He looked up at her with resignation on his face, “Well, if I’m going to be a prisoner, I might as well start with a full stomach. Do the replicators have power?”
She looked at him as if he had just used a profanity. “You’ll do no such thing. Come here. Sit. Let me fix you something. It’s the least I can do, seeing as I have to be the one to turn you in.”
She moved into the galley and got some pans heating, then rummaged through the stores until she found some steaks and vegetables. She pan-fried a couple of steaks, whipped up some mashed potatoes, and boiled some Andelian beans. In moments, she had plated two meals and set one in front of Russell. The other was for her. It was lunchtime, after all.
Russell and Sally ate their meals in silence. When it was over, she ran the dishes and pans through the cleaner and called up station security. Russell surrendered quietly. Sally hated to do it, but it was the best for him. She got security to let him help her load up the grav sleds and they all left the Andromeda Clipper together. She wondered if Pete could be talked into another waiter or dishwasher.
Alistair decided he was not doing very much good where he was. He decided to make better use of his time by patrolling the fringes of the star cluster. He put his sensors on passive long-range survey mode and covered as much of the perimeter of the star cluster as the gravimetric pressure ebbs and flows would allow. After a week, he had built up a much better star map of the field. Patterns of energy readings resolved into likely areas to inspect more closely, once the scout ship arrived. He found one area of the field that had readings much higher than the surrounding space. That would be the first area he would recommend to Kelly.
He looked down at the cat lying on the console and said, “Looks like you will have to go into stasis for a while, Rojo. I don’t think I’ll be able to drop you off at a kennel on any of the nearby worlds. It will be just a longer than usual nap for you, old fellow.” He rubbed Rojo’s head and watched the data flow.
While he was surveying the far reaches of the star field, a strange ship cruised by his former hiding place. It was huge, bigger than a fleet carrier. It was shaped like a pecan shell, painted black, and with eyes painted on both sides of the bow. It turned out of the star cluster and headed toward Aldebaran.
Irina asked Terri to get her info on the amenities of the Nebula Queen, sister ship to the Galaxy Queen that they’d come out on. Now that the pressure was off, she wanted to have some fun. She felt magnanimous and offered to pay for Terri’s amenities, too. Terri had been a good assistant and kept her from making an ass of herself quite a few times in the last year. A couple of days into the voyage, she called the concierge desk and arranged Swedish massages for both of them.
At the spa, Irina and Terri left their clothes in a locker, showered, and donned fluffy cotton robes and slippers. Irina asked for a masseur and Terri asked for a masseuse. Irina felt so relaxed she had her clothes bagged and walked back to her cabin in the robe. Terri followed her lead. Irina wasn’t as slim and trim as her assistant, but she could still turn the heads of more mature men.
The two padded down the hall in their complimentary terry cloth slippers and had just reached Terri’s cabin when the engine sound changed and the lights went out. Irina, knowing instinctively that this was a bad thing, pushed Terri into her room where the emergency lights were burning, and told her to get dressed. Now! The two women threw on clothes and prepared for whatever was coming.
Kelley, Connie and Chief Miller hopped on a man lift with the yard boss and went up to perform a final inspection of the tail gun nacelle repair. The yard had fabricated a new nacelle, and replaced the destroyed rail gun with one fresh out of the shipping crate from the armament factory on Schirra. They had replaced the rear view camera assembly completely. All grazing fire damage to the hull had been sanded, filled, sanded, and painted. Kelly was satisfied. The yard boss brought up the form that transferred responsibility back to the captain, and Kelly thumbed his approval.
Vigilant was ready four days early. Kelly wanted to give the crew liberty to blow off some steam before what looked to be a long cruise. As he was about to announce liberty, he got a call from CDR Timmons to see him as soon as the ship was returned to his control and his ship was out of drydock. Kelly prepared the ship for movement, and then requested permission to lift and move to Scout Force’s parking apron. Permission was granted and Vigilant smoothly lifted out of the drydock and across the field to the Scout Force parking apron. Once the ship was secure, he and Connie walked to CDR Timmons office.
CDR Timmons emphasized to them the political visibility of their mission, especially with increasing pressure from the Senate. He told them to leave as soon as they were resupplied and good luck and good hunting.
“So much for liberty,” Kelly thought, as they returned to the Vigilant.
Steven Maynard conducted a captains’ conference in his main conference room on Barataria. He was a medium-sized, but big muscled man in his late fifties. The deference paid to him was due to his ability to guarantee good captures/profit and a safe haven in which to enjoy them, more than anything else. He was not about to disappoint them now that things had slowed down.
“Looks like we’ll need to shift our operations to in-spiral for a while. The Rigel to Aldebaran run is starting to dry up. We’re seeing too many armed escorts and convoys since that last container ship that the Leviathan brought in. The passenger liner captured today was a fluke. Even our attempt to infiltrate a few of our ships into the escort fleet isn’t paying off any more. Captain Craig, brief us on that route you were surveying to get us out to the Perseus sector.”
Captain Sam Craig got up from his chair and motioned for the terminal operator to bring up his plot. The lights dimmed and a 3-D view of the star cluster appeared before them in the center of the table. As the image built, several red paths from Barataria led out, but all terminated before reaching the edge of the field. One crooked blue path led all the way through the field and out into space in the K’Rang end of the Perseus sector, where several green lines stretched from system to system. Several systems were highlighted in orange or yellow.
“As you can see, I’ve successfully piloted my ship out of the star cluster into the edge of the Perseus sector, represented by this blue line. It’s our back door into the K’Rang Empire. I’ve done a sensor scan and found several cargo runs that would be worth our while, shown here in green. There are at least ten runs here that would provide us with good captures. The best point is that these here, here, and here, marked in orange, are new worlds and get a lot of high tech and machinery cargos. The two more developed systems here and here, marked in yellow, get a lot of deliveries from outside the sector that will be on the edges of our ability to patrol, but high value enough to make it worth our while.”
The captains murmured at Captain Craig’s comments, with hungry looks in their eyes.
Steven Maynard signaled for quiet. “Thank you, Captain Craig. Gentlemen and ladies, we will need to harvest this new area carefully. If we continue to hit the Rigel to Aldebaran run selectively and develop this new area as well, we can all live very well for as long as we remain smart. In addition, we might find fertile markets for trade between the empires. I’m sure there are many that would pay top dollar for proscribed goods from the other empire.”
Maynard brought the meeting to a close and the captains drifted off in ones and twos. Captain Craig and Captain Chang, captain of the Leviathan, remained behind.