A few seconds later the hatch slid open and Lyyle entered the ship. Opening the inner hatch, he stepped into the main cabin of the Express just as Ian, in a rumpled jumpsuit, shuffled out of his cabin.
Without asking, Lyyle headed toward the small galley to make his friend a cup of coffee while Ian stared at him bleary-eyed. Before Lyyle could do anything, the automatic system Ian had rigged for such mornings beat him to it. The hot water system (that would work in zero gravity as well) started perking and a dispenser under the upper cupboard neatly dropped a tea bag into Ian’s favorite cup on the counter. Although he had seen it before, the whole process still fascinated Lyyle.
“Why the rush?” Ian asked sullenly from beside him. Looking at his friend, Lyyle was struck by the haggard look of the trader.
“We just got a report from long-range scanners that what appears to be a Red-tail scout is headed this way,” Lyyle said excitedly.
Big deal! thought Ian.
“So do you want me to come watch you pick off another one, or are you going to let this one burn up?” In spite of his appearance, there were indications in his voice that he was coming to life.
“Neither!” Lyyle replied with obvious zeal. “This one will pass by us but looks to be heading into what you call the unknown zone.”
“What’s this got to do with me?” Ian asked.
Just then, the automatic tea system signaled that it was ready. A relay clicked and steaming hot water poured through a stainless steel tube system into Ian’s cup. It stopped automatically and Ian instinctively picked it up.
“We were thinking that if you wanted to see what they’re up to, this might be your chance,” Lyyle answered. “We could follow using the Optiveil and find out not only exactly where their bases are but maybe what their plans are.”
“We?”
“Yes, we. I’m going with you this time.”
“Sounds rather ambitious,” Ian observed. He took a sip of the still steeping tea. The transformational effect was rapid and amazing.
“This is an incredible opportunity!” Lyyle exclaimed.
“Now you sound like a salesman,” Ian remarked. “But don’t worry. I’m already sold.”
“I didn’t mean to be so pushy,” Lyyle said contritely. “But it...” He was interrupted by the signal of the hatch intercom.
“You in there, Ian?” sounded Sony’s voice over the speaker.
“Open,” Ian said to the voice recognition system. The hatch obediently opened and Sony charged in. He came up short when he saw both Lyyle and Ian standing by the small galley.
“Oh,” Sony said with obvious disappointment. “You’ve already told him the news.”
“Seems everybody wants me to do something,” Ian observed dryly. “Next it’ll be Cap who comes knocking.”
“No, he’s busy at the control center,” Sony admitted. “Everyone’s curious about what you’ll discover.”
Ian muttered something to himself under his breath. Here I am just trying to make a living and these crazy people want me to chase a Red-tail across the galaxy. Are they nuts? Then again, it could prove profitable.
“We’ll get out of here and let you get ready,” Lyyle said as he moved toward the hatch, pushing Sony along with him. “Just give us a shout at the control center when you’re ready to go.”
Did I say I going somewhere?
“No need to run away,” Ian said dryly. “I don’t usually bite, especially when I’ve had a whole two hours of sleep.”
“That’s all right,” Sony volunteered. He saw the corner of Cahill’s mouth turn up in a mischievous grin and realized his leg was being pulled.
“I want to watch from the main center anyway,” he said. “You’re not going to get up in a spaceship. Space gives me the wobblies.”
“Suit yourself,” Ian said as Sony headed out the hatch and Lyyle went over to get himself something to drink at the galley. “I’m going to go change. Shouldn’t take long.”
Several minutes later, a suited and much fresher-looking Ian stepped back into the main cabin. He found Lyyle working the detector system of the Express where it was receiving a feed from the main detection center. He could clearly see the regional star chart, now augmented from Vogel, Red-tail, and Ian’s own records. A dotted track showed the path of the approaching Red-tail ship.
“I see you’ve been busy,” Ian commented as he strode over to the control chair and climbed in. Lyyle looked up and made ready to switch the detector screen back to its usual appearance.
