by Evan Currie
Steph smiled, not quite laughing at the boy.
Being introduced to Odysseus had been an interesting experience for him, given that he’d been on the bridge when the boy made his grand entrance. Steph was too busy to react the way he might normally have. He’d also been unarmed, which would have made his normal response rather difficult as well. So he’d allowed the Marines to handle security while he kept most of his attention on flying the ship.
That had also afforded him the chance to observe and listen.
He’d been more surprised at how unsurprised Raze had seemed by it all. Though the boss had been, without any doubt, horrified, he hadn’t seemed surprised.
There was a story in that, one that Steph wanted to hear more about. So far, unfortunately, they’d been too busy with repairs and everything else for him to corner the commodore someplace where he could be informal enough to wrestle the truth out of him.
The boy who called himself Odysseus, though, was something very different.
Others shied away from the boy, but Steph didn’t see what the problem was. Sure, the mind-reading trick was a little creepy, but he’d flown with way creepier dudes in the past and considered them closer than family. Creepy was a human condition, and not a bad one in his mind.
One thing he’d learned that drove the boy crazy, though, was when the math was incomplete. Working with holes in his equations truly seemed to frustrate Odysseus, which was a really bad thing to be frustrated by in Steph’s opinion.
The universe was nothing but incomplete equations.
“You don’t need every variable to predict the future,” Steph said aloud. “You just need the big ones. Getting close is good enough, and the closer you can get the better your reaction time will be when the moment comes and you have to deal with the variables you couldn’t identify. Don’t let your obsession with perfection become the enemy of being good enough.”
Odysseus hummed slightly, not looking happy with the suggestion, before fading away.
Steph just shook his head and went back to work.
Odysseus was confused by his confusion.
Since awakening, he hadn’t been able to answer any of the haunting questions that swirled in his mind. He didn’t know what he was, and no one else did either. He thought hundreds of thoughts at the same time, many of them about his own existence, but none of them answered any of his questions.
Much of what he knew came from the computers that had been installed in . . . him?
He thought he was the ship, but he had no proof of that.
Proof seemed to matter to most of the people, he had realized very early on, and Odysseus had dedicated his time to finding proof of everything. To completing the equation.
Now, though, one of the people he . . . liked? Did he like anything?
Odysseus put that aside for a future examination.
One of the people whom he paid more attention to was telling him that proof wasn’t everything, and that confused and bothered him intensely. Why was “close enough” an acceptable response to anything?
None of it made any sense to him. It felt like the rules weren’t staying the same, and that was just wrong.
The rules were supposed to be locked in, references that anyone could look to in order to see where they stood. From protocol to basic laws of the universe, rules were supposed to be standards he could trust and use to determine his place in the universe.
Close enough?
It didn’t seem right to settle for close enough.
CHAPTER 5
AEV Autolycus, Deep Space
Morgan Passer, captain of the Auto, drifted idly in the microgravity environment of the ship’s officers’ lounge. He watched a movie playing on the large screen across from him, his uniform jacket floating beside him as he rubbed at his shoulder through a sweat-soaked T-shirt.
“Captain, reactor will be back up in five,” Daiyu Li announced as she swung into the room. “Doohan’s got the maintenance complete, just sealing up now.”
“Good.” Morgan reached up and grabbed a handle in the bulkhead above him. “It’s getting hot in here.”
The Autolycus was a Rogue Class starship, one of the first off the line after the invasion. Unlike Heroics, the smaller Rogues didn’t pack the power of a singularity core. The older fusion reactors had to be maintained regularly, and that meant all nonessential power systems needed to be shut down during the process.
Light-duty items like display screens could run off batteries with no issue, but heat exchangers were a major system that needed the reactor to run. Contrary to most expectations, cold wasn’t the biggest risk a starship faced in the vacuum of space. Vacuum was an excellent insulator, and starships were designed to protect against temperature extremes. Without heat exchanges to actively regulate the interior climate, a ship without power built up heat in a hurry.
Eventually, the vessel would have radiated it all away, of course, and the Auto would go cold. That event would have been years away, however, and the crew would have all baked to death long before it came to pass.
Morgan flipped his jacket back on and casually buttoned it up, glancing over in Li’s direction. “Are we ready to move when power comes back?”
“Yes Captain,” she answered instantly. “All ship systems are prepared—everything registers green.”
“Excellent, Commander,” he said, satisfied as he kicked himself off the bulkhead toward the door.
Li shifted aside as he floated past out into the corridor beyond, then followed in his wake.
The two pulled themselves into the command deck a few seconds later, just as power returned and the hum of life came back to the ship around them.
Morgan sighed in pleasure as the first hints of a cooling breeze touched his face, still warm but infinitely better than the still air they’d been enduring. He was far from the only one so affected.
The main computer array booted after finally taking over from the secondary systems that had been maintaining the ship, and all the big displays came slowly back to life around them as the pair buckled into the stations.
