"If I might continue, Donald?" Admiral Moore said, glaring at Admiral Hubera.
"Of course. I'm sorry Richard. I just know what's coming."
"Oh? Then tell us, Donald."
"I didn't mean that I know exactly. I just know that it's going to be something that will keep us awake nights until we bail her out again."
"I don't recall any incidents where we were required to bail her out. She's an exemplary young officer who has served Space Command with distinction."
Admiral Hubera simply scowled.
"And I don't expect this announcement to keep anyone awake at night, except of course every scientist, engineer, and ship designer entrusted with the details. It seems that Commander Carver has broken the speed record in space. In fact, she didn't just break it; she shattered it beyond what anyone could have ever anticipated. According to the report she's filed, while in command of the Prometheus' new scout-destroyer, she traversed most of the former Frontier Zone in just twelve days. The distance covered is estimated as being some three-hundred-fifteen light-years."
"What?!" Admiral Woo said, practically as a shout as he jumped to his feet. "You can't be serious."
"I'm perfectly serious, Lon. If her reported position is accurate, our estimates of her speed are Light-9793.6. Captain Gavin confirms that she attained a minimum of Light-7500 before they lost all contact with the vessel. The instruments aboard the Prometheus couldn't be any more precise than that because they weren't prepared for the event when it occurred."
"This is incredible," Admiral Plimley said. "How did she do it? Has she prepared a report on her breakthrough?"
"Commander Carver is presently stranded near the new Frontier Zone border," Admiral Moore said. "Her ship has suffered a problem with its drive system and they don't have the necessary parts on board to make repairs. Captain Gavin is proceeding to her location with all haste, but at the top speed of the Prometheus, he won't reach her location for nine months and twenty-one days."
"Stranded?" Admiral Bradlee echoed.
"Yes. She has Sub-Light power and thrusters, but no FTL capability. They have adequate food and life-support for two years, so the only danger seems to be from hostile forces."
"We must send everyone within a hundred light years towards her position immediately," Admiral Platt said. "We can't afford to have that ship and crew fall into Raider hands. If they learn the secret of such travel, and we lose it, they'll be unstoppable."
"And while she's waiting for assistance, she must transmit everything she has on this breakthrough," Admiral Hillaire, "so our people can begin working on ways to refine and improve on it."
"I don't know how much we can improve on Light-9793," Admiral Woo said, retaking his seat, "but I agree with Arnold. We must have her report as soon as possible."
"At least we can look forward to almost ten months of peace and quiet with Carver stuck out there in the middle of nowhere and unable to get herself into trouble," Admiral Hubera said, chuckling to himself.
* * *
Two weeks later, Jenetta received another message from the Prometheus. Captain Gavin's face appeared on her com screen as she pressed the play button.
"Hello Jen. Space Command has approved our proceeding to your location with all due haste. As expected, they're anxious to learn everything possible about your extraordinary passage. I perceive from the tone of the message that the Research folks are in an absolute frenzy to receive anything that you can relay to them about the anomaly. Please have Commander Cameron prepare a complete report that elucidates not only what occurred to the ship's systems, but also what he suspects might be responsible for causing the anomaly. Encode it using the encryption algorithm November-One-Niner that can be found in your briefing room safe.
"Space Command has ordered a number of ships that are reported to be much closer than the Prometheus, to head for your location with all possible speed. They'll stay with you until we arrive and they'll assist in your repairs.
"Good luck. See you when we arrive. Lawrence Gavin, Captain of the GSC Prometheus, message complete."
* * *
The routine aboard the Colorado settled into something almost normal after receiving the message from Captain Gavin. Lieutenant Commander Cameron finally got the rest that he needed and he started looking like his old cheerful self again. His engineering team continued to work on the ship's systems, and the cables that had snaked around the Engineering deck slowly disappeared as equipment was repaired or replaced, and the functions were moved back behind the panel covers. A report describing each of the steps necessary to restore life support and power in a similar situation was recorded onto a holo-tube and stored with the emergency information holo-tube manuals. Two months after first hearing from the Prometheus, the ship had the appearance of an ordinary GSC ship. They could just as easily have been hurtling through space at Light-412.
