“It’s not a great plan, but it’s the best we have.” Shira looked confused.
“Wouldn’t an EMP impact us as well? I mean, our systems would go offline, too wouldn’t they?” Davi shook his head.
“Since we will be powered down, it will not, except for the Electro-Magnetic Pulse or EMP if you like. Which works off of an isolated battery system. Once it goes off, we power back up,
so, we won’t be disabled, but it will take a few minutes for the ship to be fully functional again.”
Shira studied her console.
“If we can power down the Specter and get her up in 30 seconds, we can take off and get inside the targeted freighter within 4 minutes.
Depending on the size and cargo of the ship,
we might only get one or two freighters completed before their systems come back online,
so, we need to choose them carefully.”
Blake’s eyebrow rose.
“Specter?” Blake asked turning now to his pilot
Shira blushed.
“That’s what I named the fighter in the bay. It seemed…appropriate.” She answered sheepishly
“I like it. Specter, it is! Alright, do we know where the hatch is going to be and what kind of resistance we are looking at once we get to the freighter?” Blake said.
Morgan’s voice came over the main speaker,
“The freighter will be occupied by approximately 25 personnel, but they will be more like your merchant marines, and not armed.
There is an arms locker on board with small energy weapons, but as long as the alarm doesn’t sound,
it shouldn’t be a problem.”
Blake mulled it over.
“Alright, we go in, we stun, and use non-lethal force. We don’t want to kill people for just doing their job,
once we get on board. We will take the bridge,
and we need to make sure they don’t get any communications out once their power comes back up. Once inside,
we will disable the power permanently,
subdue the bridge crew and download any information on the cargo of that ship.
This will let us know whether we want to pillage it or move on. We need to take out any crew we find along the way,
again, using non-lethal force unless provoked.
Once in the cargo area,
we will open the bay door and push the cargo out into space. The retrieval arm can grab it from there. Davi, can you monitor that from here to ensure we get all the cargo?” Blake finished, turning to his engineer.
“Yes, Captain. We can use the arm, but I would rather use the grav-beam on the Nismel to maneuver the cargo as well.
Just using the arm will lose a lot of cargo.” He said without looking up from the console, still marveling at the data being displayed from the black hole.
Blake shook his head.
“The what?”
he said, looking to Davi for an explanation.
The little man finally looked up and shook his head sighing as if having to explain Newtonian physics to a three-year-old.
“When the ship takes cargo aboard at a port, it uses a focused frequency gravitation beam that allows it to maneuver cargo into the hold easily and without damage.”
After a second Blake blinked,
“So… a tractor beam,” he said, very annoyed.
“Why didn’t you just say Tractor beam?”
Davi shot a frustrated look at his captain
“Sir, a tractor beam isn’t a real thing. It’s made up,” he said to the captain, the annoyance giving his voice a bit of an edge.
Blake looked over at Shira,
“If he said tractor beam, would that mean more to you then maneuver gravitational thingy.”
Shira thought for a moment,
and though she liked Davi and wanted to be diplomatic, she agreed with the Captain...
“Tractor beam would have explained it easily.” Davi went back to his console, grumbling something about Jeffries tube and warp drives. Blake ignored him and continued with the briefing. “Alright, not a rock-solid plan, but it’s a good start. Since we’re going in winging it,
We are going to need our full faculties.
We might have some surprises we didn’t anticipate,
so, we’re on stand-down until we get to the system. Shira set us a destination and get us going.
Gear check in 12 hours.
Everyone gets some rest. We’re going need it,”
Blake said, heading off the bridge.
CHAPTER
EIGHTEEN
EIGHTEEN
The Prep
Blake was startled awake by an alarm sounding through the room.
He sat up groggily and reached for the switch to open the communicator.
“Bridge, this is Blake. What the hell is going on?” Shira was instantly on the line.
“Blake, we have reached our destination point. Morgan wants to meet. Can you come up to the bridge now?”
Blake shook the weariness from his head.
“I’ll be there in 10 minutes. I need to get a shower first.”
Blake rose from bed, wearily shaking off the rest of the night’s sleep.
He sighed and thought to himself,
looks like it’s time for our first op. Let’s hope it’s not our last. Blake quickly showered and dressed before heading towards the bridge.
Things had been quiet. Aside from training, he had spent most of his time with Shira while Davi had been busy making sure the defenses were working and setting up the ship to rapidly power down and then back up for the EMP blast.
He walked onto the bridge and saw Shira in her usual place, looking over the consoles and making minor course corrections.
Since the ship could pretty much fly itself when programmed with a destination,
he felt it was redundant to have her looking over the computer punching buttons,
but she would just smile and say,
“Hey, I like flying, and if I can shave a couple of hours off our time, then it was well spent.”