“No, leave it for a minute,” Ian continued as he strapped in. “It’ll give me a better idea of what is going on.” Ian proceeded to do a quick rundown of ship systems while Lyyle strapped into the seat he was sitting in.
“We’re ready to go,” Ian said, hailing the control center.
“You’re cleared for liftoff,” returned Cap’s voice over the speaker. “You still receiving the feed from long-range sensors?”
Ian glanced over at Lyyle who signaled a thumbs-up while he switched the feed over to an auxiliary screen. He had learned Ian’s preference for having primary ship detectors routed to the main display.
“We’ve got it and will feed to you when we clear the atmosphere,” Ian said. “We’re going to keep things on tight beam for this flight. The quality may suffer a bit, but I don’t want to advertise to our red friend out there that we’re in the neighborhood.”
“Understood,” Cap said. “If we lose it, we’ll try to track it on our own long-range sensors.”
“Keep sending us a feed as long as you have a carrier wave from us.”
“Won’t that broadcast expose Vogel to the Red-tail?” Lyyle asked from his station.
“Only if he happens to be tuned to our wavelength and intersects the joint signal exactly when we are transmitting,” Ian answered as he adjusted a series of his controls. “The feed from Vogel will only shoot out on the harmonic of the two carrier waves. That way the only time Vogel transmits is when we squirt a carrier signal first to establish the link. Now, let’s get out of here.”
“We’re all set here,” Cap said over the speaker.
“Acknowledged,” answered Ian into his mic. “Lifting.” He advanced the throttle bar and rotated the axis ball. Responding to his actions, the Cahill Express lifted off the pad, rotated on its vertical axis, and then shot skyward.
“Activate the Optiveil,” Ian ordered Lyyle while he continued to monitor his main board. “I’m likely to get pretty busy, so I’ll leave its operation to you on the auxiliary board.”
“Got it,” Lyyle acknowledged. He turned to the controls.
Ian found himself marveling at how easily this ground-pounder was learning the ship’s systems. Keep this up, Ian thought, and I’ll make a space dog out of you yet.
“Optiveil powering up,” Lyyle reported, unaware of the scrutiny the trader was giving him.
“Bringing shields and weapon systems online,” Ian said.
“You expecting trouble?”
“Red-tails are always trouble, even if you’re invisible. Besides, it never hurts to be prepared.”
“My thoughts exactly,” Lyyle agreed.
It only took a matter of seconds for the Express to clear the atmosphere and approach the planet’s Optiveil shield.
“Crossing the veil,” Ian told those listening below.
“Acknowledged,” Cap replied. “We lost sight of you about half a minute ago.”
“I wonder why?” Ian said dryly. “Feed coming to you now,” he added with a nod toward Lyyle.
The technician made the necessary adjustments on his board and the tight beam downlink was established. Ian extended the long-range detection equipment of his ship to the maximum.
“Alright,” he said to his friend seated at the auxiliary panels. “Now we go find ourselves a Red-tail.”
Chapter Sixteen
Piaffè was alarmed. None of his maps and records bore any resemblance to the charts of old. The Horicon contact warned him of thi
s possibility when he’d been given the oddly curvaceous course, but experiencing it himself was quite another matter altogether.
The stars and most of the planets were as they should be, taking into account the passage of time since his charts had been updated. But all the old markers and explorer outposts that the Jibbah had established were gone. This was more than a little disconcerting. He stopped at the different checkpoints along his flight path, only to find there was nothing there. All had apparently been replaced or obliterated by this boisterous flood of bipedal creatures.
And their ships! That was another surprise for the little space-going Jibbah. Piaffè had studied all the old records concerning the explorations of the Jibbah, including the ships and equipment. He knew he was going to be flying one of the little scouts the Jibbah still had but might run across other equipment left behind.
But the ships of these humans (as labeled by the Horicon) were unbelievable. They were huge! Not only massive for the size of these bipedal creatures, but overly large, even for them. They seemed to want to create virtual planetoids in space.
