by Evan Currie
The design was simple and elegant—and terrified the engineers like few other things they’d seen.
Milla calmly walked them through the assembly steps while the Odysseus’ automated fabrication systems built the parts they hadn’t transhipped from the Forge. Mostly these were space-frame pieces, along with structure and custom containment arrays, easily fabricated once the designs had been finalized.
When she was done, Milla turned and set her eyes on the part of the project she had chosen for herself.
Odysseus quietly observed the work, standing off to one side but remaining visible. He could, of course, be everywhere on the ship without being seen. In a way he was, for there was nothing he could do to shut off the thoughts that formed in his mind in every given moment. Each plan, fantasy, musing, and daydream of each and every one of the ship’s eight hundred and forty-three crewmembers were part of his consciousness.
It was a strange sensation, or he believed it was at first, to think thoughts that were . . . less than complimentary toward himself. The idea that perhaps he should be killed passed through his mind every few seconds when someone was in any way thinking about him. Even the captain caused such thoughts to materialize in Odysseus’ mind.
However, he also felt the firm belief that all life had value and that his right to existence was inviolate right up until the moment when he chose to violate someone else’s rights to the same. That too came from the captain, among others.
The dichotomy of the thoughts were such that Odysseus didn’t even try to straighten them out within his own mind, assuming anything could be entirely considered to be his “own.” Humans had self-destructive thoughts with a frequency that Odysseus suspected would horrify most. From actual suicidal thoughts, thankfully rare, to the occasional “what if” questions as they looked into the singularity core—which even Odysseus found exceedingly disturbing—humans thought about ways of killing themselves far more often than they thought about how to kill him.
Perhaps a cold comfort of sorts, but it was what Odysseus had for the moment.
Humans were a destructive sort, seemingly by nature. There was nothing personal about it.
So Odysseus largely did what humans did and ignored those passing thoughts, letting them slide by while giving them no weight. He didn’t know if the process was healthy, to be honest, despite the musing of several PhDs among the crew who had opinions on the subject. Their thoughts being part of his mental processing helped him better comprehend what he was doing, just not whether it was a good idea.
With those issues safely put aside, Odysseus focused on the drive that he had inherited from his crew, which was deeper than any of those passing thoughts. The men and women on board were focused, deeply intent on the defense of a world he had no personal memory of having seen.
Earth.
Odysseus had viewed the digital records, but he preferred the idealized image that most of the crew held in their minds. A sparkling white-and-blue jewel set against a black infinity, Earth was at the core of an entire belief system that he found himself entrenched in. He was enough of a philosopher to wonder if this was what children brought up in deeply religious families experienced. But like his namesake, Odysseus was a warrior at his core and matters of philosophy were best left for peacetime.
There was a time for philosophy, but this was not that time.
The crewmembers had little time to think, each department head conducting drills and pushing them to peak efficiency, mostly as a means of keeping everyone busy. Too many bad and questionable things were preying on the crew’s fears and concerns. Leaving them with time to think about such affairs would be asking for nothing but trouble.
Eric, for the most part, left his officers to handle their departments while he oversaw as much of the various efforts under way as he could.
The Odysseus was already worked up to about as high a level of efficiency as could reasonably be managed, such that under normal circumstances he’d have stepped on any new efficiency drills just for concerns that they would inadvertently blunt the already finely honed skills of the crew. With as many distractions and worries as were floating about, however, he was willing to sacrifice a few points of efficiency from fatigue if it kept the crew from worrying about the “haunted” ship, or the damned flotilla bearing down on them all.
Worrying about those things was his job.
Eric checked the time stamp on his personal system, noting that the Big E and any other reinforcements the admiral could scrounge together would shortly be arriving in system. With those, as well as what ships the Priminae could supply, the Odysseus would move out to enforce the Bell and the Bo and Priminae frontline vessels.
It wouldn’t be enough, not without several major and minor miracles, but the line had to be held. Failing to do so would mean falling to an Empire that was willing to unleash beasts like the Drasin on innocent worlds.
It was more than merely unthinkable, it was intolerable.
Eric pushed those thoughts away. He had to avoid falling into the same trap he was working so hard to keep his crew from. Worrying about the enemy wouldn’t solve the problem of their approach. Only working on solutions could do that.
He called up the latest from Milla’s drone project, checking the general status reports from the different groups involved. Most of the work was continuing apace, with space frames being turned out as fast as the ship’s fab units could manage and propulsion and control systems basically dropped in without issue.
The antimatter and transition-cannon designs were a little trickier, particularly since testing couldn’t exactly be done while the drones were on the Odysseus.
Only one man had ever been so mind-numbingly insane as to expose his own damned ship to antimatter, and Eric had personally ordered that he never be allowed anywhere near the Odysseus. Chief Doohan from the Autolycus was a stone-cold badass, of that there was no doubt, but Eric didn’t want the man within two light-minutes of his ship.
Luckily, as commodore of his task force, he had a lot to say about it.
