Or, as best we can tell, no one is in orbit. Those ships are far too invisible for my taste.
When Chief Petty Officer Gomez reports the servers are good to go, I hand her a pad. Darlington's pad.
"The data on this pad have been erased. I need them unerased. My staff is available to help any way they can, but I get the feeling you can do this better and faster. Let me know what you find."
She takes it and heads off toward the wardroom, Summerlin not smiling as much as he was when she was saying her work was done. He'll get over it.
The next morning I am barely out of my shower when the door beeps.
"Come." I don't bother to tie the hair down, it can only be Shelby.
Except it's Chief Gomez. She takes one look at a half dressed captain with hair nearly touching the walls and turns around, a difficult proposition in zero gee. During the 180, there's a mumbled something like "I'm sorry." She's got the second longest hair on Yorktown, and it makes a move I am highly familiar with as she spins.
Before she gets her spin under control enough to move to the door, I manage to not laugh and call her back.
"You have something for me?"
Her 180 becomes a 360. Possibly she has some ballet experience.
"I got the data, sir. I had to look at files, I didn't mean to, but I had to know if I had them, and I saw, well I'm sorry sir, I didn't mean to...." Her head has obviously done a couple more 360's while she's talking.
"You're in the Union Navy," I put my captainly voice on, "and for now part of my crew. I didn't give you anything you couldn't handle or see."
She relaxes a little. Brushes her hand through her hair, the brown eyes looking at the monitor behind me.
"There are six coded messages, look like snowflakes. I can try to decode them if you'd like. And...." She pauses, I bet I know why.
"You saw something that concerns you."
"I...." She's a desk jockey, already had to live through her first near death experience, now she knows something, or thinks she does. She can't get it out.
"A photo? Something written?"
"No photos, the cameras are both disabled. Diary."
"Have you read Naval Regulation 222?" First Contact protocol. Not sure why they picked 222 and not 666.
"Yes sir, a few minutes ago." The hand goes back into that hair. Her eyes still avoid mine.
"Then you know what to do. Don't tell anyone what you read. Understood?"
"Yes, sir. Sir, why don't we go home and get help?" Another brush through the hair.
"Do you know enough to make a report under the regs?" The answer does not come quickly, she's thinking about the implications I suspect, both hands at one point in her hair.
"No sir, I understand, sir." I'm usually good at reading people, but I have no idea what she's thinking right now. The regs are pretty clear too: if you suspect, you have to find hard evidence at all costs, but no reporting of potentially false trails that might start a panic.
"Petty Officer, Ensign McAdams knows everything, more than I do. Would you like to assist her in interpreting the contents of this pad?"
Her eyes light and finally meet mine, her hands fall to her sides. "Yes sir!"
I touch the button on my collar. "Ensign McAdams to the Captain's Ready Room."
Courtney's here in 30 seconds. I make introductions, explain, have to stop her from spinning across the room as she reaches for the pad a little too quickly. The two of them float off to get to work on their conspiracy, with orders to report back in two hours. I message Shelby to keep an eye out for them, and come with them when they return.
I spend those two hours finishing paperwork, mostly my logs, which to date are entirely clear of any reference to aliens, and writing out a couple of plans to board an enemy vessel. About 10 minutes of paperwork that takes me 100, given my sudden inability to concentrate.
I'm thinking about calling them when the beep saves me the trouble.
"Come."
It's the three of them, Gomez and McAdams half smiling and half not, Shelby just looking like Shelby.
"What did you find?"
Gomez backs off, gives the floor to McAdams.
"Not as much as I hoped for, skipper, just lots of clues. He refers to them as Libor, Ell, Eye, Bee, Oh, Are. Says he can understand a few noises that they make when they talk slowly, thinks they are words. They understand him fine, not the grammar, but individual words." Courtney pauses, runs a hand through her hair just as Gomez does the same.
"He doesn't say anything about motivations other than they want to go home, but can't for some reason. Home seems to be a large section of space neighboring on ours. There are some other human names mentioned who may be spies or procurers, no idea why they are helping them except for money." She stops again.
I butt in. "Courtney, people have betrayed their civilizations before for nothing more than gold. And he was walking around free, not strapped into a couch playing zombie, that's a considerable motivation to start."
"Roger that, skipper. I'd like to test the hypothesis that their speech isn't beyond us, it's just really fast. If you'll loan me Olivia for a few hours more, we can run some experiments. We won't be able to translate anything, but we might be able to start a database that will eventually let us once we accumulate more data."
I nod and look at Gomez. "Chief, consider yourself assigned to Yorktown, and part of Ensign McAdams' team." I turn back to Courtney. "Anything else?"
"No sir. The messages all are mostly old news, sabotage information on Yorktown, and requests for quantities of chemicals that match some of what was found in the coating mixtures and assorted electronic components."
It's my turn to run a hand through hair. Then I end the meeting.
