The deck rumbled as the thrusters pushed the big ship out of orbit, bringing Weston’s focus back to the task at hand. Lieutenant Daniels tapped away on the touch screen in front of him, making course corrections on the fly via the computer interface.

Weston shivered. Watching Daniels work, he really didn’t trust the “fly-by-keyboard” systems much. He’d always prefered the stick and throttle in his hand, but the designers had made that type of flying a last resort for the Odyssey.

Daniels continued with his work and slid his hands along the solid composite surface in front of him. The sensors within the sealed interface detected his finger placement, and the integrated display lit up like the proverbial Christmas tree as Daniels brought the systems online and cleared the mooring.

The Odyssey, now free of the mooring cables, drifted clear under soft thruster guidance until Daniels opened up the ship’s reactor and sent a low rumble through her. The ship accelerated away from the station and Earth’s orbit, leaving behind the cluttered section of space that had given birth to her.

“Helm, as soon as we’re clear of Earth space, power up the navigation beams and accelerate to one-third of light,” Weston commanded.

“Yes, sir.”

As the Odyssey cleared the section of space claimed by Earth, the forward field generators powered up and began sweeping the ship’s path of debris. Then the Odyssey’s massive engines came into play and the big ship began to steam up the huge gravity well generated by Sol.

“Approaching point-oh-five light-speed, Captain,” Daniels said. “Request clearance for CM release.”

“Granted,” Weston replied.

The counter-mass system was the heart of the Odyssey’s sub-light propulsion systems, a series of generators along the keel of the massive ship that threw up an energy field around the entire vessel. The math involved gave Weston a headache, though he understood it enough to comprehend what was happening as the fields began to charge.

Around the Odyssey, a bubble began to form as one generator reinforced the next, establishing an oval pocket that began to segregate the ship and its occupants from the “real” universe. Within the bubble, the effective mass of the ship began to drop, at least so far as the rest of the universe was concerned, rendering the massive ship uniquely less massive.

It wasn’t quite cheating Einstein, Weston knew, but it was a way to bend the rules, just a little bit. The big drive reactors that powered the Odyssey stuck out just to the edge of the field, and when the system was in full operation, they threw out plasma at near light-speed—plasma that massed exactly what it was supposed to as it broke the edge of the field, pushing against the ship whose total mass was fooling the laws of physics into thinking it was 10 percent of what it was.

Without the field, the Odyssey could throw down a sprint mode that made a turtle look like a Formula One racer, and its top end clocked in just under a tenth the speed of light, or 0.1c. With the field active, there wasn’t a thing built by man that could hope to catch her.