Kelly saw the small cargo ship appear as they drew closer, exactly where the coordinates given in his orders had said it would be. He ordered the helmsman to hold off 50 km from the cargo ship until he established positive communications and identity.
He exchanged code words on short-range communications with the ship’s occupant. Determining that he had the right ship, he requested permission to dock; receiving it, Kelly ordered the helm to move forward and dock.
The docking was smooth and sure. Kelly made a note to see to promoting this helmsman as soon as possible. She was his best and most consistent helmsman.
Kelly went to the hatch and cycled it open, where a tall blonde man with long hair and a full trimmed beard met him. Kelly shook his hand and received a firm grip back.
“Mr. Bennett, I’m LCDR Kelly Blake, of the Vigilant.”
“Captain, come aboard and let me brief you on what I have found out so far.”
Kelly asked if he could have his XO and Senior Chief sit in. When Alistair agreed, he called Connie and Chief B to the hatch. Alistair led them into the interior of his ship to a central conference table. A white cat was curled up on the table. Alistair shooed the cat and called up a screen at the end of the table. He motioned them to sit, then went through what he had determined so far.
He told them of the agent network, laying out every node of the network he had uncovered to date. He showed them the dead drop servicers, credits handlers, and transporters, and how he identified the spies through their use of the network forums.
Kelly pulled out his pocket terminal and transferred the data his folks had developed. Alistair whistled when he saw the data. Thanking Kelly for his parents’ work, he jokingly asked if they might consider doing more work for Fleet Intel some time.
The combined data laid out the network in detail. It showed the data flow from the spies to the dead drop servicers and network forums to the transporters. There the path stopped, until Alistair transferred in the data from his analysis of the possible courier ships. It showed the flow of credits and instructions in, but how those got to and from K’Rang space was a mystery.
Alistair held back his previous order and tasked Kelly to find the courier ship’s infiltration and exfiltration paths. He also charged him with taking out any courier ships that might be leaving with critical data. His gut told him that one might show up and soon. He passed Kelly the parameters he had developed on the courier ships to plug into the Vigilant’s computer system. Kelly passed that to Chief B.
With the preliminaries out of the way, Alistair invited them all to stay for tea. Kelly declined, and Chief B wanted to get the courier ship parameters to sensors, so they could start tracking ships coming into the system. Connie expressed a liking for tea, so she stayed behind.
It was quiet in the sector over the next few days, and Connie and Alistair had time to become quite chummy. She was constantly finding excuses to go visit or coordinate. Kelly noticed, but it didn’t interfere with her duties. Considering the loneliness a reporting officer must experience, he let it go on as an act of mercy.
The D’Ran entered the system on the far side from where Alistair and the Vigilant were orbiting. The planetary data system interrogated the ship’s data banks for name, registry, and ownership, and charged it a 200-credit system entry fee.
The D’Ran did not cause Alistair’s computer to alert because it was not like the other courier ships. It was not registered under a flag of convenience, but under a first tier world flag. It was not nondescript — in fact, it was painted bright red with an eagle’s head painted on its nose. It employed the “hide in plain sight” camouflage scheme.
H’Topa had the captain park the ship in and amongst ships waiting for clearance to land at various spaceports on the planet below. After a few days, as ships came and went, no one noticed them anymore.
H’Topa linked into the planet’s data network and transmitted a number of taskings to his agents and to those belonging to other agent handlers back on G’Durin. He also received a number of reports from his and other handlers’ agents.
Alarms went off on Alistair’s console as the outgoing messages hit the network. Alistair called over to the Vigilant and asked if a courier ship had arrived in sector. They replied that no ships matching the parameters had arrived or left the system since they started scanning for them.
Alistair knew one of the ships had to be a courier ship. He checked their registries and found all legally registered in their system of origin and insured. The insurance came from reputable ship underwriters. He analyzed the IP address and saw it was from an unknown ship in orbit, using a link to the worldwide broadcast network. He called up every ship arrival in the past week and looked for anomalies. He came up with less than a dozen suspects. He needed a way to whittle down the list.