Jenetta spent much of her watch on the bridge, just as the other watch officers were required to do, and the remainder in her briefing room talking with her senior officers, reviewing reports, and preparing her own reports. She spent at least two hours each day in the gym or running around the flight bay track with her cats.
Since the ship was stationary, Jenetta tried to make it blend into the background of space as much as possible. The naturally black color of the Dakinium hull helped immensely. All exterior lights remained extinguished, and sensors would only be used in passive mode so that passing ships would not pick up an active signal. A dozen times each month, the Colorado's DeTect equipment recorded the passage of a ship within 4 billion kilometers of their position. So before the communication messages were sent each day, the surrounding space was checked for the presence of any ships.
Jenetta was working out in the gym when she received an urgent message from Lieutenant Commander Pulsen. Her CT made it seem that her XO was whispering directly into her left ear as she heard, "Captain to the bridge. A vessel is approaching our position."
"Sound GQ," Jenetta said as she jumped up from the exercise machine and ran for the door, her cats just a step behind her. She reached the bridge in twenty seconds, sweat still dripping from her brow.
"What is it, Ken," she shouted to Pulsen, over the noise of the GQ message emanating from speakers in the corridor while the doors were still open.
"A ship has dropped out of Light Speed off our larboard stern. It's still too far away for viewing with the sensors in passive mode, but it's coming on at Plus Twenty, directly towards us. Should we turn on our navigation lighting?"
"No, no lights. Let's prepare for unwelcome visitors."
"Unwelcome? It might be one of the Space Command ships sent to assist us."
"Space Command vessels will contact us as soon as they reach this sector, so they can get a fix on our position. This contact appears to be a chance encounter. Until we know differently, they're to be considered unfriendly."
"Aye, Captain. We're already blacked out."
"The Dakinium should shield all life signs from their sensors. We know that the original material couldn't be penetrated. Even com signals were blocked. Let's just play dead and see who 'comes aknockin.'"
A ship glided cautiously into view during the next hour. The Colorado's crew was poised for action. All laser gunners were at their posts in the weapons centers, even though the hatch covers over the laser arrays remained closed. Torpedo guidance specialists were likewise manning their consoles, ready to steer their charges towards the enemy hull, if it was an enemy, although the torpedo hatches were still closed. All personnel not actively involved in offensive or defensive activities were in Secure rooms.
When the ship got close enough, Jenetta remarked, "It appears to be a light destroyer, but it isn't Space Command or Nordakian. It looks Uthlaro made. It could be a private security company ship, or it might be a Raider ship."
"What should we do, Captain?" Commander Pulsen asked. "Should we hail them?"
"No. Let's wait and see what they do."
Seve
ral minutes later the com operator announced, "The vessel is hailing us, Captain."
"No response. Ignore their hails."
"Aye, Captain."
The ship stopped trying to hail them after ten minutes. As they watched the bridge viewscreen, several space tugs left the destroyer and approached the Colorado. Reaching the ship, they tried to cut their way into the flight bay, but their exterior mounted plasma torches were totally ineffective against the Dakinium.
"They can't seem to cut their way in," Commander Pulsen remarked.
"No. The Dakinium can only be cut in a special chemical process used at the GSC space dock where the ship was built. We carry special pre-cut and pre-shaped panels and vacuum epoxy to use for any hull repairs because even we can't work with the material. If they do manage to damage us, the real repairs will have to be made at the GSC space dock at Mars."
"What will they do now?"
"I expect that they'll either try to blast open the flight bay with explosives, or they'll use their laser arrays on the door."
"We should hail them before they do."
"No, they won't hurt us. At least not seriously. Let's wait before we reveal our presence."
