The Honour of the Knights (First Edition) (19 page)

“
Any sign of what they could have been looking for?” came the
reply in his ear piece.

“
Nothing yet, but I’m guessing they may
have been scavengers. Looks like the
Cardinal
was just in the wrong place
at the wrong time.”

Williams and his team pressed on into the bridge in an
attempt to gather more information. Following a short inspection of
the bridge area, Kate began examining the ship
’
s logs.

“
Some data has been downloaded from the computers,” she said,
running through them. As she spoke a screen next to her sprang into
life and began churning out information.

* * *

Estelle
’
s
eyes flashed down to her radar.

“
Estelle!” Dodds started.

“
I see it!” Estelle said.

From beneath the
Cardinal
a small craft emerged. Being so close to the ship
it had escaped notice by both the radar systems and the
Knights
‘ own eyes. But
with the activation of shielding, computer system and engines, the
vessel announced its presence to all in the vicinity as it
accelerated away from the
Cardinal
, keeping in line with the
ship
’
s original
heading.

Estelle cursed herself for not performing a proper sweep of
the
Cardinal
.

“
I
’
m going after it,” Dodds
said.

“
Stay put, Dodds,” Estelle answered.

“
I can catch it,” Dodds insisted, manoeuvring his TAF toward
the escaping craft and preparing to give chase.

“
Lieutenant, you will hold your position.
That
’
s an
order!” Estelle barked. With her own orders and duties clear in her
head she was not prepared to allow Dodds to play the hero. Dodds
had met with disaster the last time he had done so and Estelle was
not about to let him go through all that again; for his sake as
well as her own.

Dodds
backed down, though not without further grumbling.

Estelle contacted
Merekat
. “
Merekat
, this is de Winter.
Unidentified craft has been spotted departing
Cardinal.
Please advise.”
After destroying the Dart earlier, she was not
prepared to allow another error of judgement lead to an action that
she would later come to regret.

As she awaited the answer from
Merekat
, the space ahead of the
escaping craft began to distort and twist. The distortion quickly
began to subside, leaving behind a steady rotating swirl. The craft
sped into the swirling mass, disappearing from sight, whereupon the
portal vanished and the surrounding space returned to
normal.

Estelle
blinked in disbelief. “What the hell just happened?”

“
I don’t know,” Dodds said, taken aback. “Did that ship just
open a jump point?”

“
No, that’s impossible,” Kelly said. “It’s far too small to be
equipped with jump engines.”

Estelle looked from her radar to the
Cardinal
and back again, trying to
make sense of what she had just seen.

* * *

“
Cardinal
just opened a timed jump point,” Kate informed Williams. The
man walked over to investigate the screens the woman was looking
at. He relayed the information to
Merekat
’
s
captain.

“
Try and determine what the destination
was,” the captain answered. “And be careful; an unidentified craft
just departed the
Cardinal
and escaped via that jump point. If it was
hostile then there may still be others on the ship. Be on your
guard and take extra precautions.”

* * *

In another part of the
Cardinal
’
s
upper deck, Archer had found a
number of men and women lying on the floor of a room up ahead, all
bound and gagged. They all appeared to be unconscious; or perhaps
dead.

“
This is Archer, I may have found
survivors,” he radioed. “Looks like someone’s tied them all up.
I
’
m going
to check the bodies and then help anyone still alive off the
ship.”

He
started forward. The people opened their eyes as they became aware
of his approach and started shaking their heads and screaming at
him through their gags. It did not occur to him what they were
trying to tell him until he stepped through the doorway.

Too late
he saw the thin red beams of the lasers break as his hand passed
through them.

“
Aw, hell…” Archer began.

The
explosives went off, the blasts ripping their way through the ship.
A wall of fire squeezed itself down the corridors, engulfing
everything in its path.

* * *

Chaz and
Enrique were amongst the first to hear the sound, but it was not
until fire burst forth from the bridge, forcing glass, ship parts
and bodies ahead of it, that they realised what they had heard and
became aware of the crisis.

“
Get to a safe distance! Move! Move! Move!”
Estelle shouted to her wingmates. The
Knights
swung their fighters around
and pulled away from the
Cardinal
as quickly as they could, retreating back away
from the ship they had been called in to help.

Merekat
was not so lucky. The
Cardinal
’
s midsection exploded, damaging the
search and rescue vessel that was still attached to it. Before long
the explosion that Archer had triggered found its way to the
Cardinal
’
s
reactor
and the two ships were torn apart by the tremendous force of the
blast.

The
Knights
sat motionless for a moment, watching a section of one of the
ships tumbling before them. Not long after Estelle was contacted by
the second rescue ship, which identified itself as
CSN Buffalo
.

Together the five craft set about searching for signs of any
possible survivors amongst the carnage, no matter how futile it
seemed. None were found. As had been feared, no-one aboard
Merekat
had been able to
get to the escape pods in time, or had a chance to protect
themselves against the cold vacuum of space. The search for
survivors changed to a search for bodies and, after picking up all
that they could find,
Buffalo
called an end to the sweep. Finally, after
recovering the black boxes from the
Cardinal
and
Merekat
,
Buffalo
signalled to the
Knights
it was ready to
leave.