He called Kelly over, explained the situation, and asked if they could help by putting eyes on the suspects. Kelly asked for the list and how soon he wanted the pictures.
H’Topa analyzed the reports he received back and decided to pursue multiple paths to acquire the plans. He realized, from one of the reports destined for another agent handler, that there were four K’Rang operatives in the Defense HQ, not just his two. He saw there were an officer and a senior NCO working to be assigned to the special ring office, in addition to his two administrative assistants.
There were also agents being run by Mr. Shepler, who was running a small network of his own. He had an administrative assistant, Silke Watson and her boss, Bart Morton, the local security officer on Gagarin, working for him. H’Topa decided that initiative like this must be rewarded.
He also read reports from his two agents working for Mr. Yestepkin. They didn’t feel he was a good source for the plans, but the weapon he was working on would be worth acquiring. He read their precis and agreed, and sent a message authorizing them to proceed.
H’Topa sent directives to all agents in proximity to the target, ordering them to concentrate on acquiring copies of the ring design plans. He knew that this might compromise his network, but he didn’t look forward to being offered an honorable way to die when he got back to G’Durin. A network could be rebuilt, but he was one of a kind.
Kelly undocked from Alistair’s ship and started a high orbit of the planet. Their sensors were set to high gain, and within a day had a complete list of all ships in Shepard’s space. Sensors ran the list against all ships on the planet registry, then forwarded Kelly a list of ships in orbit, but not on the registry. There were four: two bulk freighters, a bulk liquid gas carrier, and an auto-container freighter. Vigilant made a close pass to all four and scanned them for any signs of K’Rang occupants. The scans proved negative. Kelly guessed that the ships were merely avoiding the system entry fee.
Kelly sat down with his sensor experts and Chief B to see if there was any way to detect K’Rang signatures externally. The discussion went back and forth between Chief B and Chief Johnson, but neither came up with a workable solution. The winning answer to what was different about K’Rang and Humans came out of the mouth of a diminutive Cryptologic Tech 3rd Class, Daisy “Pixie” Benson.
Pixie sat quietly, listening to her superiors getting nowhere near a solution on what was different about K’Rangs that could be detected by the Vigilant. The discussion was getting quite heated when Pixie said loudly, “Their poop and pee are different.”
The startled participants sat in stunned silence, and then laughed as they absorbed what Pixie had just said. Of course, ships pump their toilet waste overboard. If there were K’Rang on board, it would be detectable by the Vigilant’s multiple sniffers. Getting silly in their exhaustion, they wondered if K’Rang used litter boxes and what kitty litter brand they used, if they did. There was much laughter before they got serious and back to work.
Chief B ran a search for the chemical composition of K’Rang bodily wastes. She pulled it up on her pocket terminal and beamed it to Chief Johnson’s terminal. Kelly sent the sensor section back to their positions to “sniff” out the K’Rang poop and pee. Pixie received an on-the-spot achievement medal for her blinding sense of the obvious.
Bart Morton decided to reinstate after hours security checks in the Gagarin Research Facility. After a week of very visible signs left on desks from people leaving their terminals on, tossing classified material into regular wastebaskets, or forgetting to lock safes, people started taking security seriously. The facility manager even congratulated Bart on his success in increasing security awareness.
In addition to gaining him kudos, he also was making his presence, wandering through offices at night, a routine thing. People thought nothing of him checking safes, opening unlocked safes, rifling through desks, and digging through waste bins. It became a joke when he found a violation in the early evening, while the late workers were still preparing to leave. Workers applauded him when he caught a violator. Bart suspected in some cases that workers were setting up their office mates.
He and Silke worked together to find out how to open the safe combination envelopes for the triple locked safe holding the ring plans. Bart’s office maintained the combination envelopes for all safes in the facility, even the Blakes’ personal safe. They just had to open the sealed envelope in such a way that it could be resealed so that it didn’t look like it had been opened.
