Meanwhile Paul tells Richard that he thinks he has found something in the data pack. Its a bit weak, but never-the-less a lead, which is more than they had before.
Paul says, "I found that Kog-zey-enian ships were spotted in the vicinity of craft that disappeared, what is more there seems to be no attempt by those ships to respond to distress calls."
Richard asks, "What no response at all?"
Paul replies, "Not even acknowledgement of the communications."
Richard asks, "How do you know this?"
Paul replies, "Generally there is a record in the data pack if there had been any form of response either outgoing from the craft in trouble, or from anything around it. In all cases of these Kog-zey-enian craft there was no response issued from them. What is more their path of travel is always away from the scene of the crime so to speak.."
Richard asks, "So you think the Kog-zey-enian ships are involved in some way?"
Paul replies, "I don't know, all I have been looking for is some form of pattern. It was the only one I could find."
Richard says, "Sorry unfair of me to ask you, how could you possibly know. I'll get some of my agents out to Kog-zey-enia and get them to check things out. So there's absolutely no other pattern like time or date of disappearance?"
"I did check just in-case, but even there, no pattern." replies Paul.
They jump as the doorbell sounds. It is the food delivery.
Soon they are sat down and enjoying the food. Richard has only just noticed that Ed and Edward are not around. He asks if they are both alright.
Maria says that Ed and Jenny had gone off to look at a dwelling point somewhere.
Richard remarks, "Oh they are serious then?" Then realises that with Carina and Paul around he probably shouldn't have said anything.
Maria relies, "Well it seems to be, apparently they have been saving seriously for a deposit to get their own place. Ed was telling me this morning that he had a pay rise and it should make the saving easier and quicker."
Paul says, "I didn't know they were that serious, they hardly ever see each other."
Maria says, "Its often like that if you want to buy your own dwelling."
Paul says, "Blow buying, I'd rather rent, then you've got the freedom to move around if you want to."
Richard says, "You have a point there Paul. Is there something you aren't telling us, like the pitter patter...."
Maria interrupts Richard with, "Now Richard I am shocked that you'd even suggest such a thing."
Carina, has until this point looked a little mystified, not fully following the conversation, suddenly exclaims, "Oh I see what you mean." Then she goes bright red at her outburst.
Maria says, "Sorry Carina I must apologise for my Brother-in-law, he often doesn't think before speaking. I am sure there is nothing of the sort, they are just serious about being together and having a place that they can call their own."
Paul asks , "Do you think they will do the big W?"
Maria replies, "That's entirely up to them, a lot of people don't bother getting married these days, they see it as an unnecessary expense and tradition."
Carina asks, "What about you, what do you feel about a wedding?"
Maria is quiet for a bit, then thoughtfully answers, "I'd like one, for the pair of them, but nothing too over the top,after all it is expensive enough trying to pay for a dwelling and everything that goes with that. Its really dependent upon them and what they want."
After lunch Paul shows his uncle, some of the work that he had been involved in at the Academy. Richard is fascinated and asks questions galore. Carina looks on in admiration, wondering how Paul can know all this stuff and to such depth.
There is a disturbance in the hallway. Ed and Jenny have returned and Maria is asking how they got on and what they thought of the dwelling point that they had gone to see.
Jenny says that it was absolutely lovely, but well out of their reach.
Ed agrees, adding that they would need to save up considerably longer than they had anticipated, for just the deposit. He would need two further pay rises to be able to afford the payments and still be able to eat.
They laugh at the ridiculousness of the situation.
Richard comes out to the hallway to join in the discussion, he says, "Sorry it didn't go well."
Ed says, "You should have seen the lady's face when we asked if they had anything cheaper. She said that this was the cheapest unit they had on their books."
Richard asks if he can have a word in private with Ed. Ed wonders what is coming up. Either Paul has found something that indicates that he, Ed could be in greater danger, or Paul has found nothing and its now down to him to come up with something. They slip into Ed's room, sit down and Richard updates Ed with the news that the Kog-zey-enians were suspected of being the culprits. Richard advises Ed to keep an eye out for their ship movements and be particularly cautious if they are operating in areas that Ed is flying through.
Richard asks Ed to keep his ears and eyes open for any information that would support this lead or in fact anything in connection with the disappearances.
Ed assures Richard, that he has already been doing that, but as yet there had been nothing, not even vague leads that one could take seriously.
Richard reminded Ed that often breakthroughs were a achieved with the slightest of leads, no matter how ridiculous they may seem at the time.
Ed says that he knows this and if there had anything, he would let Richard know, but to date most of what he has heard has been fear driven panic and supposition, nothing that one could say was a possible lead. He promised that the moment he had anything he would get in touch with Richard.
