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Ray Connors` cover was as the decrepit old captain of a space tramp, a vessel that travelled around a local system looking for work, no work was too small and he never got any offers for large consignments anyway, these went unhesitatingly to the cargo ships of Aldebra. Thank god, for otherwise he would never have the time to complete any of his real work, that of spying for Earth. He had been busy today, after returning from the planet below, there he had spent six long wasted hours meeting each of his four spies who worked with the Aldebran Government, he then had to spend more time decoding the long message that he had received from Tom Parkinson. He was taking it all in over a cup of coffee when his first officer come engineer strolled through onto the bridge.
"Ray, an Aldebran space cruiser has just left space dock, it seems to be in one hell of a hurry, it almost left some of its crew behind down below in the space port, what do you think, maybe they declared war on Earth?" Jean Connors laughed as she said this. Connors looked across at her and smiled, and then he looked back at the recently decoded message.
"Maybe or maybe they are headed off somewhere to rendezvous with someone on the other side of the galaxy, look at this Jean." Connors gave the recently decoded message to his wife to read.
Ray Connors was ten years older than his wife, but these extra years had never been a problem for them. His rugged face could not be called handsome and his slim build did not look muscular, but more than once Jean had been witness to his latent strength. He was almost six foot tall with grey eyes and his hair although still mostly brown had some silver streaks. Jean was still only forty-two years of age with auburn hair, hazel eyes and was a slim five feet five inches in height. Ray vowed she was still very good to look at. They had been in the spying business for almost twenty-three years now, off and on. It was on now, being short of work once more they had drifted into the Aldebra system and asked Parkinson if he needed anyone to run a spy ring on Aldebra. Parkinson had always valued them as spies, and as he badly needed to get information about Quasar and his military, he had jumped at the chance to hire them again. That was three years ago, and since then they had been able to keep Earth abreast of the affairs here. Quasar was only considered a minor risk to Earth security, but a major risk to systems nearby to Aldebra. To the Connors` though, Quasar was also a very real risk, and if he ever got it into his head that they were spies then it would go very hard for them.
They ran a team of six local people as agents. A young idealist who worked on the space dock above Aldebra. Another slightly older woman who worked at the spaceport, she had lost her husband to one of Quasar`s purges and would do anything to help fight against the regime. The other four agents worked in the government as civil servants and all four hated the regime for similar reasons to the widow.
Connors set his telescope to follow the glow of the Aldebran space cruiser as it headed off into deep space. The captains of Quasar`s space fleet all had one thing in common, they lacked imagination, and to help Connor work out its final destination all he had to do is extend the starship`s line of flight.
"What do you reckon Jean?"
"Well if he keeps on in the direction he is on now, he should be able to keep clear of most of the more populated areas of space until he finally leaves the galaxy far, far, behind him."
"Well he is unlikely to do that, so let`s have a closer look at any of the populated systems that he might be aiming for." Ray Connors declared.
"Well there is Orion, but with Tyler Burrows still running things there he will supposedly need a couple of more Space cruisers before he even has a chance of getting anywhere." Jean said referring to one of the many myths currently circulating about Tyler Burrows. One television program had even gone as far to put his name forward as the man most likely to replace President Michaels, a thought taken up by some more of the many pundits that populated the airways. This was yet another reason that Michaels was annoyed every time Tyler Burrows, or Orion, was mentioned anywhere close enough for him to hear.
"Well we will pass on the information and let Tom Parkinson worry about the final destination, that`s if the Aldebran ship doesn`t run out of fuel or supplies before it reaches its destination." Connors said, tongue in cheek. The space fleet of Aldebra was not held in high regard by either of the Connors.
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