Blake just thought she liked being able to sit behind the stick of an aircraft after her return from injury. He couldn’t blame her and didn’t press the issue. Davi walked in and took his place at the science station without a word.
On the main screen was a visual of six freighters lined up in convoy.
From the looks of them, there were no escorts, and everything seemed quiet.
Davi quickly looked over the data coming in, and as promised, there were minimal weapons.
Thank god for small favors, he thought.
“So, what’s our status?” Blake asked the room.
Morgan spoke first.
“The system appears to be free of space traffic, except for the convoy displayed on the screen. They are five hours out and haven’t seen us yet. We were witnessing the convoy as of five light hours ago. They will have a visual on us in roughly that time. Then we can see what their reaction will be.” “Davi, is the smokescreen on the reactor ready to go?” Blake asked the little Russian, Davi nodded. “Already in place and we are sending out a distress using standard channels. Since freighters aren’t equipped with tachyon transmitters, sending it out any other way would give us away. They should receive the message about the same time they see us.”
Blake nodded and then looked at Shira.
“Set a course for those freighters. Make it the best possible speed we would make as a freighter. Even though we’re making it look like a problem with our core, it’ll look like it hasn’t affected our ability to maneuver yet, so they shouldn’t be suspicious. However, once we get within range for the EMP, it needs to look like our power systems went offline.” Shira nodded and went to work calculating the course, then with a wave of his hand, Blake ordered.
“Davi, set the reactor to show the leak. We want to put on a good show for our friends.”
The Captain paused thoughtfully for a moment. “Morgan, keep passive scans going out over the
system in case there are any unwelcome guests who are dark. I don’t think it’s a trap, but it’s better to be paranoid than sorry.”
Blake checked the sensor data one more time, verifying the course and speed of the freighters.
Shira began entering information on the console.
“I am going to do one last weapons check and get ready for the show,” continued Blake.
“Shira, when you’re done here, join me. Davi, make sure the retractor arm and grav-beams are all in the green and let us know when we are 30 minutes from show time, or if we get a response from those freighters. Morgan, check that we’re using the right friend-or-foe response frequencies. We don’t want to alarm anyone yet.”
Blake left the bridge and headed for the hanger where the small gunship dubbed the Specter was waiting
CHAPTER
NINETEEN
NINETEEN
Knock Knock
Blake sat in the weapons seat of the Specter,
staring out of the cockpit’s view screen as the freighters moved towards them.
At the moment, they looked like small dots against the black of space,
but they were slowly growing in size.
He double checked the status console to make sure they were not emanating any emissions, and that the reactive hull was working.
Blake looked at his scanner and saw that his ship was beginning to make its way towards the freighter.
Its own systems were to plan reading that of a more massive ship with a reactor leak.
However, the small gunship would seem to the freighters as normal space giving off no radar signature thus making it virtually invisible.
“This is really cool,” Blake said as he went over some of the options the tactical officer had access to.
Over his shoulder was a large cargo area made to carry items or troops for covert insertion.
All the drives were cold.
The ship was just hanging there, kept in place by the port and starboard maneuvering jets, firing every so often to keep them in place.
“The freighters are getting a little big. Are you sure they can’t see us?”
Shira asked, turning her head to look at Blake sitting just behind her.
He punched at the status screen again.
“They aren’t even flinching, so as far as I can see, they don’t know we’re here. Besides, we’re out of their immediate sensor range so they would have to go active in order even to try and sense us.”
Shira nodded,
“Good, would hate for this to go south before it even starts.”
“Don’t worry, there’s still plenty of time for it to go tits up,” Blake chuckled.
He checked the reactive hull and the emissions dampeners.
“We just need to wait until they are little closer for Davi to give the signal… then it’s party time,”
he said with a slight smile.
As they sat there in deep space with only a line of cargo ships to keep them company, Blake reflected on how lonely space could be.
Being on Earth, he had never truly realized just how big and lonely it would feel out here.
Problems that had seemed to take up entire continents, and even entire religions,
paled in comparison to the vastness of space. Maybe that was the answer;
have everyone spend a week out in space reflecting on life in general.
Suddenly, he heard a blip, and the flashing of a small, red light broke him out of his reverie.
“Looks like Davi is on the ball. Commencing shutdown of systems,” Blake said.
He began to initiate the procedure they had practiced ad nauseam in the bay
turning all systems off and powering down the Specter’s reactor.
Shira was doing the same,
powering down the HUD system and all flight controls.
The ship was now fully visible but showing no heat signatures as she floated in a reasonably stationary orbit.
Both Shira and Blake began a mental countdown from fifty.
As the freighters grew closer,
Blake had the irrational fear of someone looking out of a portal and seeing the Nismel sitting there. He squinted towards the freighters to see if he could get a glimpse of any windows.