Bart and Silke practiced with empty envelopes, using steam from her teakettle to soften the glue on the seal. They practiced until they could do it perfectly each time. Late on a Friday, Silke steamed open the main safe combo envelope, wrote down the combination, and resealed it. She did the same with the three internal safe drawer combos.
After the last worker left for the weekend, Bart and Silke put their plan into effect. They first made a sweep of the offices looking for security violations. Bart found two and left his famous yellow ‘gotcha’ signs on the desks. This gave them justification for being there late on a Friday.
After completing the security sweep, they entered the Blakes’ office and opened the safe. The main safe door opened easily. The first drawer opened and Bart had Silke photograph the one document in it page-by-page.
When Silke had the first document copied, she handed the document back. Bart put it back the way it had been, using a photo he’d taken as reference, and locked the drawer.
They did the same with the second and third drawers, where each held only one document. When they finished, they put everything back exactly as it was before. As a final step, he left one of his yellow ‘gotchas’ for having unclassified papers on top of the safe he’d just rifled. Bart and Silke took the camera’s data device with them as they checked out through the security guard, the data device securely stashed in Silke’s brocade and lace bra.
They sent the success code through the network’s cooking forum and received the code phrase to put the data in their dead drop within two hours. They copied the data to another clean device and triple-sealed it in plastic bags, then took his ground car to a certain public park. Their dead drop site was a public restroom. The third sink from the door had a lip on its underside. Bart went in, made sure the stalls were empty, and secured the bag under the sink, where it was not visible to the casual eye. He washed his hands and carried the paper towel outside, to toss in the container by the entrance to the park.
Bart and Silke went back to his apartment and spent the weekend celebrating their imminent reward. Bart wondered if it might be enough to retire on. He’d heard of a hidden world run by pirates, if they could only find it, which sounded like a perfect retirement location.
Colonel David Little had been a brigade commander assigned to reinforce the New Alexandria Ground Forces during the second battle of New Alexandria. Sergeant Major Frank Days had been his senior enlisted advisor. Little had been on a fast track to a star and planned to take Days with him as he rose in rank. After the New Alexandria campaign, he was informed he would not be considered for a star because he had no combat experience as a brigade commander. The K’Rang invasion fleet had been destroyed before they could land any ground troops for Colonel Little to fight.
When he was told this in a phone call from his mentor and superior, he exploded and said things to a two-star general that could have gotten him court martialed; instead, it got him relieved from command three months early. That effectively ended his career. After that, Little felt betrayed by a service to which he’d devoted his adult life.
It was time for him to get some payback. He found out what bars were of interest to the local counterintelligence detachment and frequented them, letting his dissatisfaction with the military be known. It wasn’t long before he came to the notice of some shady types and was recruited. He smiled when they encouraged him to apply for the special ring security detachment.
Little and Days had excellent records and were approved for the special ring security detachment. As the senior member, Colonel Little was made acting chief. A one-star admiral was to be the eventual chief, but had not yet been confirmed by the Senate. The Colonel and Sergeant Major settled in and established the processes for the office, effectively ensuring they had access to every code. After a week, Little transmitted the success code to the cooking forum and received a dead drop code in return.
Frank Days made the drop by placing an envelope containing the codes, triple sealed in plastic bags, up onto the smoke shelf of the crumbling chimney in an old abandoned house. Two days later they received another dead drop code. When they opened the package in Days’ apartment, there were two packages of backdated stock certificates totaling 200,000 credits. Days and Little celebrated with beers.
In his triumph, Little completely forgot that becoming visible in those bars of interest to the counterintelligence detachment had made him of counterintelligence interest.