Richard finishes saying that he will put Sylvie on the investigation to see if she can get to the route of the matter with the Kog-zey-enians and test out what was going on when their ships had been in the vicinity of the disappearances. With her mind reading abilities, Sylvie may be able to succeed where others have failed, she just may detect if the Kog-zey-enians are lying.
Ed hopes that Richard can get to the bottom of this and quickly.
Discussion finished they rejoin the rest of the family and find that Jenny is showing the others her latest work, the pictures and reviews were now up on GN.
~~~~~~~~~
Chapter 5 - On Duty
Several days out on their journey, Ed finds himself alone on the flight deck of the interstellar craft Cosmos 3, an impressive looking craft, but basically a recycled re-fitted and downgraded intergalactic craft. The trend now was to provide much more space and luxury on such flights, so this smaller craft had been downgraded to interstellar flights, these being between star systems, so not quite what she was used to. The passengers were impressed though, being that this craft was somewhat larger and more impressive than they were used to. Ed was equally impressed with the re-fit. It was the captain who was less impressed and described it as baubles disguising what was otherwise an outdated and served its time craft, that should by rights have been retired. But Ed reflects on some of the craft that he's flown and if the captain thinks this outdated and long overdue for retirement, he should try some of those.
Ed was glad that the captain had decided to get some "shut eye" as he'd referred to his sleep session as. Quite frankly the guy's moaning and complaining was getting on Ed's nerves. So he was glad of the break. Ed had decided to check out local craft movements, just as his uncle Richard had advised. Thus far he had found nothing alarming. There had as yet been no further craft disappearances. Ed logs into the Astralian craft movement system or "ACMoS" as the flight staff often referred to it as. Ed allows the ACMoS to use his craft's current location and logged course information and it starts coming back pretty quickly with lists of craft operating in this area and also those scheduled to enter the area. At first the list seems fine, with nothing to cause any concern. Then Ed spots a scheduled entry for a Kog-zey-enian craft under the name of Garet-
dwes-kenstia. It was scheduled to enter further along their flight path. Ed's heart skips a beat at this discovery, his immediate thought being that his number could be up shortly and with the current captain, there would be no chance of even considering any deviation from their logged flight path, especially as Ed has no evidence on which to base his or Richard's suspicions of the Kog-zey-enians and their suspected activities. Ed logs a personal communication to Richard and passes the information about the Kog-zey-enian craft, its predicted entry point and logged flight path, along with predicted flight path cross over point. He sends the information with the pre-arranged encryption coding. He has done this in-case anything happens to him and his craft, then at least Richard has a chance of finding out what is likely to have happened.
"Blimey that's quick!" thinks Ed as he gets an acknowledgement message back, then as he reads it, he realises that it was only from the nearest message beacon repeater. Richard was likely to get the message in an hours time. So any reply would take at least two hours.
Ed checks the craft's instruments as part of his routine work, satisfies himself that all is well, then returns to the ACMO database as he is still curious about the Kog-zey-enian craft, he checks the classification of cargo. Although the system does not list what is actually being carried, it specifies the type, in-case there's anything dangerous or hazardous aboard, this being from the viewpoint of an accident or incident whilst in transit. It warns any craft that comes to the craft's aid, as to what precautions to take. This craft is carrying nothing hazardous, just some foodstuffs, or at least that's what the entry in the database says. Next, out of curiosity, Ed decides to explore the layout of the craft, as most craft also upload a 3d representation of their craft, in-case there is an emergency and any rescue craft have to plan an escape route for anyone trapped aboard a craft that is in trouble. That is most craft, except those who have something to hide or their owners are particularly secretive. Ed is most surprised to find that there is a 3d plan of the Garet-dwes-kenstia. This sort of information would have been dangerous back in the space pirate days of old, the pirates would have known exactly where to attack in order to either make a quick hit to disable the craft or to make a quick grab of the cargo, before the crew can defend themselves against the pirates. Thank goodness for the intergalactic laws and treaty.
The Garet-dwes-kenstia is a four deck craft, the engine room is on the third deck, traditionally they are usually on the lowest deck. Ed explores the other decks and finds that the cargo is split between decks 1, 2 and 4, probably to make the craft balanced weight wise, and also less prone to lose all it's cargo if attacked. Ed thought this a sensible move, he always thought his company's policy of sticking all the cargo in lower decks a bit risky and it makes for bottom heavy craft, which is alright in normal flight conditions, but makes things a bit hairy when things get rough. The crew and leisure areas seem to be split between decks 1, 2 and 4. The flight deck, most strangely appears on deck 3, with the engine room. Putting them on the same deck probably means that they can cut down on wiring and crew members, making their freighters cheaper to build and run. Ed, despite seeing this race as a potential enemy, also admires their logic and business sense. Their leisure facilities seemed to be far superior to those provided by his company and considering this is supposed to be merely a cargo craft, it was quite surprising, but then maybe morale of the crew means more to them. Unless they are actually hiding something, perhaps this is actually more than a mere cargo craft. This starts Ed analysing the minimum number of crew that would be needed to run the craft and he counts the number of cabins. There is an obvious difference between the numbers, indicating that this craft may also carry passengers. If it were a passenger carrying vessel though, under intergalactic law it must be registered as such. Unless, the passengers were of a military nature! That's it, the passengers probably board any captured craft, they then take over that craft.
