Tales of the Check Mate

Untitled Part 13

Chapter 2

 

Just shy of the estimated arrival time Lee had given, the small ship dropped out of faster than light travel and entered the Krontos System unaware that they triggered two separate, and unrelated, passive sensor arrays.

“Beth place us in polar orbit.  Surge, anything on scan that we need to know about?”

“Nothing much to write home about.  We have some traffic passing through the system but it’s all clear for now.”

Rook swiveled her command chair slightly towards Surge.  “Keep me informed of any changes.”

Rook stepped out of the chair and turned towards the rear doors.  “Beth you have the con.  Have Lee meet me in the hanger.”

Rook left her bridge and as the doors closed her in the elevator she got a brief moment to think.

So far Ryan had been rather closed lipped about what it was that he needed other than some type of fancy rock.  Lee found a few obscure references scattered about the archeological sites but nothing that pointed her thoughts, or her gut feeling, to point in any type of solid direction.  Even going through several less trustworthy avenues resulted in nothing.  Ryan only came out of his room for the occasional meal.  As to his frequent communications they were well encrypted for even an up to date military decoding program she had on board.  Though she was glad that Surge found it intriguing and had already started on the challenge.

The doors hissed open and Rook walked the short distance to Ryan’s room and to her surprise he was standing there with a black satchel slung over his right shoulder.

“Good idea to put us in polar orbit captain.  That way the planets own magnetic field helps mask other ships sensors.”

Rook’s eyes narrowed and she stepped in close to him bringing them eye-to-eye.  “Mr. Ryan I don’t like people tapping into my bridge systems.  If you feel the need to know something I would request that you make yourself known.  That is the last warning I will give you Mr. Ryan.  Next time I’ll throw you in the brig and let Surge have a look at your computer.”

Ryan looked away from Rook as he fidgeted with his bag.  “I’ll restrain myself.  Shall we make way to the shuttle?”

Lee brought the shuttle systems up and began the prelaunch sequence for the engines just as his captain and the professor entered the bay.  Rook took the seat to the left of her first officer letting Ryan sit behind her at the engineer’s station.

“Mr. Ryan a destination would be helpful.”  Lee said glancing over at his captain as he flipped a few switches overhead.

“Yes of course.”  Ryan dug into his bag and pulled out several disks and sorted through them then handed one to Lee.

“How nice.”  Lee’s sarcasm was not lost on Rook as he slipped the disk into the control board.

Flight data began to scroll across the small screen and Rook let out a sigh.  “Mr. Ryan just for your information the coordinates that you gave us are in a very restricted area.  I don’t suppose that you have the authorization codes in that bag of yours?”

“I do but I would prefer to hold onto them until needed.”

Rook turned her chair around and faced Ryan.  “You have two choices here.  One you can float down to Krontos on your own or I can fly you down.”

Ryan looked from Rook to Lee who only shook his head.  “You have a good point.  Let me just give you the codes now.”  Ryan handed over a second disk giving a sheepish smile.