Chapter 39

While 737 was completing its reconnaissance, Charles, Clare and Percy were examining the strategic holo containing the results of 737's mission. Charles glanced at the spider sitting curled up on Clare's shoulder and as he looked about became aware that all the other occupants and transients except Percy and himself were similarly adorned. Clare turned to him saying,

"You aren't a mutie and Percy will leave this ship when we complete this voyage. Charles, you are wonderfully normal, disgustingly normal in every mental respect and because of that, the colony can't contact you mentally. I suppose they could use semaphore signals but that would take time and attract too much attention. The colony need brains that are no quite normal — that didn't come out how I meant it to but you know what I mean.

TJ and the Windsors are descendents of engineered muties as is the colony and there appears to be a special affinity between the colony and the Windsors because their ancestors were engineered in the same laboratory about the same time. TJ presents a problem for them because his antecedents predate the colony and therefore no open link is available.

Similarly with the naturally evolved mutants; Cedric Cahlewis, Orville Jang, 'Nita James, Dorothy Ember, Janice Dawson and myself. We all have a natural mutation in our brains which allows a link — it appears to be naturally open and we have to learn to close it. If we can, and if we want to. All the rest of the crew have recessive mutant genes from the engineered species; that means Colin Bolem, Peggy Dare, Sandra Pendle, Jane Foster, Mary Fogg, Wendy Masterton, Emily Jones, Susan Gort and Eva Porter are open to the colony and have to work to close the link.

With the exception of the Windsors, only a telepathic link exists with some minor mood settling capacity. The Windsors might be extremely vulnerable because the colony were engineered with mutant codes and Deity alone knows what could happen to their brains ... Oh! Nothing! ... Sorry, just got an update. The Windsors codes were not included in the colony's memory banks.

Pure speculation on my part but I had often wondered if crews on couriers might be slightly tweaked (chuckle); I always thought I was."

The holo was developing with a broad band of emerging icons sweeping across the spherical holo. The last piece of information was a blue dot indicating "Sundowner".

The vibration of 737 docking was felt and eight minutes later Jane and Janice, still in armour with helmets in hand, hurried onto the bridge. They put their helmets on the stands and Jane sat at the EW station inserting several chips while Janice doffed her armour.

"These are the visuals" Jane explained as Janice pulled Jane's (the reference book) from the library and inserted its chip in the navcom position. Jane (the EW tech) began doffing her armour as Janice manipulated her screen controls to boot the information across to the EW screen. The holo began altering the red emblems into the recognisable symbols of the classes of warships. Percy made a noise like sucking on a hollow tooth,

"I somehow don't think that lot mean us well" he observed "and I am being paranoid. I somehow don't think they want us to depart the planet; but why wait until we are in space? They could have simply arrested us on some pretext or other or even mounted a cutting out expedition."

TJ and 'Nita arrived in soft uniforms.

"That's a lot of effort for just us unless they are more interested in capture. Percy, out in space away from neutral's eyes?" TJ offered.

"Yeh! I think also this being a Solarian register must be spooking them"

Morg entered the bridge,

"My ... ah, familiar? said you were back — that does not look good. But all that effort just for us? Can't see it. The whole scenario is ... is ... words fail me."

"Suits" Charles remarked "but we are planning on not staying here, I presume? TJ, Morg I want you to examine the situation — accepting that they stay in position and the double coverage you accidentally collected doesn't show any movement — and get some possible tracks out of here."

"None of them was patrolling but all are maintaining stationary orbit" Jane confirmed "just positioned in max stealth and if you look at the positioning, they have totally overlapping passive detection fields over this quarter of the planet plus a good coverage around that."

Jane made an adjustment to her screen and the holo developed green spheres about the Harbourian warships. TJ looked closer at the "Sundowner" icon,

"Suits. Morg I think I can see a way out of this..."

Clare motioned the bridge cleared and,

'You all have things to do. Get to them so we can get at least a watch's rest.'

Charles and Percy followed the others.

...

"We've analysed the coverage and the overhead appears to be mediums stiffened with BBs and a wide circle of BCs around that. As you go further outwards, the coverage is by lighter element and reference to Jane's shows they are the faster ships in the fleet; those BCs aren't slouches either. It certainly looks like a trawl and we are the selected catch."

It was five hours later that TJ had called a conference which included the Commodore to give his findings and recommendations.

"This planet's equatorial plane is parallel to the galactic plane and that means the inward pole points to the depths of the galactic disc and that disc is all n space as are the spiral arms which form in it. "Sundowner" is at thirty four south latitude and direct track we don't have far to go except that central sphere of the dense coverage covers the south pole and its not that far from the horizontal band of those fast BCs. I don't plan on going any where near them. I plan on casting off here, just before dawn light arrives and move into the night - I anticipate there is an alarms system which will be triggered - in full stealth mode. We make a great circle route to our antipodes on the northern hemisphere. The track is over agricultural land, mountains and the oceans — there is a late rising moon but I plan on not travelling under its light and we wont get backdropped against a city's lights. From our northern reference we head straight up to wards the hyper layer but not pierce it and then arc over the top of the watchers towards the galactic plane"

TJ threw a holo of his proposed track and went on,

"A couple of days down we come parallel with the galactic plane on a track to Bhute and keep that elevation as it were until the arm ellipse cross section narrows and we go through hyper on track for Bhute.

If we get discovered, we crash straight up from the planet through the watchers who are not vertically layered, into hyper and broadly head for Gorgipest for a day under sail and then go ballistic using thrusters gently to nudge us toward Bhute over the next three days before raising sail again.

Two scouts will be paralleling "Sundowner" in full stealth to act as decoys if we need them. Questions? Commodore?"

"I, we have a problem. My decks now know they are going to Bhute and some of them are not happy about that and will probably drop things once we cast off."

