| Reunion (cont'd) |
| "For the most part," Mansel answered, taking a brief glance at the infopad. "There's a few things still left that needs to be patched up--" "The transporters, I know about," Little interrupted. "Commander Vaughn was here not too long ago; I talked to him about it. "They'll be patched up by Thursday, correct?" Mansel nodded. "Yes ma'am. Thursday at the latest." "Good." The Admiral gestured to the infopad that Mansel was holding. "There's your first assignmnet." "Didn't hesitate, did you?" Mansel mumbled as he quickly scrolled through the mission outline. He frowned as he read the situation report. "A defector? One of us is attempting to defect to the Imperial side?" Little nodded. "Yes. When I went through his record, I noticed you went to the Academy with him. Perhaps you remember Damion Hicks? Mansel didn't bother to try and hide the surprise from his face. "Not Hicks....impossible. He might be an annoying little bastard sometimes, but not even he would stoop so low as to defect over to the Imperials." In response, the Admiral dipped into a file on her desk and produced photos. She slid them across the desk to Mansel. Scowling that his cursory theory was about to be proved wrong, the new starship commander leaned over and snatched them up. They were photos, five of them. Each photo had Hicks in it; in each one he was talking to a different man. Who exactly the men were didn't much matter at that particular moment in time, but one thing stood out between all of them. They wore Imperial uniforms. "Where'd you get these from?" he asked, handing the photos back over to Admiral Little. Immediately she put them back in the proper file and locked it away in her bottom file drawer. Admiral Little gave Mansel another one of her famous scowls, one she reserved specifically for the young commander. "Come now, Mansel. You know I can't tell you that; you know our sources are classified." The Captain nodded idly, having gone back to the infopad. "Any idea when he is going to attempt his defection?" "Three days." Once again, Admiral Little gestured to the infopad. "It's all on there, the when, the how...the only thing we don't have yet is the where." "Intel working on that?" Mansel loved and valued the people that worked for UNSF Intelligence. Their information made his job so much easier. They made the who, what, where, and when of thing so much more convenient and less timely. The why could be discerned at a later date. The Admiral nodded. "As soon as I get that information, I'll forward it on to you. But for now, get out there and stop him before he can make a move. That'll be all." "Yes ma'am." Captain Mansel stood up and prepared to leave. "Mansel." The starship captain stopped at the door and turned back around. "Yes?" The Admiral gave him a warm smile. "Good luck out there." *** UNSF shuttle ???? SET 2193 Mansel didn�t have to tell the Ensign operating the shuttle where to take him when he stepped in. It was a known fact around UNSF Headquarters that the Explorer-B was heading out that day; a ceremony had been prepared, but due to the newly raised urgency, it had been canceled. Now, it was just Mansel and his crew on their way out to match wits against an old friend of Mansel�s. All this and more was on Mansel�s mind as the shuttle sped as fast as its little engines could take them to the Sovereign-class ship waiting in limbo inside the spacedock above Earth, Spacedock 01. The starship captain was sitting quietly in his seat beside the Ensign, looking out the window, trying to clear his mind and get himself back into the mindset that he was back out in space again. He hoped that he wasn�t too rusty; the scenarios that UNSF HQ ran him through certainly proved that he wasn�t. Mansel knew, however, that not every possibility could be programmed into a computer. He could do nothing else but wait until the challenge arose to test himself to see if he was once again fit to command a starship. The Ensign brought him back to reality with a quick nudge in the ribs. �There she is, Captain,� he said with a nod of his head. �The Explorer-B.� The Sovereign-class spaceships amazed Mansel every time he saw them. The disk was slightly skewered from the norm; instead of being near perfectly round as had the original Explorer, this disk was more elliptical in form, being loner than wide. There was no distinct connector piece to the disk and the body, also a differentiation from his old ship. Here, the disk flowed smoothly into the body, which in turn, branched off into two translight engines, both on either side of the ship. The ship was an engineer�s beauty. |
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