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Ray Connors parked the small shuttle on the hanger deck of his space tramp and hurried forward to speak to his wife.
"Jared Singh has been arrested, Col Pando saw it happen just after I left Singh, it was mere luck that he saw it happen and thankfully then had the guts to leave me a message on the park bench, we have to leave orbit now before they get around to interrogating him." Connors moved onto the bridge of the freighter and sat at the pilot`s seat.
"It might be a little suspicious Ray, but they will soon find out everything that Singh has been doing including what he has for breakfast, so yes we will have to leave now." Jean Connors agreed.
"I will send the space port a message saying that we are heading across to the second moon to have repairs done to our hyper-drive engine, which at least will get us underway, as soon as we enter hyper-space I will send out an SOS to Tom Parkinson asking for assistance." Ray Connors said.
The small freighter was soon heading across to the second moon, but instead of going into orbit around it they slipped by hoping that the worthless staff of the Aldebran space authorities would not notice there change of plan. Unfortunately, Tirana was sitting inside the space ports office and looked across when he heard Connors` message regarding his hyper-drive engine.
"Was that Ray Connors just then, the captain of that piece of junk called the Jeanette?" Tirana barked out.
A startled official looked round. "Yes Sir, he is moving his ship over to the second moon." The official said in a cowed manner.
"On what screen can I see Connors` ship?" Tirana asked.
"This one Sir, that blip there is his ship and this large object is our second moon." The same official answered.
"Why has he not slowed down to enter orbit around the moon?" Tirana asked, but Connors answered the question when he took his ship by the moon and away from Aldebra.
"Order him to stop and return to his intended destination." Tirana ordered the harassed official who immediately tried to make contact with the Jeanette.
"Come in Jeanette you have gone by the second moon, please return and go into orbit around it."
For an answer, Connors turned on his hyper-drive engine and blasted out of the Aldebran system of planets. His next action was to send out the SOS to Tom Parkinson, and then wait anxiously to hear back from his boss.
Tirana had not left it there, he had ordered the space authority to have the ship stopped at all costs, and he told the official that Quasar himself was very interested in the pilot of the Jeanette. The harassed official swallowed loudly and paled visibly before contacting a starship that was just about to dock.
"Sword, the ship that just blasted out of this system has fugitives on board that our Emperor Quasar wants back here, you are to follow after the ship and don`t stop until you have his ship safely in custody, is that understood?"
The captain of the Aldebran space cruiser also paled as he prepared to give the necessary orders that would take his space cruiser after the fleeing freighter.
"Your orders are understood space port; we will bring the captain and any crew members back for our Emperor Quasar`s pleasure."
Tirana looked across at the harassed port official. "I hope your captain is good at his job or we might all feel the wrath of our Emperor, if that ship escapes us."
Jean Connors looked at their long range sensors but they were clear, but then their long range sensors only showed the area around them for one astronomical unit and so in affect were only any use for scanning short astronomical distances. The port authority`s message to them was clear as well, they knew that they had entered hyperspace and that they was fleeing the Aldebran system and heading towards Earth. Whether they would pursue them depended upon whether they, the port authority, knew that they had been spying on the Aldebran system. Suddenly their sensors sent out an alarm, a ship was slowly closing on them from behind.
"Ray, they have sent someone after us, that probably means that they know that we have been operating a spy ring." Jean said, her voice betraying some of the fear that she felt. Ray looked across at his wife to smile at her, to try to raise her spirits; he hoped that his actions had not put her life in peril.
"Well we cannot outrun an Aldebran space cruiser in this rust bucket, so we had better try to hide ourselves away some place, the bear nebula is just ahead we can duck in there, their speed advantage will mean nothing in there and their sensors will be worse than hopeless with all the interference given off by the nebula." Ray hoped so anyway.
"Ray we cannot stay in there forever, what happens when they try to blast us out of there?" Jean asked.
"It is a big nebula, they may try but it will take a better captain than they have to catch me in there, anyway I have an idea forming in my rusty old brain which might buy us some more time, but we are here now so let`s concentrate on not running into anything nasty." The Jeanette`s speed decreased as it entered into the bear nebula with the Aldebran starship not far behind them, but the Aldebran captain had forgotten the dangers of travelling fast through a nebula of this sort. The captain soon realised his mistake when his external sensors started to explode and so he belatedly decided that he better slow down fast, and he belatedly ordered his helmsman to bring the starship to a halt, and his first officer to turn off their sensors. The Sword quickly came to a stop right in the middle of the nebula.
"I need to know just what damage we have incurred." He said to his bridge crew. "And before that space tramp gets away." The science officer looked across at his captain.
"We have lost our long range sensors, but in here they are useless anyway, we do still have our short range sensors plus our external cameras are still operational, so we are ok to proceed with our mission, Captain."
The Sword began to edge forward through the nebula searching for any signs of its quarry, while further inside the nebula Ray Connors was just about to tell his wife about the asteroid belt that was just one light year away, when a message from Tom Parkinson arrived; it took Connors ten precious minutes to decode it.
'There are no space cruisers free at the moment, the space fleet is stretched to almost breaking point, and they still haven`t replaced the Saviour and the Repulse that were lost in orbit around Orion. I am going to ask Tyler Burrows for help, he has a fast ship with at least one powerful Phaser weapon, let me know a rendezvous point that you think you can reach, the nearer to Orion the better because otherwise it will probably be upwards of four days before he can get to you.'
"Ray if it takes Tyler Burrows four days to reach us we probably won`t need any help, we will more than likely be dead." Jean said as fear bit into her stomach.
"We will just have to play run and duck a bit more, for we certainly couldn`t outrun that space cruiser, but maybe he will just get fed up with the search and leave." Ray answered.
"Play run and duck a bit, Ray what is that supposed to mean?" Jean had never heard that term before, and she had heard most space faring terms in the years that she had been married to Ray Connors.
"When I was a boy we played a version of tag but in the countryside and within a set area. You would run and when you were out of sight of those who were tagged you would then duck and hide until you were in danger of being found, and then you would run again." It might work even out here in the depths of space Ray Connors mused to himself.
"That sounds good to me Ray, let`s play duck and run for a while." Jean said smiling across at him.
Ray Connors then sent a message back to Tom Parkinson, from necessity it was very brief. It detailed out his proposed course to Orion, but he stressed he did not know how far his pursuers would allow him to go before catching up with him.
"They will expect us to head towards Earth, but we will be heading towards the spiral arm in Perseus and Tyler Burrows. I know many a place between here and there in which to play our game and dodge them for a while; it should make us some valuable time, if only we have any luck left." Ray Connors said with just a little more hope than befor
e.
"It won`t be quite so easy if they send another space cruiser to join in the hunt for us Ray." Jean said fretting.
"At least we will know if they plan to send another space cruiser Jean, thanks to their code book that Milan Keota gave to us last month." Ray said. He was desperate to keep the hope of being rescued alive in Jean, for otherwise who would reassure him.
"If they do send another space cruiser it will need more of a space craft than Tyler Burrows will be able to lay his hands on, even with his one powerful Phaser." Jean lamented.
"I know, but we will just have to hope that things turn out ok, and in the meantime the Aldebran space cruiser that is chasing us is now in front of us and moving away, so we will have to play follow the leader for a while behind some of these dark nebulous pieces of cloud."
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