Eric shivered, just thinking about the mission reports filed by the Auto’s Captain Passer. An induced antimatter enema for the ship might have topped the cake, but the bizarre star gun built into an entire alien world, albeit a small one, that was populated by dragons . . .
I thought we got the strange missions.
He set aside those thoughts, cursing his tendency to get sidetracked while simultaneously realizing it meant that he was getting tired and mentally fatigued. He closed down the files and rose from his station.
“Commander,” he said to Miram, who was working across the way, “you have the bridge. I’m going to check on some of the side projects. If the Enterprise arrives, let me know.”
“Aye Captain. I have the bridge,” Heath said automatically. “I’ll have you paged if the Big E arrives in system.”
“No need for that. It’ll be hours before we rendezvous anyway,” Eric said. “Just send a notification to my systems.”
“Yes sir.”
“Thank you, Commander. I’ll be back shortly,” he said as he left.
Eric was silent as he stepped onto the open decks where the engineers had taken over, assembling the space frames Milla had designed and quickly installing all the off-the-shelf components they could while the final designs for the more esoteric pieces were put through their paces in simulations before real-world testing could be completed. They were rushing everything faster than he would normally be comfortable with, but when you were up against the wall, you did what you could with what you had.
He spotted Odysseus, also silently looking over the work, and briefly wondered what the young intelligence was thinking. As if that was a talisman to summon the boy—and Eric supposed it likely was—Odysseus turned and marched in his direction, looking like something out of a historical documentary.
Eric wondered curiously whether actual hoplite soldiers marched like that, or if what he was seeing was the result of modern exp
ectations.
“Captain,” Odysseus said formally as he came to a stop beside Eric’s position.
“Odysseus.” Eric returned the respect. “How are things progressing?”
“They appear to be moving along as expected, so far,” the boy replied, his formal tone bringing a twitch to Eric’s lips as he tried to keep from smiling.
Just the thought seemed to put Odysseus out slightly, though, and the rigid soldier vanished to be replaced by the young boy.
“Did I speak improperly?” Odysseus asked, his voice just a little plaintive.
“No, I’m sorry.” Eric chuckled, not able to keep it in any longer. “It has to do with your apparent age and how people perceive children who act overly grown up.”
Odysseus pouted slightly, looking down at his body. “I don’t understand why I am in this form. I’m immaterial. Shouldn’t I be able to choose what people see?”
“We rarely get to choose how other people see us, Odysseus,” Eric said softly, “however much we might try. Don’t worry too much about how you look. Just focus on what you want to become in the future.”
“I am a warrior, I will be a warrior.”
“There are warriors . . . and then there are warriors, Odysseus,” Eric said with a very slight frown. “But Odysseus was more than a warrior in the epic, I hope you know.”
“I do. He was also a king.”
“And a father,” Eric said, “and a navigator, a sea captain, a diplomat when necessary, and a clever man who knew that fighting was not always the solution he should seek. He was also foolish and arrogant, a man who knew the gods existed and yet chose to mock them anyway. The Romans knew him as the liar Odysseus, a man who shirked his duty. The Greeks revered him as a cultural hero. If he existed in reality, he was probably all of these things. People are complicated.”
Odysseus looked down, his face a mask of confusion. “But . . . I am named after him. Should I not model myself after him?”
“Take what you like of his story, aspire to that, but don’t try to be anyone other than the very best you that can be managed,” Eric said. “We don’t become heroes or legends, Odysseus. We take one step at a time, solve each problem as it arises, and we let the rest handle itself as it will. We can’t control how we’re seen, but we can control how we see.”
“I do not understand,” Odysseus admitted slowly.
“You will, and probably sooner than later, so don’t worry about it for now,” Eric responded as he refocused his attention across the deck and winced involuntarily. “Ouch. Steph is going to kill me.”
“What?” Odysseus looked up, seemingly distracted enough to have initially missed Eric’s reaction and thoughts. He followed the captain’s gaze, tuning himself back into the thoughts around him, and saw what had prompted that reaction. “Oh. Is that going to be as bad as I believe it to be?”
“Steph is going to blow his top,” Eric confirmed, smiling a little ruefully, “but I gave her blanket authorization.”
Milla and a small crew of engineer ratings had swarmed over Steph’s Archangel and had already succeeded in ripping the twin power plants right out of the airframe with the overhead-loading gantry. She was intent on welding in the framework to drop a Priminae shuttle warp core in the reactor’s place, which was a neat trick. If it worked out, he would probably get her to mod his own fighter.
He was plenty glad that she wasn’t experimenting on his, though.
“You will need a pilot for that,” Odysseus pointed out.
“Yup, and there’s only one on board I trust with it besides myself. I hope Steph has trained his department well, because at least one Archangel is going to taste vacuum again soon.”
Miram Heath looked up when the soft alarm chime sounded, checking the computer automatically without pausing in her work.
It was a proximity alarm tied to the long-range scanners, alerting her to the arrival of a small squadron of Priminae Heroics. They were expecting more of the same over the next few days, while the Odysseus completed its official task of working back up to fighting form and, unofficially, worked to get everyone used to the presence of the deus ex machina that now inhabited the ship.
