G-Pol Ch. 09

"Yeah, and we're packing armor piercing warheads in our missile tubes." Natasha said smiling grimly, "They probably won't be expecting that. Most point defense systems use fragmentation missiles to cripple fighters or destroy heavier missiles. So are they still just holding position?"

"Yep." Vixi agreed nodding, "It's like they're just watching to see what we'll do."

"That's exactly what they're doing." Bona commented, "Even this far away, I can feel the excitement, their impatience. Somebody out there doesn't like the waiting any more than we do. They're just trying to make us nervous. To break us before the fight even starts. I'd say lets change the rules."

Natasha laughed. "Just what I was thinking! Let's see what they think of this move." She brought the Transit drive online and set up a jump for the belt, but on the opposite side of the system. Then she activated it and watched as the stars faded out of existence. "Well, we have eight hours. Let's make sure we're ready just in case this jump ends up the same way my first one into this system ended. Somehow I don't think there's going to be another hot bounty hunter tracking anyone we might come across."

"I hope not!" Karl laughed, "That's my shtick! If somebody's stealing my moves I'm gonna be ticked!" That brought bursts of relieved laughter which was exactly the point.

"I don't think they'll expect us to go where I sent us." Natasha reported as they began unstrapping themselves, "I sent us to the opposite side of the system, but still in the belt. We'll end up about two billion kilometers away from where they found us. My guess is, they'll expect us to head back for Aphrodite's jump zone. Who would suspect we'd come way the hell out here."

Lisa shrugged. "Just the same, I think we aughtta search the ship to make sure there aren't any tracking devices on board. We've had a lot of people we don't know traipsing all over the ship. It wouldn't have been hard to plant something when we weren't watching."

Vixi looked disturbed. "What if it's not inside where we can find it? There were plenty of people all over the outside of the ship too. There are always people space walking around the station for that matter."

Karl looked thoughtful. "Now you mention it, Mallory was within a hundred meters of us the day of the bombing. You told me he said he'd sent those pirates after you Natasha? That means he knew this ship. That close brush back at the station couldn't have been coincidental. He got close enough to leave scorch marks..."

So it was, they ended up sending a half dozen maintenance robots out onto the ship's hull while they searched the interior. Fortunately for the robots, the transit field extended far enough beyond the hull to allow them to move about freely. Noone was really sure what happened to anything lost in Transit space. Most believed anything exposed outside the field simply ceased to be. This theory was confirmed in a way by certain other theories that postulated anything exposed to Transit space was ripped apart on a quark scale, that physics in that dimension were almost diametrically opposed to those of this dimension. In other words, gravity, magnetism, any forces that held things together here, forced them apart there. In that place and under those conditions,, solid matter wouldn't even be possible. Whatever the truth, anything lost there was never seen again. Whether it just drifted endlessly in an empty void, nobody knew, and probably never would.

Searches using the most sophisticated antisurveillance gear available found an even half dozen devices inside the ship. These were sealed inside a faraday container until they could decide what to do with them. As Karl had suspected, the robots found nothing electronic on the ship's exterior. Instead, they found traces of ionization where the scorch mark had been that could be tracked from across astronomical distances with the right kind of sensors, and those were easy to come by. That near miss hadn't been coincidental at all. Mallory had carefully tuned his engines and doped his fuel for exactly this purpose.

Karl wondered if he'd filled his tanks with the stuff. If he had, any place he went until he ran all that dope out, he would leave a clear, easy to follow trail. Just on the outside chance, he had Natasha forward the idea to G-Pol. He had his doubts, but only time would tell.