:: 29/12/2000 ::
When I woke up, I heard voices, three of them. I couldn't tell who was who, but I felt pretty sure that they were those of the Captain, Commander Paktu, and Tetral Soban. The conversation went something like this:
"….but why wouldn't they use a flame-based explosive?"
"I think that they found it an advantage to use this kind of bomb o pin every ship in the fleet. Only a few officers were onboard anyway, so the Angel Base wasn't a tempting target."
"How long until you can make the necessary changes?"
"Can't say. At least 20 hours. That's how long it'll take me to synthesize enough anti-gravitons. Realistically, though, I reckon it should take over a day's work."
"How long until the third convoy reaches the assembly point?"
"Say, nineteen hours. If we finish early enough, we might be able to catch them on the fly."
"Then you've got sixteen hours to finish. I don't care how, but do it."
"Yes, sir."
As the third person walked off, I opened my eyes. I didn't see what I expected: the white glare of sickbay, but instead I seemed to be still in the engine room. As my vision sharpened, I saw the two senior officers hovering over me. "Lieutenant," asked Commander Paktu. "Are you all right?"
I grunted and sat up, with difficulty. "Uh, yeah. Pretty much." Then, "Where's Jacyn?" my voice now sobered with rage. Captain Naabal replied, "Not much worse than you. He's still under, so I'd like to hear from you the turn of events."
I looked at my chrono. Only ten minutes had passed. "Well, I left the Lazarus, and boarded the ship. I was walking to this room, and I saw one of the Turanic prisoners. I shot him, but…" I looked at my still burnt arm and winced. "Not soon enough. Anyway, I got here, and saw Jacyn working on what looked like a bomb, so naturally I knocked him away. But I guess I was too late."
"Why did you come here, looking for Flight Officer Naabal?"
"I thought he was a mole for the Taiidan. He neglected his duties, he led the first convoy attack force to us, and I found out from Nolan that he'd been spending a lot of time in the brig, and sending out encrypted messages. I concluded that he was a spy."
He mulled this over for a bit. Then he looked at Commander Paktu. "Did you know this?" She nodded her head, and my leader was taken aback. "It's not what you think, Kaar. There's something I have bee keeping from you."
"And I think I can explain it." This last sentence came from the man next to me. I spat at Jacyn. "Traitor." He only smiled, though he was clearly as weak as I. "You know very little about me, Jake. The most important of my secrets, however, concerns my being a spy, yes. But one for Fleet Intelligence."
My mouth lay wide open, as was the Captain's. "What?"
"I'm an Intelligence officer," he repeated. "I was brought into the squadron to directly report the secret projects of the Raiders." The Captain fumed. "You knew about the Ion Accelerator." He shook his head. "We weren't that knowledgeable.
"About two months ago, a cloaked salvaging squadron, Bandit Wing, caught a Turanic Carrier and its task force. Now, not only did we get valuable new starships-we have never successfully captured a Turanic Carrier, you know-we also got information on secret transit routes of unaccounted Turanic vessels. It was decided that we send an elite squadron, and have it forced to investigate these fleets." At this, I said, "So the attack at the debris field wasn't an accident? You could have gotten us killed." Again, a slight headshake. "Had we sent a rookie squadron, that would have been murder. But we believed that this would be a good gauge of Angel Squadron's capabilities."
The Commander nodded. "Intel told me of this plan, and I agreed to it." The two of us looked at her. She said, almost sheepishly, "You wouldn't have cooperated had you known."
Jacyn continued. "I planned to capture a ship for interrogation, but you surprised me, Jake. Well, when we began to go on this campaign, and Captain Naabal ordered a communications lockdown, I knew we wouldn't survive. Even with the best pilots, we were severely undermanned. So, using Intel encryption codes, I sent continual status reports informing them of our progress. They ordered both Commander Paktu and I to stay silent, so we did. We were responsible for sending the signal to the Lazarus fleet to examine Sheil'an, hence their involvement."
I took all of this in. But there were many questions left unanswered. "Well, then why did the first convoy fleet jump us? Because of you, three people (yes, 1R-E was a person) are dead."
"My cloaking device did malfunction. I couldn't help it, so I had to retreat to the fleet. I would have died otherwise."
"Well, then why were you constantly visiting the brig?"
"Interrogation. Also, I wanted to be sure that they weren't planning anything. Since you're going to ask anyway, I'll just say that I got a signal from one of my spybots that I hid in the brig. I saw that one of the prisoners had escaped, and when I got to the engine room he was gone, but he had fixed a bomb onto the power core. I was in the process of disarming it when you interfered." He snarled, "And now look what you've done."
The Captain began to speak, but I cut him off. "At the debris field, I was attacked by one of the Turanic ships, and you didn't cover me. Why?"
"Look, if you must know, I got a distress signal from Lieutenant Soran. He was in very bad shape, and under attack by two corvettes. I trusted that you could live without me, and I went off to save him. I didn't tell you this, because we might have become close, and friendship is something that a spy cannot afford to have. It compromises my judgment."
I kept quiet, signifying my understanding of the situation. I was more than a little embarrassed, but it was a perfectly reasonably explanation. Not to mention that Commander Paktu was in on it. She didn't strike me as a traitor. Captain Naabal began to speak, clearly distraught by both the explosion and this new information. "In any case, the bomb was specially designed to irradiate the surrounding 500 kilometers, and the hulls of every ship in the fleet, with heavy molecules we have dubbed "gravitons." We called them that because they are destabilising our hyperdrive engines much like gravity wells. Chief Engineer Soban thinks he can safely dispose of them by creating antiparticles called anti gravitons, which will destroy any gravitons, but leave any other molecules unharmed. But we probably won't get our chance of attacking the last convoy."
Both of us stood up, and Jacyn asked, "What kind of opposition are we talking about?" The captain pulled out a holo plate and switched it on. The scene was very disturbing, as the Captain dictated. "Surrounding the weapon itself are 100 Defense Fighters, which could shoot down any non-energy-based attacks we throw at them. We also believe there to be about three defense Frigates flanking it. At least ten Ion Frigates and five Destroyers. No Missile Destroyers, thankfully, but the station is home to seventy starfighters, from the schematics we believe them to be thirty-five Defenders and thirty-five Bombers. All of the ships are Taiidan, showing that the Imperialists are the ones who want to defend this thing. As it really makes little difference anymore, we have sent out a distress call to every fleet on the frontier to fight this thing. We haven't received any responses just yet, but we hope to before we enter hyperspace."
I looked at Jacyn, and would have been ashamed of the look of terror on my face had it not been reflected in his visage. The Commander concluded grimly, "You're the first two non-senior officers to know about this. We will hold a fleet-wide briefing in two hours. Believe me, gentlemen, that we are heading into the maelstrom, and we will need a hell of a lot of luck to get out of it."
