“Sure, I got them locked back up. Don’t worry about it. Now get out of here and go get well.”
The foreman and his rumbling guts checked out and went home. Before he powered up his transporter, he called the machinist and chewed his butt for using the wrong dimensions. He gave him the right dimensions and told him to make sure they stayed that way.
The janitor thought he was working for a competing manufacturing firm unfairly locked out of running for the ring contract. He waited until he got home at his usual time and formatted the data file for transmission in a cooking recipe. He chuckled as kindly old Aunt Martha from Schirra sent off her family recipe for Sickleberry Pie.
Alistair Bennett woke up as his ship’s computer dinged to let him know a message with the parameters he’d set had shown up. He read the recipe and waited for the fifth response to come in.
The fifth comment was from a young wife on Tereshkova wishing she could see a picture of the pie. Alistair assumed this was code for a dead drop. There was never a response back in any of the previous messages and he didn’t expect one this time.
Alistair had found the common thread when he noticed that in every suspicious message, the message was sent from a different planet than the one on the profile. He’d tumbled to the anomaly by accident and spent a few days testing his hypothesis and weeding out the real grandmas visiting their grandkids on another planet. He found three agents working on Carpenter at the factory — two dead drop servicers, a transporter, and a creditsman. They were brilliantly compartmented except in their communications, which used the assumed security and anonymity of the public network. That would be their downfall.
Shadow Lead Agent H’Topa was overjoyed. One of the covert collection ships in Human space had intercepted a success code from one of their agents in the factory on the Human main world Shepard. They sent a short coded burst, which a frontier collection site picked up and forwarded to him. He looked up the code and saw it was for acquiring one part of the three-part ring design plan. J’Kraul would be overjoyed to have something tangible to report to the Elders. They were being quite harsh with him, even though they understood how good Human security could be.
He placed a call to pass on the good news. J’Kraul was ecstatic, as he had an appointment with the Elders next day. J’Kraul asked him what chance there was that the other two parts could be acquired in the same manner. H’Topa had to burst his bubble by telling him he had no way of knowing at this time how this one part had been acquired and wouldn’t know until the agent could be interviewed or the data file off the public network could be delivered to a K’Rang world network for forwarding. It would take at least four days for the collection ship to arrive at N’Ganu, the nearest main world to their exfiltration route. The collection ships were built for collection, not speed. In the meantime, he would arrange for one of his enforcers to interview the agent and report as soon as possible. Although he didn’t tell J’Kraul, as soon as possible could be four weeks.
H’Topa remembered how his request to place a special communications device in one of the Human’s FTL hubs had been turned down by the Elders and how they had excoriated him for even suggesting such a thing. He remembered their instant dismissal of the idea, fear actually, at the danger that the humans may discover it and turn it into a way to gain access to the K’Rang communications system.
“There are times like this when it would be helpful for there to be direct connection between the Human and K’Rang networks,” he thought.
The meeting with the Elders did not go well for Shadow Leader J’Kraul. The news that they had obtained one of the three design plans just led to questions of when would they have the other two sections and the codes to make the rings work. J’Kraul was pummeled so hard by their impatient harangues that he had to use all his will power to keep his ears from flattening on his head. He barely salvaged the meeting by promising to put more resources to bear on the matter and was summarily dismissed. His aide read his superior’s mood and wisely kept quiet on their trip back to Shadow Force Intel HQ.
H’Topa was summoned to J’Kraul’s office immediately upon his return from the Elders. H’Topa could see the frustration in his friend’s eyes and demeanor.
“It was the worst I have ever felt in any briefing to any audience. They are almost in panic mode. They must have those other two other design plans or neither of our careers or lives are secure.”
H’Topa tried to calm his friend, but nothing he said helped. Finally he asked, “Would it help if I went into Human space and directed the network more closely? Our biggest problem is that it takes two weeks to get directions in and two weeks to get the info out, if we’re successful. If I go in on one of the collection ships I can direct my network in real time.”
J’Kraul looked up at his friend, “H’Topa, old friend, if you are caught it will mean your death.”
“Then I had better not get caught. How soon can you have a collection ship to take me to Human space?”
J’Kraul argued in his head against this course of action, but in the end realized he had no choice. If they didn’t make progress on this, Shadow Warriors would be sent to offer them the honorable way out, or they would do it for them.
“I will have the Special Collection Ship D’Ran at your disposal tomorrow. It is not your usual collection ship. It has teeth and legs. Captain M’Toth and I have served together before. He is steadfast and brave. He will be there when you need him and will give his last breath to keep you safe. Be safe, my friend. You are not just our best lead agent, but also my friend. Contact M’Toth and inform him when you want to leave.”
H’Topa looked down, then back up into his friend’s eyes and said, “When you tell him he is under my orders, tell him to be ready tomorrow morning at dawn. I will be there ready to load and leave. I don’t think this is the time to dawdle.”
J’Kraul smiled and said, “You’re right, it isn’t.”
Chapter Four
It was two hours before Antares crept up over the horizon, as Kelly looked around the bridge. All the first watch were at stations, and Chief Pennypacker had the quarterdeck watch.
Kelly called Chief P and said, “Chief P, bring up the gangplank. Secure the quarterdeck watch.”
Kelly felt the now familiar change in pressure in his ears, which signified a good seal, but he checked the pressure indicator to make sure the pressure wasn’t dropping, signifying a leak.
He keyed his communicator and said, “Antares Base, Vigilant requests permission for take off.”
The tower came back immediately. “Vigilant, you’re cleared number one for take off. Good luck and good hunting.”
Kelly ordered, “Helm, standard departure, set course for Antares Station.”
The helm lifted Vigilant smoothly from its parking apron and moved to the takeoff point. She held it still over the takeoff point for a second and smoothly applied power to the engines. Vigilant lifted into the night sky. The transition from atmosphere to space was hardly noticeable. The Vigilant came to the course that Chief Billings had entered into the navigation computer. The station came into view as the ship approached the terminator between night and day.
The Vigilant was ushered directly into the ordnance loading dock and a 20-missile pod was installed into the dorsal cargo bay. This was not the usual 20-missile wartime pod they had carried before, but a special pod holding 10 of the long-range heavy missiles capable of killing a destroyer or frigate, and 10 newer, smaller missiles capable of stopping a smaller scout-size ship, but not necessarily killing it. The type of missile used was selectable on the gunnery console. Fully loaded, the Vigilant backed out of the dock and moved to the ring for transport.