Pixie’s brainstorm worked. The Vigilant’s sniffers could detect the chemical signature of K’Rang bodily waste. Unfortunately, the Vigilant could not determine which ship contained the K’Rang in the orbital parking area holding over 200 ships without spooking the courier ship. Alistair did some magic with the planet’s servers and increased his computational power exponentially. He called up the ship’s logs for every ship that had entered Shepard’s space in the last four weeks. He let the combined computing power look for anomalies. In seven hours, the computer spit out three ships. One was an ore carrier, another was a cargo and passenger ship, and the third was a decommissioned military gunboat converted to civilian use.
Sensors plotted out the ships’ locations in the parking orbit. Kelly looked at how the three ships were parked in relation to each other and had navigation plot a course that would put the Vigilant in close proximity to all three ships. When plotted out, it looked very similar to a standard approach pattern, which gave Kelly an idea.
The Vigilant left orbit and looped around the next nearest planet. It came back lined up on the vector to pass all three ships and started a standard approach. Kelly called to Shepard Station and requested docking at the station, also on the same vector.
In sensors, Pixie jumped up and shouted, “Bingo!” when they passed the second ship, the combined cargo and passenger ship. She had found the K’Rang courier ship.
Kelly had them put the visual of the ship up on their main monitor. Kelly couldn’t believe his eyes when he saw the paint scheme, crimson red with an eagle’s head on the bow. It was so obvious that nobody would suspect it. He kept his ship on course for the station and docked long enough to send Connie and Cookie with a shopping list and a set amount of credits. They bought spices and delicacies and returned to the Vigilant.
Kelly departed the station and made a low angle approach to the planet. He kept them on this vector until they pushed beyond the spot where the K’Rang courier ship’s sensors could still range on them and had them climb back up to dock with Alistair.
Alistair spent the time that the Vigilant was away to break out more data on the cooking forum discussions. He found he could decipher more of the spoofed data and find out from which planet the reply messages came. The first reply originated on Tereshkova, to a recipient on Shepard. The second came from Shepard to a recipient on Gagarin. The third came from Shepard to a recipient on Earth. The first message was from four weeks ago and must have been from another courier ship or the one here on its transit in. Alistair deduced that the courier ship would need to leave here after it retrieved the first package and go to Earth and Gagarin to pick up those packages. Kelly agreed and proposed to move his ship out to the edge of the star system. There he would monitor the ship and follow it when it left to retrieve the data from its next stop.
Alistair composed a message to a counterintelligence office in Fleet Intel HQ. This office dealt with espionage cases involving compromised Fleet Intel officers. He provided all evidence he had so far gathered on the agent network. It was up to them to decide which individuals to roll up and which to turn, and which to continue to watch.
Cindy arranged another special lunch for Valeri. She was quite energetic about it and left him snoring on his couch. She had little sense of accomplishment from that. He had been working so hard on his weapon systems that he was one blink from falling asleep most days. She let him sleep.
She walked into the lab, without bothering to put on so much as her now signature lab coat, and sat down at the CAD/CAM terminal. She called up the complete designs for his hand weapon and an assault rifle that would use the disruptor technology. She included the large caliber shipborne weapon design, even though it still had the energy supply problem, and copied it all to a clean data device.
She put the data device into a compartment behind her pocket terminal and returned to her sleeping beauty. She knew just how to wake him.
Cindy did not hate Valeri. He was just a means to an end. She liked, no, loved fancy things and keeping herself beautiful. That required more credits than a lab assistant made. Her K’Rang friends had lots of credits, and all she had to do was move within the theoretical physics community and get hired to work on the latest technology. Her high grades from the Delosian Institute of Physical Sciences, plus her long legs and firm breasts, usually put her on the short list for hiring wherever she applied. Valeri was the first male to hire her that actually read her transcript and master’s thesis. It was so unusual that she blushed at her job interview. She thought that blush was one reason he hired her.
