Exiles

  Chapter 16 Binaries

  The Themis dropped out of hyperspace and emerged in the Scorponoid system, equidistant from its twin stars. The red giant Scorponoid-A and its smaller, hotter, blue companion Scorponoid-B.

  “We're alone, no other ships in the system.” said Bryn running his fingers across the sensor consol as he scanned for signs of life around them.

  Carol looked at Ford. “Maybe the Sultan has cut and run?”

  He shook his head. “They need supplies and we need the energy from these stars to fabricate them, amongst other things. They’ll be here. It’s an old ship. It’ll take them a little longer than us, that all.”

  Lucy had begun manoeuvring them towards Scorponoid-A. “Ready to deploy the collector web when you are.”

  “First things, first, we bury our dead with the respect they deserve.“ he held up his hand to silence Lucy before she could speak. “Then we focus on repairing and reequipping the ship. So we can find and rescue our absent friends. I’ll see you all on the hanger deck.” he added as he made ready to leave the bridge.

  Carol gestured to him to wait. “I’m picking up a heavily encoded data burst.”

  “Sultan?” asked Bryn.

  “Negative. It using our old rebellion algorithms, from back on Anobar, decoding it now.”

  A tense silence hung in the air as the ships AI, Alaster, ran the transmission through his filters, using the appropriate algorithms to decode it.

  “It’s the Phoenix, Jay has just sent us the co-ordinates of the raider base. Boarding party alive, but captured.”

  Lucy let out a sigh of relief. “At least we know their alive, did he say how he avoided capture?”

  Carol shook her head. “No, but there’s more. According to Alaster he used one of their transmissions to hide his data burst and we got an echo of it, an after-image as it were, with Jay’s transmission. Alaster is cleaning it up now and it’s bad.”

  “How bad?” asked Ford.

  “It sketchy, but as far as I can tell it was a general call out to the Jasper and Fury, advising them they’d encountered you and captured some of your crew.”

  “The clocks ticking, we have to rescue them now!” blurted out Lucky.

  “It could be a trap, there’s no way of knowing if Jay really sent that message, or if they're really still alive.” David had remained silent till now as all eyes turned towards him. “What? You're all thinking it, am I the only one who has the guts to say it?”

  “Right now we all need to stay focused.” cut in Ford. A calm, authoritative tone, in his voice. “It‘ll take more than a few Raiders to dispose of Bryson and the others, trust me. We’re going to take that base down and get our people back, but we’re not going to go rushing in head first. It’ll be like the good old days of the rebellion, we’ll fight them on our terms, at a time of our choosing. Now let’s bury our dead.” he turned and led the way off the bridge in a manner that indicated the debate was over.