Odyssey One 5: Warrior King by Evan Currie Page B

shuttles use very crude controls,” she told him with pursed lips. “However, there is something . . . exciting about flying one.”
    Steph nodded. He’d flown with the Priminae a few times on their own shuttlecraft, and he knew where she was coming from. Priminae small craft relied heavily on computer-controlled systems, far more than even the most automated vessel in Terran service. Their technology allowed for extremely precise flying, but very little of it had the seat-of-the-pants thrill of putting your own hand physically on the stick.
    Computer-based piloting was beyond impressive for many types of maneuvers, but it never quite matched up to the best intuitive pilots. And such systems were almost inherently predictable if your opponent had enough flight data from which to derive pattern recognitions.
    “When will you be ready to test?” he asked her.
    “Very nearly there,” Milla answered. “I need a few more hours of stick time, yes?”
    “Alright. Let me know, and I’ll put aside some time and we’ll get you certified.”
    “Thank you, Stephan,” she said gratefully. “I look forward to it.”
    “So do I.”
     
    ►►►
     
    ► Miram Heath looked over the orbital telemetry from her station on the command deck of the Odysseus and permitted herself a curt nod of satisfaction.
    Her specialty, pre-Drasin, had been astrometric analysis with an eye to deep spatial anomalies. After a decade of studying the most obscure pieces of data in known space, from black holes to gamma ray bursts, the nuts and bolts of navigating a starship were almost mundane.
    Almost.
    Like most people who delved into the space sciences, she’d spent her formative years dreaming about the great void. While in school, she’d desperately wanted a shot at the Mars mission, but war had broken out before she’d graduated, and by the time the dust had settled, she had been considered too valuable on the ground in Houston.
    When the Odyssey ’s mission had been announced, she’d made her application, but it was a Department of Defense project, and she had been a civilian at that point. Aside from the short-term jaunts to Space Station Liberty, she had all but given up on the idea of getting into space—into the deep black.
    The Drasin changed the rules.
    Suddenly, the budget for deep black exploration was all but unlimited, and the new Confederation-Block Alliance was screaming for qualified people to man starships. She’d put her name in immediately, had her commission reactivated, and gotten her pick of the new ships.
    Miram had selected the Odysseus without hesitation.
    Eric Weston had become a symbol on Earth—many symbols, in fact. Some people saw him as a war hero, others as a war criminal. More than those labels, however, he’d become the man who had introduced them to the stars, to the Priminae—and to the Drasin.
    He was perhaps the most polarizing man on the planet, or off it, she supposed.
    That was one reason the Confederacy had put him back into the black as quickly as they had. Weston was off the planet where most of his detractors were focused and thus out of the public eye. Giving him the Odysseus , the spiritual successor of the Odyssey , kept his supporters happy, and he was a beloved figure in the Priminae system, which made him a boon to diplomacy.
    For Miram, and her community, he was the man who had proved that humanity was not alone in the universe. He had gone out into the stars, found intelligent life, and risked his own ship, crew, and well-being to save theirs.
    Eric Weston was every sci-fi captain she’d ever watched on TV and in the movies growing up. Despite her very disciplined demeanor, she was thrilled to serve on his ship.
    Showing that was out of the question, of course. Even in the early twenty-second century, science was a shockingly male-dominated field. Not as much as it had been traditionally, particularly in the aftermath of the Block War, but enough so that she’d built a