"Go run your experiments, let me know the results. Make a list of any words you think they would know if we ran into them. Don't be afraid to try anything else, or run ideas past me, just don't do anything to disturb the original contents of the pad."
I get two ayes, and they float back out to the bridge, leaving me and Shelby alone. I look her way.
"Thoughts?"
"Nothing useful in there."
"Agreed. Though eventually might be to our advantage if we can translate their language and they don't realize it."
She nods. "I hope we never reach that point."
"We ready to get going?"
"Aye. We're as combat ready as we're going to be."
"Then let's get to work."
We float out to the bridge, I relieve Ayala, and spend a half hour going through every status screen I have. Then we fire up and run some battle sims. We're basing everything on some assumptions about the planetary system we're targeting.
The Gamma Theta star is a normal brown dwarf with only one planet in its orbit and lots of little rocks. Pirates don't normally live there, it's too obvious where they have to be. Nu and Upsilon are the opposite, not a single planetary sized body in either one, but lots of moon sized objects that make incredibly difficult to detect bases if the pirates have any brains at all.
That means if either Defino or Opportunity is in Theta we know where she will be. The planet is a mining treasure trove, the rocks really are just rocks.
So we're going to jump in above the main system plane and right where the planet should be, kinda like coming out of the sun in old school fighter tactics. Unless they've upgraded the sensors aboard the cargo ships, they won't see us until the missiles are flying.
We send a pod out to grab the LS and reattach it to Yorktown, the three corvette jumping into position to take care of any bad guy waiting in unexpected spots or little pointy ships thinking of escaping. Given what happened the last time we jumped, I'd want to be anywhere but attached to Yorktown too.
Our little battle group is going through another series of checks when McAdams makes us all jump (that's out of our couches, not move instantaneously from our current location).
"New target bearing 110 mark 000 solar, inbound planet 2."
> I knew we'd been too lucky. My finger reaches out for the alarm panel to sound battlestations when I discover we are luckier than I ever dreamed.
"Skipper, it's Santa Cruz." Just as McAdams says it my comm panel lights, and there's a recorded message from Commander Julio Mendoza of the destroyer USS Santa Cruz, one of my former running mates from the Sherman's battle group. It's short and to the point, just like Mendoza, giving us the timing of his rendevous.
Sixteen hours later, he and I are exchanging hugs outside the boat deck hatch, Santa Cruz parked a couple hundred meters off our starboard side. We used the time to get all three corvette skippers back aboard, and we have what is beginning to feel like an authentic battle group conference in my ready room.
Mendoza is shorter than me, no hair above the neck but way too much below, rock hard, smart enough, as he puts it, to be the finest escort commander in the fleet, but not smart enough to take the next step up. His name means "cold mountain" which fits him to a tee. Exactly the guy you want guarding your flank.
"Admiral Showalter," he starts up as soon as we're all collected in my ready room (me, Shelby, Summerlin, Maxwell, Rivera), "was ordered to send a corvette to deliver a message to you. Unfortunately, none were available, so he sent us. I'm under orders to spend up to three weeks searching you out." In other words, my old boss is bending the rules to help out his favorite frigate captain. I owe him a case of Scotch.
"I am instructed to inform you that Mark Darlington was aboard CSS Opportunity when it went missing two and a half years ago. Intelligence assumes that means he was spying for the pirates that took the ship, and sabotaged Yorktown to protect their interests. Beyond that, they have nothing, so far unable to trace back the money to identify who paid him. They did give me crew rosters for all the missing ships."
I'd tell him what's really going on, but regs are regs, and I'm still not sure that any of them would believe me.
"We were about to jump to Gamma Theta," I flip the hair around a little, "but I just had the beginnings of a new crazy plan I want to pass by everyone." When I finish, Julio looks as though he wished he stayed home.
I think we have an advantage now because Santa Cruz looks exactly like Yorktown from the outside, on top of the increase in our firepower from adding the destroyer to our group. And I dearly want to be on board one of those ships to get the proof I need.
I put Shelby in charge of coordinating the plan, everyone looking desperately for something I'm overlooking beyond my psychosis, then float off for my daily run in the ship's gym. For the first time in quite a while, I am feeling like we just might be able to take the initiative. Or, as my team keeps pointing out, we could all be dead in 48 hours.
It takes us the rest of the afternoon and evening to program everything we need the ships to do into the flight computers and all the next day to run simulations of various scenarios based on the most probabilistic outcomes of what we will find when we jump into Theta. Every piece of equipment we need to work gets checked three times.
Santa Cruz goes wheels up at 2000 hours, driving inbound toward the Omicron star. It'll take her about 16 hours to get to the jump point, then she'll have maybe 12 hours on scene to find who or whatever is there. Our plan depends on them being in orbit around Theta 1. If they are, Julio can find them visually despite their coating.
