Odyssey One 5: Warrior King Read Free Page B

Steph said. “I like these floating cities we’re on here, Milla, don’t get me wrong . . . but you can’t hide one of them from a blind man. Remember the Odyssey . There’s power in stealth.”
    Milla nodded. “Truth. Still, they seem so small.”
    Steph couldn’t help but agree. The Rogue Class destroyers would be better served as escorts than as the scout status they were likely to be relegated to. Unfortunately, for the moment there just weren’t enough hulls or people to go around, and personnel were doing more jobs than they should and not always the jobs they were best at.
    “Anyway, the captain will be back on board today,” Steph said. “I checked the schedule. That means we’re either set for more tests, or we’ve got a mission.”
    “I rather hope we have a mission,” Milla admitted.
    “Don’t say that too loud,” Steph muttered and chuckled. “Something will hear you.”
    She rolled her eyes. “What could possibly hear us? We are in space, Stephan.”
     
    ►►►
     
    ► The Odysseus had a heart.
    Buried deep below the ceramic white armor that plated the outside, under the twisting composites that framed the hull, the heart of the ship didn’t beat so much as hum with an intense power. The spherical core that held the heart was lined with elements that didn’t occur naturally outside a high-gravity star, and even there only miniscule amounts existed.
    The heart floated in the center of the chamber, always, never deviating by even a nanometer. A hundred meters across, the core was impressive in its own right, but looks can be very deceiving.
    It was a very big heart.
    Bigger than the physical presence it held, bigger than the ship that held it. At rest, the core massed 1.35 planetary masses, Earth standard.
    Fueling the core was easy. Just dump whatever you wanted into the singularity. It wasn’t picky. Rock was fine; stellar mass was more efficient, but really anything at all would do. The core would swallow up pretty much anything one cared to toss in: it was the ultimate trash compactor.
    Kept just on the edge of stability, the singularity converted mass into radiation. The humans called it Hawking radiation, while the Priminae word was effectively unpronounceable by humans. But in the final analysis, the core simply consisted of high-intensity radiation.
    Power aplenty to run a warship or a significantly populous planet through whatever it may have to do. That energy was raw by design, bearing no particular pattern or frequency, to increase the efficiency of the power-accumulation system.
    The designers would have been shocked—and possibly disturbed—to find that was no longer entirely  true.
    Deep in the heart, so very deep in the heart of the Odysseus , a flower bloomed.

CHAPTER 2

    AEV Odysseus , Earth Orbit
     
    ► “Captain on deck!”
    “As you were,” Eric said as he shifted uncomfortably in his new uniform, not having yet had the opportunity to break it in. “Ship status?”
    The bridge still felt odd to him, despite his having been on it a dozen or more times since the invasion. He paused by the captain’s station, let his hand drop to rest on the controls arrayed around the seat, and again noted that he rather missed the more enclosed space of the Odyssey . Eric felt like everything before the invasion was perhaps colored by a rosy tint, and he was now having a hard time fully trusting his judgment.
    “All systems nominal, Captain,” a tall blonde woman said, turning in his direction. “We’re green across the board.”
    “Thank you, Commander Heath.”
    Miram Heath was his new executive officer, or XO, replacing Jason Roberts, who had been given command of the Bellerophon . Miram was almost six feet tall with Nordic looks, and she was a little stiffer than he’d prefer, though Roberts hadn’t exactly been a smooth operator himself.
    “Stand by the board for new course,” Eric said.
    “Aye Captain. Standing by the board,” the helm duty officer replied