“Stick and move, Lieutenant,” Weston told Daniels. “Stick and move.”

“Yes, sir.”

The ithan lifted her head from the screen. “I think we just registered the Odyssey, Admiral!”

“Where is she?” Tanner asked.

“The green icon, Admiral.”

Tanner looked up at the display, noting the information appended to the icon. “What are they shooting at, Ithan?”

“We have a soft reflection in that area, Admiral, but I’m not certain. We’ll have to wait for the light-speed return.”

Tanner nodded in reluctant acceptance.

Seventy-five light-seconds was a long distance for anything to travel, even light itself, when you consider that most cultures take centuries or longer to realize that it even did travel. For anything substantially slower, that distance was a prohibitively long way.

For the four pulse torpedoes from the Odyssey, however, it took just over eighty seconds to cross the void and arrive at their target. The range meant a relatively shorter gap between their arrival and the light and energy they projected, which, to the alien warship, meant that much less time to react.

The alien command saw them coming and opened fire with lasers, only to have much the same effect. Firing light at an energy weapon was very nearly pointless, and this reaction had been expected, so the order went out at the same time and fighters began to pour from the big ship.

The problem, such as it was, was that the reaction time had been calculated on a ten-second period in which they could react. In each previous time, that was what the enemy weapons had given them.

This time, they had a little less than eight.

The first of the fighters were just sliding into place as a screen when the initial strike smashed into their formation, obliterating the formation and the vast majority of the fighters and opening a hole in them for the remaining three.

Fired sequentially, the pulse torpedoes exhibited much smaller degrees of variance in their course while in flight, their like charges not being able to push them apart in a shotgun-like spread effect. Instead, they flew straight and true, which was why a sequential attack was preferred against single targets at any range.

The remaining three shots slammed into the ship, even as its fighters scrambled to leave its decks, ripping the alien war craft to pieces in an explosion of light and energy as its reactor containment was annihilated.

Seventy-four seconds after the torpedoes struck, the Odyssey’s bridge surged with the exhilarated rush of the kill as the catastrophic display of light and energy etched itself on their sensors.

“It’s a kill, sir!” Daniels enthused.

Weston’s eyes were glued to the screens for the next one. “We’ve got four more out there, people. Find them before they find us.”

“Aye, aye, Captain,” they said together, the energy of the moment carrying their enthusiasm.