Scout Force

by Rodney Smith

  The next morning, Kelly reviewed the night watch log and saw nothing of interest. He headed over to the dining facility and had breakfast. Kelly was hoping that today would be boring. Boring was good when you were the acting commander.

  Kelly spent the morning reviewing the manuals on the sensor systems. He was looking for new tricks to use when out on patrol. He was especially interested in applications he could run on his monitor on the bridge. It was a shame that Chief B had the duty last night and was sleeping. She could have helped him in his research.

  Kelly checked messages. He had a reminder message about the 1300 meeting. He had a message from his bank, giving his balance and including his most recent purchases. He had made a small hole in his account. Fortunately, his expenses were minimal. His quarters were free. His meals were free. His uniforms were subsidized. Life in the Fleet wasn’t bad.

  Kelly went to the 1300 meeting. It was one of the interminable meetings by the base admin and logistics folks about the latest regulations on requisitions, personnel actions, and yard procedures. Kelly knew it was going to result in more paperwork for him that evening.

  Of course, one of the things that was bad about the Fleet was the paperwork. Technically, it wasn’t really paperwork, because all of it was handled electronically. Electronic or paper, it still took a long time to complete. By the time he was finished, it was well past the time the dining facility closed for the evening. He called his parents and invited himself over for dinner. He owed Arnold a chance to cook him a meal.

  Kelly cleaned up and changed out of his coveralls and into his duty uniform. Officers living on ship generally wore their duty or work uniform while on base. Kelly caught a shuttle and wound up at his parents door.

  Arnold met him at the door, beaming. “LT Blake, welcome. Your parents are in the outdoor room. Your dinner will be ready shortly. Kelly thanked Arnold for cooking up something for him this late, and went out to see his folks.

  Kelly’s folks were having a heated argument about digitizing living tissue. Kelly poured a glass of wine from a waiting bottle and sat down. He listened for a few minutes, decided he didn’t have a clue what they were talking about, and tuned them out. When they realized he wasn’t listening, they stopped.

  Moira said, “Kelly, are we boring you?”

  No, Mom, I just haven’t a clue what you are talking about. You two are using terms I never heard in college.”

  “Son, I never knew your education was so deficient. We paid good money for you to be an engineer. Obviously, it didn’t take.”

  Kelly’s folks broke out laughing. Moira said, “Of course you didn’t understand any of it. We invented it. We are talking about transporting human beings and cargo through the ether like radio waves. It does what our FTL transport system does, but with no receiver on the other end. We’ve done it with inanimate objects over short distances. We are trying to extend our range to hundreds of kilometers...”

  Kelly broke in, “Are you telling me you are working on a transporter beam?”

  Andrew said, “Well, son, that’s not what we call it, but that sums it up succinctly. In fact, that is what we’ll call it from now on. We feel we are a couple of years away from perfecting it, but it shows great promise.”

  Kelly shook his head and laughed, “Mom, Dad, do you get all your ideas from old science fiction works?”

  All three were laughing when Arnold came in and said dinner was ready. Moira and Andrew had eaten earlier, but they went in with Kelly to keep him company.

  Kelly sat down and Arnold brought in a local fowl, sort of like a cornish game hen, wild rice, apple relish, and a shredded vegetable salad from local greens. Kelly ate very well.

  After dinner, Kelly went back out to the outdoor room with his parents and a bottle of wine. Andrew took a long sip and said, “Son, I understand that Tom has already spoken to you about why we are here. He didn’t tell you everything, though. Our transporter gate will be here in two weeks. It was fabricated at Fleet Base 14 in the Tau Ceti system. When it gets here, it will have taken the space tug two weeks to pull it here at power 2 light speed. Once we have it set up and functioning, that tug will make the trip back in seconds.”

  “Dad, how safe will it be?”

  “It will be safe enough that your mom and I will make the return trip using it. In fact we are so confident, that we will ask Tom to loan us your ship to take us back.”

