Odysseus Ascendant (Odyssey One Book 7)

by Evan Currie

  The damages to his own dreadnought, the Liann, were more a matter of pride and image. Even he knew that, but Jesan could play those off once the mission was accomplished. The story of a worthy enemy felled despite great risk would play well in the Imperial Court.

  They would have to work out a better countermeasure for those irritating interceptors, however, as they were almost entirely untouchable once they were in close. Nothing on the fleet was designed to track and kill a target moving that fast, that close to a ship. Generally speaking, nothing lived to get that close to an Imperial warship.

  In the meantime, however, he had a more important duty to attend to.

  “The enemy vessels are out of range?” He looked over to where his second was monitoring the scanners.

  “Yes, My Lord. They’ve withdrawn from effective combat distances but remain within scanner range.”

  “Good. Then let them observe this. Signal the fleet. Inform them that we are advancing on the Oather world.”

  AEV Odysseus

  Milla Chans looked up with some level of satisfaction. “Stephan and the remaining drones are on board and secured, Capitaine.”

  Eric was briefly distracted. “Remaining drones?”

  “We lost two,” she answered. “They were inside a beam rather than measuring its corona. Bad positioning, I am afraid.”

  Eric winced. The antimatter drones were a fair chunk of investment in time and materials. Losing them was costly, though not as costly as what they’d prevented overall, he was quite certain.

  “Make a note that we need to build a simpler drone for picket duty,” he said, eyes straying back to the screens as they watched the Imperial Fleet descend through the gravity well of the local star, heading for the colonized world within.

  He hoped that the people there had been able to get to shelters, because if the Imperials followed the protocol they had set into place at their last stop, there would be a great deal of destruction raining down on that world shortly.

  He glanced to his left, where a display showed various captains networked in with him. He had the screens mostly muted, enough that the sound of their arguing wouldn’t disrupt bridge operations, but for the most part there was nothing he could say. The Priminae captains were, justifiably, in a rage. Even knowing there was nothing they could do didn’t help.

  Some were arguing that they should intervene, others that there was no point in enduring the torture of watching the proceedings when there was nothing that could be done. He let them go on because it was a touchy affair and they weren’t disrupting his crew.

  He could hear the arguments and finally cut in with his rank override, silencing them all.

  “Shut up. Now,” he growled, low enough not to attract too much attention from his own bridge crew. “We are going to sit here, and we are going to watch this. We will do the first because there is nothing to be gained by sacrificing every man and woman in this fleet trying to stop the Empire, only to have them go ahead and do whatever they intend to anyway. We will do the second because we have failed in our duty to those people, and while there is nothing we can do about that, we can and will stand witness to our failure.”

  He looked to where the Imperial ships were closing in on the planet, just entering the orbitals. It had happened already, hours ago of course, but they were only getting the light from the approach now.

  As Eric watched the Imperials start to bombard the planet, he presumed they were targeting infrastructure based on Roberts’ report, but it would be hours before the combined computers took all the signals they’d managed to gather and compiled them into something for proper analysis.

  “Remember this,” Eric said quietly, though no longer pitched so low that his own crew couldn’t hear him. “This is what happens when we fail.”

  Silence was all that answered him. Not even a breath could be heard as he watched, refusing to take his eyes off the screen. Finally, the initial bombardment was over. Eric took a breath and looked down to his left, his gaze landing on the figure of Odysseus standing just beyond the camera that was focused on him.

  “We are human, sometimes we fail,” he said, looking at Odysseus rather than the camera, “but because of the power that has been entrusted to all of us, when we fail . . . the effects are devastating. Do not forget that—never forget that. The power we have is a sword with as many edges as hands to wield it, and when misused, either intentionally or through no fault of our own, it will cut regardless, and people will die. That is the burden of duty. We are not civilians who, for the most part, only hurt themselves and perhaps a handful of others when they fail. If you cannot handle this truth, then let someone else take your place, because I promise you this much . . . there will be worse to come, no matter what happens with this Empire. The galaxy is not a nice place. We know this too well.”

  No one spoke as he took a breath, forcing himself to relax. “Honor the dead and the suffering of the survivors by working hard, that failure may come as rarely as possible, but never pretend to perfection because that is the path to worse than failure. It is the path to dishonor.”

  “Man, Raze,” Steph said dryly from where he had been standing as Eric walked off the bridge, “sometimes you can be a pontificating son of a bitch, you know that, right?”

  Eric glanced up at his friend, who was still wearing his sweat-soaked flight suit.

  “Tell me something I didn’t figure out a long time ago,” he replied wearily. “And what the hell are you doing up here? You should be getting some downtime in case we need to redeploy.”

  “Not going to happen, and you know it,” Steph said. “No way we can reload on antimatter anytime soon, not with the mess everything else is in, and there aren’t enough drones to deploy a decent sensor picket. They’re working on more, but it’ll be days at least.”

