Star Force: Ghostblade (SF67) (11 page)
Read Star Force: Ghostblade (SF67) Online
Authors: Aer-ki Jyr
“Even for jumpship slips?”
“Haven’t got one of those out of design phase yet.
Everything I’m referring to has been hastily built in prototype back home. What
I’ve got here are the first and last of the production models. Everything else
going forward stays with Clans Saber and Sangheili, while these were quietly
misplaced in the construction logs. The crews that built them will be cycling
out to us as they train others to replace themselves in the program, so we’re
still ghosts in this, though the sooner these jumpships get back to normal
operations the better, because we still have a trail until they do.”
“Paul really is worried about a computer hack, isn’t
he?”
“I wouldn’t say worried, just playing things safe.
This Clan is going to be our ace in the hole should something unexpected
happen, V’kit’no’sat or otherwise, and he wants us to live up to our name as
soon as possible. Nice choice by the way. Pays homage to both Saber and
Sangheili.”
“This is a joint op, so it only seemed fitting.”
Lev raised an eyebrow. “This is way more than an op,
unless Paul has been telling me tall tales?”
“Right now it’s an op. I have to build the actual Clan
along the way.”
“Are we basing outside of Star Force territory or just
visiting to grab goodies?”
“We’re staying outside and out of sight for now,
though we do need to establish a line of communication back home. We can’t
build relays of our own, so we’re going to have to have proxy ships within both
Saber and Sangheili fleets come out to meet us for information downloads. If we
access a relay directly there’s an electronic trail to follow, while a ship can
give us full access to records without any system flags going up.”
“Now you are just being paranoid.”
“Being thorough. Very, very thorough.”
“How are we going to communicate with our own fleet
once it gets large enough to be spread out?”
“That’s one of many problems yet to be solved, but
since we don’t have a fleet yet we’ve got time to chew on it…along with a lot
of other things. Paul and Jason have promised to work most of it out from their
end, I’m here to put it into actual practice.”
“And hit the lizards to no end.”
Kara smiled. “Exactly.”
Lev crossed his arms over his chest. “Why do I get the
feeling we’ll be going after more than cargo ships in the long run?”
“Star Force has gotten very good at recycling lizard
tech. It may not be as convenient as stealing their cargo, but it’s a hell of a
lot easier than mining it ourselves.”
“Yeah, I’m definitely going to enjoy being part of
this Clan,” Lev said with a smile. “We need somewhere to ground these puppies.
Do you have a site selected yet?”
“Yep. Two jumps from here and a nice, quiet little
frozen ice ball with a lot of untouched ore fields.”
“Ice?” he said, losing his merriment.
“The rebels didn’t choose
Hoth
for the scenery,” Kara reminded him. “Clan Ghostblade has to be invisible,
which means going to the fringes and avoiding all the obvious vacation spots.”