  Kelly almost dropped his glass of wine when he heard this. He said, “You want to use the Vigilant and my crew as guinea pigs?”

  “Exactly, except they won’t be guinea pigs. The only thing they will be testing is the long distance transmission capability. We’ll do a number of tests before we send your ship through. It will be very safe.”

  Andrew mentioned that he and Moira had made scores of trips through the gates at their lab at Tau Ceti and the two prototype gates within the Tau Ceti system. “This will be the first operational test over realistic interstellar distances.”

  “But why the Vigilant?”

  “Well, the Admiralty is not completely sold on the idea. We need a test they can’t ignore. They need to see a Fleet ship come through the gate unscathed to convince them. They also need to know that we have no reservations, no fears that our technology won’t work. The most convincing test we could think of was to use your ship in the first operational test. I hope you understand the importance and significance of this test.”

  “Dad, are you absolutely sure this technology is safe?”

  Moira spoke up. “Son, if we weren’t sure, we would never risk all of our lives at once. We have months of successful tests over short, intrastellar distances. We wouldn’t ask anyone to chance what we won’t chance ourselves. Trust us, it will be fine.”

  “Well, I always have trusted you. Why should I stop now? I have a request, though. When we do the test, only one of you is to be on the ship at a time. If anything should go wrong, it won’t be a good idea to have the only two people in the galaxy that understand it to disappear. We’ll need one of you to help get us back if something goes wrong.”

  “You make a good point, son. Your mother and I will consider your concerns.”

  Kelly had to get back to the ship. He said goodbye to his folks, thanked Arnold for a wonderful meal, and caught a shuttle.

  Upon his return to the ship, he did a quick walk around inspection and retired to his quarters. He turned in, but it was a while before he could get to sleep. Tomorrow, he’d have to tell LCDR Timmons about his parents’ plans. Together, they’d have to tell the crew.

  Kelly woke up early the next day. He wanted to give the ship a thorough going over before the captain got back. Chief Watson met him in the galley with a cup of coffee. Together, they divided up the ship and put the crew to work making the Vigilant shipshape. After noon chow, Kelly took the helmsmen and ran them all through simulations on board. He remembered the slow response when they lifted off the asteroid. He ran them through several drills of landing in zero-G and making quick lift offs. He wanted them to bring the ship down quickly and safely and get them up and away in a smooth easy movement. After four or five drills he had all the helmsmen much more confident at the controls. It would still require actual practice to get it fully ingrained in them, but it would do for now.

  Chief Watson told him that the captain was due into the spaceport in twenty minutes. He was leaving to go pick him up. Kelly made a final walk around and was pleased with what he saw.

  Kelly was waiting with the quarterdeck watch when LCDR Timmons came up the gangway.

  “Exec, how has it been?”

  “Just fine, sir. All but 10 of the crew are on board. The 10 are on leave and are due back tomorrow. No orders or communications of other than a routine nature have been received. I have something to talk over with you later, but it can wait until you get your gear unloaded.”

  “Is it important?”

  “I think so, sir.”

  ‘Then come on and tell me while I unpack. Okay if
the chief listens in?”

  ”Absolutely, sir. Let me help you with your bags.”

  Kelly grabbed one of the captain’s bags and followed him to his cabin. Once there, the captain closed the door behind them and moved into his conference room after dropping his bag on his bed.

  “What’s up, Exec?”

  Kelly told the captain and Chief Watson about the transport gates and his parents’ involvement. Once they had absorbed that concept, he told them about his parent’s plan to use the Vigilant to test the technology.

  LCDR Timmons pondered on this for a time and then said, “I’ll wait for the order to come from Scout Force, but if your folks are willing to risk their lives and yours, how can I not trust them? We can do this. Somebody has to go first. If not us, some other ship will have to do it. What do you think, Chief?”