  “They’ll have their days,” Eric said as he continued past, Steph following. “There’s nothing we can do here now except watch and wait to see where they go next.”

  They entered the lift and the doors closed, causing Eric to bring his hand up to his face. “God you’re rank, Steph. Next time shower before stepping on my bridge, okay?”

  Steph just flipped him off, causing Eric to roll his eyes. Technically it was insubordination, but he was well aware that his friend knew better than to pull that sort of crap when others were present.

  “So why are we just floating around out here?” Steph asked finally. “Haven’t even gone to stealth?”

  “Not going to,” Eric said. “I want them to see us, to know we’re out here.”

  “Why?” Steph asked, frowning.

  “You’ll see if it works, and if it doesn’t it costs us nothing,” Eric told him as the lift arrived on the habitation deck. “I need some time alone, Steph, and you need a shower. Go, get cleaned up. We have a lot more work ahead of us.”

  “Aye aye, Skipper.”

  CHAPTER 24

  Allied Earth Command, Cheyenne Mountain Facility

  Admiral Gracen winced as the map was updated, based on the report pulsed in from the Odysseus via a relay through Ranquil.

  They hadn’t expected any different, of course, as there was no real chance of the small fleet they’d assembled being able to hold off the massive numbers on the Imperial side of things, but it was still unpleasant to see the official news hit the board.

  When the Empire had redirected to the Doran System, that had taken the wind out of a lot of the Priminae sails on Ranquil as far as she could gather. While not a core planet in the least, it was on a much more direct-line course into the Priminae’s more populous worlds, and that meant that the population of Doran was commensurately higher than any previous targets. They were getting close to the heart of the Colonies now, and it was beginning to show.

  She didn’t know how that population was at the moment, and could only wish the best to them.

  At least they had a bit of a warning, though in a few days there are limits on what can be done.

  Now e
veryone was waiting to see where the Imperial Fleet would go next.

  It was a hard thing, really, being forced into a purely defensive and reactionary position. Gracen preferred to take the initiative and make moves that the enemy had to react to. Fighting a defensive war meant that you didn’t have the power to take the fight to the enemy, and that always meant that you were going to lose a lot of people, both soldiers and civilians.

  She had endorsed Weston’s current strategy, one of the few viable ones available to them at the time, but she despised it deeply because she didn’t have to look far in history to see the plan in action. Playing the enemy for time by sacrificing territory was an often-winning strategy, it was true, but territory was never the only thing you had to sacrifice when you employed it.

  A lot of people are going to die, she thought with certainty as she looked around the big control room and wondered how many of her colleagues would have had the guts to back the commodore’s suggestion if Terran humans were on the chopping block?

  A lot fewer of them, she suspected. A great deal fewer.

  She doubted that the Priminae would be so quick to consider such a move in the future either. Not once the butcher’s bill officially came due. It was one thing to see the numbers on a sheet, another to walk through the aftermath of such a move. Sacrificing worlds to the Empire in order to draw them out, playing for time . . . a solid strategic move, but one that was cold.

  She shifted her focus to another feed that she was monitoring, an FTL link to the heliobeam world discovered by Captain Passer and the Autolycus on their first mission for Project Prometheus, but there was nothing new from that source.

  Ask me for anything but time, words that could be the mantra of any strategist in history, she thought.

  Weston was doggedly going to buy her every bit of time he could. She just hoped it would be enough.

  Humans were such fascinating creatures.

  The vast majority had no idea what was being decided in this isolated room, of course, and so life went on for them without pause or consideration. But they were not entirely ignorant. Gaia knew that the threat of attack from beyond the atmosphere was now an ingrained communal nightmare for effectively the entire species.

  Sadly, the incidents of violent arachnophobia had increased significantly as well, given the physical resemblance between the Drasin and spiders. The similarities were only on the surface, of course, but that was enough for a lot of people.

  Spiders were having a bad time on Earth since the invasion, which was in turn leading to all sorts of other issues with insect populations increasing unchecked. Honestly, humans were just as frustrating as they were fascinating.

  Still, for the moment, she was happy to focus on the fascination.

  She stood just behind Gracen’s position, amused by the admiral’s decision to largely ignore her presence as much as she was irritated by many of the others’ actions and thoughts. As the admiral privately believed, Gaia could attest that many of those in the room were just happy that the fighting was happening as far away from Earth as possible.

  She could understand, if she were to be honest. She was quite happy with that herself. Where she took offense was the secret joy some of the people present had over the deaths of any “aliens,” whether they were allies or not.

  They were more politic than to admit such things, of course, but that hid nothing from her.

