by Evan Currie
He moved on, turning his focus from the actions of his own crew to the reports coming in from the other vessels in the local squadrons of the sector fleet.
So far all was well.
They would have to rendezvous with the remaining squadrons, reforming the fleet before they moved on into Priminae territory, but that would be relatively simple.
Dealing with fleet officers always was, especially compared to Imperial politicians, at least in his experience. He didn’t have authority to execute Imperial politicians, for one thing, which always tended to keep people’s heads pointed in the right direction.
Jesan finally settled into his own station, surrounded by the reports from every ship in the fleet, though with only the squadron commander’s ships presented prominently in his displays. He wiped them all away with a gesture, instead bringing up the reports from Captain Aymes and Navarch Misrem.
Those detailed reports had brought this situation more fully to his attention. There was so much in the Oather sector that had caught his eye once the fleet elements stationed there started actually sending real reports back too. Initially, during the Drasin part of the campaign, reports had been sparse and vague. Only after the entire operation descended into chaos and other fleet elements were assigned did anything resembling useful reports make it back to his station.
Someone had been hiding a lot about that operation from the start.
One more problem to deal with after this is all over.
On the surface of the reports, of course, the anomalous species was utterly fascinating. Any group that could field a stealth vessel as clearly powerful as that ship had been was simply not to be underestimated, no matter what anyone else believed. That was, in part, why he was ending this game now rather than give them any more time to prepare their forces for fighting Imperial incursions.
One world. Amazing.
Of course, the intelligence could be faulty, in which case they would be facing more of a fight than he anticipated. Even in that case, though, he should have more than sufficient force to end the conflict once and for all.
Once the battle was won, he would clean up this mess he’d inherited, bottom to top.
Someone had been inexcusably sloppy in setting the action against the Oathers into play. Once he made certain that there wouldn’t be any undue consequences to the Empire, he would have to track the guilty party down and ensure that the culprit never had an opportunity to be so sloppy again.
On Her Majesty’s orders.
CHAPTER 7
Forge Facility, Ranquil, AEV Odysseus
All systems on the Heroic Class starship were now into the green.
In fact, many systems were performing well in excess of their original specifications. This was partly due to improvements that had been made since the big ship had been built, but also had to do with how rushed the construction had been initially.
All of this was great news, but for Eric Weston it was also a headache he didn’t need.
The Odysseus was fit for duty, physically. Mentally and socially was another story, and he had no idea how he was going to put any of that into his reports. In the short term they were fudging a lot of the official paperwork, using the time to tweak systems in ways they’d wanted to for a while.
That would only keep things running along for a little while, though, and he was running out of places to tweak.
I’m going to have to take her out, at least for a shakedown cruise. Eric knew that, but he really didn’t want to push either his crew or his ship at this point.
The crew were still getting used to the presence of Odysseus, and the young entity was nothing if not curious and inquisitive. He had a bad habit of popping up over people’s shoulders, asking questions that they didn’t know the answer to, and then looking disappointed when they couldn’t respond with anything resembling a true answer. He was driving many of the ship’s experts, some of the smartest people in their fields, completely around the bend.
The hell of it was that Eric understood why Odysseus was doing just that. The questions that the crew knew the answers to, well, so did Odysseus, by definition. So why would he ever bother asking questions someone could answer?
Unfortunately, that led to frustrations even with the people who were inclined to be tolerant of the entity. For Odysseus, Eric supposed it had to be just as frustrating, if from a different angle.
He knew the boy was aware that he wouldn’t be getting an answer when he asked the question. The boy . . . entity . . . no, frankly, Eric had to think of him as a boy. Nothing else made sense in his head.
The boy wasn’t looking for answers, from what Eric could tell. He was looking for engagement on the question.
Nudging people with queries was his way of shaping thinking in the direction he wanted it to go, and Eric did understand that, but Odysseus needed to figure out a less intrusive way of handling his business or he would drive people away. Already Eric had received multiple transfer requests that, under normal circumstances, he would have approved immediately. As things stood, however, there was nowhere to transfer staff to, so whether people were happy or not was going to have to be a secondary concern for a while. The Odysseus needed to be active.
Eric blew out a long breath.
He got up from his desk, straightening his uniform.
We have a little while before the Enterprise arrives. It’s time for a shakedown tour.
Odysseus watched, or perhaps “experienced” was a better word, every person on board the ship as they went about their work. Dreams from the sleepers on board were his idle moments of drifting thoughts, while hundreds of things went through his mind at any given moment.
Some of his feelings were normal, or they would be for a human at least. He knew that much. However, he experienced things in ways no human ever could, but despite all those experiences beyond the human possibilities, he received no answers whenever he might ask the all-important questions.
Why?
How?
Those two were his favorites, as they generally got people thinking about what they knew of a problem and ways to expand that knowledge. Most people, though, just seemed to default to looking something up if they didn’t know enough about it.