He had certainly never made any advances on her. He had assumed she and Ron were together, seeing as how she so strongly lobbied for him to be hired. Even her flirting with Valeri was never the cause of reciprocal flirting in response. She finally had to take matters into her own hands with their special lunches to get him to give her a tumble. Even that couldn’t cure him of his workaholic ways. She worked around him totally naked one afternoon and he never even noticed, while he tried to work out the power supply problem for the larger caliber guns. It was most frustrating.
She kneeled down beside where he lay on the couch and ran her lips and hands over his body until he stirred. Then she gave him one more gift, for her pleasure this time.
Alistair jumped when his console alarmed, signifying a new message on the cooking forum. He was so startled he almost dropped Connie off his lap. She stood up, allowing him to read out the latest message. This one was a beef stroganoff recipe from Gagarin. He would break out the IP address and location of the sender later. For now he waited for the fifth comment. It was from another housewife, asking for a picture of the completed dish.
Alistair had learned that it signified a call to place the data in a dead drop. He wished he had the technology to trace an IP address to a specific individual. The imaging technology on his ship could follow an individual on the ground from high orbit. It would be helpful to follow the package to the dead drop, and then follow the package after it was picked up, and make prosecutions easier when Fleet Intel counterintelligence rolled up the network. Oh, well, rolling up the network was someone else’s responsibility.
He pulled Connie back onto his lap. The airlock door sensors would give them plenty of warning.
Irina Bugarov toured the 4 Motion Electronics, Inc. plant on Shepard as the introduction to her first of ten subordinate firms. She saw a modern, efficient factory putting out three main components of the transport ring system. She made a point to look beyond where she was being guided. If the guide turned left at a hallway that also went right, she went down the right hall to see what she was being led away from. There were more than a few instances where her guide kept on walking and talking, while she was looking through storage closets and unoccupied workspaces. After this happened twice, the CEO had the plant manager inform her what was in the opposite direction and ask if she wished to confirm this. She didn’t. She just wanted to make the point to this manager and all the others she had yet to visit that she would look and go anywhere she pleased and wouldn’t be fooled by being led away from somewhere unpleasant. She knew this manager would be in a conference call with the other nine managers within seconds of her leaving the building.
She did see things that disturbed her. There were numerous copies of classified plan design sheets at many supervisory positions, most with no one present at the position. She had her assistant make a note to enquire about security in the plants. The company CEO and plant manager explained the sheets were needed to ensure the components were made to spec.
Irina asked, “Are all these people here cleared for this information? If so, how would you know? They have no badges or other identifiers showing they are cleared. What are your document security procedures? How many copies of these documents have been made?” She walked over to a partial document obviously run off a copier and held it out before her.
“How many of these are running around? This is unsatisfactory. Terri, make a note. Look into hiring a security officer for my staff. Gentlemen, clean up your act before my security officer arrives. I suggest you dust off your industrial security manuals and read up. There will be a test.”
Terri looked at the faces of incredulity, the ‘but we’ve always done it this way’ faces and thought to herself, “Folks, there’s a new sheriff in town.”
Terri worked late that night, preparing notes for the General’s visit to her next plant. It required her to put together a data file with each key plant individual, a picture, notes on compensation, and last performance review. All this was organized into a master file, which included the plant’s production statistics, manpower, facilities, and any issues relating to the plant, such as lawsuits or regulatory issues.
The General was a tough taskmaster, but Terri could stay ahead of her and usually anticipated her needs. Irina needed to make a first impression of confidence, business savvy, and knowledge of each plant’s contribution to the subsidiaries’ profit potential. Irina needed to get them all pulling in the same direction, like a team of horses dragging a heavy wagon.
The plant managers were under the same gun as the General. She wasn’t afraid to terminate any of the managers’ contracts if she lost confidence in their ability to do their jobs and contribute to the overall profitability of the subsidiary. She was going to make a profit, a quite considerable profit. Profit was Irina’s mission now.