Since none were visible,
Blake dismissed the thought.
He tapped Shira’s head to get her attention because the internal coms were offline while the ship was powered down.
“Hey, power up your suit before hitting the systems.” He yelled, hoping she could hear through the sound dampening flight helmet.
She nodded and began tapping at the console on the suit.
Blake did the same, and within a minute,
he could feel the heat spread down his suit and through his body.
He began going through the preplanned list they had practiced in the bay until their hands hurt.
He flipped on the power switch to the reactor,
and nothing happened.
Confused,
he flipped it twice more.
Still nothing.
Blake smacked Shira’s helmet lightly,
the first thoughts of panic starting to enter his mind.
“The reactor won’t start! What the fuck?” he said. “Not sure if this ship was meant to do a cold start in space, boss. Might need to give it a second for the igniter to warm up.”
She yelled turning to look at him again,
he could see the worry in her eyes, it started to disturb his calm.
He stared at the dead light indicator that showed the reactor on his console.
If they couldn’t get the reactor started,
this would all be for nothing.
The cockpit would get colder,
and not even the heating elements in their suit could protect them from that.
They would freeze to death before Davi knew anything was wrong.
He could already feel the suit struggling as the temperature in the cockpit continued to decrease. He took a deep, calming breath,
and slowly flipped the switch.
He squinted in anticipation feeling the switch catch, and then engage
…and nothing happened.
“You fucking piece of shit!”
he yelled, slamming his non-metal fist against the console repeatedly.
Finally, accepting his defeat,
he laid his head down on the console and uttered one last string of curse words.
No sooner had he done that,
Blake heard the familiar sound of the engine cycling.
His head shot up, and he stared at the indicator light which was now solid red and starting to blink green.
“Someone does like us up here,” he whispered.
They scrambled to turn on all the systems,
and Shira let out a “whoop” of victory as the engine ignited and came back online.
Once they completed their checklist,
Shira touched the stick to activate the maneuvering jets and pointed them towards their intended target.
She watched the reactor power rise.
As soon as it read one hundred percent,
she turned towards Blake.
“Might want to hold on, Boss. This is going to get interesting.”
Suddenly, Blake was thrown back into his seat by about 4 G’s.
He heard the inertial dampers whine as they tried to adjust. Blake slowly felt himself settle into the seat, the two-hundred-pound weight feeling coming off his chest.
As he watched, the freighters began to grow larger very quickly on the front screen.
“Should we be going this fast?” he asked Shira a bit nervously.
“Relax, Cowboy. This is my thing. Just sit down, shut up, and enjoy the show.”
Shira said with a slight edge to her voice.
She was intently concentrating on what was in front of her.
She aimed for the third freighter in convoy.
As they closed within
meters of it, she fired the retro rockets and maneuvering thrusters to bring
the Specter parallel with the freighter.
She quickly slowed the ship and matched the freighter’s forward velocity.
The Specter crept along for a moment until it found an access hatch.
“Alright, Captain, it's party time.”
Shira rotated the ship ninety degrees to line up the Specters hatch with the freighter's airlock.
She fired the cold jets and slowly guided the ship in until it lightly pushed against the outer hull of the freighter.
Once it connected, the Specter’s computer mated the two airlocks, allowing them to equalize pressure.
The light on Shira’s control panel showed green to indicate a good lock.
Blake and Shira crawled out of their seats in zero-gravity and floated to the middle of the cargo compartment where the round hatch was set into the floor.
Shira went to the console next to the hatch and lifted the lid.
After entering a code and setting the options, she floated back.
The outer door to the freighter received and acknowledged the Empire codes the Specter had, and the hatch slid open to reveal a dark tunnel on the other side.
Both he and Shira’s optical nanites adjusted to the darkness, allowing them to see their low-lit surroundings.
Blake raised a fist,
then held up three fingers.
His other hand reached under his trench coat and pulled out two of the orange metal balls.
He counted down,
and on one,
Shira pulled hard on the door,
Blake tossed the balls in.
There was shouting, and they both heard the metal balls cross from the zero-gravity of the Specter to the artificial gravity of the freighter as they both clanked on the deck.
Shira slammed the Specter’s inner hatch just in time to hear a muffled “whump.”
She opened it back up as Blake covered her with his pistol,
slowly sliding into view ensuring that no one was lying in wait to ambush them.
Once he ascertained that there were no hostiles,
he motioned for Shira to continue as he covered her.
She swung herself through the portal and was instantly caught by the ship’s gravity pulling her towards the floor.
Shira pivoted with her hand.
Using the newly acquired strength and lightning reflexes, she was able to propel herself into a midair half-turn that allowed her to land deftly on her feet. Blake was very impressed and tried to mimic the move.
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