Dark Earth by Steven Lake

Author:Steven Lake
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: scifi, adventure, action, military, space opera
Publisher: Steven Lake

Chapter 13

Pendleton watched as the Prometheus, and the Apollo, entered Trepedor space, and were genuinely surprised at how few ships were standing patrol along the border. In their dimension there were easily ten times as many ships doing the same duty. Yet the Trepedor military here seemed to be stretched disturbingly thin. It was likely the result of too many years of war. As they moved past a thin, gaseous cloud in front of them, he noticed that the Trepedor ships suddenly broke from their formations and began heading in their direction.

"Tactical, how's our cloaking doing?" he asked.

"Still five by five, Admiral," came the reply.

Pendleton contemplated this.

"Then why did they react to our crossing their border?" he said, more to himself than anyone.

"It's possible they may be employing a gaseous alert system. Any disruption in the cloud would signal our presence no matter how good our cloaking; and at our speed, it would be impossible not to disturb it. It's a rather primitive form of ship detection, but it's excellent when dealing with cloaked vessels," said Basil.

Just then alarms began sounding.

"They've just deployed an anti-polaric ion particle field," said the operations officer.

"Avoid! Avoid!" shouted Spire.

The helmsman immediately dropped the ship to sublight, turned it nearly on a dime, despite its still considerable forward velocity, and then immediately leapt out of the area.

"What just happened?" asked Pendleton.

"They're trying to interrupt our cloaking," said Spire.

"Anti-polaric ions can't disrupt a cloaking shield," said the tactical officer.

"No, but the particles will cling to the field allowing them to track us," said Basil.

"Another incoming field!" shouted the ops officer.

But before Spire had a chance to respond, the helmsman turned the ship again, avoiding the surging cloud of ions as he pushed the ship back towards the galactic core. Once safely beyond the gas net they watched as the Trepedor ships tried again and again to detect them, but soon gave up, attributing it to a false alarm. But now they had another problem. The entire area was awash in anti-polaric ions. Pendleton was impressed at this. Despite being beaten down, they were still a formidable opponent. It partially explained how they'd held on for so long. Just then another chime sounded. They were being hailed.

"It would appear that they know we're here, despite not having detected us yet," said Spire.

"Or they might just be trying to draw us out. Even if you can't get a sensor lock, you can still get a signal lock if you know what you're doing," said Pendleton.

"What about using a remote probe to initiate the link. We place it here, move a safe distance away, and then relay through the probe, thus hiding our true location. It was a trick that Mr. Clayton came up with during his time as Grand Admiral," said Basil.

Pendleton grinned.

"Yeah, I remember that. Pretty sneaky too, if you ask me. Alright, let's do that and see who's calling us," he said.

A few minutes later, after everything was setup, they connected the transmission. Not long after, a large, beefy, but disheveled looking Trepedor captain appeared on their screen.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.