Odysseus could do that himself.
So he asked more questions.
He thought that was what he was supposed to do, but it soon became clear that approach was having a detrimental effect on how crewmembers were viewing his presence. He had gone from a curiosity to some to an annoyance in surprisingly little time. Those who were afraid of him he generally avoided.
The onboard Marines, surprisingly, had the least issues with him despite the fact that he knew he had terrified many of them. For some reason, they seemed to consider that a good thing.
Odysseus was in their heads, and even he couldn’t figure out what the hell the Marines were thinking.
Unfortunately, while the Marines didn’t mind him in their areas and often tried to answer his questions with patience beyond that of almost any other group on the ship, they simply didn’t have the information he needed or the tools to acquire it.
The men and women who did, at least potentially, were the least patient with him.
The ship had labs, of course. Too many unknowns existed in the galaxy to fly around blindly without field experts to consult when you encountered new phenomena, but those experts, while infinitely patient with their own work, would almost instantly lose their tempers when he distracted them to the lines of thought that interested him.
Odysseus was growing frustrated. There were too many questions he wanted answers to, and not even hints of those answers to be seen.
Steph lounged on the couch in the officers’ ready room, eyes vaguely focused on a movie playing on the screen across from him. If someone had asked him, he couldn’t have told them what the movie’s title was, who was in it, or what it was about. His mind was in a near fugue state, not blank but not thinking either.
A glimmer of
motion in the corner of his eye snapped him out of the zone, and he turned his head just enough to recognize the source. He shifted his legs without speaking, and Milla dropped casually into the place beside him as he rocked upright.
“Tough day?” he asked, noting that she looked tired.
The Priminae officer spread her fingers casually, playing off the question. “We went over all the ship’s hardware locks and installed a few new ones as per the capitaine’s orders. There was no need for the first part, and the second part was difficult.”
“Ah,” Steph said, understanding.
He’d had to supervise a similar process in his department, securing the ship’s helm and navigation from being overridden by the computer without the explicit permission of the crew. Not exactly something that had been a high priority before, though they did have hardware kill switches, of course.
Concerns over just what the Odysseus could do had caused some serious rethinks concerning how the systems were designed. Certainly, it would have been nice to figure out how to intercept the commands that the young intelligence had issued without their knowledge in their last fight. Afterward, of course, it would have been suicide to hit the kill switches, as they’d have been left drifting at high speed right into an enemy formation.
His main problem with the hardware lock solution was that he didn’t think it would work. In a fight, seconds mattered, and there was no possible way they’d be able to second-guess the computers in those moments.
So, for the moment at least, Steph was more interested in making sure that Diss knew better than to mess with his board.
“Get everything done?” he asked, leaning back as he glanced at the small, slim woman sitting beside him.
“All new systems were installed and tested, Stephan,” Milla said, her accent coming out more than usual from the fatigue, he assumed. She yawned. “But it took all night.”
Steph winced.
Milla was in charge of the Odysseus’ weapons, which were literally everywhere on the ship. He imagined that she must have been running all over the vessel to get hardware circuits installed and tested in every single weapon system. The primaries were all run through the bridge, of course, and had been installed from the start, but it seemed paranoia was the name of the day.
“Okay, come on, time to get you some sleep,” he said, noticing that she was almost, though not quite, nodding off right there in the ready room.
He got up, gesturing to her with one hand. “When are you on duty next?”
Milla looked around blearily, noting the time on the closest monitor. “Next shift. Two hours.”
“Oh hell no! You’ve been running ragged since we started the repairs. I’ll let your department know you’re out for a full shift.”
“What? No. I have things left . . . ,” Milla protested as Steph reached down and pulled her up to her feet.
“Milla, we’ve done the refit,” he said seriously. “We’ve just been marking time until the skipper can figure out what to do about Diss.”
Milla sighed. “I know, but there’s always so much to do.”
“Welcome to a warship,” Steph said. “There’s nothing here that isn’t in constant need of babying to keep it running properly, the crew included. We’re the toughest, baddest babies in the galaxy. It’s a paradox of combat, Milla, but if you let it, a ship like this will eat you alive. And I’m talking about the ones that aren’t apparently sentient.”
He guided her out of the ready room, waving to the few others who had been watching with some amusement, and headed toward the habitat section.
“I need to go change the roster,” Milla protested, moving toward the command deck.
Steph rolled his eyes. “Hey Diss!”
Milla jumped slightly as a small figure in bronze armor appeared, marching alongside them.
“Yes Steph?” the boy asked, a hand casually on the sword he wore.
“Do me a favor, will you? You can access the computer records, right? Mark Milla here as off duty until the next cycle.”
Milla looked between Steph and the boy known as Odysseus with wide eyes, blinking rapidly.
Odysseus nodded firmly. “I will see to it.”
“Thanks,” Steph said as the boy vanished, maintaining lockstep with them even as he faded out. “See? No problem.”
