“Reactor Control…go.”

The list ran through all of the ship’s stations, each confirming in turn that their section had prepared for the effects of the jump until Roberts spoke the final phrase.

“Odyssey Command…go.”

“All systems, we are a go for transition in T-minus…” Weston glanced down and punched a series of commands. “Two minutes.”

CHAPTER 3

THE TENSION ON the bridge continued to build as the count ticked down, the numbers dropping rapidly until the crew was confronted with the final ten seconds.

Weston shifted nervously in his seat as the number ten went by. The transition effects had been kept highly classified for a reason. He knew what to expect, as did the entire crew, but in this case, that was worse than ignorance.

Next to him, Weston noted Commander Roberts forcing his hands to unclench; small bloodred marks were left to decorate his palms.

Weston viewed people all through the ship holding tightly to things, as if preparing for massive acceleration despite what they had been trained to expect. In one room, a nervous crewman had accidently knocked himself out while trying to strap himself to a chair; in retrospect, he was considered lucky.

A high-pitched whine began to reverberate through the ship. Usually felt long before heard, the sound continued to rise.

On the bridge, Captain Weston watched the small red light flicker on as the count went past five seconds and noted a slight relaxation that swept through him when it did. They were now past the point of no return. The Odyssey and her crew were about to make history.

The whine had reached painful levels in some areas of the ship, causing people to cover their ears and close their eyes in the vain attempt to shut out the sound. Outside the ship, a strange disturbance was affecting the ship’s forward sensor spires, causing the Odyssey computers to begin insisting that the spires were no longer present.

The disturbance had begun making its way toward the aft of the ship. One by one, key systems appeared to go offline, each system insisting that it simply wasn’t there.

The count hit zero. Weston’s eyes widened as the disturbance intersected the bridge, and the entire forward section, including the view screen, disintegrated into uncountable particles that were swept away into the void of space. Weston found himself sitting on the edge of the void, grasping his chair for protection, as the effect encompassed his crew, one by one. When the maelstrom engulfed him and the universe went black, Weston’s last conscious thought echoed through what was left of his universe.

If we survive this, I’m going to have a very serious talk with the techs back home about what constitutes “need to know.”

Four and a half light-years from where the Odyssey vanished, in the Alpha Centauri star system, a cloud of particles decelerated, apparently from nowhere, and rapidly reformed themselves. First, the long forward spires of the Odyssey’s primary communications array, and soon the rest of the vessel, were reconstituted as the tachyon disruption faded and left the massive ship hurtling sunward into the system’s primary.