The speed built slowly at first as the Odyssey’s huge engines and integral CM fields worked in conjunction to chip away at the inertia of the ship, increasing quickly as the grip of the star’s gravity joined in. Soon the ship was speeding down the well fast enough that Lieutenant Daniels powered down both the thrusters and the CM fields until the Odyssey was free-falling toward the star.

Watching his trajectories, Lieutenant Daniels was less worried about the path of the Odyssey as he was about the path of anything the Odyssey might run into. Even with the powerful navigation fields shouldering aside anything in their path, he still kept an obsessive eye on the screens. Attention to detail was the bread and butter of his job, especially since certain electrical- and magnetic-neutral composites could penetrate the navigation fields with ease.

Such things didn’t exist often in nature. However, as the debris ring around the fourth planet would testify, this system wasn’t as pure as the driven snow.

An hour into the drop, Weston excused himself from the bridge and headed to the mess deck for something to eat. The course Daniels had plotted to the fourth planet would take them about twenty-four hours, including acceleration and deceleration.

The mess was as busy as he’d expected. A large portion of the crew had taken advantage of the projected course to refuel.

Weston smiled as he spotted a group talking at a table in the corner. Some of them are just here because they have nothing better to do.

He walked over, wiping the smile from his face. “So, I see we’ve got a bunch of laze-abouts, huh?”

Everyone at the table jumped, save one.

“Gee, Cap,” Stephanos said, grinning at him from where he was seated in the corner, “why don’t you tell us how you really feel?”

Weston resisted the urge to laugh or roll his eyes since both reactions would have been too much, and besides, he knew that the Archangels would be able to read him without anything that overt. Instead, he just sat down. “So, how do you all enjoy being passengers on this cruise?”

The fighter jocks laughed, relaxing as they recognized their old flight leader in the captain, and they began to joke back with him.

“Just fine, Raz.” A big beefy man who went by the call sign “Brute” smirked. “But when are you going to find us some real work to do?”

Weston shrugged. “Looks like we may have something coming down the pipe for you. Be patient.”

Blaze, one of the first women in the unit, snorted softly. “Do as you say, not as you do, huh, Raz?”

“Precisely.”

Weston reclined back in his seat, ordered some food, and let himself remember the glory days.

The waking world came back slowly to Milla. Her mind lost in sleep for a few moments, she forgot where she was or what had transpired.