Free Homeworld (Odyssey One) by Evan Currie

again, knowing they were once more heading out into the black.

    Climbing out of the gravity well of a star took time, particularly when you started from a dead stop. Well, relative stop, Eric supposed. All things were relative in space and time, and all that rot.
    They met with the fueling tanker just past the orbit of Saturn, standard procedure on outbound jags. Of course, besides the
Odyssey
the only other outbound ships were generally comet miners and research ships. They all used the same fuel, however, so the procedures held.
    He’d received a briefing package concerning the Chinese outbound ship, the
Weifang
, and had to admit that he was a little jealous of their propulsion tech. Apparently they’d really cracked the Alcubierre equations, something the West hadn’t managed to pull off in several decades of trying.
    I’m sure someone just got a billion-dollar grant to make it happen, though.
He supposed, though, there was an excellent chance that the External Intelligence Bureau had gotten their marching orders to capture that research and bring it home.
    He wished them luck, even though he figured that Gordon was probably an EIB agent and would be a pain in his rear end sooner or later. A reaction drive had some advantages, in theory at least, over the Alcubierre equations, but to have a reactionless drive? The sheer savings in propellant mass
alone
staggered the imagination.
    Probably why the
Weifang
is a third the size of the
Odyssey
. I wonder how her weapons and defenses stand up?
    “Approaching the heliopause, Captain.”
    Eric looked up to see the newly minted Lt. Commander at the door to his office and nodded. “Thank you, Daniels. How are the new trainees handling her?”
    “No real complaints yet, Captain. I’ll let you know when I see them under some stress.”
    “Good,” Eric said. “Just remember to step in if things get hairy. I’d rather trust your hand over anyone else’s.”
    “Wilco, Cap,” Daniels said, flipping a casual salute as he stepped back from the door that connected the office to the bridge.
    Eric sighed and set about putting the rest of his paperwork into order. There was an awful lot of it, even more now that he had to sign off on every new and modified system since the refit. He was just lucky that everything seemed to be working, more or less; otherwise he’d be filling in reports from now to doomsday.
    With the last of the immediate requirements having received his official stamp, Eric made his way back out into the bridge and took a seat at the central command station.
    “Ah, Commander, good to see you up from the darkest recesses of the ship,” he said with a mild grin as he looked over to where his executive officer was sitting. “I understand we had some power issues?”
    “Contractors didn’t know how our reactor was wired and apparently had trouble reading a schematic,” Roberts answered dryly, the former U.S. Army Ranger clearly not amused by the whole situation. “Chief got it all squared away. We’re good to go.”
    “Excellent. I knew that she would,” Eric said as he relaxed.
    While he hadn’t wanted to wait around in Earth orbit—it would have looked questionable on later reports if the ship hadn’t been deemed fit to make her scheduled departure—Eric had dreaded the possibility of having to turn around and go back for repairs so soon. The Chief was good at her job, or she wouldn’t be on the ship she was on, but there was always Mr. Murphy to consider, of course. He was happy that he’d been right in his earlier assessment.
    He stepped out on the bridge and glanced at the main repeater displays as he walked by. “Time to T-point?”
    “Three minutes, Captain,” Daniels said from where he was hovering over the ensign at the controls. “Calculations laid in for Ranquil system.”
    “Good.” Eric took a seat, his stomach already roiling. “Signal all hands, transition is imminent. You may engage the system at your discretion.”
    “Aye