  Chief Watson had been silent up to this point. He leaned back and said, “Sir, I was always taught never to turn down a combat mission, because some other poor soul will just have to go out and do what you wouldn’t. If we get this mission, we’ll come through it just fine. We have the best ship and the best crew in Scout Force. Hell, I’d be insulted if they didn’t pick us.”

  “That’s the spirit, Chief. Now, Exec, how’s this technology work?”

  “I’d love to tell you, sir, but I listened to my folks talking about this last night and I didn’t have a clue what they were saying. They tend to work out on the leading edge of technology. Most of the jargon of high tech came out of their mouths first.”

  “I want to speak with your folks about this, but not until we get the mission through channels.”

  “Give me the word, sir, and I’ll get them to invite us over for dinner. Arnold, their housekeeper and cook, is a gourmet chef.”

  “Great, now let’s talk about a training cruise I want to do this week.”

  The captain, Kelly, and the chief spent the next two hours planning a three-day training cruise to work out some deficiencies the captain saw on the last patrol. At the end of the planning session, the captain’s terminal chimed with a priority message.

  LCDR Timmons walked over to his terminal, dumped his bag off the chair, and sat down to log in and see the message.

  The message was from Captain Hasselrode, instructing Timmons, Kelly and the chief to report to Building 603 at 0800. It had to be more debriefing on the K’Rang ship encounter.

  They arrived at building 603 right on time. They were ushered up to a different floor and a different office than before. The room they were led to was a computer lab. A LTJG introduced himself as Bill Taylor and invited them to some seats in front of a large screen wall. He said, “Admiral Craddock wanted you to see what we were able to glean from the two ships and all you brought back. What you are about to hear is not to be discussed outside of this room, except between the three of you, and in a secure space.”

  “First we’ll cover the data device you found on the K’Rang body. By the way, the body belonged to the severed hand with the ring you found, LT Blake. The ring belonged to a K’Rang named M’Talli. He belonged to a small sept of the ruling clan. Not quite royalty, but very comfortable.”

  “Anyway, the data device contained partial schematics of a number of recent technological advances, including a few your parents developed, LT Blake. None of the schematics were complete, suggesting that the Indigo folks were holding back on what they were trading the K’Rang for the flame stones. You were witness to how successful that technique was. We are working with your folks to see if we can determine how many installments of data there were. We are assuming this transaction was not supposed to be the last.”

  “The K’Rang data log was much harder to break into. It was encrypted with a devious code that relied on K’Rang music as the key. I won’t bore you with the details. I’ll just say it was a real challenge for our Crippies. Oh, excuse me, sir, our Cryptologic Technicians.”

  “LCDR Timmons, you were correct in your assumption that the device found in the K’Rang instrument panel was the ship’s log. That is exactly what it is. It's the captain's voice log. It’s taking a while to translate the language. What we know so far is that the ship is an eight year old merchant ship. It left the K’Rang home world nine days before it crossed the frontier, transported in the hold of a larger ship that had FTL capability. It was released about a day away from the frontier and proceeded to where you picked it up. The captain says in the log that he was working under the orders of a high K’Rang family patriarch. The fellow with the ring was his son and had absolute authority over the captain. It was the son that gave the order to fire on the shuttle. The captain recorded M’Talli telling him to fire on the shuttle in his log. M’Talli says something about his ring and that the humans were not supposed to know of any involvement by the nobility. He was probably talking about the ring that showed him as a resident of the home world. We guess he forgot to sanitize himself before the meeting. The Indigo folks must have spotted his ring and recognized what it signified.”

  “Most of the stuff in the log is routine ship’s business, but we did find a segment where M’Talli burst in on the captain while he was recording and the captain left the log running. M’Talli was a little upset that the captain wasn’t going faster. There was some concern about being late for the meeting. The captain told him that they’d be there in plenty of time to approach slowly and scan the area to make sure they were unobserved. He reminded M’Talli that he’d already done this three times and he knew what he was doing.”

