Inadvertent Adventures Read Online Free Page B

coms for a moment?" Silver asked when he finished laying in the course.
    "Done. Why?" she asked.
    "Disinformation, Ma'am. Just a little disinformation," he replied as he typed commands into his console, then keyed in a broad-band transmission. "Attention Fredrick's Station and all ships. This is the CSS Kiev , in-system bound at point three 'C' on a vector of three-six-two by four-seven-three." He keyed in a sequence of numbers on the console that tagged a false transponder signal onto the transmission. "Fredrick's Station Control, feed us your sensor data on the intruder so we know who to shoot."
    "What the hell are you doing?" the captain asked.
    "You knew I was in the Navy, Ma'am," Silver replied without turning. "You should have asked where. One of my posts was as Communications Officer for the Kiev , and I remember a few tricks as well as her transponder codes. In just over an hour that message and tag are going to hit Germanicus. It's just a hunch, but I bet that raider is going to haul ass out of here at his maximum acceleration as soon as he receives that transponder signal."
    "What is the Kiev ?" Olaf asked.
    "Heavy cruiser. Sixty thousand tons of whup-ass in a seven hundred meter hull," Silver replied with a grin. "My last cruise was a search and destroy mission against raiders in the Tibet systems. Six ships destroyed, admiral's award for the crew, and a presidential commendation for the captain."
    "Hold course," Captain Denise said with an answering grin. "Keep updating your course correction to Westin, but we'll wait to see what happens when the message is received."
    Two hours later the radio message changed. "CSS Kiev , this is Fredrick's Station Control. Sensor data will follow this communication. The raider has broken off and is fleeing on course three-six-zero by five-seven-nine." The squeal of compressed data followed and Silver captured and decoded it immediately.
    "Raider is," he said, pausing as he scanned the information, "a little bitty thing. She’s only sixteen thousand tons? That can't be a warship of any kind. Maybe it's an armed freighter, but it's not any configuration that the databanks on Fredrick's Station can identify."
    "Watch that 'little bitty' crap, Silver," Captain Denise snarled. "We're only about twenty thousand tons."
    "We're not raiding anyone, Ma'am," he said with an apologetic grin. Turning back to his console he keyed his microphone. "Fredrick's Station, this is Kiev . We are altering course to intercept the raider. If we can overtake them before they go into hyper they will be destroyed." He again tagged the message with the Kiev's transponder code and sat back.
    "You don't think they'll notice that we haven't altered course?" Olaf asked, turning in his seat to look at Silver.
    "Their course is almost directly away from us. I doubt the real Kiev could catch them, but it'd be close. Orders, Ma'am?"
    Captain Denise smiled and then started laughing. "Maintain course to Germanicus. Estimated time till orbital arrival?"
    "Seven days, six and one quarter hours, Ma'am," he immediately replied.
    "We came out too close. If we weren't so small that could have been a disaster. Watch your calculations more carefully. I'd rather spend more time decelerating than risk hitting a star. When we are in range of the station, switch to directional laser and tell Fredrick's Station Control who we really are. I'll leave communications in your hands for a while. I had no idea that you were such a sneaky bastard." She grinned at him, and he and Olaf both laughed.
    At half an hour to orbit, Silver powered up the communication's laser and contacted Fredrick's Station. "Fredrick's Station Control, this is the cargo vessel Jolly Jane, inbound with a cargo of food stuffs. Requesting vector and docking instructions."
    The answer was immediate. " Jolly Jane , this is Fredrick's Station. Where did you come from? We were under attack until the CSS Kiev contacted us. Were you on the same vector as she was? Why