Rita Longknife--Enemy Unknown by Mike Shepherd

Author:Mike Shepherd
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: KL&MM Books

18

That was the end of going home for dinner. While Rita retired to nurse Alex, Ray and Andy arranged a full staff conference in the Exeter’s wardroom. Matt came over from the Northampton with Sandy, Mary and the new scientist they’d transferred from the Second Chance.

While Ray had been getting the Exeter up to Rita’s specs, Matt had not only gotten the Northampton back in commission, but transferred the sensor suite from his old scout cruiser. A heavy cruiser was a warship, and as such, specialized for fighting.

A war emergence merchant conversion to a light cruiser had more play in her hull and had easily taken on the larger sensor suite of a scout. How Matt had managed to bend the warship’s guns and armor around the expanded sensor suite he’d had on his scout was nothing short of a miracle, but he and his crew had done it.

Now, the wardroom filled up with officers from both ships, waiting to hear what they were hunting.

Once Rita came in, her blues immaculate and showing no evidence of an encounter with an infant’s choosy stomach, Andy stood up.

“Three weeks ago, a convoy of four ships and a prefab space station set sail from New Eden. Two of the ships had come to Eden from Earth, loaded with over twenty thousand colonists from Korea in deep sleep. The convoy left for Far Pusan, a new colony paid for largely by Korean financial interests. They should have been there by now. They have not arrived.”

“You say a convoy. Were any of the ships armed?” Rita asked.

“No. Haven’t you heard, we’re at peace. It’s in all the media,” Andy said dryly.

“Do we have any idea what happened to them?” Rita demanded, not at all happy with Andy’s dry humor.

“No,” the spy said, “but we have some idea where it happened. The jump buoys two jumps out from Far Pusan had been blown away. The ones on one side of the system show them entering. The jump out they intended to take has no buoys anymore.”

“It’s bad enough the bastard is stealing ships, but to leave jumps without their navigation buoys is an open invitation for ships to collide in a jump,” the retired Navy captain growled.

“Can we use the sniffer to track him?” Matt asked the small woman sitting stiffly at his side.”

“My ‘sniffer,’ as you insist on calling it, is good for sections of space that have had limited use. If there has been a lot of traffic, it becomes harder to pick up a trail.”

“Much like a bloodhound can’t track a scent through a lot of traffic, either,” the spy said.

“So, what do we do?” Ray asked, quite unhappy to be only hearing things that he couldn’t do. “Have you had any luck on tracking down where Whitebred went?”

The spy was shaking his head before the question was even on the table. “Our initial report from High Savannah was very complete. Your Marine there, I believe Trouble is his name, did a thorough job of a search and discovered that there was nothing left behind to find.

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