The Heart of Matter: Odyssey One by Evan Currie Read Free Book Online Page B

powerful capacitors pouring the energy into the tachyon generator pierced the veil. A moment later, the bridge lights dimmed slightly as the power draw was fed from their main taps as well, and then everything went silent.
    “Spires have transitioned, Captain. The effect will overtake the bridge…now.”
    And then everything spun away into the void as the bridge crew gritted their teeth and held helplessly onto their seats as the black of space seemed to engulf them.
    From the outside, the big ship just vanished in an instant, though sensors that were powerful enough would have registered a cloud appearing from the void and swallowing them like a ghost. To those inside the ship, the moment stretched out into an eternity, then ended as their bodies were swept away by the effect, and all that was left was the screaming.

MILITARY COMMAND AND CONTROL

Planet Ranquil
    ▸“ADMIRAL, WE JUST detected a tachyon event from the outer system.”
    Is the moment arriving sooner than even I expected?
Adm. Rael Tanner asked himself. Perhaps it was just he had been hoping the moment would never come, that the people of Ranquil could expect some brief respite, some semblance of a normal life. The weight of all of those lives made him stooped sometimes, pressed down on his thoughts.
    Tanner turned to examine the results of the sensor sweep, and frowned. “Direct the
Vulk
to identify.”
    “Yes, Admiral,” the young woman replied diffidently, lightly pressing a series of commands into the projected control interface.
    Far out in the outer system, the signal was received and a hulking mass of starship shifted its long orbit to intercept the center of the pulse they had recorded.
    “
Vulk
reply, Admiral. They are changing orbit to locate and identify. Orders for Captain Maran?”
    “Identify only at this time,” Tanner replied, taking his seat as the display was updated. “It may be a Drasin; however, the pattern is not a bow wake.”
    “Yes, sir. Identify only.”
    Tanner watched the screens, waiting for the
Vulk
to arrive on-site, and hoped that it was who, and what, he thought. The intervening months since the Battle of Ranquil had not been easy on any of the colonies. They had lost a total of fourteen of the outer worlds, with a combined population of nearly thirteen billion people.
    That was a relatively low number compared to the forty billion that the Battle of Ranquil had saved; however, it wasn’t something that was easy to forget, just the same.
    None of the central worlds had been lost, thanks be to the Maker. The initial attack on the central combine had been poised to pass through Ranquil, and when they had held them off, it had apparently thrown the Drasin battle plans out of order.
    That was to the sole credit of Eric Weston and his crew, Tanner firmly believed, and he would very much like to see that man again.
    He would like even more if Elder Corusc had managed to negotiate an arrangement for technology concepts, designs, and military aid from Weston’s fellows. The Drasin were still out there, and their attacks had begun a battle of attrition against the fledgling fleet the colonies had managed to construct.
    They had managed to achieve parity with the Drasin. Power for power, a Colonial ship was at least the equal of a Drasin cruiser; however, they had lost as many of their newly commissioned ships as they had killed Drasin ships in the twomonths of warfare that followed the Battle of Ranquil. In the past month, things had grown quiet, though, with no sightings of the alien ships at even the few surviving outer colonies.
    The populace was now hoping that it was ending, the fear and despair having worn them down.
    Celebrations were the norm within the habitats of the great cities now, but Tanner and his people didn’t join in. Neither, for that matter, did Nero and his slowly forming ground force.
    Nero had once explained why the quiet brought such a sensation of dread to Tanner’s inner soul.
    He had told Rael