Jenetta's prediction was correct. The space tugs moved out of the way and the ship fired a laser at the bay door. The coherent light hit the door dead center and remained on that spot for over a minute but was totally ineffective. Jenetta smiled as she imagined the surprise on the ship's bridge. After a few minutes, five arrays combined their pulses on the same point of the flight bay door. The laser pulses didn't even mar the surface.
"What next, a torpedo?" Commander Pulsen asked.
"If that happens, we'll try to destroy it before it reaches us, and we'll return fire immediately. Bomb-pumped laser and high-explosive warheads shouldn't hurt us, but a nuclear warhead could do some serious damage if it gets close enough. How well we'll hold up against a fission or fusion torpedo will depend upon the strength of the warhead, but I don't intend to let them pound us with impunity. I'm betting that they won't fire any torpedoes at us, though. They're going to want us intact."
"What exactly are we trying to accomplish, Captain? Are you testing the strength of the hull plating?"
"No, this is deadly serious. I'm hoping that they decide to drag us home so they can get a better look at us without destroying the ship. This must appear to be quite a prize to the ship's captain."
"Drag us home? Where?"
"That's the question, Ken. Do you know what our biggest problem has always been in combating the Raiders?"
"Uh, finding them?" he said as the light suddenly clicked on behind his eyes.
"Exactly. Now, if we've convinced the ship's captain that we're a derelict, but one that can stand up to almost any pounding, that's a prize that the Raiders, or anyone else, would want. Except for our unique sail, required for docking with a mother-ship, we look a lot like a small GSC destroyer. But since we're the prototype, we won't match any configuration that they're familiar with, or have in their computers. Right now they're wondering if we're from this region of space, or maybe from another part of the galaxy. They'll want our secrets, and want them badly. After all, the GSC has kicked their butts all over space during the past six years. They have to be searching for an edge."
"You think that they'll reveal the location of a hidden base?"
"It's a good bet. If it turns out that they're legitimate salvagers, we'll thank them for towing us to a spaceport or planet and pay a towing fee according to scale. If they tow us to a Raider base, we can contact the ships on their way to find us, and direct them to our new location."
"Brilliant, Captain."
"Let's wait to see how things turn out before we start tossing around superlatives like that, Ken. This could all be a big bust, or a total disaster."
Less than thirty minutes later, three more tugs joined the three already outside the ship, and the destroyer moved off, resuming its original course. The six tugs placed themselves around the Colorado and began to move it. Placement was tricky because the tugs couldn't properly attach themselves to the ship, but in no time the ship was moving along at Light-75. Tugs on either side were ready to guide the ship while three tugs positioned themselves at the stern for propulsion. The sixth tug, placed at the bow, initiated a temporal envelope in the same way that a freighter creates an envelope that extends to the rearmost container section. That envelope merged with the envelope created by each of the other tugs so that all vessels would remain FTL if a gap between them momentarily exceeded the limitations of an envelope. The extra tugs were really only there to provide thruster power for maneuvering at sub-light in the event of a problem.
As the Colorado began to move, Jenetta at down in the command chair on the bridge. For the first time since the red alert sounded, she became consciously aware of the two cats that still flanked her sides. "I'm going to my quarters to shower and change, Ken. Call me if anything changes."
"Aye, Captain."
Knowing that she would be notified in her CT immediately if anything significant occurred, Jenetta walked to her quarters with the cats. They had been extremely well behaved on the bridge, no doubt recognizing the smells of everyone there since most crewmembers worked out in the gym during the day. In fact, they had been so good that Jenetta decided to start bringing them to her briefing room each day. She would leave them there when she went out to the bridge, but she'd be able to spend a lot more time with them.
If Jenetta expected a short trip, she was mistaken. Six days later they were still being towed towards their unknown destination. Since the tug's sensors couldn't penetrate the Colorado, life continued on as before, except that the bridge remained at a reduced alert status.