Piaffè watched from afar while one of their vessels docked and launched scores of smaller ships from it. The Jibbah, for all their ambition, had never built anything remotely comparable.
The Jibbah had always used natural moons and planetoids from which to base their explorations. In cases where no such mass of rock was available, suitable orbs were prepared and moved to the required location. To create your own spatial bodies seemed unnatural, though Piaffè could see the economy of it.
Although intrigued by these new neighbors in space, Piaffè felt somewhat repelled and took great pains to avoid detection and contact. Fortunately, his Horicon contact had admonished him to remain undetected, which much to Piaffè’s relief, reflected in the flight path outlined by his mysterious friend.
A sensor alarm startled Piaffè out of his reprieve. The little Jibbah anxiously scanned the readout. It was one of those red marauders!
Cold fear ran up and down his spine and his fur rose in hackles with the instinctive reaction. A second scan showed that the red ship did not appear to have spotted him since its course did not alter. Instead, it seemed to be stalking one of the human ships. This should be interesting.
Intrigued, Piaffè watched the red ship move closer to the unsuspecting human vessel. Piaffè could not fathom why the intended victim did not either detect the attacker or immediately flee. Such encounters with those red ships by the Jibbah had always ended with the death of the Jibbah, which was why generations ago the Jibbah had abandoned space and burrowed deeper into their underground sanctuary or fled into the deep forests of their home worlds. Nothing in the experience of the Jibbah could stand up to the red onslaught.
The red ship drew closer toward its intended victim as it approached from an optimal attack position. Powerless to help, Piaffè watched in morbid fascination what he knew would come next. For some reason, the victim still had not reacted to the approach of the enemy vessel.
Unexpectedly, the red ship broke off its attack, twisting and accelerating away when another human ship mysteriously appeared immediately astern of the surprised red invader. At the same moment, the first human ship reversed course and took off after the fleeing red ship.
Watching from his safe location, Piaffè saw them bracket the red ship and torch it with some sort of heat ray. This kind of weaponry was unheard of among Piaffè’s people. That anyone could stand and fight against the red menace was incredible, but to deliberately hunt them, or allow one’s self to be hunted by them, was unbelievable!
Piaffè glanced over and saw that his sensor recorder had taken in all that had transpired before him. This would be welcome news back home. As an afterthought, Piaffè considered contacting his Horicon friend with the news.
∞∞∞
Space streamed by the front windows of the Cahill Express in its usual bands of vivid color. Although fascinated by the spectacle, Lyyle knew that Ian had his mind on other things—the main detector screen for one.
“Still maintaining the same heading,” Ian commented more to himself than to Lyyle seated nearby. Realizing he was talking to himself, Ian made a mental note to watch it more carefully when someone else was around. Having company onboard the Express was definitely unusual and he wasn’t used to it. All he could hope was that Lyyle had been too entranced by the light show out front to notice what Ian had said.
“Were you talking to me?” Lyyle asked.
“Just talking to myself about our friend out there,” Ian said with a nod toward the detector screen.
“Should be coming up on the next planet soon,” Lyyle said.
Ian glanced down at the navigational display in front of him. He was pleased at how quickly his new friend was learning to read the display. For someone whose first trip into space was only a couple of days ago, he showed exceptional talent.
Ever since leaving Vogel safely veiled behind them, they had been tagging along behind this particular Red-tail. In spite of the speculation about where the enemy ship might be headed, Ian resisted being caught up in the excitement. As one who had spent years in space, he knew only too well that there were countless places a ship could be going besides where you expected.
However, contrary to his skepticism, the original suggestion about where the Red-tail was going seemed to be playing out. They had already observed the ship briefly stop near two planets marked on the captured Red-tail navigational charts.
