“Let me see it.”

The massive screen focused on a floating hulk—no running lights, no apparent drive activity, no life support. The ship was so dead that the Odyssey’s computers had to enhance the image from the ship’s lidar- and radar-based sensors to allow it to be seen against the black backdrop of space. The screen automatically cut back on magnification as the Odyssey approached the derelict craft. The ship was covered with carbon scoring from dozens of weapon strikes. Little of the original exterior appeared intact, although penetrating sensors detected that the interior atmosphere was possibly intact.

“Fascinating,” Weston said. “Commander Roberts, have the landing shuttle prepped and take a team over there. Full environmental protocol. You’d better assume that it’s a class-six environment.”

“Yes, sir.” Roberts sent a signal to the shuttle bay and exited the bridge.

“Pay up!” Bermont grinned as Sergeant Rogers curled on the ground after his more-than-ten-light-year standing long jump, emptying his stomach across the deck.

Rogers groaned but shoveled a ten and twenty into Lieutenant Bermont’s hand just as the alert station’s call rang through the deck.

The laughing, joking, retching, and cursing ended abruptly as every man shoved his bitching stomach back down his throat and stumbled for the door.

It didn’t take long for Commander Roberts to reach the flight deck, and the crews were already prepping the Prometheus Class shuttle when he stepped onto the deck, boots echoing against the metal floor.

From another lift he saw a group of soldiers double-time their way across the zero-g deck, heading toward the shuttle that was prepping, and noted with concern the sickly color of a few of their faces.

One of them, a sergeant from the marines—Rogers, he recalled—was currently the palest black man that Commander Roberts had ever seen in his life. He shook his head in sympathy. Anyone that sick didn’t want to move, let alone strap into a shuttle, but he didn’t comment as the soldier began fitting himself into armor and grabbing a rifle from the rack. Instead, he suited himself up in likewise fashion, grabbed a sidearm and rifle, and followed the men onto the shuttle.

Roberts strapped himself into a troop seat on board one of the Odyssey’s recon shuttles, pulling the harness tightly down across his shoulders. Around him, a small team of Special Forces troops followed suit, some of them strapping weapons above their seats and others breaking their arms down in preparation for the mission.

“All right, Jenny, take us out,” Roberts addressed the diminutive woman, Lt. Jenny Samuels, in the pilot’s chair and thought he detected an evil grin playing across her face. “And none of that hotdogging, either. The Archangels already know you’re a good pilot!”

A low chuckle rippled around the flight seat as the shuttle was jarred by the thrusters kicking in. Two of the older soldiers groaned, making Roberts wonder what they knew that he didn’t. He found out a few moments later as the shuttle’s retro-thrusters fired and he was pressed hard up into the biting straps that held him to his seat. Outside, the shuttle flew clear of the Odyssey’s flight deck.