Co-Or

  Chapter 10

  Secret Destination

  Even though they were not at their scheduled destination, he went ahead and contacted Colby again. He brought him up to date on his recent encounter. He also told him about his three day session in the Medi-Unit, while he was recovering from his head injury. Colby's first comment threw him.

  “How did you get in the Medi-Unit if you were unconscious?” He asked innocently.

  Busted, he was busted. he had to now tell Colby about his luck with the lottery and the acquisition of the Warman. He dove in and told him just enough so he got the idea and then he prepared for the lambasting.

  “Impossible, you can’t, law and rules do not permit this. You should be shot not court marshaled, just plain shot. I have never……

  Scott let him ramble on without interruption on his part. There is no way he would interrupt when Colby was this upset and here he was, worried about telling him, afraid he might rant and rave. Scott's fears, as they were, were now justified however.

  Scott got the chance, when Colby had finally run down, to tell his complete story. It was hard to imagine but the boss was even more pissed off. The basting was even more severe than before as Colby now knew that he had been correct to chew Scott out. To put it mildly, he did not appreciate the way Scott got himself into a jam like he did with the Warman.

  Scott later guessed there was one good thing that came out of this, it at least took Colby’s mind off of their troubles and gave him a direction to vent his pent up frustrations and anger. Of course Scott didn’t think about this as his ear was being bent by Colby’s blast. Scott kind of stood to one side of the camera which took him out of the middle of the monitor. He tried to make himself invisible or at least very small in Colby’s view. This did not work, Colby can see around corners and has bifocals to pick out very small objects in any surroundings.

  Colby did finally rundown and recover some of his normal composure. He started to talk to Scott rather than at him. He made some sense and finally asked. “Scott, what are your plans now, will you be continuing in route to your next scheduled appointment?”

  Scott, for some time now, had an idea running through his head that somewhere, somehow, someone must know where he was headed and when he would get there. No other explanation would support the two, out of the blue, unprovoked attacks and the locations of those attacks. There were just too many coincidences, unarmed on the asteroid and in his ship between jumps. Someone had his route and planned those attacks accordingly. Twice now, with unbelievable accuracy, alien ships had appeared out of nowhere and tried their best to retire him without a pension. That’s the reason he said, “I’m going to have to reserve my itinerary plans for my eyes and ears only. It will be that way until I can convince myself that there is no third party listening in on our conversations.”

  Colby could see no way anyone could eavesdrop with the type of security on their radio channels. They discussed this for a few minutes and he relented to Scott's idea. He either thought it was a good idea or he just didn’t want to talk to Scott anymore and he had better things to do. Scott was sure Colby was still very upset with him, the law breaker, one of the worst kinds.

  It took him some time to convince Nard that he should not keep headquarters informed of their whereabouts or their destination. Scott explained how he could be turned into wasted debris, floating in space, circuit boards ripped apart, burned and pitted. Only after this explanation did Nard agree. No contact until Scott said it was ok to do so.

  “Nard, shut down the transporter so I don't do something stupid again and, if you will, lay in a course for the Nimbus sector. As you are aware, this must be a secret destination and as far as anyone else is concerned, we no longer exist, we were eliminated. Now we are only a minor memory and hopefully we will be forgotten by our enemies.”

  There was no reply from Nard or the Warman so Scott continued. “Nard, I don’t want any kind of signal going off board and, Nard, please engage the cloaking device.”