"Something I say amusing to you, mister?" Kruger asked, looking back at Jason.
"As a matter of fact, yes, sir," Jason replied.
Kruger looked at him coldly and again Jason found himself wondering if his honesty would get him into hot water. Whether Kruger could really discipline him or not was problematic, he was after all a "volunteer" in the Landreich's Free Corp, not even officially sworn in, but he did suspect the gaunt one-eyed leader could make life difficult.
"We've got a little surprise for you two," Tolwyn said handing a cup of tea to Ian and moving to get between Jason and Kruger. Glad for the excuse to break eye contact Jason focused his attention on Tolwyn.
"What is it, sir?"
"The special equipment we were hoping to get made it out of the Confederation and will arrive here tomorrow. It's the real reason I wanted to get these carriers out here," and he looked over at a frowning Kruger and smiled "besides helping out our allies in the Landreich.
"Therefore Tarawa and Normandy aren't going out on forward patrol with the other three carriers."
"Why, sir?" and the disappointment in Jason's voice was evident.
"I couldn't let you in on it till now, but your ship has been selected for the real mission. Let's head up there now, Paladin's moved over from Normandy and he's already on board waiting for us."
"What is it, sir?" Jason asked, feeling like a child who was being held back from looking under the Christmas tree.
"Let's just say we've decided to add to Tarawa a little something special that just came in."
CHAPTER SIX
Hard docking completed, Jason followed Geoff Tolwyn to what usually served as the entry bay for his fighters and was now blocked by the side of the heavy transport which was almost as big as Tarawa.
The crew worked around him, extending the docking collar through the magnetic field which separated the pressurized flight deck from the vacuum of space. The collar snapped onto the side of the transport and the deck officer turned to Jason nodding that an airtight seal had been secured. The side of the transport popped open and a thin, nearly bald man, who Jason judged to be in his early sixties, came through.
"So the Cats have been snooping around?" the man asked, coming up to shake Tolwyn's hands.
"They know we're here."
"And they'll be back for a closer look. I think I managed to get here without their knowing and I can tell you what's inside my hold is secure."
Tolwyn looked back at his companions.
"Admiral Vance Richards, I'd like to introduce you to Captain Bondarevsky."
Jason came to attention and the Admiral motioned for him to stand at ease.
"Everyone here's retired at the moment, Captain, so let's cut all the saluting crap."
Jason took Richards' hand, surprised at the firmness of the grip. Tolwyn went down the line introducing him in turn to Hunter, Doomsday, Kevin, and finally Paladin.
"Ah, Vance, tis good to see ya again," Paladin said with a laugh, the two slapping each other on the shoulders. "Did you bring me my new toy?"
"That I did," Richards said, "it's tucked into the forward cargo bay."
Paladin grinned with delight
Jason watched the familiar greeting with surprise. Admiral Richards, until his retirement only days before the armistice, had been head of military intelligence for the entire Confederation. He was, to the members of the fleet, a shadowy figure, a name without a picture, an individual never seen — though it was often rumored that he traveled into more than one action, hidden away as a staff officer under an assumed name.
"Let's start unloading and get to work" Richards said with an almost boylike enthusiasm, and he motioned for the group to follow him off the deserted hangar bay.
The group started down the corridor back to the bridge and Jason looked back to see a team of black cover-alled personnel emerging from the transport ship, each of them saluting the lone Marine guard by the hatch and requesting permission to come aboard.
"Who are those people?" Jason asked, motioning back towards the stream of personnel filing off the transport.
"That's part of our surprise," Tolwyn said with a grin.
The new arrivals started to maneuver long black canisters from out of the transport, moving them with small hand-held null gravity units. They had a certain look to them, tech personnel he could almost guess out of hand, but beyond that a cold professional look as well.
"Since I am captain of this ship, sir," Jason said, looking over at Tolwyn, "can you finally let me in on what's going on? You've been looking like a cat that just swallowed the canary."
"We're installing a D 3S 5 on board your ship, Jason," Richards said, motioning for Jason to turn into the wardroom off the bridge and indicating that Ian, Doomsday, Paladin, Geoff, and Kevin were invited to join as well.
"Just what the hell is a D 3S 5?" Ian asked.
"Deep Space Surveillance System Five," Richards said quietly, closing the door behind them.
"Something then with signal intelligence, is that it?"
Richards smiled and sat down on the small table that filled most of the room, motioning for the rest of group to sit down. It suddenly caught Jason that Richards was awfully familiar with light escort design, having made it straight from the hangar to the bridge wardroom without a single false turn.
"The sig intel department's been working on this new design for years, in fact they were just getting set to deploy it when the armistice hit. This system was a black project. The only ones who knew about it were the chiefs of staff and several hundred design and research techs working on a base buried inside one of Neptune's moons, and that was it. Security was so tight that the techs were only allowed to bring their spouses and children with them and then were listed as killed in a transport accident."
Jason noticed that Richards had neglected to say if anyone inside the civilian government knew of the project. Chances were not even the president fully understood it, nor perhaps did he want to.
"I should add it is strictly a military project," Richards said, as if reading Jason's thoughts. I think it's fair to tell you that we've suspected a mole in the inner circle of government for some time now. The money for this project has therefore been buried, and no one else knows about it.
"So what's so important about all of this?" Ian asked.
"Since this war started, signal and photo intelligence has been crucial. From the little bits of information that we've been able to occasionally get, victory or defeat in some of the major battles of the war has often been decided. Vukar started because of a recon survey and in a lot of those missions good people died as a result.
"We ve even got picket ships specially designed for the work, and they've been hiding on the edge of the frontier for years, quietly parked in asteroid fields. Hell, some of them are camouflaged to look like asteroids. Gods, it must be boring work, but to the sig intel crowd it's like a giant game, figuring out one puzzle after another.
"The problem is that we're trying to listen in on everything from old sub light ship-to-ship radio communication, through newscasts, right up to fleet command high density translight burst signals. It comes down to hundreds of billions of signals floating around, made even more complicated by old radio waves, signals maybe five hundred years old, drifting by. The Kilrathi of course, assume we're listening in, so throw in language and coding and you see how complex it gets.
"D 3S 5 might be a partial answer. It's not only the detecting equipment, it's also the analysis software which can sort through these millions of signals, crack codes, figure out which ones have certain things we're looking for and then give them as hard copy to intelligence. When they started the design work twenty years ago, the antenna nets were twenty miles across, it took five hundred personnel to run it, and it needed a ship bigger than a carrier. The early models were, as result of these limitations, well inside Confed space for security reasons, trying to squeak out information from as much as five hundred or more light years and ten or more jump points from the front. Now we've finally got it down to something we can deploy inside the flight deck of a light escort carrier, with a fifty meter antenna array mounted outside."