Tiger- Crusade by David Smith

Author:David Smith [Smith, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2017-07-23T06:00:00+00:00

Chapter 10

They approached Todot Hahn and Crash took the ship down to warp factor six, taking Tiger back into the realms of normal time and space.

Dave came to the Bridge to find Commander Ruiz in the Captain’s chair, but good as his word, Ruiz vacated the seat and took the ExO’s chair at the rear of the Bridge.

Dave nodded an acknowledgement to him as he passed him and sat in the big chair. ‘What’s the situation Dolplop?’

‘We have arrived approximately two minutes before we left, Commander, the Sha T’Al ships are still in orbit.’

Dave was aware that his Navigator’s use of English was limited by his difficulty in grasping concepts that humans took for granted. His limited spatial and temporal awareness meant it was usually quite difficult to understand him, but in this instance the idea of arriving almost immediately before having left was exactly what they’d been trying to achieve.

Aware that their warp signature might give them away, Dave ordered Crash to drop out of warp, and they coasted into the system on impulse power. By the time they were close enough to use the ship’s optical telescopes to see Todot Hahn and the Sha T’Al Fleet clearly, their previous selves were long gone.

The Sha T’Al fleet were still in orbit, but having destroyed the orbiting Federation communication assets and seen off the Tana battle fleet, it seemed they were about to move away too.

They seemed to be setting a course to head towards Cho-dal-far, but before they moved, the ships stopped and after a short interval, adjusted their course and headed towards Federation space.

‘What are they up to?’ Dave mumbled to himself, just as Dolplop said ‘Commander, I’m detecting a warp-drive signature, inbound from Federation space. The Sha T’Al are setting themselves to intercept.’

Dave held his breath. They hadn’t heard from the Santiago, Auckland or Paul Revere since leaving Todot Hahn several days ago. He then mentally kicked himself as he realised those ships had left only a few minutes ago in real time and would still be high-tailing it to safety. It couldn’t be them inbound from Federation space, so who else could it be?

‘Navigator, plot a course to follow the Sha T’Al. Helm, keep to minimum speed and maximum distance, we don’t want to draw attention to ourselves.’

Tiger veered to one side and began to accelerate, the engines audibly whining as she struggled to keep up with the more agile Sha T’Al vessels.

Even the large battleship seemed inordinately quick and within minutes there were a series of relativistic flashes as the Sha T’Al fleet jumped to warp-speed one by one. Dave heard Crash mumble under his breath ‘Damn those ships are fast’ as he pushed Tiger’s reaction drives hard, accelerating the huge cruiser to the point where she could make the transition to supra-light speeds herself.

The stars on the view-screen blurred and became streaks before settling down and streaming past the vessel. ‘Warp factor one, sir. The Sha T’Al fleet is about ten minutes ahead of us, cruising at warp five point eight.

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.