0618 hours CST, June 22, 2673; the Skate in transit to Sigma Delta Four

An hour before the newly scheduled transition into SD-Four, Murphy called another combat warning drill. He was sitting watch on the bridge when he called it, having sent Lieutenant Sinkovich back to her quarters before the call to give her time to get into her skin suit.

Crew members raced to their quarters when the alarm sounded, all of the crew but the six fortunate, or unfortunate, enough to have the gel suits. Those with the gel suits reported to their stations within five minutes, relieving those who were there so they could get their own suits on. There were some grumbles, but the report to stations took fourteen minutes for the two-thirds of the crew that were off duty, and another twelve minutes for the on-duty crew to report back to stations.

Murphy waited for the alarms to go quiet and then activated the boat’s intercom.

“This is the commanding officer. The combat warning drill took us a total of twenty-six minutes and fourteen seconds. That’s good, and I am happy with the results. The standard time is thirty-two minutes, and you beat that by six minutes. But then, we were all expecting a combat warning drill to happen. At least, I hope you were all expecting it.

“We are now thirty minutes from transition into the Sigma Delta Four system. Our mission, as you know, is to patrol and explore the system, to do a standard outrider stealth survey. As you also know, pirates have attacked a cargo ship in the Stellar Alpha Four system. It barely made it to Clearwater. Fleet intelligence thinks the pirates have a ten percent probability of coming here after the attack.

“All hands will be spending the next half hour making sure their stations are ready. Camera and PD laser operators will make sure their turrets are fully functional. The RSG will be loaded, but the system will be maintained safe and secure in the stealth configuration. Offensive weapons techs will make sure the Mark Fifteens are fully functional. Our two sensor pods will have one more set of diagnostics run. All stations will report readiness and verification to the bridge before we transition.”

Murphy paused as he read through the transition briefing. It was not necessary, but it was traditional during the war that the crew on a torpedo boat receive a final briefing before transitioning into a battle situation. Murphy had decided to keep to that tradition, even though there was no war going on.

“In twenty-five minutes, we will cease our deceleration and make ready for our transition into SD-Four. We will not be doing a peacetime entrance to the system. Be prepared for maximum manoeuvring and acceleration. We will enter the system with our fingers on the triggers, but with the safeties on. Make sure you are ready. The chances of hostile action in SD-Four are low, but the Skate will be going in hot.”

Murphy watched the body language of the bridge crew. They seemed shocked that he had used the boat’s unofficial name.

“I have full confidence in the crew of the Skate. I know you will do your duty with competence and fortitude. The results of the drill just proved it. While we are in SD-Four, and until we’ve scoured it to make sure the pirates are not there, all watches will report in their skin suits. Those off duty are encouraged to have their suits handy if not on. Our mission calls for seven days. I wish us all good luck. Bridge out.”

Murphy was getting better at making the speeches, though his improvements were slow, and it was something else he was going to have to work on. He looked at the bridge crew and relaxed back into his chair with a confident posture and expression on his face. Acting was one of the highly recommended optional courses at the Academy, and now that he was in a command position, he was glad he took the recommendation. Lying with the mouth was one thing; lying with the body and facial expression took more effort. He did his best to have the face and body expression of the competent and trusting officer.

The timer on the console ticked down, and after allowing about ten minutes for the translation, he called out to the astrogator, “Lieutenant Bell, what course do you have plotted for when we transition into the system?”

“I have two courses laid in. The first is a straight one-G acceleration for two minutes away from the sun. That will get us away to where we can shut off the radiation shields. The second plot is a four-G acceleration for five minutes straight out from the sun. That will get us clear faster.”

“Plot a third one. As soon as we transition, I want us to make a ninety-degree turn so that we can go into a counterorbit around the sun. Make sure the antigravity plates are ready till we build up enough speed. Plot us a five-G course for five minutes, slowly moving us away from the sun. Then I want us pointed out from the sun, thirty degrees above or below the planar orientation of the system. Have us accelerate at three G until we can shut off the shield. At that point make sure the antigravity plates are fully active, shut off the engines, and we’ll drift at full stealth.”

Lieutenant Bell took a few moments to write down the requirements, and then he started to enter the course into the navigation computer, setting the waypoints for the helmsman to follow after the transition.

“I have it, sir.”

“Good. Helmsman, cease deceleration and prepare for transition back to sub-light travel. VSO, I want you focused on looking for asteroids for the first ten minutes. There shouldn’t be any this close to the star, but our system data is out of date. If there are any asteroids anywhere near us, I want them marked.”

“Aye sir,” Sabeen replied from her station and relayed the instructions to the camera operators. The Skate stopped decelerating and flipped over so that the bow was pointed down the line of its vector. She waited for the transition to normal space. Lead Hart had the ship pointed in that direction even though she knew about the turn. She was not going to pull anything fancy this time. With the ship pointed down the vector, she was ready to speed up if they ran into any trouble on entrance.

“Sir, transition in fifteen seconds,” Lead Hart reported from the front seat of the bridge.

“Very well, make the transition as planned.” Even though the course was fixed during the initial transition, the boat could still play with acceleration and deceleration and leave the curve drive a little longer or shorter than planned. This gave the boat about twenty seconds of leeway on when to enter the system.

