Operation Orion - Kevin Dockery [100]
“I understand, sir. I have been a prisoner of an Eluoi savant myself. Their powers go beyond the normal.” Jackson noted without comment the admiral’s comments about the lights flickering; surely Char-Kane and Sulati were right about the electrical component of the savant’s power.
Ballard nodded. “Captain Pickens said that they brought some sort of masking device aboard the ship; that’s no doubt why you couldn’t find her.” The admiral’s face flushed. “Do you know?” he said grimly. “These bastards are holding us hostage. This Tezlac Catal intends to blackmail our whole goddamn planet into accepting his ‘protection.’ Needless to say, Lieutenant, I will die before I allow that to happen!”
“Captain Carstairs is still looking for the Pangaea,” the SEALS CO offered hopefully. “And we’re due to report back to him as soon as possible. But first, we’d like to set up a plan of escape.”
“Well, a lot of things would have to go right for that to happen,” Ballard declared. “But I’m all ears.”
Twenty: The Trail of the Pangaea
“I’ve got something, Captain,” reported the female electrician’s mate operating the area scanner in the Pegasus’s CIC. “It’s blurry, no heat signature, but there seems to be something distorting the magnetic fields in space.”
“Mark a course for it,” the CO ordered immediately.
The search for the Pangaea had occupied all of his attention since Olin Parvik had carried Jackson and the recon party toward the large station orbiting Darius III, the place the Assarn had called the Bazaar. While he waited for communication from Jackson or Parvik, the captain had maintained all his detection systems at full power, though he grew more and more discouraged as the hours passed with no sign of the large starship.
The frigate moved through space under low power, barely generating enough acceleration for a single G of gravity. The crew consulted all the sensory equipment while the gunners stood by the rail gun and missile batteries. They were in a very crowded area of the star system, with cargo and passenger ships accelerating, decelerating, or merely orbiting around them in all directions.
Every cryptographic tool was used to make her signature seem to be merely that of another merchant ship. No recognizable call signs were broadcast, no military radar was employed, and no communications were made with any of the nearby vessels as the Pegasus made her stealthy way into an orbital pattern above Darius III.
“We’re going to get close enough for optical confirmation,” Carstairs declared. “Engines to low power. Helm, start your turn.”
Despite the matchless technology at his disposal, he felt much like a submarine commander must have felt when taking his boat into the Inland Sea of Japan or silently approaching a North Atlantic convoy 110 years earlier.
The powerful lenses on the frigate’s optical viewers would allow a detailed look at another spaceship at a range of several thousand kilometers, and as they drew into that distance, they fastened on the mysterious hulk.
“It’s the Pangaea, sir!” reported the mate who had discovered the magnetic anomaly. “She’s dark and cold, but it’s definitely her.”
The frigate set up a matching orbit barely a thousand klicks away from the motionless civilian ship, which was drifting in a high orbit above the huge planet. Remaining in position for a number of hours, they watched and observed and took care not to draw attention to themselves.
They noted a supply ship, a nondescript civilian vessel from a large, apparently industrial station orbiting Darius III. The smaller ship decelerated as it came up to the Pangaea and docked at one of the great ship’s four shuttle ports on the exterior of the hull. It departed an hour later, and four hours after that another, similar ship approached. When the third supply ship made a visit, Carstairs had the inklings of a plan.
“When that supply ship leaves, I want to follow it home,” he said. “Still running as quiet