Who Hunts the Hunters?

[Gir Quee]

Gir's comlink buzzed. He stepped back from the holo-projectors and tapped a button.

"Yes?"

Lars voice began to flow out of it.

"Sir, we've just reached the rendezvous point...but it appears that we have been followed. The carrack that we saw previously has reverted behind us, though it is clearly staying out of engagement range."

"It's shadowing us...but We jumped far enough away that they shouldn't have been able to follow us with a soliton attenae."

"Yes sir, I agree, especially after the secondary reversion and course change."

"They must have a tracking device on our ship."

"But how?"

We never were in range for them to attach a homing beacon to our hull. Not with one of their ships. Suddenly, one of the prisoner's first exchanges with Vries immediately came to mind: she doesn't think that she'll be here long because we're being tracked. And she knew that...but how would she know that? He turned his eyes to Lieutenant Tabe, but he appeared to be speaking in his helmet to someone else. Of course...there's the obvious answer. She planted the device...

"Send the rest of the ship's on the course home," informed Gir, "we will remain here until we get rid of the tracking device. Have our security teams search the captured escape pods and any areas where the prisoners walked through."

"What about the Carrack? If it's there, the other's can't be far behind."

"We'll just have to endure it. We have good armor and shields...I imagine we can withstand several minutes of fire from them."

"All right, will do sir."

"I will join you on the bridge shortly."

"Yes sir."

Gir turned to Lieutenant Tabe, who had once again removed his helmet to better converse with him.

"I know sir," said the auburn-haired man, "we'll get it out of her."

He nodded, "Inform me and the security teams if you are able to uncover anything."

"Yes sir."

 

[Gir Quee]

Gir let himself out of the monitoring room and headed back towards the bridge. As he did so, he heard Lars announce general quarters. There were few crew stations int his area of the ship, so he saw few naval crewmen at the announcement, but he found that the announcement was mobilizing many of the marines from their barracks to various posts across the vessel. In the off chance that the ship was boarded, they would need to be present at the various airlocks and central chokepoints in order to hold the advance until reinforcements from other parts of the ship could arrive. The blonde man spared a lingering glance a pair of the soldiers hustled past him while being bathed in the ethereal blue lights of the organoform circuitry. The way the light suffused and glinted off their armor plates almost seemed a picturesque to the man, like he was watching light glint of the ocean's surface on his homeworld. He shook the thoughts away as he proceeded through the blast doors into the bridge itself. Lars hovered over one of the bridge's holo-tanks, swinging a laser pointer across various areas of space around them as he talked to the ship's navigator.

"What are we looking at?" asked Gir.

"Escape trajectories that do not match those of our other ships."

Gir eyed the holo-tank's interior, "They are already on their way to Hast then. How many minutes has it been?"

Lars peeked at his wrist chrono, "Maybe three standard minutes and some change."

"They have a head start then if we end up taking on their routes. Or have you calculated a new route of here?"

"We have a route that's somewhat different from the other ships," said the navigator, "but it shares some legs of the course that the other ships are taking."

"We'll take it," decided Gir, "we only need our route to be different until we can figure out where the tracking device is coming from."

Lars hesitated, "Before you decide on that for certain, you should know that it will take us into contact with the enemy fleet. Probably a couple minutes of firing. Our shields and hull can probably take it, but that's an opportunity for them to afix another tracking device on us."

Gir nodded, "Then that is a risk that we will take."

 

[Gir Quee]

Lars nodded before he and the navigator departed from the holo-tank to enact the plan. Gir lingered behind, observing the formation of criminal ships that seemed to be slowly forming. Their ships aren't coming in as a single unit...which means that they're moving individually to the destination probably based on how fast they can push their hyperdrives. That would be risky method of movement in a normal military action, but that also suggests that they're not worried about being ambushed, which is curious. Gir filed that piece of information into the back of his head for possible later use. If Tabe would be able to extract the name of the enemy commander from their prisoner, he might have gained an insight into the mind of the enemy commander. Gir watched the holo model of the Gauntlet slowly turn to her port, edging her way on a path that would take it across the enemy formation's left flank.

"Any particular targets you want us to hit?" said Lars, returning to join him at the holo-tank.

"That Carrack always seems to be at the front of their formation. I don't think that's by accident. Whoever is commanding that ship is an experienced or trusted officer in their service. And it is probably someone who is interested in mobility rather than brute force, given his choice of vessel."

"But the Carrack has a know design flaw. Would they really risk one of their better officers on it?"

"They probably have taken measures to minimize that...or at least be cautious about that weak point," mused Gir, "but it might be worth shot. Are you thinking about Firelances?"

"I am."

"Let's not use that card yet," said Gir, "when we can use the turbolasers and mass drivers that they already know about."

"All right, will do."

Gir watched as the Gauntlet began to accelerate on its new course. As it did so, the enemy fleet briefly shifted as its smaller vessels quickly moved to reinforce that side of the fleet. Some seconds elapses before streams of weapons fire began to fill the space between the Directorate warship and the criminal vessels. Lars managed to coordinate a feint with the gunnery crews that initially saw several of the ship's light quad turbolasers lash out at the Carrack's bow shields, while he held several mass driver cannons in reserve but trained on the ship's rear power generators. Once the enemy captain reinforced his bow shields by taking energy from the rear shields, the mass driver cannons fired. Solid slug perforated around the bulbous power generator before several smashed into the generator itself. Power flickered off across the Carrack's left side as the Gauntlet began to accelerate past the tip of the enemy's formation.

 

[Gir Quee]

"Here we go," muttered Lars.

"Slugging match," affirmed Gir.

Weapons fire erupted from across the enemy fleet as the Gauntlet plowed parallel to the edge of their formation. It seemed something like a school boy fight to Gir, simply because neither side seemed likely to do any real severe damage to the other. The Gauntlet's heavy autocannons rarely had a good shot with the ship's trajectory, and when they did, the target was far away enough that the shots were too far spread about to do any real damage. Gir's prohibition on using the general purpose warhead launchers primarily loaded Firelances took out a significant chunk of the ship's broadside power, leaving only the relatively weak mass driver cannons and light quad turbolaser to harass a multitude of probing enemy ships. On the flipside, the Gauntlet was receiving a large volume of fire from the enemy ships, but it was not concentrated significantly enough to penetrate the ship's mon calamari-built shields or the Lab's new composite armor. He glanced at his wrist chrono. Two minutes to jump time...His comlink buzzed, causing Gir to unclip it from his breast pocket and activate the receiving call feature.

"Sir, this is Lieutenant Tabe, we have information on a shotgun-style hypertransceiver that was rigged up in one of the recovered escape pods."

"You told the security team about it?"

"They are moving to in deactivate it now."

"Make sure that they do not destroy it when they deactivate it."

"Already done," said Tabe, "we will want to do some signal intelligence work on it, I imagine."

"Excellent. Do you have anything else to report?"

"Negative."

"Thank you Lieutenant, Quee out."

Several more minutes passed before the Gauntlet neared its navigation point. Seeing the increasingly battered shields from the enemy barrage, Gir readily approved Lars's decision to take the Gauntlet into the safety of hyperspace, even though the tracking device had not fully been deactivated. He glanced at his chrono. If they don't deactivate it within two hours, or if the enemy shows up with an interdictor, we're in trouble. But Tabe and his people seem more than compotent, we should be safe from pursuit now.