“Aye sir,” Hart said, her hand hovering over the control to kill the drive. “Transition in five…four…three…two…transition,” she called out, and the Skate made the transition to normal space. She immediately engaged the antigravity plates.

The Skate made the transition with the flash of light and radiation that all vessels made as they entered a new system. The forward-looking cameras took a moment to clear, and Hart’s eyes were focused on the display, ready to move the ship as needed.

“Nothing in our path currently, sir. No objects along the solar plane within a quarter of a light second detected.”

“Roger. Astrogation, we’ll go with course three,” Murphy ordered.

Lieutenant Bell breathed a small sigh of relief, as he did not have to adjust the plot. He ordered the new course and flushed the waypoints to the helm. The boat twisted along to orient herself to the stellar plan and then accelerated toward a counter orbit with the sun.

Lead Hart slowly pulled back on the energy that was being fed into the antigravity plates, letting the sun’s gravity slowly pull them into orbit. The five minutes were full of her watching the power output, the distance from the star, and the forward cameras to make sure they were not on a collision course with anything.

The five-minute countdown ended, and Hart brought the ship around to port and accelerated away from the sun. Breaking orbit was easier with the antigravity plates running at full, and they were now out of the area of their entrance signature. More time passed, and the boat moved beyond the area where they needed the radiation shields to supplement the boat’s armoured hull.

“Radiation is down to acceptable levels,” the electronic sensors operator reported.

“Very well. Helm, drop the shields and cut all acceleration. Maintain antigravity plates at full,” Murphy ordered and then turned on the boat’s intercom again. “All hands, we have successfully made the transition to SD-Four. We are now entering full stealth. The star’s atmosphere is still pretty thick, so keep the noise to a minimum. Bridge out.”

The chances of being detected were slim. The vibrations of the boat were still transmitted through the particles being blasted from the sun, and these could still be detected. With the boat travelling along the solar winds, the density of the particles would get lower and lower, lessening the chance of them being detected. Murphy discounted the chance of being detected that way; he was mostly interested in keeping the crew on their toes.

Skin sensors all throughout the hull of the boat were set to measure the ambient temperature of the surrounding space. This close to the star it was fairly hot, so the liquid hydrogen fuel was not moving along the hull of the boat in any great amount, but as the boat left the hotter gas around the sun, the hull would need to be cooled more to keep down the chance of their thermal signature being detected. The ironic thing was that dumping excess hydrogen fuel would be perfect in the area around the sun, but without the need to dampen the thermal characteristics of the hull, the excess hydrogen gas did not build up.

The Skate drifted for an hour, slowly moving farther from the sun. Without the gravity of the star to pull them back, there was nothing holding it in orbit. The friction from the gases in the atmosphere would normally slow a vessel down, but the solar wind was helping to push the Skate away from the sun. The crew kept up their vigil, looking through the cameras, scanning vast quantities of space to see if anything had spotted them. They had yet to deploy any of the sensor pods. So far, no active emissions had been detected. That did not mean that SD-Four was an empty system.

Another half hour passed, and Murphy cancelled the call to general quarters, allowing the crew to get away from their stations. He did keep a full watch on the cameras.

“Deploy the HHE,” Murphy ordered and then sighed softly to himself. It was 0900 hours, the morning watch. Lieutenant Ridgard had left, since his watch was the afternoon watch. Murphy brought up the OWO view on his console and deployed the HHE himself. At the aft of the ship, the middle port torpedo bay opened up, and a pod shaped like the Mark 15 torpedo was pushed to the outside of the ship. The bay doors closed behind, leaving the sensor port on the external rack. The HHE indicator glowed green.

Murphy looked over to his right and the ESO. “Sensors, give us a sweep of the system.”

The fifty-metre-long pod started to emit a stream of radioactive hydrogen isotope. The stream of hydrogen was geared to have a half-life of ten seconds. With the stream being shot out at 20 percent the speed of light, the hydrogen was two light seconds away when half of it had decayed.

The benefit of using the Hydrogen Half-life Emitter was that when the specific hydrogen isotope decayed, it shot out a photon on the same general frequency as most of the radiation around the sun. The signal coming back from the decaying hydrogen would be seen as interference, but using techniques found in spread spectrum communications, the interference pattern was not truly random.

The computers inside the pod could take the pseudo-random nature of the returning photons and pull the signal from the interference of the sun’s radiation. Only the pod’s computer knew what the pseudo-random generator was, and so it was the only sensor in the system that could pull out the signal. That was the theory anyway.

The computers processed the density of the incoming signal, and from that they calculated if the hydrogen stream had run into anything. If it was denser than expected, the computer knew something was out there in a general direction. The denser the returning stream, the closer the object. If nothing came back from a general direction, the computers knew something was out there, keeping the photons from returning.

The HHE only emitted a pulse of hydrogen every ninety seconds. By the time a second pulse went out, the density of photons from the previous pulse would be less than a fifth of a percent what it was initially.

“Thermal contact, four sources!” the VSO shouted.

“Where and what?”

“Still determining. They are off our port beam. Parallax…” The VSO paused as more cameras along the portside picked up the head signatures. “Parallax has them at just over two light-seconds away. We have a visual on light spacecraft, mass probably around sixty tons. They look to be fighters and are angling in on our entrance point but staying at least point-four-five AUs away from the sun. I think they’re searching for us, sir.”