“Estimated time to intercept?”

“At present speeds, the first bandit group will intercept us in eight minutes. Two and a half minutes later, group two will join in the fray, and ten minutes after that, we’ll have to deal with group three,” Roberts presented in a matter-of-fact tone that belied the grim look on his face.

Weston’s face twisted as he considered his options. In a one-on-one confrontation, he could afford to wait and let the enemy make the first move. It was foolish, but it allowed him and his people to do as they had to without worrying about whether or not it could have been avoided. For a long time, it had been a proud tradition of Weston and the Archangels that they had never started a fight, but once started, they always finished it.

Apparently, however, he wasn’t going to have that luxury this time. A three-on-one battle against relatively unknown enemies was already too foolish a situation for him to compound with an equally foolish act of chivalry.

“All right, let’s make this spectacular. Lock the forward pulse torpedo launchers onto the lead ship. Fire a full barrage, then let the Archangels out of the pen.”

“Aye, sir,” the response came back instantly, and everyone bent to their tasks.

It took only moments to make the calculations.

“Target locked, Captain.”

“Fire.”

“By the oath,” someone swore under his breath into the shocked silence of the room.

The small man couldn’t blame him. There were three Drasin cruisers in the system now, and they’d completely missed the other two.

Well, at least that poor bastard out there did us one favor, Rael Tanner thought to himself as he whispered a brief prayer for those who were about to die.

“Send a coded tight beam to the Forge. Inform them of this revelation…Tell them…” Tanner paused, shaking his head. “Tell them that we haven’t much time left.”

“Yes, sir.”

CHAPTER 19

THE ODYSSEY SHUDDERED as the blazing-white charges were expelled into space, streaming ahead in an ever-widening cone. The instant the lethal charges were out of range, sleek Archangel fighters poured from the dual flight decks, weapons and pilots both primed and raring for action.

On board the lead Angel, Stephanos took a deep breath before opening the tac-net and addressing his pilots. “All right, boys and girls, our threat board is all lit up, and this time around we’re going to be heavily outnumbered and outgunned.”

“So what else is new?” Paladin’s wry grin carried well over the radio frequency, eliciting a laugh from those of the squad who remembered skirmishing with the Block’s air force in days past.

The Archangels had never relied on numbers to win a fight.

They spread themselves out, keeping pace with the Odyssey and providing a flying wedge between their mother ship and the enemy. The small sensor screens in front of each pilot echoed the current displays on the Odyssey’s bridge, a countdown to the impact of the pulse torpedo barrage. The tac-net was silent as they watched the diverging path of the torpedoes.