‘Are you able to judder the ship a bit when the explosion sounds echo around, Andy?’ Ed asked.
‘Yeah, probably,’ he said. ‘I’ll randomly fire the attitude thrusters, that might upset the inertial dampers a little and feel like a mild earthquake.’
‘Okay, is everyone happy with their part of the operation?’ Ed asked, taking a quick glance round the room.
He got his reply with a circle of nodding faces.
‘Cleo, you may begin,’ he said and closed his eyes.
The cruiser had initiated its damping field shortly after the Hope had left for the asteroid belt. It was obvious the Mogul ship felt safe as the majority of weapons stations around the ship were unmanned and the bridge was on night-time routine. Ed flicked around the camera views, trying to find Triyl but was unsuccessful. As soon as he saw the first few crew members start coughing, he played the explosion soundtrack over their tannoy. A few of the crew began falling over, so he knew Andy’s ploy was working.
The general alarm sounded and pandemonium began. Phil’s job was to transmit abandon ship messages as if he was the captain, citing serious radiation leaks as the reason.
It wasn’t long before the first lifeboat launched. Satisfied, Ed switched to one of the bridge cameras and witnessed the captain stumble in half dressed, coughing his lungs up, and promptly collapse. Two of the Marine guards posted outside the bridge door picked him up and carried him to the nearest lifeboat, closely followed by several other senior officers.
‘Some of the Marines on duty have sealed their helmets up,’ said Rayl. ‘We need to make sure they’re all off before we board.’
‘Their suits aren’t radiation proof,’ said Andy. ‘So I don’t think they’ll want to hang around for long.’
‘That sleek shuttle just launched from the hangar,’ said Rayl. ‘Oh – it’s jumped.’
‘Where to?’ asked Linda.
‘Embedded, I’m afraid.’
‘Ah crap,’ said Ed. ‘There goes Triyl and the data files. He must be so paranoid, he sleeps in his shuttle with an emergency jump already programmed.’
Ed had only just finished speaking when the holomap went white, then immediately black. Those with their eyes open on the bridge sat there blinking away the sudden flash blindness.
‘What the hell,’ uttered Andy, opening his eyes and staring at the holomap. ‘Where’d the ship go? And where’s the bloody planet?’
‘We jumped,’ said Cleo. ‘Just in time.’
‘Did the ship explode?’ asked Rayl, looking up and squinting at the holomap.
‘Power core containment failure on the Mogul ship,’ said Cleo. ‘I have an automated jump sequence programmed for just such a scenario. So long as we’re at least five hundred kilometres away, we should be gone before the shock wave crushes the ship.’
‘Triyl’s parting gift,’ said Ed. ‘I hate to think what just occurred on the side of the planet facing that.’
‘What about Hope?’ said Rayl, a look of horror on her face.
‘The belt is a long way from there,’ said Phil. ‘I should imagine the helm on that Blend cruiser would have had time to jump away.’
‘Can we go back and see?’ asked Tocc, a hint of fear in her voice.
‘It’s okay,’ said Rayl, staring at her readout from the array. ‘I’ve found her, she’s in clear space a couple of light years away.’
Ed sat back, put his hands behind his head and exhaled loudly. It went quiet on the bridge for a while as everyone contemplated the huge loss of life they’d all just witnessed and would continue on the surface of Garag for some time to come. Ed looked up after a few moments and spoke softly.
‘Sometimes, even with the power of this starship, I feel utterly useless. All those people dying on that planet and there’s not a thing I can do to stop it.’
‘We must find Triyl,’ said Linda. ‘He needs to answer for that.’
‘The last time I spoke to Huwlen was at my wedding,’ said Andy. ‘He said they still had about a dozen Mogul ships unaccounted for.’
‘I just don’t get how Triyl got these two ships into this galaxy,’ said Phil. ‘That gateway is permanently guarded by two Katadromiko cruisers and it’s completely on the opposite side of the galaxy from here.’