"Do they just want to get off or are they favourable towards Harbouria?" Charles asked.

"They don't want to go to Bhute. I think they were originally planning on disembarking at Maureen's Moon after we toured through the rest of Harbouria."

"Satan's teeth" Clare exploded.

"Calmly, Clare, calmly. 'Gene, I take it you don't have the manpower to take them into custody? No, thought not. Better to kick them off there so they cant signal the Harbourians of our actual positions... 'Gene, back to D and organise a last minute provisions run — something they can throw onto a shuttle truck quickly and get up here fast. Don't load the supplies, Deity, I'm getting as paranoid as you lot, there could be a tracer in it. Have the shuttle stand off and dump your dissidents out through the force field. As soon as you have done that, we'll cast off. TJ what's your ETD (estimated time of Departure)?"

"Six standard hours and some minutes."

"'Gene?"

"I'll time it as close as I can Charles. Hopefully I'll see you all in Bhute."

"Sundowners" Clare ordered, "Bunks for four hours; Charles and I will stand watch."

The Sundowners were moving about after the break, hitting the freshers, partaking of the food prepared by the Windsor Women in the Club galley so as not to make noise, donning armour, collecting the cylinders of hot coffee to hang on their suit belts, leisurely(?) moving to their Action Stations and thoroughly going through the check lists using the auxiliary power plant at the back of the accommodations. Their helmets hung on their short cords and sometimes got in the way as a crewmember pivoted. Cedric, Morg and TJ each manned a console screen; Cedric the bow maser, Morg the missiles and TJ the scouts. Four ERAs had moved on the forward side of the console and plugged in portable 'puters into the mainframe to take control of the PD mounts if they had to be manually controlled — their screens enabled them to follow events in real time. Orville and Colin were in main engine room and engines were on line.

Clare took the left seat, Dorothy the right and Charles clipped his harness to the back of the left seat. Clare ordered helmets to be donned and sealed. Leashes were plugged into the consoles.

The provision shuttle was pulling alongside and a vid showed skinny suited people being assisted to / thrown at the stationary shuttle. Percy had joined the bridge party; his headset crackled and he reported,

"Hatch sealed"

Charles ordered

"Cast off (waited until the electromag clamp indicators on the seat central console went green). Crash departure stat!"

Charles and TJ had had a further discussion arising out of their now raging paranoia — another what if? What if a bigboy had "Sundowner" bracketed just in case "Sundowner" did something unusual and while capture could be the priority perhaps destruction was an alternative. Charles always asked the Question as to whether he was paranoid enough. He was.

Clare pushed the yoke forward and to the side allowing the thrusters to push the bow out and the stern up, and as she felt the stern lift kicked the right rudder to push the stern to the opposite side as the bow performing a corkscrew movement and then opened the throttles wide for thirty seconds using the pods to explosively thrust "Sundowner" away from the berth. The acceleration was horrendous despite the best efforts of the inertial compensators but "Sundowner" bugged out in the best traditions of a terrified rabbit. As the pods distanced "Sundowner" from the berth, Dune was activated, the throttles were pulled back to maximum cruise settings and Clare reversed directions heading for the antipodes.

The berth behind her and a considerable margin on either side was cast in the intense blue white glare of a berth disintegrating under massed energy weapons. Weapons targeted about the berth did not show — well, not until they gave meaning to the term "scorched earth".

"How is Dune coping, Jane?" Charles asked his EW tech.

"Well, Sir. There is a Hades' volume of active out there and it must be fogging every screen they've got but sooner or later somebody over there is going to wake up and designate a few ships to be active. So far, and its only tentative because of that storm out there, I can detect only three frequencies. TJ's scouts might have a clearer picture."

"Not really Sir; the scouts' receivers are just as overloaded but "Sundowner's" Dune is looking good to me from the scouts."

"Very good."

"Sundowner" was well established on the great circle route when Jane reported,

"Sir, the majority of sources have shut down and it looks like only one in eight is on active. Number of frequencies is confirmed as one and Dune is fully tuned."

"Very well, thank you Jane. Clare, TTR (time to run) to point alpha?"

"Forty three minutes Sir."

"Very good. Dorothy throw the course / track holo, please."

"Course / track, aye Sir." And the holo appeared forward of the console.

"Enemy ships please Jane"

"Enemy contacts, aye Sir; the pulsing icons are the actives."

"Very good Jane."

The minutes passed and Point Alpha was reached; the autopilot had been locked onto the Nav screen since Clare had completed her corkscrew and it gently swung "Sundowner" towards the galactic plane leaving the searchers behind them.

"Sir, request one active FTL sweep?" TJ asked "or rather one from each scout not hitting us. I'm not sure how big an electronic hole we might create if we get swept by our own scout; apologies I didn't visualise this scenario of the scouts sweeping us."

"Put it on your to-do list please TJ, and approved."

TJ made adjustments to his controls and then activated the sweeps.

"Full sphere covered and no contacts sir."

"Very good, TJ. I think we'll stay at Action Stations for another standard hour and then go watch and watch. Clare, you and I will share; get a replacement for the seat. I'll take first."

...

Just before passage through the Perseus arm n space hyperlayer, TJ conducted his tests and with out evaluating them, remounted the scouts for translation into hyper. After translation, TJ, Morg and Cedric examined the last scout reports and were able to report that an FTL active would make a hole discernable by passive (detected by the other scout's passive) if an operator knew what he was about — and that meant any experienced EW tech. The greater the separation of the source radiating and "Sundowner" the smaller the effect.

The voyage to Bhute was uneventful, and after the first few days would have been the usual boring watching hyperspace pass by — there is only so much enjoyment that can be had from watching the multi hued sails shift visual frequencies — except the colony provided an interest.