Fleet Action (wc-3) by William R. Forstchen

Author:William R. Forstchen [Forstchen, William]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: sf, sf_space

CHAPTER SEVEN

"You know, laddie, I think I'm getting a bit too old for this sort of thing."

Ian shook his head and said nothing, waiting for the jump transit to hit. Space forward blurred and then snapped back into focus, his stomach dropping, flipping over, and nearly coming up his throat. Ian scanned the nav screen, waiting for the locks to set in on the various stars to confirm that they had jumped into the system they wanted. Anomalies in jumps were not uncommon even in the heavily traveled lanes in the heart of the Confederation. In the barely charted jump points beyond the outer border of the Kilrathi Empire it vas almost a guess at times where the next jump would lead

Paladin leaned over Ian's shoulder to watch, the seconds ticking by, finally a confirm light flashed on the screen and both breathed a sigh of relief.

"At least according to what our charts tell us, we're in the right place," Paladin said. "It's a bit hard to tell though. Hell, laddie, we're going down one narrow little road here, we might have passed hundreds of other jump points in between and not even known it. The last time I did this I had to feel my way blind through it all.

"I can tell you this, though, I think we've definitely gone a good bit into Hari territory, and Kilrah is somewhere off there," and he waved his hand vaguely off towards the port side of his ship, "roughly three hundred odd light years away. Where we're heading towards, that signal is sort of this way," and he vaguely waved his hand straight ahead, a gesture which Ian found to be strange and somewhat amusing.

"In the olden days they used to draw places on the map and say, here be'eth dragons," and Paladin chuckled.

"It's a long way back home," Ian said quietly.

"Aye," Paladin said quietly turning in his swivel chair to scan his surveillance instruments.

"Oh, we've got a little company way out here," he announced and pointed to the screen. "Ionization wake coming through here, heading straight for what I think's the next jump point."

"How old?"

"Not very, hard to tell, sir, maybe ten hours."

"Could he have spotted us on the other side and jumped out?"

Paladin sat quietly for a minute thinking that question over yet again. One of the problems with this cat Stealth machinery was the simple fact they were not even sure if it was really working right anymore. At least when Tarawa was alongside they could get a very quick and easy read. They hadn't seen Tarawa in ten days; it was now a good eight jump points behind them, holding itself at extreme burst signal range back to the edge of the frontier in case it had to get an emergency signal out.

He had figured out by now that the Stealth gear was to be used for only short periods of time, and the drain it made on ship's energy was tremendous. So they had finally agreed

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