Fleet Action (wc-3) William Forstchen (fox in socks read aloud .txt) 📖

jumping was the simple fact that you never knew what was on the other side. Inside secured shipping lanes behind the lines there were beacons placed at both points, monitoring traffic, sent up to avoid the possibility of a ship materializing in the same point of space occupied by someone else, an event that always had spectacular results. But beyond that was the question of just who was waiting. Paladin, piloting his new ship which he had named Bannockburn, with Ian aboard as his co-pilot, had already gone ahead to scout. The fifteen minutes' wait had passed and now it was time to follow through and the potential for an unpleasant surprise was always there.

He felt Tarawa drop away, and there was a momentary queasiness then the flash of rematerialization. He looked over at his navigation officer who was peering intently at her holo display.

"Correct jump alignment confirmed," she announced. "Bannockburn reporting in on laser lock."

Paladin's image appeared on the screen.

"This Stealth works like a charm. We found a remote sensor and took it out, it never even put out a signal. Optical scan shows the entire system's clear right up to the next jump point."

Jason looked over at Tolwyn and grinned.

"It looks like we got through. We've crossed from the frontier into the heart of the Empire."

He looked up at his aft visual and less than a minute later his escort CVE-6 Normandy came through.

"All ships through," communications announced, "all systems running nominal, Bannockburn reports successful take-out of remote drone without detect signal being activated."

Geoff Tolwyn, standing behind Jason, nodded, letting out an audible sigh of relief. Jason found that alone to be surprising; he was used to his old chief being absolutely unflappable.

They were now four jumps into the Kilrathi Empire, tracking down one of the hundreds of transition points leading from neutral territory into the Empire in the one direction and Confederation space on the other. Surveillance drones of course monitored these points, but "accidents" like the one Paladin had just arranged for the drone covering this jump point were easy enough to set up. It could be days or even weeks before a picket ship came out to replace the drone with a new one.

"Let's hit the flight deck and see what Richards is up to," Tolwyn said, motioning for Jason to follow.

Excited, Jason came out of his seat. He had been waiting for days to get a look at what Richards was doing.

Leaving the bridge they went down the main corridor to the forward part of the ship. At the airlock door two guards came to attention at Tolwyn's approach but did not step aside.

Internal ship security was nothing new to Jason but this was different. The two men were not dressed in the usual Marine class B uniform, for after all this was not a Confederation ship any longer. There was something disquieting about the black khaki uniform the two guards were wearing without a single insignia or marking on them. The easy way they held their laser rifles told him that these two were highly trained professionals.

Only seven members of the Tarawa's operating crew were allowed on to the hangar deck, Tolwyn and himself, along with Kevin, Doomsday and two Landreich pilots cleared to fly one of the four craft still left in the very forward part of the hangar, and finally Sparks as the one overworked maintenance officer permitted to work on the fighters. Everyone else aboard ship had already been told that the guards had standing orders to shoot first and then ask questions. Jason could tell this was simply not rhetoric, these two would do it without batting an eye.

Clearing the doorway, they stepped out into the hangar deck. Equipment was spread out across almost all the floor space which once was occupied by forty-four fighters. He realized that he was, in fact, looking at perhaps the single largest concentration of computing power anywhere in the Confederation except, perhaps, for the administrative centers of Earth and the moon, and even then he wondered. Banks of storage systems were arrayed along one wall, dozens of holo display fields were already up and running, and he approached one of them, a field nearly half a dozen meters cubed. A technician was standing inside the display field, which showed a three dimensional model of what he recognized as the near space environment around Kilrah. Bright hovering points of light represented the stars, their planets, and transition jump points, with blocks of data appearing above them, the information readable from any angle one looked at it. The technician standing inside the holo display looked almost godlike as she walked about inside it. He was totally mystified by what she was doing as she pulled out what looked like a laser pointer, aimed it at the orange size planet floating in the middle of the field and squeezed.

Another holo field popped into action next to the first, this one a close up of the planet the first technician had pointed at. The entire field was occupied by what looked like a solid ball, its continents covered with hundreds of flashing lights

"That's Kilrah," Jason whispered.

"Using this, they can lock in on any one of millions of sources even while continuing to scan all other traffic and look for new sources at the same time," Tolwyn replied softly,

Several white overall clad techs gathered around the globe, pointing, talking softly, arguing, and then aiming pointers at particular flashing lights. Behind them, two dimensional flat screens flared into light, streams of data flashing across some, others showing pictures, one of which caught Jason's eye, of Kilrathi wearing heavy leather armor slashing at each other with swords.

Vance came up to the two and nodded a greeting.

"Say, what the hell is that on the monitor?" Jason asked, pointing to the screen.

"A Kilrathi drama from the Gakarg Period."

"What?"

"Their ancient history. They love holos about the ancient wars when the various clans were feuding with each other before the unification. We monitor every