To say nothing of the fact that he had no suits on hand for these people, and in the battle to come, a hull breach was all too likely. One glancing-laser strike could kill every single one of them, rendering the whole operation to rescue them a particularly bad joke.

CHAPTER 29

“CLEAR THAT DECK!” The landing signals officer (LSO) screamed, though he didn’t technically have to raise his voice. The com-net intercepted and normalized the volume before it shot across the vacuum of the flight deck. “Inbound on the ball!”

The computer filtered out the mass of acknowledgments, its programming designed to bring problems to his attention rather than highlight what was going right. This time, everything seemed to be working well, and the software didn’t raise any flags.

Not that Chief Mackenzie was going to take that for granted.

His eyes roved the Odyssey’s flight deck, looking for anything that might inflict foreign object damage (FOD) on the incoming craft. He wasn’t sure if the alien ships were likely to suffer any bad effects from a FOD strike, but it was better to be sure.

When the deck was cleared to his satisfaction, he nodded and waved to one of the cat-control crews standing well out of the way in their green-accented suits. The crew chief flashed him a thumbs-up rather than clutter the network with chatter, and Mac turned back to the front of the immense flight deck.

The unblinking stare of the stars beyond the maw of the deck was a little unnerving, but he’d seen it before and was finally starting to get used to it. Certainly, it wasn’t as bad as trying to launch fighters in a hurricane, though it was close, he had to admit. He had two men down by the opening, clearing the deck, and didn’t envy them that job in the slightest.

Once they were clear and out of the way, he switched over to a control channel. “Deck is clear for landing.”

“Roger that,” the answer came back instantly. “Drone will lead. Watch the followers.”

“Right,” Mac muttered, cutting his channel just after.

Who thought up this idea? He didn’t want to know. Chances were that it was Captain Weston, and in that case, he’d really rather not know. Because he and his crew were duty bound to curse the idiot’s soul for this, and Mac rather liked the captain.

The problem was, of course, that the incoming ships didn’t have any active communications with the Odyssey, let alone Mac’s deck crew. Which was the closest thing to insanity he’d run into since the war.

Four alien ships who don’t know fuck all about our systems, procedures, or technology…And we’re landing them on a closed flight deck that has a damned field patch running up its center… Mac shook his head.