H’Topa was almost done on Shepard. Transport specialists were rendezvousing with dead drop servicers and consolidating the data in one location. The close pass by a Human warship, specifically a scout ship, made him anxious to get away from this planet. He would wait until darkness covered the selected spaceport and land, be on the ground just long enough to pick up the deliveries, and then back into space to Gagarin.
The captain tried to convince him that the close pass must have just been a coincidence. If the Humans were on to them, why would they alert them to their presence? H’Topa was somewhat assured by the captain’s logic, but didn’t like coincidences. He would be happier when they were a few light years from here and with blank scans behind them.
Alistair informed Kelly that the courier ship was moving. Alistair had moved his ship to where he had line of sight on the K’Rang ship. The courier was moving down to a spaceport on the smallest continent. Alistair focused his optics on the ship as it flared out and set down gently on the parking apron. He watched as a vehicle drove out to the ship. A single man carrying a case of some sort passed it over to someone from the ship. The first man received something in a bundle from the man from the ship, and the first man drove away.
The ship sat on the ground for 30 minutes and lifted off. Alistair informed Kelly that the ship had filed a flight plan to Gagarin and lifted off.
Kelly ordered his ship to Gagarin and set an initial course 300,000 km parallel to the most direct course. His intention was to shadow the courier ship from just ahead and to the side of his path, hopefully out of his sensor range. As long as the courier ship didn’t have special sensors, they should be okay.
On the planet below, Cindy was railing at Ron. “How could you have been so stupid? I told you to put the package on top of the south support beam of the footbridge, not the north beam, you jackass! Couldn’t you tell your north from your south?”
Cindy had been in a foul mood ever since she’d seen the post on the cooking forum with the missed dead drop code. No telling how long it would be before another courier ship would show up. Plus they had to retrieve the package before some inquisitive teenager sneaking a snort under the bridge looked up and saw it. She punched him in the side to encourage him to drive faster.
Alistair landed on Shepard and coordinated with the counterintelligence team leader in charge of rolling up the agent network on Shepard. Alistair turned over his report and the detailed information on the suspects. The team spent an hour on Alistair’s ship, reviewing the data and planning their raids.
Alistair asked the team leader not to start the raids until they received the go signal from him personally. That would signify that the courier ship had launched from Earth and was out of contact with a network node.
The Vigilant would track the courier ship until it showed them the exfiltration route into K’Rang space. At that time, the Vigilant would destroy the courier ship before it could escape across the frontier.
Concluding the briefing, Alistair hurried them off and fired up his ship to pursue the courier ship to Gagarin.
H’Topa reviewed procedures for collection on Gagarin. The landings were at one of five minor spaceports, chosen at random. He reviewed info on the spaceports, saw no difference between them, and picked the last one according to the Human alphabet. He was heartened to hear from the captain that no ships left orbit behind them. He also did a 360-degree maximum range scan and found nothing but routine intrastellar traffic.
H’Topa liked this captain. His quiet assurance calmed H’Topa’s nerves. Yes, the scout ship yesterday was probably just a coincidence, but the stakes here were too high to trust to luck. Their successful return to G’Durin would ensure the security of the K’Rang Empire and take away a significant Human advantage, not to mention keeping a certain two Shadow Warriors alive.
Kelly conferred with Chief Johnson in the sensor section on the best way to close on Gagarin without the K’Rang ship detecting them. After their close pass at Shepard, the K’Rang would spook if they showed up again. Chief Johnson recommended lying off 300,000 km as they were now and letting Alistair do the orbital surveillance.
“Nothing says the K’Rang can’t tap into the planet arrival registry and pull us up if we get close enough to be interrogated and registered, even if we just go to Gagarin Station.”
Kelly saw the logic and agreed to hang back, keeping the ship in sensor range, but moving them laterally so they were parallel to the flight path to Gagarin. “Just because we assume he’ll make a collection run to Earth next doesn’t mean the K’Rang have agreed with us,” he thought.
