“Aye aye, sir. I’ll put it in the watch log. If you don’t mind the company, I’ll run the wiring with you.”
“Sure Chief, see you in about six hours.”
Kelly went back to his quarters. He had lost track of when LT Chen was on and off watch, so he went in as quietly as he could. They had managed to miss each other so far in the patrol.
She was in. She was asleep and snoring slightly. She was also naked, at least from the waist up. The blanket covered the rest of her. He stripped down to his skivvies and crawled into his bunk. He’d shower when he got up. In a few minutes he was asleep and dreaming about LT Chen.
Six hours later he awoke, rested and ready for a shower. LT Chen was gone and her bunk was folded up into the bulkhead. He stripped down, took a quick shower and checked with Wanda to see how her search was coming.
“Kelly, I’ve found no asteroids or other debris out in the area between the cluster and the frontier, but I may have found something that will be useful. There are the remnants of an old supernova in the area. One or more of the gas tendrils may serve your need. I’ll put them on the screen for you.”
“One of them is across the frontier, it’s the largest. The second largest is almost perfectly positioned for your need. The third is here about to enter the cluster. A fourth is approximately 100,000 km off toward the Hercules Constellation, to port of our current course. It is near the frontier.”
“Thank you Wanda, make this information available on all the command group terminals and message it to the captain.”
Kelly left his cabin and went onto the bridge for the start of his watch. He relieved Chief Watson after hearing that there were no indications of anything unusual along their path or near the Manchu Warrior behind them. He checked the sensor feed on the path ahead and astern of them, 300,000 km to where the Manchu Warrior was poking along. Nothing, good, now to trace the wiring.
He turned the conn over to the senior petty Officer in the bridge watch and proceeded astern. He met Chief B in Sensors and they ran a diagnostic on the EMP device. All indicators came up green. Kelly crawled under the instrument console with a flashlight and started to trace every circuit into and out of the controller. Chief B joined him with the schematic on her pocket terminal. When Kelly had to pull himself into a cramped space to follow the wiring, Chief B took the flashlight and crawled up on Kelly to position it on where the wiring went through a grommet in the bulkhead. Having an attractive well-built woman lying on top of him would have been pleasant under other circumstances, but here it was just awkward.
Chief B looked down at him and said, “Promise me you’ll respect me in the morning, sir,” and burst out laughing.
Kelly just shook his head as they disentangled and crawled out of the console.
If there was any tension in the situation, it was gone now. Kelly moved around the bulkhead and followed the fire control wiring as it snaked down the side of the ship. They traced it until it moved upward into a wide cable conduit leading into the dorsal weapons bay. Kelly stuck his head up into the conduit, but his shoulders were too broad to fit. He could see about a foot of the wiring to where the conduit made a turn and he lost it.
“Chief, can you fit in here to see where the wiring goes?”
Chief Blankenship lifted herself up into the raceway and could see about three feet further. She dropped down out of the conduit and said, “I hope you aren’t too easily shocked, sir.”
At that, she unzipped her coveralls and stripped them off. She stood there for a heartbeat wearing only her boots, socks, panties, and a sheer tank top. In his peripheral vision he could see she was spectacular. Kelly had the good sense to look her straight in the eyes.
“Sir, if you boost me up there, I’ll follow the wiring up and meet you in the weapons bay. Take my coveralls with you, please. I’m not bashful, as you can see, but it wouldn’t be good for me to walk back here in my skivvies. It would make a bad impression on the younger members of the crew, much less the Marines.”
Kelly boosted her up into the conduit and watched as her very nice derriere and legs slid up and around the turn. He went back to the ladder leading to the weapons bay with her coveralls over his shoulder. He climbed up, opened the hatch and lifted himself into the bay. He found the light switch and went over to open the hatch on the conduit.
He saw a light shining in the conduit and called out, “Chief, are you okay in there?”
She chuckled slightly, “I’m fine sir, I just got snagged on a wire bundle tie. I’ll be there in a second. So far so good. No splices, nicks, or strains on the wiring.”
Kelly backed up as she got closer.
When she was almost to the hatch she called out, “Sir, you might want to set my coveralls down and turn around.”
“Why? What happened?”
“Well sir, I snagged my skivvies on the way here and I’m sort of out of uniform, if you get my drift.”
“Oh,” Kelly said, “Your coveralls are by the hatch. I’ll be following the wiring to the EMP device.”
Kelly set her coveralls next to the hatch and followed the wiring to where it went into the rear of the device.
A few seconds later Chief B came up behind him with a twinkle in her eyes. “Sorry about that, sir. Now aren’t you glad you brought my coveralls with you? Damn wire bundle tie reached out and almost ripped my shorts in half before I even knew what happened. I got a hell of a scrape on my right hip. I’ll let Doc look at it when we are done here. He’ll get a thrill out of that. Some of those new plastic compounds can cause a nasty allergic reaction if they break the skin.”
“Thanks, Chief. I ran a self diagnostic on the device from here and got the same reading as from the console. Let’s go run the power wiring from the console into engineering and you can get your hip tended to.”
Kelly sealed the conduit hatch, let Chief B go down the personnel hatch into the ship first, turned out the lights, and followed, sealing the hatch behind.
The power wiring into engineering also was run properly with no nicks, wears, splices, or strains. The space dock yard crew had done a very good job.
Kelly thanked Chief B, saw her off to see Doc, and went back to the bridge. Cookie had just finished baking, so he grabbed some cookies to take to the bridge crew.
He took the report from the senior petty officer as he reassumed the conn. Nothing out of the ordinary on sensors and the ship was performing normally.
The captain stuck his head out of his cabin and motioned for Kelly to come in.
“Kelly, I like this largest tendril as a hiding place and I think we need to get there sooner than our current pace will allow. This smaller one between the system and the frontier is too exposed and too obvious. I’m concerned that a K’Rang scout or a sensor pod may be out there watching the meeting point and see us when we move in to monitor the rendezvous.”
“I’m not worried about violating K’Rang space. My orders allow me to go anywhere I need to successfully intercept this courier.”
“I’m, therefore, going to take us to max speed, make a wide loop around the star cluster, cross the frontier here where this other tendril is up against it, and slip into the gas cloud around this largest tendril from the K’Rang side. With our sensitive sensors, we should be able to spot any K’Rang ships or scouts before they can spot us. Here’s the new course. Execute.”
Kelly went back out onto the bridge, forwarded the new course and speed to the helm and navigator. While they entered the new instructions, he told Sensors to go into a maximum 360 degree scan and report all contacts.
As the Vigilant sped off on its new course, Sensors started calling out all targets within a half million kilometer bubble around the ship. All were initially shown as yellow on the screens until they were determined to be friendly, blue, a threat, red, or not a threat, green. There were no red symbols. The Manchu Warrior, now falling quickly behind, was alone in the depth of the dark space between systems. No ships were near them or on a path to intercept.