We get to spend the next 24 hours bored and nervous, rerunning every simulation and every weapons drill to exhaustion, and everybody seems to be spending extra time in the gym. Shelby doesn't say anything to me the entire time other than acknowledge orders. I find it almost a blessing when we strap into our couches, line up with our three little buddies, and rocket together toward the jump point and our destiny at four gees.
Six hours in my comm lights go off, indicating an inbound transmission from Santa Cruz's communications drone. It lets us know that one ship, identity unknown but the correct class with the impossible coating, is in orbit around Theta 1. There's a data file for RISTA that will let them plot the jump. The plan is a go. We also used our last comm drone, no way now to call for help if we need it.
Two hours out from the jump point we reach go/no go. I'm go. We've been on auto pilot jointly with the three corvettes keeping our formation perfect. Exactly as the clock hits zero, the engines cut out.
I keep it short. "Confirm formation status."
Garcia answers, almost no pause. "Formation perfect down the line, skipper."
I start unbuckling my harness, the clips suddenly seem to take too long to unfasten. Finally it's done and I am free.
"Commander Perez, the ship is yours." She gives me a cursory "aye" in return.
I meet Yeager down on the boat deck. He's still speaking to me, in fact, he seems excited to go. I told him this was a volunteer mission, and I know Palmer took him aside more than once trying to persuade the Master Sergeant to let the Lieutenant go in his place. Palmer took Yeager to practice assaulting the mockup of the ship with his detachment when we were back on Earth, he might be regretting that choice now.
We go inch by inch over my gig, which is now covered in an ablative coating usually reserved for re-entry into heavy atmosphere planets. Then its centimeter by centimeter over our space suits, their tanks and electronics. The boat crew and Palmer's Marines have done this at least a half dozen times each since yesterday, but it's something you don't trust unless you do it yourself no matter how much you trust the person who did it for you.
Two Marines help each of us into our suits, triple check the seals, then get us stowed into the gig. They hand me two weapons packs, no space in the front for Yeager to hold on to his. Each pack has a BR-40 semi-automatic assault rifle, a couple hundred rounds of non-penetrating ammunition (that's non-penetrating of ship hulls, it definitely penetrates bad guys), a nine millimeter pistol with two spare clips, a combat knife, two explosive grenades, and two flash bangs that flash, bang, and then put out a lot of smoke. Of course, all designed to be used effectively with gloved hands and suited operators: bigger triggers and guards, laser sights, and so on.
Then they give me a recon pack loaded with empty sample containers for evidence collection, a much higher definition camera than comes on the suit, some special electronics the Marines brought, and a backup radio. Nowhere to stow this one, I wedge it down at my feet.
Then a fourth pack with extra explosives, magnetic time delay charges, very carefully stowed on top of the recon pack, basically between my legs. Hopefully, they left the pins in.
I toggle the radio on and call Shelby. "Foxtrot Alpha One One to Yorktown. Comm check."
Shelby answers, she should have let Wallace do it. "Hear you five by five."
"Foxtrot Alpha One One is go. Proceed as planned."
"Roger, go as planned."
Now we sit for 12 minutes. Mostly I spend it hoping I don't need to go to the restroom anytime soon. Exactly on schedule the hatch starts to open, it also seems to take unusually long to me.
As soon as the door stops, Shelby is back in my ear. "One one cleared for departure." There's a pause, I think she's done, then she comes back, softer than normal. "Good hunting Katana."
"Same to you Commander. Cleared for departure." I put in an intentional pause, then start again, stronger. "Master Sergeant, take us out."
Light push from the thrusters, Yeager gets us into space clean and quick. Congress is waiting for us, having moved in close in the 12 minutes we sat and waited. I get on the radio.
"Congress, Foxtrot Alpha One One requests docking clearance." A formality, Summerlin doesn't really have a choice.
"Foxtrot Alpha cleared to dock." Summerlin sounds ready to go too.
Yeager rolls us 180 degrees so that we're upside down relative to both ships, though that's an optical illusion only, in free fall you are always right side up. He pops the thrusters to take us "down" below the corvette's keel (though it feels like we're going up), then gently to port until we're centered beneath her. At that point I extend the landing skids, which are also electrom
agnetic attachment points.
"Three green. Alignment excellent." I make sure Yeager knows the skids are down (up technically if you're on the corvette). Then he takes us back "up" which feels like down until the skids contact Congress. I check the magnets have us firmly attached, and I know Yeager is doing the same, since we're about to die if they aren't.
"Three solid." Yeager, sounding solid himself.
"Affirmative. Well done Master Sergeant." A brief pause, then I get back on the air.
"Yorktown, One One. Confirm docking orientation." The jump field on Congress extends outside of the ship, but barely. If we're not positioned properly one or more of our body parts could extend outside the field, meaning it wouldn't jump with us. Painful at minimum, deadly more likely for both boats.
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