and a 1950s science-fiction laser cannon.

The latter was actually the closer of the two comparisons, but only a small handful of people in the area actually knew that.

One of those was the army general in charge of the facility, Ethan Thomas, and he was not in a mood to be trifled with as the clock was counting down far faster than he liked.

“General, I’m telling you, this is incredibly risky,” the civilian supervisor was telling him for the twentieth time. “There are too many variables here that we can’t account for. The magnetic field alone is driving all of our simulations completely off any sense of predictability.”