At 0900, Timmons and Kelly rode over to the Shuttle Detachment. When they checked in, they were led out to the ramp and escorted to the new S-660. Tammy met them at the top of the ramp and welcomed them aboard.
“Commander, welcome aboard the maiden flight of the City of San Francisco. Please follow me. You are my senior passengers today, so you can sit anywhere you please. I’m very proud of my new ship. If you would like a tour of the cockpit, we have a few minutes before the rest of the passengers arrive. I expect clearance from the tower shortly.”
LCDR Timmons turned down her invitation, but he waved Kelly forward and took a seat. Kelly followed Tammy into the cockpit and was impressed. The S-660 was fairly robust for a planetary shuttle. In addition to the normal instrumentation for an atmospheric shuttle, he saw exoatmospheric instrumentation. With the transporter rings in the Antares and Tau Ceti systems, this S-660 had an interplanetary, interstellar capability.
“This is nice, Tammy. It’s a lot more complex than I thought it would be. This cockpit looks like a dual position version of the F-53. I’m impressed.”
Tammy practically beamed at Kelly’s compliment. “Of course, it lacks weapons; however, it’s got everything else that a Scout has, but the FTL drive. I hear the new 700 series coming out will have an FTL drive. But with your parent’s invention, we may not need to have FTL in the future.”
“You may be right, but I think the military will still need FTL to cover the areas that won’t be served by rings.”
Tammy’s co-pilot entered the cockpit and told her that all the passengers were onboard.
“Kelly, meet Ensign Jim Stevens, my co-pilot. You’ll have to go back and take a seat now. I’ve got a ship to fly.”
Kelly rolled his eyes, shook Ensign Stevens’ hand, said, “Aye aye, Captain,” and went back to join his captain. He settled into a seat, buckled up, broke out his pocket terminal, and caught up on messages.
He was absorbed with his messages during lift off and climb into space. He completely missed Tammy’s announcement as they came into orbit. It wasn’t until she announced that shortly they would be docking at space dock that he even looked out the window. He noticed a frigate on one of the external docking arms.
“Hey, Captain, did you know there was a frigate up here? It looks like the Tenacious.”
LCDR Timmons leaned over to look out his window. “Yeah, that does look like the Tenacious. I wonder why they're hanging around. When the Bolivar Battle Group came through here last week, they must have broken something. Why don’t you see if there is anything in the reports?”
Kelly keyed up his terminal and saw the yard report of a blown FTL engine. It was waiting for parts that were due in this week. He wondered why they didn’t just head through the ring to the better equipped yard at Gagarin.
Kelly watched as Tammy made a perfect approach to the docking arm. She came to a complete stop next to the arm, applied side thrusters, and made a bumpless connection to the docking flange. Kelly was impressed.
In the cockpit, Ensign Stevens looked over at Tammy and said, “Your friend should have been impressed with that one. I think that was your best docking ever.”
She grinned and said, “I had to. I wasn’t about to give him anything to kid me over. You get to do it on the way back. I hope you’re up to it.”
The transfer of personnel and equipment onto and off of the space dock went smoothly, and in under 30 minutes they were on their way. Kelly watched as the space dock receded and the transporter ring came into sight. He felt Tammy line up with the ring and increase speed. The ship went through the ring and Kelly felt the familiar cold and blackness, but with the increased speed, it went by much faster than during the initial tests, just a few weeks ago.
He looked out as they came into orbit around the planet, Gagarin. Kelly felt the thrusters fire and the shuttle orient into re-entry attitude. Ships no longer burned into the atmosphere as in olden times. Modern engines gave the ships the ability to make a controlled spiral into the atmosphere. Heat shields were no longer a part of modern ship construction.
They landed at the military spaceport and Kelly and Timmons left the ship behind a Fleet Commander that had gotten on at the Antares space dock. A marine captain met them at the bottom of the ramp and escorted them to a hover vehicle.
“Commander, I am Captain Roger Starr. I’m an instructor at the Marine Special Operations Academy. I’ll be your escort. It will take about thirty minutes to get to the academy. Relax, gentlemen, while I get us going.”
The captain, actually equal in rank to Kelly, moved forward to sit next to the pilot and the shuttle lifted off. It quickly achieved altitude and sped off to the west. Kelly sat back and spent the time working though more of his messages. By the time he finished, they were maneuvering into a parking space near a large warehouse-like building. A group of marine officers were standing waiting for them as they debarked. The senior individual was a marine full colonel. Two majors and a Fleet commander accompanied him. Kelly and Timmons walked over to the colonel and saluted. His nameplate said Kumar.
“Sir, I’m LCDR Timmons. This is my exec, LT Blake.”
The salute was returned. The colonel reached over to shake Timmon’s hand and said, “I’m Rashid Kumar. Welcome to the Marine Special Operations Academy. I believe you know a nephew of mine.”
LCDR Timmons smiled. “You must mean Rajna, sir. Doc is my Corpsman and a damn fine one at that.”
“Rajna is my little sister’s boy. She always wanted him to be a doctor. I’m glad to hear he’s doing well. Now let me make some introductions and we’ll go inside. Commander Stew Thompson here is from Fleet Intel. He’s here to handle security for us while we’re training for this mission. These two are Majors Jones and Valicelli. Jones is my operations officer. Valicelli is my senior tactics instructor. You’ve already met Captain Starr. Let’s go inside.”
They walked into the building, up some stairs, down a corridor, and came into a room with a set of stepped theater seats facing a curtain-covered wall.
The Colonel motioned LCDR Timmons and Kelly over to sit next to him. Captain Starr sat on Kelly’s other side. The others took seats in the row behind them.
The Colonel turned in his seat, “Stew, set the stage for us.”
The Intel Commander started. “Ed, the ship you shot up in the Scutum sector is a fairly common, inconspicuous K’Rang interstellar freighter. It’s fast, armed, and innocuous looking. We’ve found similar ships in the vicinity every time an Indigo Consortium freighter made a suspicious visit to planetary systems close to the frontier. We expect this is what you will encounter on your mission.”
Colonel Kumar said, “Ed, we’ve built a scale model of the K’Rang ship and have been training our platoon to assault this ship. We also have several other common ship models we’ve been training on, but we have concentrated on this model.”
Colonel Kumar motioned to a Marine in the back of the room and the lights dimmed. The curtains parted to reveal a long window overlooking a mockup of the K’Rang light freighter in a large room. The model hung suspended in the air above the floor and Kelly suspected that the room was an anti-gravity chamber.
Col Kumar motioned again and the far window panels turned into large monitors. The video appeared to be night vision view from a helmet cam. The view was of a group of people in a small space. Kelly assumed it was the inside of an assault pod. As he looked out into the room, he saw an object move up behind the ship model. It was obviously a mock up of an assault pod and docking collar. The lights went off in the ship. The pod and docking collar came up on the port side.
Colonel Kumar said, “Captain, at this point you have just employed the EMP device and all unshielded components in the K’Rang ship have just been fried. You will move against the K’Rang ship and the assault collar will extend to lock with the hull. Explosive cutting charges will open a gap into the hull and the assault party will move into the ship, disabling all personnel on board. Because we won’t be able to separate out the courier, we have worked out the procedures to capture all occupants. Major Valicelli, would you take it from here?”