The Return of the Manhattan by Lee Ecker Read Free Book Online Page A

speed. The personnel on Space Station Juliet are anxiously awaiting our arrival, planning a reception in our honor, which my wife and I will attend. David will be in command during my absence. Marie, you can shuttle us to the station and bring the passengers aboard. I don’t want any of our regular crew to leave the ship. Too many loose tongues and news of our mission would reach the space pirates long before we reach light speed. We will put our starfighter pilots on full alert as we approach Juliet and remain on red alert until we reach light speed. The greatest danger from the pirates will be in the solar system and particularly while we are relatively stationary at the space station. Roger, what’s the latest ETA?”
    “We should be there in under two weeks. We began our deceleration weeks ago.”
    “Marie, you and David should get with Kevin Haugen, the flight commander for the starfighters, and map out the alert strategy.”
    “We’ll get right on it.”
     
    Marie paged Kevin and David joined her as they walked the short distance to the pilot’s briefing room. David turned on the projection system and they watched again the spectacular view they recorded while they passed near Saturn a few weeks earlier. The planet had been close enough for the rings to take on definition of their own. In moments like that, space travel had its rewards. They sat together and David held Marie close as they watched as the particles making up the rings seemed to swirl as the irregular shaped particles caught and reflected the sun’s rays. It was like watching a beautiful romantic sunset on Earth which seemed to go on forever.
    They were interrupted in their reverie as Kevin entered the room, “Good morning Marie, David, you wanted to see me?”
    Marie nodded, “Yes, Kevin, sit down. Can you believe this fantastic sight?” They continued to watch as she briefly described the rendezvous at the space station. “The Excalibur will be most vulnerable while orbiting Juliet, and we will require fighter protection. As soon as we slow to launch, we need to keep a portion of our force outside the ship on patrol and the rest ready for immediate launch until leaving the Solar System. Our intelligence reports are months old, but they indicate all known pirate ships have been relatively quiet recently and were last sighted near Jupiter which is a long way from our course. Even though we have no reason to believe they are aware of our mission or our configuration, we must be prepared. I’m sure they would love to capture some additional top of the line starfighters. If we could continue at top speed, we wouldn’t have any trouble running away from them, but we must stop at Juliet. We will have to rotate the crews on and off duty while we orbit Juliet. Give me your candid opinion on those security plans.”
    Kevin was confident, “Don’t worry, we have the best pilots and anyone tangling with us should have their heads examined. We have been practicing the latest defensive maneuvers in the simulator and all our pilots are well prepared.”
    Marie was more cautious, “Don’t get too cocky. Those pirates may not have the latest equipment, but the element of surprise will be on their side. Our intelligence reports indicate they do have the latest stealth cloaking technology and we won’t be able to detect them until it’s too late to prevent an attack.”
    “True and there’s always danger involving a surprise attack. We would not be here if we weren’t willing to take that risk, but it won’t be as easy as they might think. We will launch four ships and keep them in a high speed scissors formation at a distance of one to two hundred miles from the Excalibur. At our speed, we can cover that distance quickly while keeping our surveillance active. We could cloak, but our speed will be our advantage. If they attack, they will have to uncloak for a few seconds first and that should be enough. While cloaked, they can’t maneuver quickly