“Godspeed, Weston,” Stephanos whispered. “Godspeed, Raziel.”

“Amen,” the rest of the team replied, recognizing the call sign of their old flight leader. “And pity the poor bastards on the receiving end.”

Raziel. Secret of God.

Well, it had worked out that way once, Stephanos thought, with a grim smile. Maybe He’ll be smiling on them this time, too.

If you believed in that sort of thing.

“Captain! The ship…The Odyssey is altering her stance.”

“Is she changing course?” Tianne asked, turning her attention to the ship’s section of the threat board.

“Not yet, Captain.”

“Then ignore her, I don’t have time to worry about what some pet of Tanner’s is up to. Continue firing.”

“Aye, Captain.”

Tianne eyed the screen, watching as the alien warship completed its maneuver and began charging its weapons. The power curve for the ship was still distressingly low, and she couldn’t quite imagine how anyone had managed to build effective weapons with so little power.

For the moment, however, it wasn’t her concern.

Ahead of her still lay two Drasin warships, though one was badly damaged now, and her own Cerekus was still on the hunt.

“Fire sequence loaded!” Waters said, looking up at the main screen.

“Bow armaments coming around,” Daniels added. “We will be in firing position on the target in thirty seconds. Firing braking thrusters now.”

Weston looked back to the plot, eyeing the approach of what he knew had to be the colonies’ ship. The massive vessel just kept getting bigger as it closed, but it was still almost a light-minute behind them despite their relative closing velocities.

Given their current vectors, however, the computer had their rendezvous listed as forty-three seconds. At that point, the Odyssey would be officially out of this fight for quite some time, unless Weston ordered her main reactors to power.

“We are locked on, Captain.”

Time to decide that later.

“Initiate firing sequence,” he ordered, eyeing the board.

“The Odyssey is firing again.”

Rael Tanner looked back to the plot. His own space in the pit was the only part of the command that had more than minimal elbow room, as people had suddenly found reason to gather here and watch the drama unfold above them.

The first energy spike from the Odyssey was identified as her main laser array, a pitiful trickle of power, according to the computer, but as they’d seen earlier, a respectable force, just the same.

The computer couldn’t track the beam, not the way it did those from the Drasin or the Cerekus. The leaked energy from the underpowered beam was well below the system’s sensor ability. However, it was able to detect minute fluctuations when the beam crossed paths with stray matter.

Space was, after all, not nearly so empty, as most believed. There was always something out there, somewhere.