“That won’t last!” Weston snapped. “Ahead, all flank!”

“Aye, sir!” Daniels said, slamming the controls hard forward.

“Sir! We have another one along our course!” Waters warned.

“I’m aware of that, Mr. Waters,” Weston said. “Bring all forward weapons online and give me a narrow-arc tachyon ping as soon as we have power.”

“Aye, aye, sir.”

Weston gripped the arms of his chair tightly as the numbers started to drop, the Odyssey racing against the enemy to see who would get their ship to full power first. If he was lucky, he’d taken them by surprise with the sudden surge to full military power, but there was no way to tell how quickly they could respond. If they were on the ball, or if their technology was faster than his, the Odyssey was in a seriously bad situation.

“The enemy is accelerating.” Waters sounded calmer now.

“Trying to catch us in a pincer, Ensign,” Weston said.

“Aye, sir.”

“Don’t worry about it. Our acceleration curve is almost as good as theirs, and we’ve got the jump on them. Just pay attention to the one in front of us.”

“Aye, sir,” Waters said, looking up. “Captain, if they hit us with their lasers, even our best general armor setting isn’t likely to—”

“I’m aware of that, too, Ensign,” Weston cut him off. “Don’t forget, they’re still sixty light-seconds out, and they don’t know our acceleration curve. No way can they predict where we’re going to be when their lasers strike.”

“Aye, sir.” Waters sounded relieved.

Weston decided not to remind him that the craft down angle from them was staring at an essentially stable target and wouldn’t need to do much prediction. The tense look in the man’s shoulders told him that he didn’t need to; Waters had figured that out on his own.

Weston’s eyes glanced to the clock.

Thirty seconds.

“Move your butts, ladies!” the Engineering chief snapped. He swung himself through the compartment, catching a grip on the wall to arrest his flight, and landed near the control for the tokamak. “The captain’s gonna need this puppy online in a hurry, Jenks.”

“Working on it, Chief,” the young man said, not looking up. “We’ll jump-start it cold, just as soon as I clear the tubes.”

“Just get it done.”

“Go bother someone else. You do not want me missing something here,” the man replied, his head stuck down inside part of the system.

Normally, the chief would have torn his head off for a comment like that, but it was true. The last thing they needed was stray matter particles in the tokamak stream.

Commander Roberts’s face was ashen as he watched the telemetry plot, but his voice was steady and calm while snapping out orders.

“Contact Point Defense and make sure that they’re on the ball, Lieutenant,” he said, taking up his primary duties of handling the secondary systems so the captain could focus on the situation at hand.