“
There
’
s nothing more for us to do here,”
Estelle informed her team. “We’ll escort
Buffalo
back to Spirit.”

* * *

“
This is an utter disaster!” Turner grated,
holding his head in his hands as he read the reports detailing the
fates of the
Cardinal
and
Merekat
. Though they had yet to be
fully sorted and collated, it had not proven difficult to piece
together a picture of exactly what had happened earlier that
evening.

Parks
had returned to Xalan upon hearing the news. He now stood before
Turner, waiting as the admiral went over each of the reports,
knowing that they did not make for pleasant reading.

“
What the hell was
Cardinal
doing there
without some sort of escort?” Turner growled.

“
According to Spirit Orbital they had
reported a suspected case of Shizaru
’
s Fever aboard and had performed an
emergency jump into Temper.”

Turner stared at him incredulously.
“Shizaru
’
s Fever?
The disease that induces deaf-blindness?”

“
Yes, sir,” Parks said, though he found
himself sharing Turner
’
s scepticism.

“
There
’
s not been a confirmed or even
reported case of that for over one hundred years. They should have
followed proper procedure instead of trying to handle it
themselves,” Turner grumbled. “Just our damned luck that raiders
would choose a research ship to hit. This is precisely why we need
to step up patrols in all sectors. This event could have been
easily avoided if we’d simply had more manpower.”

Parks nodded, even though he knew that it wasn’t a real
solution; Turner was clutching at straws.
The bigger issue was what had been taken from
Cardinal
. The moment
word had reached him that the ship had been attacked and destroyed,
Parks prayed that was all that had happened. As the reports from
the various witnesses had come in, he had heard that a craft had
fled the scene moments before the ship
’
s destruction. But not before a
dump had been taken from the computer systems, copied onto a data
card and then, presumably, taken on board the fleeing
vessel.

Parks mused. As a mobile research facility
Cardinal
had held much
of the Confederation
’
s project work, acting as an extreme kind of disaster
recovery service. It therefore held a lot of important data; though
none as important as those pertaining to the ATAF project, as both
he and Turner knew full well. It was all there: every schema,
blueprint, theory, problem, solution, purpose; the list went
on.

The
Cardinal
’
s
black
box had proven to be a treasure trove of information, detailing all
the events leading up to the ship
’
s untimely destruction. As well as
letting the CSN know the nature of the data that had been
downloaded onto the data card, it had also revealed the destination
of the jump point the thief had used to escape. And Parks had
almost despaired when he had discovered it led into Imperial space.
Of all the places the thief could have chosen to go.

Upon hearing the news Turner had conversed with the
Confederate Administration, who had been quick to assign a number
of agents to the task of recovering the assumed stolen data. The
investigation was then placed at the top of the
Navy
’
s priority
list and Turner had summoned Parks to Xalan.

“
That fool of a raider thinks he is going to earn himself a
tidy little sum by selling on military secrets,” Turner
growled.

“
The data is heavily encrypted, sir,” Parks
offered.

“
That
’
s besides the point, Commodore!”
Turner snapped back at him. “With the resources available to them
the Enemy could crack it within a matter of months.”

Turner
rose from his chair, taking one of the reports with him. Parks
glanced over at the cabinet by the wall. The admiral was out of
White Label whiskey. Turner started to pace, mumbling aloud the
summarised time line of events, as detailed by Spirit Orbital
station,

1710 hours – CSN Cardinal has made an emergency jump into the
Temper system and reported a suspected case of
Shizaru
’
s
Fever.

1749
hours – Received distress call from CSN Cardinal. Vessel under
attack by raiders.

1751
hours – Contacted nearest patrol group, White Knights, and
requested they assist Cardinal.

1753
hours – Dispatched Merekat and Buffalo for search and rescue
operation.

1811
hours – CSN Cardinal reports that attacking vessels have been
completely destroyed but raiding party has boarded.

“
First
Dragon
and now this,” Turner stopped
reading the log of the events and tossed the report back onto the
desk to join the rest. He stood staring out the window,
contemplating.

“
They’d still need to build the ATAFs,”
said Parks, once again attempting to reassure the admiral. “That
would take them several months, even after they’d deciphered the
data. And as far as we have been able to determine the Enemy
don
’
t
retain any knowledge of starfighter construction.”

“
No, they could do it much quicker than
that,” Turner said as he picked up another report and began going
over it. “Unlike us the Enemy do not require sign-offs, approvals,
security, money… They don
’
t have to justify an enormous
military budget; they don
’
t have to gloss over expenditure or
attempt to keep the project under wraps; they
don
’
t have to sit
in a boardroom full of suits trying to explain, in basic terms, the
long-term implications of non-action. It doesn
’
t matter that they might not
understand starfighter engineering; with the information about the
ATAFs in their hands they’ll certainly make the effort to learn.
And damn quickly at that, too.”