“Kelly, follow me in. We’re going to take away this guy's fangs. I’m going under him and take out his guns. You take out his engines.”
Angie made a hard turn to starboard to come back at the scout ship. Kelly followed, toggling his weapons from the mini-seekers to guns. The two fighters dropped down below the scout ship and rose up. Angie’s guns reached out and destroyed the scout’s guns. Kelly fired his guns into the rear of the ship, taking out the port engine. The two fighters shot past the scout, executed a sharp loop with the help of their vectored thrust, and Kelly took out the starboard engine. The two shot back under the scout, executed another loop, and a roll to end up above and to port of the scout ship. The scout coasted in space, venting gases, and sparking where the engines had once been. The scout yawed and tumbled in space.
CPT Chang’s voice came over the communicator, “K’Rang ship, this is CPT Chang of the Galactic Republic Fleet. You are disabled in Galactic Republic space. Prepare to be towed. Disable all your systems but basic life support. Any deviation will result in your ship being destroyed.”
There was no response from the K’Rang ship. CPT Chang flew his fighter over to do a visual check of the scout.
His voice came over the inter-ship frequency, “LT Shappelle, would you and your wing man tow LT Obagwe’s ship back to the carrier. We can take the scout from here.”
Kelly switched to Angie and his private frequency and said, “He can take it from here? He let the K’Rang ship outfly him twice, got one of his ships shot up, and had to have us take it out for him, but he can take it from here. What kind of BS is this?”
Angie replied, “Relax, the data captured by the Bolivar will show what happened here. Let’s let him tow the hulk in.”
Wanda said, “Kelly, I am picking up a strange reading from the K’Rang ship. I sense an energy build up on the scout ship.”
Kelly’s turned his eyes toward the scout ship. CPT Chang and his two remaining fighters were pulling up to the scout ship to affect the tow. The revelation hit him in an instant. He keyed his mike on the fleet frequency and yelled into his mike, “Chang, get away from him. He’s activated his self-destruct. Get out of there now!”
CPT Chang and his two escorts didn’t hesitate. They hit max power and had blasted to several kilometers from the scout when it lit up the black space like a supernova. The blast wave rocked Angie and Kelly, but did no damage to any of the fighters in either group.
Angie said, “Well, that was fun. Let’s go get LT Obagwe and tow him to the carrier.”
Kelly said, “Thank you Wanda, you saved a bunch of us just then. It’s good to fly with you.”
“Thank you, Kelly, it’s good to fly with you, too.”
The two ships moved to LT Obagwe's disabled fighter and engaged their tractor beams to tow his fighter back. A shuttle from the nearest frigate was dispatched to retrieve as much debris from the scout ship as they could find.
As the six fighters proceeded to the Bolivar, a data pod sped in-spiral. Its laser communicator extended and transmitted the last data collected by the late K’Rang Shadow Scout Ship D’Rella. The data stream sped to the waiting relay satellite. The data transmission completed and the personal messages of Shadow Warriors K’Tella and M’Drek were sent out. M’Drek’s message was to inform his father and clan mates that he died willingly in service to the Empire and to remember him at the reading of the M’Drella. K’Tella sent a message to his Creche mother that his sacrifice was in honor of her and she should remember his sacrifice to his creche mates. At the end of the transmission, the pod waited for acknowledgement, received it, and then self-destructed.
In-spiral of the fleet, another larger black spot in space waited. Inside it was the orderly buzz of activity indicative of a military vessel.
A sensor crewman looked up from his screen, “I think that is the last of the data pod transmission, Captain.”
“The captain of the GRS Vehement, latest ship in the Valiant Class of Scout Ships, nodded at his crewman and called across the bridge, “Exec, how long will it take to shut down that K’Rang satellite in our hold?”
A Fleet Lieutenant, Junior Grade walked over from his console and replied, “Captain, it will take about a half hour to spin down and secure the satellite’s electronics. I’m closing the hold doors now. We should have normal atmosphere in there in a few minutes.”
“Okay, Exec, take care of it and then set course for Antares at best possible speed.”
The captain walked over to the sensor crewman and said, “Poor bastards, their sacrifices were for naught. Did we get all the data the K’Rang ship sent since they crossed the frontier?”
The crewman looked up from his screen again and replied, “Yes sir, nothing got through. We got it all, every last photon.”
Kelly discontinued his musing, shut down his terminal, and turned in.
Chapter Seven
The Vigilant’s return flight to Antares was uneventful. The crew spent the time working on the ship. Anything that could be was fine-tuned. Engineering found a way to gain an extra power. 4 light speed. Sensors found ways to increase the sensitivity and resolution. Gunnery ran simulations and qualified 70 percent of the gunners as expert. Some were even better than Kelly.
The galley was where great advances were made. Because they had stayed out longer than the 30 days they had scheduled, the galley was getting a little sparse. Cookie found ways to use the remaining rations and the replicator to come up with culinary delights. What could have been several days of dried rations and sandwiches became a feast as the galley crew used the replicator in ways its designers never envisioned. The good thing about the replicator was that mistakes could be fed back in and tried again. It was also faster than traditional cooking once the programming was complete. LCDR Timmons was their most finicky customer, and even he was pleased with the results. Next patrol would see a lot more replicator use.
The Antares system appeared on the long-range sensors, and the crew went into a hum of activity. Duty uniforms were brought out of the lockers and donned. Chief Watson had each section giving their areas the once over to make sure they were shipshape. Chief Willis actually looked hurt at the suggestion that his engineering space could be improved.
Antares control cleared them into the system and they made a normal approach into Antares Base Space Port. The ship landed at its assigned space and started shutting systems down. The Base ground crew personnel hooked them up to shore comms, power, water, and sewage. Chief Willis initiated shut down procedures on the engines. LCDR Timmons called Kelly into his quarters.
“Exec, I want you to look at these sensor records and log entries again to make sure that we haven’t left anything out.”
Kelly felt that he had already done this, but if the captain wanted it done again, he would. He knew that the record was important. Their monitoring of the Indigo Consortium and K’Rang meeting was significant. The files would be turned over to Fleet Intelligence and they would glean every last bit of information. The computers on the Vigilant were good, but could not match the speed and power of the systems available to a Fleet Base like Antares.
Kelly realized he had been at the task for over an hour when LCDR Timmons asked if he was through and suggested they get some lunch. Kelly closed down the terminal and followed the captain.
The ship was deserted. The crew had already left for chow. The ship’s galley had closed down in accordance with base regulations. Petty Officer Benitez was manning the quarterdeck at the gangplank.