Kelly returned to the bridge and tracked the courier ship. After some time of very little going on, he zoned out, and started back to the present when Connie leaned over his shoulder and said, “Captain, you should get some rest. It’s going to be three days to Gagarin, tagging along at this courier ship’s speed.”
Kelly agreed, turned the conn over to her, and turned in.
Alistair pushed the throttle forward and made a broad sweep around the courier ship on its port side, maneuvering to stay out of sensor range, and reach Gagarin before them. He had to confer with the special CI team before the courier ship arrived. He needed them to be very careful not to divulge their presence or be seen by the chief security officer before taking down the Gagarin network. They would not be able to advise the security office, as the special team would be arresting their boss and receptionist. This should have been obvious from the report, but Alistair liked being sure everyone understood what was expected.
Alistair’s status as a Fleet Reporting Officer gave him certain privileges and authorities. One privilege was a special code that allowed his ship to have unimpeded access to any world in the Galactic Republic with no questions, no entry or landing fees and no record of his arrival or departure. He also had a nominal equivalent rank of brigadier general and special authority to task any Fleet or Fleet Intelligence or counterintelligence unit he needed to help accomplish his mission. Alistair normally never needed these authorities and he used them sparingly. He knew from experience that the more people involved, the harder operational security became.
Alistair pushed past the courier ship some 350,000 km to his starboard and arrived in Gagarin two days before it. He conferred with the special CI team chief and ensured he understood not to spring the trap until the courier ship left Earth and they had been given the go signal from Alistair. The team chief acknowledged his instructions and left the meeting to coordinate support from the local CI office and the Special Ops School. They would be trying to arrest 12 people in ten locations, eleven if Bart and Silke weren’t together.
Coordination completed, Alistair positioned his ship in geosynchronous orbit above the Gagarin Research Facility and waited.
H’Topa sent the signal for the transport specialist to deliver his package to the ship at the Whispering Pines Spaceport on the northwest side of Star City. He gave the transporter a simple code phrase to use to identify him. The transport specialist was told to be prompt, as they would not remain on the ground for more than an hour.
The transporter acknowledged receipt of his instructions and put his material in proper order for the transfer. He filled out a shipping receipt, listing all the included packages by code name and sequence number. He had quite a bundle to pass. He was also hoping they would pass back a larger than normal package his way. His wife’s brother was spending his credits almost faster than he could earn it. If the bum didn’t get a job soon he was getting thrown out the door, no matter what his wife said. She could follow her brother out the door, if she objected this time.
At the appointed hour, after the cloak of darkness had settled over the spaceport, H’Topa ordered the ship down to the surface. He thought that this delivery would provide him the complete data on the rings he had been seeking. This Gagarin delivery should be a complete copy of the plans from the Blake’s safe, in their special language. The earlier acquired second segment of the design plan received on Shepard, written in galactic standard language, should give the Imperial Analytical Cabal a key to translate the other two segments. H’Topa just had to collect this package and one more on Earth, and he would have all the info necessary to construct a transporter ring.
The courier ship descended through the night sky and was directed to a parking space on the operations apron. The transporter met them promptly at the assigned time, gave the code phrase, and passed the package over. A package was handed back to the transporter and the gangplank started coming up as the engines wound up. The transporter quickly moved away as the crimson ship leapt back into the sky.
H’Topa opened the package and verified the contents. An entire copy of the plans, in the Blakes’ special language, was in there and as described. He locked the packages in the ship’s safe and ordered the ship to their final pick up on Earth.
Alistair watched the courier ship start its flight up through the atmosphere as he boosted out of orbit toward Earth, ahead of the courier ship. He headed off at an angle away from Gagarin for 400,000 km before increasing speed and heading straight for Earth. That should be sufficient to not appear suspicious on the courier ship’s sensor, if they could pick him up at all. The Vigilant was on a parallel course and slightly behind the K’Rang ship. If the K’Rang ship did not go to Earth as predicted, they were in position to intercept and destroy. The K’Rang courier ship must not be allowed to enter K’Rang space.