Lyyle had wanted to try tapping into whatever signal the ship might be sending but Ian had vetoed the idea. Lyyle had no experience with tight beam technology so he did not understand the risks involved. Such signals were sensitive to interception, and any such effort could be easily detected and traced, surrendering their greatest advantage - stealth.
Clearly, the Red-tail had no idea that he was being followed, and Ian was loath to tip him off for the mere sake of listening in on any signals. Besides, even if they could translate it, any benefit they might gain would be more than offset by revealing their presence.
“So what do we do now?” Lyyle asked. “Just watch him stop and drop off messages again?”
“No, I was thinking of doing some serious investigation,” Ian answered as he slowed to match the Red-tail ship. The Red-tail slowed his approach to this planet and Ian did not want to overshoot its position. He let the Express creep toward the enemy ship. As it came to a stop, he edged in even closer.
“I want to try to determine exactly where he is signaling on that planet,” Ian said to his friend.
“He could be signaling anywhere in this hemisphere.”
“True,” Ian answered.
With deft motions of the controls, Ian tried to position the Express directly above the other ship in line with the center point of the hemisphere below.
“I’m hoping he’s being lazy. Red-tail ships tend to park directly over whatever ground point they want to talk to. It is much easier with a tight beam signal than trying to hit a particular point on a moving object. Just park over the point and wait for them to signal you. We won’t be able to intercept his signal, but we might get lucky and pick up his carrier wave.”
“Trying to get the bleed over caused by atmospheric dispersion?” Lyyle asked.
“You learn fast,” Ian observed.
He gave the axis ball a final twitch. “That should do it.”
Reaching over, he carefully turned up his own reception equipment. Putting too much strength into the detection wave might cause it to register on the equipment of the Red-tail ship not far below him.
For several seconds the Cahill Express and the Red-tail ship hung in synchronous orbit over the rotating planet. Ian watched his own transceiver for any indication of a carrier wave emitting from the planet, although he wasn’t sure he could pick it up. Many assumptions had been made in choosing this spot. Not only was the location on the planet unknown (which meant the axis of the signal could be anywhere) but he also did not know how
good the Red-tail tight beam equipment might be.
Just as he was about to give up he caught indications of a carrier wave on his equipment.
“Got it!” Ian announced. He tried to triangulate where the point of origin might be on the surface of the planet.
“Pull up a surface display on the auxiliary monitor,” he directed Lyyle. “This signal won’t last long!”
“Coming up now,” Lyyle said as he hastily adjusted the controls.
“Peg our location above it,” Ian ordered. “I’m sending you the vectors that I’m receiving now.”
“Coming in...” Lyyle started to say.
“Lost it!” Ian snorted as the tight beam signal stopped.
“I think I managed to get it anyway!” Lyyle replied happily.
“Plotting in the target area now,” he added as he worked with the data coming in from Ian’s transceiver.
“There he goes,” Ian observed as the Red-tail ship started to move. “I’m taking us outward on the same tangent to the surface. We don’t need him finding us by simply bumping into us.”
With quick motions, he moved the Express higher away from both the Red-tail ship and the planet below. Moments later, the Red-tail started moving higher, also in a move almost mimicking Ian’s efforts on the Express.
“Hang on!” Ian said unnecessarily. He rapidly accelerated yet higher. Only upon later reflection would he understand why he had said it.
When they had been going over plans to install the Optiveil on the Express, several unknowns had cropped up. Sony had wondered what the Optiveil would do to the inertia-canceling effect of the drive system of the Cahill Express. Even though their earlier test hops had not detected any interference, in the back of Ian’s mind it was still possible. Fortunately, everything worked fine.
Through the front windows, they could see the planet falling away as the two ships shot away from the surface. Ian was seriously beginning to wonder if they had been detected since the Red-tail ship was still keeping pace with them.
“He’s changing vectors!” Lyyle announced from his station. Simultaneously, Ian could see the Red-tail ship veer away and resume his original heading. In seconds, it was a rapidly shrinking blip and then it was gone.
Space Trader (Galactic Axia Adventure) Page 14