The vessel was sitting in a star system, the only living thing that existed in the hellish place, orbiting around a red giant primary at a safe distance. The King of Thieves had been brought out this far as part of Operation Prometheus and the ongoing mission to scout and investigate stellar anomalies for anything of value, or danger, to Earth and her allies.
This particular mission had been a bust. The anomalous stellar scans they got from the closest star had been caused by what appeared to be a collision between the celestial body and a stable black hole. The result had torn the star system to shreds, turning anything of interest into little more than rubble waiting to be swallowed by the monster that now sat at the center of the mess.
“Alright, power up the main drives,” Morgan ordered. “Li, you can tell the geeks to grab whatever scans they can on our way out. We’ve been here long enough.”
“Aye aye, Skipper,” the young lieutenant at navigation answered as the commander tapped a few commands into her console.
“Done, Captain. I expect they’ll be scanning right up until we transition out.”
Morgan chuckled. “I don’t doubt it. Let them have their fun, I suppose. This whole run has been a bust anyway. Ten stars, nothing but natural phenomena.”
“We cannot . . . what is the phrase . . . win the lotto every time?” Li asked.
“Close enough,” Morgan said. “And no, you can’t. And while I can’t help but wish for new things to help Earth, I’ll settle for not finding any more threats.” He laughed. “At least we’ve not given the chief any more reason to play with antimatter.”
Li shivered, and he didn’t blame her. He still did as well whenever the thought of the dreaded event came on him unexpectedly. No man should intentionally expose his own damn ship to antimatter, and he still experienced the occasional night terror over his vessel being in such dire straits.
“No doubt the chief is
saddened by that,” Li said, a smile playing at her lips as she collected herself. “He seems to enjoy his reputation.”
“Only man in the fleet to be banned from setting foot on the Odysseus, by Eric Weston himself no less,” Morgan said as the Auto rumbled to life around them, her drives heating up.
“Would that we could do the same,” Li responded, almost wistfully, earning another laugh from Morgan.
He knew that their conversation had been overheard, of course, since they hadn’t been trying to mask it in the least. Ribbing the chief was tradition now on the Auto, and probably would continue with whoever took over the job when Doohan retired. Some traditions inevitably survived the men who founded them.
“Drives are lit, Captain,” the helm officer announced. “All systems are go.”
“Alright.” Morgan leaned into the straps holding him to the seat. “Let’s be moving, then. Give me a course to our next star of interest.”
“Aye Skipper. Course is already plotted, loaded, and locked.”
“Well, kick the tires, Lieutenant.”
“Roger, Skipper. Lighting the fires.” The lieutenant responded just before the Auto rumbled deeply and they were all forced down into their seats as the ship began to smoothly accelerate upwell of the local star.
When the interior acceleration reached one gravity, the pressure evened off. Counter-mass systems powered up to keep it there as Morgan and the others unsnapped their restraint straps and stood up at the stations to stretch out their limbs. Gravity was a luxury on a Rogue, only present when they were burning for a new destination, and the crew had learned to take advantage when possible.
They hadn’t gone deep into the system once they recognized it was of no value, so the Auto only had a short climb to the transition point. After a few hours of burn, they were back to free fall while the last-second calculations were made for the jump.
“Skipper!”
Morgan twisted in the straps he was once more locked into, looking over to the signals station. “What is it, Ensign?”
“Tachyon pulse. Coded, sir, it’s one of ours,” she answered.
“To my station,” Morgan ordered. “Hold on transition.”
“Aye Skipper. Holding on transition,” the helmsman answered automatically.
Morgan got the signal on his station and ran it through the decoding software, frowning as he read through it.
“Well,” he said as he hummed in consideration, “isn’t that something?”
“What is it, Captain?” Li asked, leaning over in his direction.
Morgan flicked the message to her station, not bothering to answer. She’d get more out of reading it for herself. He instead looked up to see most of the command crew staring at him.
“New transition coordinates,” he ordered, “and a new mission. Signal general quarters and start running preparation drills as soon as we arrive. Looks like we’re scouting for more dangerous game from now on, people.”
Across a small yet oddly significant swath of the galaxy, a series of lone ships received similar calls and responded in kind. The Rogues shut down their current operations, closing up shop wherever they were, and immediately began climbing out of whatever system they were in.
Operation Prometheus was shutting down. The fires they’d stolen from the gods were blazing well now in human hands, and it was time for them to turn their focus on more mortal targets.
AEV Autolycus
The rendezvous system was unnamed by both Terran and Priminae sources.
There was a reason for that, of course. It was a dead system, no planets to speak of beyond a hot Jupiter orbiting the primary star every four days. The gas giant was so close that the sun’s gravity was sucking methane and hydrogen out of the atmosphere, lighting a ribbon of flame between the two that was stretched to breaking by the rapid orbit of the giant world.