Kelly watched the courier ship on his monitor. It was making a beeline for Earth. He wasn’t letting down his guard, but he was confident that was the K’Rang’s current destination. Kelly turned the conn over to Chief B and turned in for a few hours.
As he laid on his bunk waiting for sleep, his thoughts drifted back to his last day on Earth, his graduation from the Academy. He wore his Summer White Defense Academy uniform with a forest green stripe down the leg, signifying accession into Fighter Force. He had flight wings on his chest, showing he had qualified on the F-11 Atmospheric Fighter Trainer. He was fulfilling his dream of joining Fighter Force.
He sat through the speeches and the interminable roll call to receive his diploma and another long wait to receive his commission. He stood with his classmates as they all swore the oath to defend the Constitution of the Galactic Republic. At the final word of the oath, they were officially dismissed from the Academy and their hats soared high into the air.
He was a brand new second lieutenant in Fighter Force. His classmates shook his hand, hugged him, and a few females kissed him. He had only a short time to meet with his parents, then at 1900 hours would board a shuttle to the transport ship leaving for Gagarin. His parents were disappointed that they didn’t get much of a visit with him, but the ship had to leave that evening, to deliver them all to their branch courses on time.
The Galactic Republic Transport Ship Admiral Donald B. Hanson was a purpose-built ship, specifically designed to carry ground force troops from home station to where they were needed. It was one of five such ships that were part of the Fleet Reserve. Once a year, it made the voyage from Earth, carrying the entire Defense Academy graduating class to their component basic schools on Gagarin. This trip, the Hanson was having problems with its number three engine, and would take a week longer to reach Gagarin. The ship’s engineer would attempt repairs enroute to speed their journey.
Kelly shook his dad’s hand and gave his mom a kiss goodbye as his group was called to load on the Hanson’s shuttle. Once on board the Hanson, he was assigned a four-person cabin with three other cadets, two females and a male. The Academy never assigned coed rooms, so this was something new to them. Back to back desks and clothing lockers in the middle of the cabin provided a visual block and they agreed to respect each other’s privacy. After a week, they were so used to each other that passing gas and scratching themselves while walking around in their underwear were routine occurrences on both sides of the central divide. By week two, even the underwear was sometimes optional.
The Hanson’s captain had made this particular run many times and knew what to expect when several hundred energetic males and females used to rigid discipline were set loose on their own recognizance. He had not just a Master at Arms, but an entire section under him to maintain order. They were specially trained in calming down rowdy junior officers by appealing to their sense of duty. If that didn’t work, they had Sleep Wands that could put a charging elephant down with a touch. Many a new butterbar wound up sleeping the night away in a holding cell, to be freed the next morning with no charges filed and as if nothing had happened, but that the butterbar just needed a good night’s sleep. The captain felt duty bound to deliver his cargo of junior officers as close to the condition they were when they boarded. After all, he took this same trip many years ago himself.
Kelly’s two female cabin mates, Celia and Marta, had no romantic interest in him and thought of him as a friend. They frequently joined him for late night gabfests, while the ensign in the upper bunk snored the night away.
This was a military transport, not a luxury liner, so recreational facilities were limited. There were two small bars, one port side and one starboard, a supersized gym with weights, exercise machines, a basketball court, and a pool, and an observation room up on the uppermost deck with a clear dome for watching the stars in reclining seats.
Kelly, Celia and Marta made the circuit, starting in the gym, moving to one of the bars, then to the observation deck, and back to the gym for a late night dip in the pool. After the third week on board, most people were bored out of their minds. A cheer rose throughout the ship when the captain announced the engines had been repaired and they would be getting into Gagarin a week ahead of schedule.
Kelly was sad to see Celia and Marta go when they finally disembarked at Gagarin. They made him swear to look for them wherever he was assigned. They exchanged contact info, but he had yet to meet up with them again. His mind finally at rest, he drifted off to sleep.