“No, really. In the Jeweled Lizard. Second star from the end of the tail.”
Oldathan craned his neck to look upward, then brought the nose of the K-wing up so it would be easier for him to look. Sure enough, the tail of the familiar constellation had only four stars in it now, not five.
Then the missing star reappeared.
Almost holding his breath, Oldathan sent the K-wing into a spiraling climb toward that distant point in space, widening the pattern as he ascended. A moment later, the last star in the lizard’s tail vanished, then reappeared a few seconds afterward.
And there was still nothing on his sensors.
“Grayfeather One to squadron, Grayfeather One to Starfighter Control. We have an anomaly here, spaceward from my position, distance unknown, size unknown. Suspect it may be a cloaked capital vessel.” Starship cloaking mechanisms were rare due to the tremendous power drains they cost their host vehicles and, depending on the design, the usually fatal price of the vehicle controllers having no ability to detect anything outside their cloaking fields. But they did exist, and had been used within living memory.
“Grayfeather One, acknowledged.”
Oldathan switched to squadron frequency. “Two through Five, maintain your current patterns, but scan visually along the line I’m about to transmit.” He had Danen plot a missile-firing solution toward the anomaly zone and transmit it to the others. It appeared on the sensor boards as a line from his current position to the farthest reaches of the Commenor system, toward the end of the Jeweled Lizard’s tail.
A few moments later Grayfeather Four reported in. “I have it, sir.”
“Give me a plot.”
Seconds passed, and then another red line appeared on the sensor board. Together with Oldathan’s line, it formed two sides of a very long, narrow triangle. The third line, the triangle’s base, had it been drawn, would have been much shorter than the other two, and would have spanned only a fraction of Commenor’s diameter.
“Everybody, keep at it, update sightings on our sensor board. I’m heading up.” Oldathan switched back to fleet frequency, then sent his K-wing on a rapid ascent straight toward the target. “Control, blip is definitely an inbound ship. We’re triangulating to get its speed of approach.”
“Understood, Grayfeather One. We’ll have support your way within minutes.”
Oldathan shook his head. Starfighter Control was not likely to divert vehicles already engaged in Commenor orbit, meaning that what he’d get would be some reserve squadrons-likely as not, some planetary defense TIE fighters so old that their solar array wings wobbled.
As Oldathan climbed away from Commenor, the other Grayfeathers continued to supply him data. More lines appeared on his sensor board. They didn’t form a clean image; the triangle was shortening.
Danen muttered to himself as he ran mathematical calculations. “Best guess, it’s now at about twenty thousand clicks. And moving at about forty thousand clicks per hour.”
Oldathan grunted an acknowledgment. “It should begin decelerating pretty soon.”
Under constant acceleration, Grayfeather One closed the distance to the target in short order. Oldathan decelerated and swung wide of the incoming vessel’s approach path-not being able to see it or precisely calculate its speed made him twitchy, nervous about collision.
But now his target was easy to detect. Sensors still did not pick it up, nor could the naked eye, but there was a growing dark spot in space where stars just blanked out.
A big dark spot in space. “Danen, can you give me an estimated size?”
“Uhhh. … Circle it, would you?”
Oldathan did, drawing ever closer as he maneuvered. His own estimates made his mouth go dry. “I hope your numbers are friendlier than my guesses.”
“I don’t think so. I’d hazard. … thirty, forty kilometers across. At least.”
“Grayfeather One to Control. Incoming blip is meteor-sized. Repeat, meteor-sized. Nature and identity still not known. Blip is cloaked. Request authority to fire upon it.” There was a chance, a bare chance, that it was a friendly vehicle, planetoid-sized, arriving under the auspices of and with the permission of the planetary government, and refusal of authorization would be a sign that this was the case.
“Grayfeather, you are authorized to fire.”
Oldathan turned toward the void and accelerated. The rapidness with which it grew in his viewport suggested that he was close to it, but he had no good way of determining how close. No way before now.
“Arm two bangers. Report their transceiver codes to squadron and Control sensors. Then fire.”
Danen’s voice, now that he was engaged in acts of war, was cool, professional. “Yes, sir.”