Like most everyone on board, she had her reservations concerning Odysseus, but Miram had to admit that moments arose when she looked forward to what the entity would become with some level of anticipation. She knew that she was just seeing mere hints of what he was capable of, and she was already impressed.
Odysseus could interface with the ship’s computers, analyze information through the eyes of every member of the crew, provide intelligence on any person who stepped foot on the deck of the big ship . . . She truly suspected that was only the very tip of the iceberg when dealing with Odysseus.
Ultimately, she had no doubt that he could do great things. She was just terrified of the mistakes he could make along the way. Odysseus had already gotten a lot of good men and women killed, and he’d really only woken up and tried to live up to the expectations the crew placed on his name. His excitement at the prospect of battle was the sort of thing only a child could have truly emulated, which proved neatly that while the intelligence might have all the crewmembers’ thoughts, it did not have their experience.
The people lost in that headlong rush at the enemy were a hard lesson, or she hoped they were at least. If the boy shrugged the lesson off too easily, then the great things he would inevitably accomplish in the future might well be terrible things too. There was no moral compass to greatness, sadly.
She knew he had the one inside him; she just prayed he had both.
Another chime distracted her from her line of thoughts, this time slightly different. She looked over to the repeater screen she had tied in to the scanner station, and her eyes widened as she recognized the transponder codes.
“Well, well, welcome to the war,” she said to the screen, shaking her head slightly. “Not sure what you’ll be able to do, but somehow I feel a little better with the Enterprise in the fray.”
Miram smiled tightly, eyes darting about the screen as she noted the rest of the icons. The admiral had come through, with a dozen more Rogues appearing and two Heroics that had been assigned to Home Fleet defense.
The Commodore will be pleased, she thought. The Geronimo and the Chin Shih would significantly add to the power they could bring to bear. She entered the date into the system and copied it to the commodore, settling back to return her focus to her tasks at hand. The ship was ready. The crew was ready. She just hoped Odysseus was ready.
Whether he was or not, however, time was up.
The warrior king was going to war.
AEV Enterprise, Ranquil System
“All systems green, the ship is good to go, Skipper.”
James knew without doubt that he had to have a sickly green look to his face, but he stoically refused to acknowledge its existence as he stiffly nodded.
“Thank you, Ensign,” he told the young woman at the ship’s communications center. “Secure the vessel from transition alert.”
They’d transitioned into the system some time earlier, but as it had been their first transition in some time, he had maintained alert while all systems were properly checked. The Enterprise had taken its place in the line of battle that was now loitering in the outer Ranquil System, and while she was a small ship, even compared to the Rogues, he’d be damned to hell if she came up short in any way that mattered.
The two Heroics the admiral had shaken loose, including the Shih (he was stunned that she’d managed to convince the Block to give up one of their best ships to the cause), took up the center of the formation. The massive vessels were surrounded by a dozen Rogues and several dozen collier vessels with supplies and munitions for the task force.
All in all, over a hundred ships had just entered the Priminae’s main star system, loaded for bear and looking for targets.
Unfortunately, from what they had on the enemy, targets would shortly be in plentiful supply.
“Si
gnal from the Odysseus,” the communications officer said, looking up. “She welcomes us to Ranquil and attaches rendezvous coordinates, sir.”
“Send them to the helm, Ensign,” James said. “We’re here to do a job.”
“Aye aye, Skipper.”
The Enterprise was shortly shifting course along with the rest of the formation, keeping the ships to the edge of the heliosphere as they awaited the arrival of the Odysseus and her Priminae companions. James eyed the telemetry that showed the formation rising up from the Ranquil primary’s gravity well on course to meet them, and couldn’t help but wonder why the Odysseus was separated from her task group.
The official story wasn’t unlikely, but something didn’t ring true about it to him either.
It wasn’t hard to believe that Weston had managed to take the brunt of the fighting in such a way as to more severely damage the Odysseus, but the repair times in the report seemed like overkill for anything short of building an entirely new ship. Since he was pretty certain that hadn’t happened, James figured there was more going on than he’d been told.
“The Odysseus and escorts will rendezvous with us in four hours, sir.”
“Thank you, Ensign. I suppose we just get to relax a little and wait,” James said as he smiled.
Some things in the service just never changed.
Hurry up and wait, my boys, hurry up and wait.
AEV Odysseus
Steph reread his orders again, uncertain what to make of them.
He certainly wasn’t going to object, of course. If the commodore wanted him flight checked on the Double A platform, that was nothing but good news to him. It did arouse a certain suspicious curiosity, however, since he was well aware that there was not a damn thing an Archangel could do against what the Imperial Fleet was likely to throw in their direction.
What are you up to, Raze?
Steph reserved some simulator time before doing anything else, though he was relatively certain he could qualify. It was never a bad thing to brush off a little of the rust before a qual flight run. Then he queried the computer for a location of the captain.