Nothing other than sterile rock existed in the entire system, making it of no interest to anyone beyond a few of the more esoteric stellar physicists on board who were even then eagerly turning the scanners of the ship downwell in hopes of finding something that completely escaped Captain Passer’s imagination.
No doubt it would be important to someone, sometime, so he let them have at it as long as there was no need for the scanners to be used more practically.
“Transition signature . . . Hold on, Skipper.” The signals ensign frowned. “Multiple inbound transitions!”
“On-screen.” Morgan was calm. He had a better idea of what was going on than the ensign did.
“Closest signals will be live in . . . thirty seconds.”
Morgan waited patiently for the light from the newly arrived ships to make its way to the Auto’s scanners. When the first did show, the situation was as he expected.
“That’s the Jesse James, Skipper,” the ensign said a moment later. “And the Song Jiang just pulsed . . . They’re all Rogues.”
“It’s old home week,” Morgan said. “Prometheus just got a new job.”
AEV Boudicca
Captain Sandra Hyatt looked over the command deck of the Boudicca as it and the Bellerophon emerged from the solar corona of the Ranquil primary.
The pair of Heroics had worked together under the command of the Odysseus since they had sailed out of dry docks. In all that time they’d seen a fair few fights, and a lot of light-years, and now the pair would be sailing without the third sister of the trio.
Hyatt didn’t really know what to make of the issues the Odysseus was having. The idea that a starship could be haunted in this day and age struck her as simply ludicrous. But something was obviously going on. She’d seen the state of the Odysseus and read the initial reports, and there was no way the ship still needed weeks or months of repairs.
Whatever was going on, however, clearly both the commodore and admiral had signed off on the orders, and that was all she needed at the moment. For now, the Bell and the Bo had their marching orders.
Hyatt contented herself with looking over the state of her command deck and took comfort and pleasure in its smooth-running operations.
Lieutenant Commander Samuels was in the “pit,” the sunken section that housed the helm controls, moving almost languidly as she guided the Boudicca through the coronal mass of the star and into open space. She made maneuvering the big ship look like child’s play despite the relative proximity of the Bellerophon and their Rogue escorts.
Like most of the pilots currently commanding the helm and navigation departments on Heroic Class ships, Samuels was a former member of the elite squadron known as the Archangels, something that had made Hyatt cringe more than a few times in their previous missions when the young woman opted to maneuver the massive ship like a twin-reactor air superiority fighter in a dogfight. They’d come through every scrap more or less intact so far, which made up for a lot she supposed.
“Signal from the Bell, ma’am,” Hyatt’s first officer, Commander Cedric Simmons, told her as he approached from the left side. “Course updates. We’re to immediately make for the heliopause, orders from the admiral and commodore to follow just prior to transition.”
Hyatt nodded absently. “Send the updates to Samuels.”
The short, dark-haired man nodded as well, turning back to his task as she wondered just what it was all about. She could make a few educated guesses, of course. The last furball they’d had with the Imperials made it clear that this new war was heating up.
The Empire clearly had no interest in a cold war.
With the limited intelligence she had access to, which was nearly everything Earth knew as far as she was aware, Hyatt had little doubt that they were again on the wrong side of a power differential. Whatever tricks the admiral and commodore had pulled out against the Drasin were unlikely to be enough against a stellar empire the size of what they seemed to be looking at now.
Normally, the move now would be to talk. Even capitulate if that was what it took to buy time.
Unfortunately, the Empire had no interest in tal
king or, apparently, fighting a war of maneuver. Their idea of a reconnaissance probe was to barrel on headlong into enemy territory and just start destroying things until they could turn up something of value.
The fact that it worked for them just made Hyatt grit her teeth all the more.
That sheer lack of tactical acumen should never be rewarded, she thought fiercely.
Unfortunately, it seemed that the Empire was happy to spend lives until they achieved their goals, and that was a sound enough though wholly callous tactic if you had the lives to spend. Earth could never pull that sort of crap, she was well aware. Such a strategy would work well in the short term—that had been proven multiple times in history—but the current world governments were too open and exposed by the press to survive that kind of idiocy in the long term.
Even a relative press blackout on the actions of Black Navy operations, largely imposed by a simple lack of ability to get reporters anywhere near fleet operations, wouldn’t impede news from reaching the masses. In fact the blackout might actually enhance the effect, since the press would likely start speculating as losses began to filter back through the upper echelons of military circles.
Sooner or later the numbers would leak and public relations would degrade in short order.
Running a war the way the Empire seemed to would be political suicide on Earth, which was likely for the best in her opinion, though there were times she could wish otherwise. In a drawn-out war, public fatigue would come into play and begin to reduce support that was desperately needed if the Earth wanted to mount and maintain a credible defense.
We need more time.
Time, however, was one thing that it seemed they no longer had.
AEV Bellerophon
“All ships on course, formation solid, sir.”
Jason Roberts nodded curtly, handing off a digital pad to his assistant. “Thank you, Commander Little. Proceed on course. Inform me when Ranquil control issues our transit paths.”
