The two cast each other sidelong glances, wondered what they were being set up for, and sat down.
“You two really impressed the CFW. What did you two do out there?”
Angie spoke first. “Sir, we were just practicing formation flying. We were pushing the envelope, but I don’t think we did anything all that spectacular.”
Kelly spoke up. “Sir, we were pushing it pretty hard, but we were well within the safety limits of the ships. You can review the flight tapes if you need confirmation.”
“Relax, you two. This is not a dressing down. You aren’t in trouble. The CFW just wanted us to know that you two flew like you had been flying together for years. When he found out you two had just been paired up he wanted to let me know that, whatever I was doing to train my folks, I should keep it up.”
Broad smiles flashed onto their faces.
“You had us worried, sir,” said Angie. “We thought we were in hack.”
“No, you aren’t in trouble. We want to review your flight logs and the Bolivar sensor logs to see exactly what the CFW saw that was so impressive.”
They called up the flight and Bolivar logs on the holographic briefing table. It showed the flight of the two fighters as Angie attempted to shake Kelly from his wingman position. Kelly was amazed at Angie’s flying ability and she by Kelly’s ability to stay up with her. He never got further than three ship’s width’s away from her the entire flight. LTC Samuels and CPT Willis also appeared to be impressed.
“I can see why the CFW was so excited. That was some pretty fancy flying. Were you two doing that on purpose or were you just screwing around?”
Angie spoke up. “Sir, I challenged Kelly to stay in formation with me. Then I proceeded to try as hard as I could to shake him off. He stayed with me through all the maneuvers.”
“All right, you two are dismissed. Tomorrow, CPT Willis, I want you to concentrate on four ship formation flying.”
Angie and Kelly headed off to change out of their flight suits and get cleaned up.
CPT Willis turned to LTC Matthews and asked, “Do you have any idea why the CFW would be so interested in those two, sir?”
“No, Captain, but I’m sure we will find out soon enough.”
A jet-black hole in space was watching and listening 100,000 kilometers in-spiral from the fleet’s position. The K’Rang scout ship D’Rella was monitoring the Fleet activity, its sensors in full receive mode.
“Shadow Warrior K’Tella, the human fleet is conducting training drills only. I detect no indications of any preparations for movement against the Empire.”
Slightly bristling at his technician’s presumption, the Shadow Warrior shot back, “Shadow Technician M’Drek, our mission is to collect. Let us leave analysis to those better able to make such judgments. Remember, we only see a small piece of the total picture. Concentrate on making sure that we collect all that there is to collect. The Imperial Analysis Cabal will draw its own conclusions from our data.”
Recoiling from the rebuke, his ears flat on his head, the technician responded, “I understand, Shadow Warrior. Forgive my impertinence. I will double my efforts to gather as much data as I can. We are gaining valuable information on their new interceptor ships. They turn tighter and fly faster than our best ships. I will emphasize collection on these ships. I detect no new capabilities in their escort class ships. Their capital ships appear to have some new weaponry, but they have not conducted any gunnery exercises that I have been able to detect.”
“Shadow Technician, we are coming up on our communications window. Prepare all you have collected in this period for transmission.”
The technician spooled up all his data, encrypted it, compressed it and prepared to transmit. At the push of a button, a turret on the top of the ship rose and rotated an antenna to face in-spiral, to an awaiting relay satellite just over the frontier. As the timer counted down, he watched the compression indicator light go from orange to pale red to bright red. As it reached bright red the light blinked.
“Shadow Warrior, the data is ready to transmit on your order.”
“Send it.”
The technician pushed the button next to the compression indicator light. A green light came on. As the data streamed out the light grew dimmer and dimmer until it blinked and went out.
“Shadow Warrior, the data has been sent and acknowledged.”
“Continue our monitoring mission. I will rest now.”
Shadow Technician M’Drek turned back to his scopes and gauges and concentrated on his mission.
CPT Willis pulled Angie and Kelly out of the breakfast line before they’d had a chance to pick up a tray. “Come with me,” was all she said. Kelly wondered what trouble they had gotten into now.
The two followed her down the passageway and to the upper decks near flag country. LTC Matthews met them in the hallway and the four of them proceeded past the Marine guard at the entry to the flag office spaces. LTC Matthews knocked on a door. The door was opened by the CFW.
“Come in, all of you.”
They proceeded into a dimly lit, large room, with a double height ceiling. As Kelly’s eyes adjusted to the light, he saw the CFW, two Fleet Commanders, a Fighter Force captain that Kelly didn’t recognize, General Bugarov, and Admiral Haddock-Halloway. He looked over to Angie and got a “What have we gotten ourselves into now?” look.
Admiral Haddock-Halloway said, “Now that we are all here, please be seated. CFW, would you begin?”
“Thank you, sir. As you all know, the Bolivar has been here close to the frontier for a week now, conducting fighter training and fleet formation drills. About four days ago, the frigate Tenacious picked up an echo on its sensors. At least, that is what they thought at first. After a day monitoring this echo, they noticed some inconsistencies. Echoes normally maintain a constant bearing and distance from the ship that detects them. This echo, however, shifted around. It was subtle and took all day to sort it out, but the Tenacious thinks we have a K’Rang Shadow Scout ship monitoring our fleet operations from our side of the frontier. It’s about 100,000 km away and in-spiral of us. Admiral?”
Admiral Haddock-Halloway stood up and moved over to the tank. The tank was a large holographic projector used for fleet battle management and took up most of the room. The room lights dimmed further and a representation of the space around the fleet appeared in mid-room. The admiral stood within the projection.
“The fleet is arrayed here in the center. The echo is represented by this green dot. The frontier is in-spiral of us and is represented by these two curtain-like bands. The red band is their side of the frontier. The blue one is ours. As you can see, the distance from us to the echo is greater than the distance of the echo to the frontier. We could not turn the fleet or launch fighters and catch them before they could cross the frontier on maximum burn. We are going to need to be pretty slick to catch these guys. We are going to have to find a way to trick them. That will not be easy, because their ship is just one big sensor pod.”
“The CFW and I have wrestled with this problem for a couple of days now. He came to me yesterday and told me the last piece of the puzzle had fallen into place. As you all know, we have very strict orders dealing with any engagements with the K’Rang. We have to have a significant tactical or numerical advantage to take on the K’Rang. We think we have that.”
“We are going to try and draw the Shadow Ship further into our space. To do this, we are going to move the fleet further out-spiral and conduct gunnery exercises. This will undoubtedly cause the scout ship to follow us. We are going to leave two fighters behind for the scout ship to pass by. These two ships will become the hammer. A four-ship flight will drop off behind the fleet, hide and become the anvil. Once we have the Scout between our two fighter groups, we will spring the trap.”