Ed decides that he had best send another message to Richard concerning his latest suspicions about the Kog-zey-enian craft. Ed finds it difficult to describe accurately his suspicions and takes some time writing and re-writing his message, in order to get it just right. He is surprised that Richard's people had not come to the same conclusions as himself, but then he has 'inside information' in that he is a commercial pilot and understands how these craft are or could be run.
When the message has been sent and an acknowledgement received, Ed turns his attention back to the view outside his craft. There are some magnificent galaxies in front of him, a wonderful backdrop to the star system that they are heading for. Ed never tires of the magnificent views of space that he sees whilst on his journeys. Although it can't actually be the case, but every time he sets off on a journey the star scape seems somewhat different. Perhaps its just that he notices something that he hadn't spotted before. He has travelled in this direction a number of times now, as often journeys start out the same but end up deviating off in a different direction after certain distances have been reached. You would have thought that with the vastness of space, a craft could just set off in the direction of the star system that it is travelling to, but oh no the interstellar trade routes agreement had set out pre-defined flight paths and Ed's company had to stick to the same conduits when leaving the planets that they fly between. Such agreements wasted time and fuel, as often, flying straight to a destination would save several days and even weeks on the longer flights, but no they had to stick to these routes.
~~~~~ Later ~~~~~~
The captain asks Ed what the beeping was all about.
Ed replies, that it was merely a reminder that he had set for himself to check something.
The captain asks what exactly Ed wanted to check.
Ed not trusting the captain, to let him in on his little secret about the cross over of flight paths between their craft and the Garet-dwes-kenstia, simply replies, "Oh a colleague told me at around this time of the flight I should look out for a particular star system as they would be flying past."
The captain replies in a stern voice, that this journey was only a pleasure trip for the passengers, the crew should confine themselves to their duties.
Ed is tempted to say something about captains showing more loyalty to the company and not criticise the craft that they are allocated, but decides it best to keep quiet and say nothing.
The captain, whilst not satisfied, as Ed has not acknowledged his comment, realises that there is very little that he can do about the situation, unless he wants to make even more of a scene about the matter and possibly make himself look silly. He decides instead to keep an eye on Ed's activities. For the time being he appears to be performing his duties adequately, continuing with the system checks that he was doing before the reminder sounded.
After a while Ed reports that everything is fine. There was a slight overheat in the main drive, but he had trimmed the over exciter and that seems to have settled things out. Ed is most surprised as the captain praises him for the corrective action.
Ed grabs an e-pad and pretends to do some further checks, whilst actually sneaking looks out of the large windows, looking for any sign of the Kog-zey-enian craft the Garet-dwes-kenstia. Sure enough, he catches sight of something gleaming far off to the left. It is much larger than a star and as Ed glances at it again, he sees that it has moved. Looks like it could cross their path ahead of the predicted time. Unless of course this is not actually the Garet-dwes-kenstia, it could be another craft, Ed hadn't checked for craft operating under other 'flags of convenience' as they were called.
Ed sneakily glances at the surround a trace display. He quickly identifies the path of the other craft. He can't quite make out the identifier tag, without getting closer to the screen and it would then be more obvious what he was up to. Ed quickly glances to check for other craft coming from left side of the trace diagram, but there are none, so this just has to be the Garet-dwes-kenstia.
The captain makes Ed jump as h
e asks if Ed has spotted anything. Ed replies just another craft approaching from the left. He feels he needs go no further than that. Although the captain presses him, by asking whether it is scheduled or not. Ed uses this as an excuse to get closer to the screen, so that he can now read the identity tag. Ed reports that it is the Garet-dwes-kenstia and that it was scheduled in this sector. The captain whilst impressed that Ed had prepared for this event, also has his suspicions that Ed's real reason for checking the trace screen was to check out his friend's flight. As a consequence, the captain suggests that Ed can go off duty as he's had a long shift.
Ed is at the same time relieved to be going off shift but also disappointed that he won't be able to closely monitor that Kog-zey-enian craft. Then he remembers that the cafeteria has a good view out into space, so he bids the captain a good shift and departs.
~~~~~~~~
Chapter 6 - Encounters
Ed soon finds himself settled at one of the tables by the large window of the cafeteria, enjoying the view and his meal. He watches as the Garet-dwes-kenstia slides across the stars. Ed marvels at its speed. To a non professional it would look painfully slow, but to Ed's trained eye he can tell that the craft is moving at some speed.