  She had seen many men and women like that over the years. Most of them were kept in check by the need to be perceived as noble, but their rot thrived under the surface. Occasionally men would somehow gain power despite having no skill at hiding their feelings whatsoever, which normally was for the best but occasionally turned very badly, very quickly.

  It was part of the human condition that she herself had once felt strongly aligned with, but as time progressed and the attitudes of people with it, her thoughts moved even more quickly, since she had the ingrained understanding that all people on Earth were merely that . . . people. It was no giant leap from that to the realization that the populations of other worlds such as Doran, the poor world the Empire was occupying, were no different. People were people, the galaxy over.

  She had been so used to being the all-seeing goddess of her sphere, however, that the knowledge that there was so much more out there had come as something of a shock. Then the invasion had hammered that home with decisive force.

  She wondered how Odysseus was faring. There was a powerful draw in that knowledge, and she looked to the map with the flags lit up, showing the last known location of the ship known colloquially as the Warrior King.

  There was so much more to the universe than even she had known.

  Priminae Central Command, Ranquil

  Tanner looked on grimly, a twisting hook in his gut. The report from the ships deployed to Doran had not been unexpected, of course. There really had been no other option than to let the Imperials into that system to do as they would.

  That did not make it any easier to see the colors change on the map and know that an entire world had fallen to invasion and was even then likely being bombarded from orbit. The only consolation he could take from the conquest was that at least it didn’t involve the Drasin.

  The colony on Doran would likely still exist, and survivors would probably be found if a liberation could be mounted.

  Whether that day would be forthcoming was the question that gnawed at him.

  The Forge was not only building new ships and materials as quickly as possible but also building new facilities to construct those new ships and materials. Given time, Tanner didn’t doubt that between the Priminae facilities and those being manufactured by the Terrans, they could eventually put together a force that would make the Empire reconsider whether it was truly worth the costs to wage this war of theirs. But time was not a commodity in easy supply.

  He knew better than almost anyone else just how long it would take to mount a credible defense against the Imperial forces they knew of, to say nothing of what else was hiding in the wings. Whatever else Commodore Weston could manage, there was just no chance of him delaying the Imperial forces even remotely that long.

  There was already talk of surrender to forestall the destruction associated with an all-out invasion, but Rael doubted whether that would work. The two worlds already bombarded had no defenses to speak of, and that had not deterred the Imperials from their course of action. Tanner supposed it was possible they might want to keep the more developed assets of Ranquil intact as he would in their place, but so far they hadn’t done anything as he would choose.

  If he were ordered to surrender, he likely wouldn’t object much, at least not once the fleet was in the system. He just didn’t think surrender would accomplish much beyond making the Imperials’ job a little easier in the short term and allowing his people to further study the behavior of the Empire during nonviolent conquest.

  Rael wondered if he was presiding over the end of Priminae culture, however, and just what would happen after all of what he knew disappeared.

  If that should come to pass, Nero will find out just how well his forces are trained, if nothing else.

  Calling that a cold comfort would be giving it far too much consideration, but there was something about the idea of those men, who were even then preparing for the worst, that left him with a shard of hope. He prayed that they would never be needed, but Tanner was glad that they were there.

  The insanity was growing beyond all reasonable proportions.

  Since the Drasin had shown up and brought the Terrans’ attention with them, everything was on a constant headlong rush into oblivion and Central was not happy. It had taken millennia to carefully prune back the prone-to-violence aspects of the Priminae, forming them into a harmonious culture that respected the universe instead of desiring to subjugate it.

  This hadn’t been his plan, of course, but rather a desire of the people when they fled persecution by those that he now suspected had later formed the Empire. His actio
ns had been an extension of their group ideals.

  Ideals that were now being destroyed with every subsequent event that passed.

  The first time he encountered then Captain Weston, Central had known that he was facing a decision between survival and extinction.

  There was no choice, of course. He was human to his core in a way that even humans were not. His instincts were human, his experiences were more human than any single person could come close to being . . . and humans were survivors.

  He knew he couldn’t sacrifice the Priminae on an altar of their ideals.

  Reality would always win when faced with an ideal.

  It hurt so very deeply, however, to watch those long-held ideals begin to crumble. Central rather thought that it might not have been so bad if the destruction had come from within. If the Priminae had realized that the ideals were not what they wanted, or that they would not work. That would have been painful, but less traumatic.

  To have them work, however, and then see the culture torn down by . . . barbarians from the outside . . .

  Central was furious in ways he could not easily remember being.

  CHAPTER 25

  Lord’s Own Dreadnought, Empress Liann, Doran Orbit

  Jesan looked down on the world below as he stood at the center of his command deck, the great billows of smoke pouring from the locations of the kinetic strikes that had ravaged the world’s infrastructure. Surface forces were being deployed even as he watched, the flames of landers scorching through the atmosphere as they descended to the planet below.

  “Status of our friends out there?” he asked, not looking around.