Scout Force (33 page)

      
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.”