Junker's Moon: Pirate Gold

  Chapter 7: Some Sort Of A Plan

  Five minutes after leaving the workshops, Judith joined Marshall at his desk.

  'What are we looking at?' his chief test pilot asked.

  Marshall showed her the outline on the screen, remarkable for its lack of a tag and a colour.

  'And what's that other thing?' Judith asked, indicating a smudge some distance from the unmarked ship but apparently on a parallel course. No sooner had it appeared than it disappeared. 'Oh, it's gone again.'

  'Yes, it's done that twice before while I've been monitoring the unmarked ship. On that basis, it probably won't appear more than once in the next hour.'

  'OK, back to the plan. What about them seeing the ship I'm taking up?'

  'The taxi is too small to show up, especially with no transponder.'

  'Won't it be too small to have any effect, then?'

  'I'm not intending that you should take the taxi anywhere near their ship.'

  Judith stood back with her hands on her hips and regarded Marshall. He was beginning to look old, compared to the last time she had been this close to him. Worry lines were showing in his face and he didn't smell as good as she remembered. She had twenty years on Marshall and had been one of his father's most trusted employees towards the end of his life. Marshall had never faulted her work and she guessed he was hoping that his father's trust was well-founded.

  'I want you to take the taxi up to the moon, while Cymbeline is still between it and the pirates. No matter how good their sensors are, they won't be able to see through the planet.'

  'How long do we have before the moon moves into sight?'

  'Fourteen hours.'

  'Who can I take?'

  'Your choice, but I advise one of the men, in case there's any heavy lifting.'

  'I'd rather have Debbi and Lucy, and take a hydraulic suit as luggage.'

  'Lucy's on a day off.'

  'Then she'll be well rested.' Judith gave Marshall a knowing look. 'Unless you wore her out last night.'

  Marshall grinned. 'She'll be fine. Debbi?'

  'Software engineer. Where brute force fails, hard-wiring can suffice, and if that fails, you can always try rebooting with a few code changes.'

  'Good thinking.' Marshall glanced towards the countdown he'd set for when the pirates were due to drop out of the pipe. 'You'd better get started.'

  'And you'll tell me what we're supposed to do on the moon, when exactly?'

  'Soon as you've assembled your team, fuelled the taxi and got yourselves suited up ready to go on the launch ramp.'

  'I'd love to get some idea what they know about us and why they're coming here.'

  'Well, if you find out let me know,' he said without expecting an answer any time soon.

  Marshall monitored the rogue ship's progress as it zoned in on his display. To achieve a better sense of scale, he projected it across the room. Legitimate liners and merchants could be seen in the background going about their business. As the ship drew closer to the Junker's Moon end of the pipe, a tag-like image appeared next to it. It was immediately obvious that it was a spuriously generated one, not a certificated tag issued by the Space Vehicle Licensing Authority, SVLA for short.

  One useful item FBIS had given Marshall's father was a tag ID system. As one of the larger salvage and servicing operations, Junker's Moon had been provided with a database, updated monthly, of all legitimate ships. If Marshall was offered for trade or salvage a ship with an illegitimate tag, he was supposed to inform the SVLA immediately, and assist FBIS in impounding the ship. Under the current circumstances, that would have to wait, as any outgoing transmission would alert the pirates, or whoever else was aboard the rogue ship, that he was aware that they were up to no good.

  The fact that the pirates had not attempted to generate a false tag until they were an hour outside the range of conventional long-range scanners indicated that they had no understanding of the power of Marshall's deep scan system. The second image was still blinking in and out of sight on a curiously irregular basis, so Marshall was unsure if its existence was anything more than a false echo.

  From observation of their mode of approach and attempted concealment, it was doubtless the pirate's intention to take Junker's Moon by surprise. Marshall, who had been tracking the ship for some time, had the brief enjoyment of making his own preparations. Placing his hands behind his head, he tilted his chair back and gazed at his main screen. There he studied the image from an orbiting telescope. It showed Judith landing on the far side of the moon, which had now risen from behind Cymbeline. By the time the pirate ship hit the end of the pipe, the moon would have rotated the domes into a flanking position. Judith's taxi was parked near one of the airlocks and the small vehicle was dwarfed by the curve of the dome. The measures Marshall had discussed with Judith just before she, Debbi and Lucy rocketed off the ramp in the taxi would soon be in place, he hoped.

  The view from the pipe would put the moon to the right, with Cymbeline to the left. Marshall was still bothered by the strange echo which occasionally popped up and appeared to be trailing the ship which was coming ever closer. He dearly wanted to know what it was but he had no way to tell. The more he dwelt on the matter, the more he managed to convince himself that it was some kind of scanner artefact resulting from the stealth technology the pirates had on board.