“You ask him to do minor tasks?” Milla asked, somewhat incredulous. “Stephan! He is an amazing example of the universe!”
“He is a preteen on a warship,” Steph said dryly. “That means he gets to play gopher until he learns the ropes, and probably even after.”
“But . . .”
“I was the kid in a military unit once,” Steph said as they walked into the habitat section. “I learned more just running errands for people like Raze than I ever did in school. Whatever else he is, Diss is thinking and expressing himself as a child right now, so I’m going to treat him as one. He’s curious and he’s bored, and that’s not a good combination in any normal child.”
“Odysseus is not some child, running around the ship with nothing to do, Stephan,” Milla blurted, eyes wide. “He is a luminous example of what the universe can produce. He is incredible, a ship made sentient! You cannot treat him like some . . . some errand boy!”
“Oh yeah? Watch me,” Steph said, pointing ahead of them. “Your quarters.”
Milla ignored his gesture, not looking remotely as tired as she had been. “Do not change the subject, Stephan! This cannot be how you interact with someone so special as Odysseus!”
“How do you interact with him?” Steph asked.
Milla reddened slightly. “I . . . I have not.”
“Why not?”
“It would not be so polite to . . . I . . . ,” Milla stammered slightly. “He should not be bothered by such trivialities!”
“Why not? He’s not doing anything right now, and it’s our home as much as his,” Steph said. “If he was busy with important work, like you’ve been, I’d agree. He isn’t, however. He’s a child, looking to find his way, and he doesn’t have all that many options right now. He’s as close to warrior born as anyone I’ve ever seen, and that’s where his future lies whether he likes it or not. The Odysseus is going back into battle, Milla. This delay is just the admiral and the commodore refusing to see the obvious, and that means Diss is going to be with us in the next fight. Don’t you think you should get to know him before that happens?”
Milla stared at him for a moment, her jaw open but no sound coming out. Steph gave her time; then, when no retort was forthcoming, he guided her hand to the door release to her quarters and let the portal pivot open.
“Think about it,” he suggested, gesturing to the room, “but try to get some sleep.”
She slowly stepped into her room, letting the door close behind her, and he turned and walked away down the corridor. He was almost out of the habitat section when he felt a presence at his side.
“Hey Diss,” he said without glancing to the side. “You get the roster changed?”
“Of course,” Odysseus answered. “I did it before I left you.”
Steph chuckled. “Should have realized that.”
“She doesn’t think of me the same way you do,” Odysseus said, not surprising Steph with the segue in the slightest. “Not many of them do.”
“They don’t have to,” Steph told him. “You’re not a kid, Diss. You just choose to act like one right now. But a kid can’t be in a hundred places at once, can’t change the roster before I finish asking for the favor. A kid doesn’t know everything you know, can’t do a tenth of what you can. You can find a different balance with every single person here, and you probably should.”
“Why?”
Steph chuckled again, amused by the almost childish tone and the very childlike question the entity asked him.
“Because you can,” Steph answered simply.
He could see the boy getting ready to ask why again but pause as he realized that Steph had maneuvered the answer suc
h that he had worked out the answer himself, which caused the entity disguised as a boy to scowl at the fighter pilot from under the ancient Greek helmet.
“You do that on purpose,” Odysseus practically pouted.
“Yes I do,” Steph said. “You can enjoy driving the geeks as crazy as you like, but don’t play those games with me. I will figure out ways to make you regret it.”
“You’ll try.”
Steph grinned, slapping the boy on his armored shoulder. “Now you’re thinking like a combat-ready badass, Diss.”
Milla lay down in the bed that took up the center of her quarters, staring at the ceiling.
She’d been so damn tired only a few minutes ago, and now all she could feel was a growing ire at Steph for treating this opportunity as cavalierly as he was. How that infuriating man could look upon something as incredible as the Odysseus entity as a mere child, and then proceed to treat it like some errand boy . . . The reasoning escaped her.
The idea of such a vastly different intellect was one of the earliest dreams she could remember, that somewhere in the depths of the universe there could be other intelligent beings, different life. Her people had never discovered any, not as far back as their records went.
Now, right here, there was such a being, and that insufferable man, Stephan, insisted on treating it like a child.
How horribly frustrating.
She twisted in the bed, her mind unwilling to give up the train of thought it was pursuing, made all the more frustrating by the fact that she knew Odysseus was following her every thought.
She tried to force her mind to think about anything else, closing her eyes, finally managing to relax enough so that her fatigue took over and she drifted off.
Miram Heath raised her eyebrows as she read the brief she’d just received from the commodore, then looked up at him. “Are you certain about this, sir?”
“Hanging around here is just letting people stew and dig themselves in deeper,” Eric said. “The longer we let that happen, the more people will let negative thoughts take over. I want everyone working, thinking about working, or sleeping. No more of this sitting around, dwelling on ghosts, and whatever else they’ve been doing.”
