“The course you requested has been encoded. We started warping space the moment your shuttle came to a stop,” she told him. “May I ask what is going on, sir?”

“Had to get away from Ranquil for a while, Commander,” Eric said simply. “We’re moving on to the second phase of the mission a little ahead of schedule.”

“Any reason why?”

“It got a little . . . stuffy.”

Miram blinked. “On the planet, sir?”

Eric stopped in place, half turning to look at her before he pivoted back around.

“Lately, Commander, I find I prefer deep space.”

She was about to ask more before he went on.

“It’s . . . quieter out here.”

►►►

► The Odysseus warped space as soon as they cleared the orbit of Ranquil, powering up to what would be relativistic speeds with any traditional drive system. The ship was already passing a third the speed of light by the time Eric stepped onto the command deck, standing at his post as he accessed the command station.

“ETA to system heliopause?”

“Three more hours at current acceleration, sir.”

“Good,” Eric said, sighing nearly imperceptibly as he relaxed. He found he now really didn’t feel comfortable until he was well away from planets.

Discovering Central on Ranquil was one thing. The entity hadn’t shaken his worldview all that much. Ranquil was an alien planet, after all. He expected alien things.

Gaia, however, he could admit that she—if that was what Gaia was—she had shattered part of him. He hadn’t realized that until he’d met Central again however. When Central isolated him in the shuttle, effortlessly slipping through his mind . . .

Eric had to discover what those things were. He just didn’t know how.

With one eye on the vessel’s telemetry, Eric accessed the ship’s database and called up the files they’d copied from the Priminae computer cores. He opened the mythological database and accessed Priminae “gods.”

Gaia apparently styled herself the goddess of Earth, if he were to take the name seriously, and Central had told him once that he was the source of some Priminae deity myths, long ago. Eric was more than passingly familiar with Earth mythology, but couldn’t think of anything that helped him make sense of Gaia. He was hoping that something in the Priminae database would cause things to gel.

Thankfully, the admiral took the opportunity to copy the Priminae cultural database as part of the exchange deal she cut with them.

The Priminae culture was one with a long history, a history that Eric knew almost no one had even begun to scratch the surface of. The Confederacy had several analysis teams dedicated to just this sort of thing, or they had before the invasion at least. Eric wasn’t sure if anyone was digging too deep into cultural nuances at the moment, considering other priorities, but for him the subject had just taken a very high place on his list.