Captain Carrow watched the distorted stern of the Odysseus as it accelerated away from Earth at incredible speed. His Enterprise was pouring on the power as well, but couldn’t hope to match what the Priminae engines were putting out.

The Enterprise was the only ship in the system that could come close, however, while maintaining a high level of stealth, so the job was theirs by default.

“Captain, enemy ships are changing vectors to pursue the Odysseus.”

“Well damn,” Carrow swore softly. “He was right.”

He wasn’t one of Weston’s fans or even remotely an admirer. In Carrow’s opinion, Weston was a reckless fool with a penchant for dime store heroics and a code of honor that was crafted right out of fiction instead of the real world. The man was also, however, one of the finest tactical minds in the Confederacy, and there was no one who contested that much at least.

Still, even with that in mind, Carrow had never expected the enemy to actually break their march on Earth in order to pursue one fleeing starship.

What the hell did he see?

Like the man or not, Carrow had to admit that sometimes he had a way of making anyone else feel a little inferior by comparison.

He sighed. “Contact engineering. I want more thrust, see if they can’t fine-tune the CM fields a bit. The Odysseus does not get outside our range of flight operations. Am I clear?”

“Aye sir!”

Well damn, Eric thought, grinning nastily. I was right.

“Enemy fleet is vectoring in on our course, Captain.”

“Intercept?” he asked, though he was pretty sure he knew the answer.

“No sir,” Michelle said, a tinge of satisfaction in her own voice. “Pursuit.”

“They don’t want to catch us,” Steph said from where he was sitting at the helm. “They want to flush us, make us run for home.”

“How little they know,” Eric said. “Let’s thin their ranks, shall we?”

“I am ready, Capitaine,” Milla said softly from her position at weapons control.

Eric nodded, eyes on the time. “Stand by to clear our baffles and fire as the targets bear . . . execute Crazy Ivan in three minutes.”

Milla scrunched up her face, clearly confused as to the terminology, but she knew her own part in what was to come and didn’t need to understand what a “Crazy Ivan” was. “Yes Capitaine. We fire in three minutes.”

“Remember,” Captain Roberts glowered over his bridge, “aim through the swarm. Target the ships closer to the Odysseus.”

“Yes Captain.” His tactical officer nodded. “Targets selected. We’re sharing data with the other Heroics. We’re ready.”

Roberts nodded slowly. He knew that they were, but it was a hard moment and he was on edge. The Odysseus was leading the swarm away from Earth, but that still left them with over a thousand ships chasing down one Heroic Class vessel that had absolutely zero chance of winning an engagement.