“The transmissions, Captain! They were reporting a series of coordinates!” Palin babbled on. “It’s fascinating. You see, they use a trinary numbering system and—”

“Doctor! I’m busy up here…” Weston trailed off, thinking furiously. “Wait! Coordinates? Are you sure?”

“Yes, Captain. Quite sure.”

Weston supposed they could be reporting their own positions through a battle network, but if that were the case, he would have expected to have picked up signals like this in their earlier encounters. So what’s different this time?

Only one thing he could think of.

“I’ll have to talk to you later. Weston out.” He cut the line as he looked around, trying to make a choice as his gut and his mind argued two different courses.

He paused, then straightened in his seat, slapped open a ship-wide channel, and started snapping orders.

“All stations, this is Captain Weston. We are about to go to full military power. All stations, I say again, full military power.” Turning to Waters, he said, “Do we have enough for a full-power tachyon pulse?”

Waters blinked, checking his controls. “Yes, sir, but only if we kill recharge on two of our tubes.”

“Do it,” Weston ordered. “And for God’s sake, kill the black hole settings! Bring the armor back to maximum general deflection!”

“Aye, aye, Captain!”

The big ship began to hum as its core leapt back to life, power feeding into previously dormant systems as it gave up any pretext at hiding its dull-black exterior, suddenly shifting and changing, until it was visually an almost pure white.

At the same time, its running lights came online, casting out the shadows that had covered up its name and numbers, causing the NACS Odyssey to roar to life, even as it announced its resurrection with a sudden blast of tachyons.

The massless little particles jumped out from the ship, spreading far and wide as they went out in every direction, looking for things to bounce off. Omnidirectionally, her detection range was limited, as the Odyssey simply didn’t have enough power to generate that many tachyons, but this time it didn’t matter.

“Mother of God.”

Roberts didn’t look up to see who had said that. In fact, he nearly seconded the statement himself.

“How’d they get so close?” someone else demanded.

That was a good question, Roberts knew. One that he couldn’t answer. Though, to be honest, he was more interested in how Captain Weston had guessed they were there.

On the screen, previously blank, there were now three icons in hostile bloodred, all closing on the Odyssey from less than sixty light-seconds.

CHAPTER 35

“HOSTILE CONTACTS—PORT and starboard!” Waters yelled out as the lights came back to full power from their minimal status. “They’re moving dead slow, Captain!”