At the breakfast table in the officer's mess, Lieutenant Kerrey asked, "Captain, how much longer do you think it will take, to reach wherever it is we're being towed?"
"I don't know. I originally estimated about three days, but that was based solely on one fact. We'd had dozens of contacts in an area of space where I wouldn't have expected to have one contact in six months. That indicated that there might be an unknown base operating around here."
"So you were developing your plan even before the destroyer showed up?"
"Not a plan, per se. I was trying to make sense of our observations. The plan didn't develop until our position was discovered and contact with a possible enemy vessel became unavoidable."
"When will we contact the fleet?"
"When the time is right. Every day that we spend at Light-75 is another day that the Prometheus draws closer at Light-412. Our course isn't taking us much farther away because we're running almost parallel to the new frontier border, so the Prometheus is closing on us quickly."
Eighteen more days passed before the tugs dropped out of Light speed. The sight that greeted the bridge crew surprised probably everyone except Jenetta. There in front of the ship was an enormous black asteroid with a huge gaping maw. It appeared ready to swallow them up, like a hungry, large mouth bass about to swallow a fly after leaping from a Terran lake.
* * *
Chapter Eight
~ June 17th, 2273 ~
From a distance, one enormous hunk of rock floating in the depths of space looks pretty much like another. This one was in orbit around a Type F5 blue/white MMK class III giant with a large asteroid belt, but no planets. But to Jenetta's trained eye, the hundred-twenty kilometer long asteroid looked similar to that of Dixon Space Command Base. Dixon had been a Raider base known as Raider Three until Space Command attacked the Raider stronghold, defeated the garrison, and commandeered the base for their own use.
Using their Sub-Light engines and thrusters, the tugs slowly maneuvered the Colorado through the kilometers long cavernous opening. The engineering effort required to create such a base never failed to impress Jenetta.
Like Dixon, the hollowed out interior of the enormous asteroid was about sixty kilometers long and thirty kilometers wide. And like the other Raider bases
Jenetta had seen, it was a marvel of engineering. With walls that were probably thirty or more kilometers thick, it was able to withstand an assault from almost any force. After being hollowed out, the interior surface had been covered with smooth, meters-thick, pre-stressed plasticrete. At Dixon, space between the inner 'shell' and the asteroid walls, had been filled with a special plasticrete designed to harden in a vacuum. Jenetta had no reason to believe that this base was constructed differently. To hide the base, giant doors, several meters thick and cleverly camouflaged, could be rolled closed.
A habitat building, that appeared to be identical to the one at Dixon, occupied an area along the wall on the larboard side of the ship as it was pushed to the work area where plundered ships were repaired, either for service by the Raiders, or for sale on the black market. If constructed to the same specs used at Dixon, it would be three-kilometers wide by one-kilometer deep. Its eighteen levels made it the size of a small city. Dozens of ships were moored at airlock piers that extended out from a pressurized docking platform that ran first along the length of the habitat, and then continued into the cavern for some forty kilometers. Dixon could accommodate a hundred-fifty ships at its docking piers. Jenetta counted sixteen large warships here, mixed in with dozen of smaller ships. She had no doubts that this was a Raider base, and the warships had to be Raider vessels.
After delivering the Colorado to the spacedocks, the tugs backed away and then zoomed off somewhere. Their two-man crews were no doubt anxious to get a decent meal after eating emergency rations for the twenty-four day journey. Second on their priority list would no doubt be to get some sleep in a decent bed instead of restless sleep on a mattress pad laid on the tug's flight deck. Jenetta waited until the work parties began to approach the Colorado, and then gave the order to Lieutenant Kerrey to execute the plan that she had laid out as they entered the cavern.
Using its Sub-Light engines and Deuterium maneuvering thrusters, the Colorado began to move quickly to a place along the wall opposite the habitat building. It took a few seconds for the work parties to get over the shock of seeing the ship suddenly come to life, but then the com channels came alive with screaming voices as emergency lights began to flash all over the cavern.
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