‘If he got here with two, he could’ve brought more,’ said Linda. ‘If what Huwlen said is right, there could be up to ten more here somewhere.’
‘And with the Hass drive, cloaking and Genok weapons,’ said Rayl, dejectedly.
‘I think the answer is in this region somewhere,’ said Ed. ‘Triyl didn’t have cloaking or Genok technology until he bumped into that training corvette on this side of the Milky Way. As for the Hass drive, I think that has something to do with that shuttle he’s using. It’s not a Mogul design at all, is it?’
‘It’s not a recognised model from any known race,’ said Phil. ‘There’s nothing like it recorded in the GDA database at all.’
‘In other words,’ said Andy. ‘Out here somewhere, there’s going to be an otherwise unknown human race who’ve just had their first meeting with the Moguls and are most likely going to be severely pissed.’
‘Guys?’ said Rayl, sounding perplexed. ‘I’ve just noticed that the Hope and its escort jumped into clear space before the explosion at the exact same time as Triyl’s shuttle went.’
‘Now that’s interesting,’ said Ed. ‘Triyl warned them, which means he still wants the Hope for the attack on the GDA.’
‘We need to set up a tracker on the Hope,’ said Linda.
‘Or better still, orchestrate a fault on the Blend ship that requires a Mogul ship to attend and we affix a tracker on that,’ said Andy.
‘Or both,’ said Ed. ‘We really need to know where both parties are at all times. Triyl has as good as eliminated the Blend leadership and I’m sure is out there now gathering the Blend’s naval power under his command.’
‘The Hope’s just jumped back to the belt,’ said Rayl. ‘All the tractors were hiding inside the hangars and they’re now resuming the rock collecting.’
‘Linda, can you take us there?’ asked Ed.
Ed received a nod and they arrived back in the Dubl’ouin system a few moments later, ten thousand kilometres away from the bustling tractors.
‘Now – what do we do to that cruiser that would attract a Mogul vessel to attend?’ he asked, glancing around a sea of blank faces.
‘Disable the Hass drive,’ said Rialte, from the leaning posts at the side of the bridge.
Ed turned and pointed at Rialte.
‘Good suggestion,’ he said, thinking about the consequences. ‘That could indeed require repair by one of Triyl’s ships.’
‘You don’t think the Blend vessels will have been given the data to fix it themselves?’ asked Phil.
‘You know the Moguls,’ said Andy. ‘They take stuff, they don’t give it.’
‘So you believe they just fitted the technology in the Blend ships, but won’t have told them how it works?’ said Tocc.
‘They probably don’t understand how it works themselves,’ said Andy. ‘Moguls aren’t the sharpest chisels in the toolbox.’
‘Cleo, are you able to infiltrate the software to their drive and cause it to fail for some inexplicable reason?’ Ed asked.
‘Oui, monsieur.’
‘Merci beaucoup, faire en sorte,’ replied Ed, rolling his eyes at Andy who nodded and winked in return.
‘Is this a private game, or can anybody play?’ asked Pol, crossing all four arms.
‘Sorry, Pol,’ said Linda. ‘Switching languages is one of Cleo’s annoying little foibles.’
‘I’m picking up organic hull residue,’ said Rayl, suddenly changing the subject.
‘Where?’ asked Ed, glancing at the holomap.
‘Everywhere,’ she said. ‘That Mogul ship had a metallic hull, not organic.’
‘That was me,’ said Cleo. ‘I faked it to appear as if an organic ship was destroyed. They’re bound to notice that and believe we copped it big time.’
‘Love your work, Cleo,’ said Andy. ‘Is their new drive buggered yet?’
‘Corrupted software – oops,’ she said. ‘Will definitely need reloading.’
‘Good,’ said Ed, turning to face Linda. ‘Linda, can you move us away somewhere safe to watch who turns up?’
The Gabriel moved out away from the Hope and hid in the shadow of one of the larger lumps of the belt and began to wait and watch.