  “Three times gives us a pretty good number to work from, as we try to figure out how much the Indigo folks traded for the flame stones. Speaking of which, we have identities on the bodies from the shuttle. Most of them are longtime employees of the Indigo Consortium. All but two were manifested as crew onboard the Gurkha. Those two were out of the Indigo Consortium HQ on Secundus. They were Aubrey Gundersen and Dale Wilkins. Wilkins was a courier. We anticipate that he was to be the guy bringing back the stones. Gundersen was a VP of the Indigo Consortium. We think he was the dealmaker.”

  Kelly said, “Yes, we saw how good a deal it was.”

  LTJG Taylor continued, “We’ve tracked Gundersen’s travels for the last four years. He was fairly consistent until six months ago. In four separate occasions, he took business trips with Wilkins to planets where one of the Indigo ships was to make a port call. The last two were to meet up with the Manchu Warrior and the Gurkha. He and Wilkins would make the run out to the 6664 system and back. Gundersen always went straight back to Fomalhaut. Wilkins, on the other hand, would take a roundabout path back to Fomalhaut, but each time included a stop in the Rigel system. We have Fleet Intel snooping about to see if we can discern Mr. Wilkins’ activities. Rigel may have been the final destination or a transfer point.”

  “We are still analyzing the K’Rang ship, but we have found a few interesting things. On the port bulkhead is the electronic device that you pointed out in your report. We have determined that it is a sensor device. According to the ship’s log, it was installed just before this trip. Fortunately for you it wasn’t installed correctly. The ground cable was installed improperly. They used a rubber washer between the cable and the hull of the ship. The whole apparatus was shock mounted to the bulkhead. Somebody probably got in a hurry and used a shock isolation washer instead of a regular washer.”

  “It was probably only working at 50 percent efficiency, if at all. Our techies have tested it and found that if the ground had been properly installed, you would have stood out like a beacon on that asteroid. We’re studying it to adapt it for our own ships. It should give us a 10 percent increase in sensor range and 50 percent increase in resolution.”

  “We’ve also found a complete navigation and communication system. The nav system is being tested against known data, but appears to have a complete star chart for all of K’Rang space. Interestingly, there is another space faring race in-spiral of them they call the A’Ngarii. They seem to be having the same problems with the A’Nga
rii as they are with us. The communications system had an independent self-destruct device that failed to go off when you cut the ship in half. Seems it wasn’t designed to operate in a vacuum.”

  “The comms system was complete and loaded with a week’s worth of codes. The Crippies are ecstatic over that bit of good luck. They have gone back over the tapes of the last three weeks of traffic and are breaking out all manner of information about the K’Rang.”

  “We are going to continue exploiting the ship for quite some time. LCDR Timmons, there are a lot of people on this base that want to buy you a beer. Your crew will probably drink free for a month.”

  “Do you or any of your people have any questions of me, sir?”

  LCDR Timmons looked over at Kelly and the chief, “I don’t have anything. Do either of you want to ask any questions?”

  Kelly shook his head. Chief Watson spoke up. “What bar do you guys frequent so I can tell the crew?”

  Everyone laughed and Timmons said, “LT, I guess you answered all our questions. Is that all?”

  “Yes sir, Admiral Craddock wanted you to know what all we found. Of course, this is just a preliminary assessment. We intend to continue to tear the ship apart until we get all we can from it. Again, I must emphasize the sensitivity of this information. Be very careful discussing it. Let me escort you out then.”

  The captain, Kelly, and Chief Watson rode quietly back to the ship. They stopped off for lunch on the way, and discussed the upcoming training cruise and what each of them had done on their days off.

  * * * * *

  On the K’Rang home world, a very irritated Shadow Leader M’Trang was berating his subordinates. One lay in an enlarging puddle of his own blood on the floor. His throat had been ripped open with an expert flick of one paw, all claws extended. The former deputy never saw it coming. The other two remained at a stiff, but shaky, attention.