Chapter 15 - Early wake up

Day 3

Jay was woken up at 4am in the morning by an alarm on his comm. Report to cockpit. Was all it said

He jumped up and dressed in a hurry and met Tilly heading in the same direction. Benny, and Ryder were already there.

"What's going on?" said Jay 

Ryder started to explain "I have been watching another ship going in the same direction that we are. It appears to be a newer ship with a much higher speed that what his old girl can hold. I have been making our course look like we could have been heading to two other planets at once but this ship ever since I noticed it has been heading directly to Planet S610" 

"I don't have a good feeling about this" said bunny as she entered the room with a tray containing coffee for everyone. 

"Oh Bunny" said Benny almost groaning in delight "you do know the way to a man's heart. . .  Jay can we keep her"

"Careful Benny, she is a wild thing that can't be tamed" Jay warned

It was quiet while they all took their first sip

Then Ryder began again "The big thing is, in the next 10mins we run out of places to head, we need to turn off to Planet S610 and they will know exactly where we are heading.

"If we turn off to S610 now how long will it take us to reach it and how long will it take them to reach it?

"Based on the top speed I have seen them do, they will get there 45mins before us. 

"Can you tell if they are hostile?" Asked tilly

"No but I suspect this ship is a Solar KY-9P. It was only released last year and its specs are impressive, I was asked to review them for the military for long haul missions. They are everything but bomb proof and also have self-defensive measures. You don't want to go near one of these things uninvited.

"How long until it passes us?" Jay asked

"20mins" said Ryder

"If we hold our course until they have passed and then head for the planet, what will the time difference be?" Asked Jay

"Just over an hour" replied Ryder

“Can we establish communication with S610? We should at least warn them,” said Tilly

"Yes, try and make contact." agreed Jay

Bunny spoke up, “what if we just stop, fake a break down, look like something is wrong and we are going to the closest planet for repairs? What would the time difference be then?"

"Actually" Ryder said "that could work really well, we would only loose a little bit of time and we can open an emergency line with the planet and try give them a coded message.

"If they are hostile, do you think that will be enough to fool them? Asked Tilly

"I think it’s the best plan we have,” said Jay. "How far away are we from getting to the planet."

"2 hours" Ryder said

"Its not much time to prepare for battle" said Tilly "especially when your army are kids, your weaponry is nothing more than a pea shooters and your planet wants to explode."

"Yeah we had better get them out of bed," said Captain Jay "Ryder better make this breakdown sound good"

"Right, better hold on we are going to stop . . . In a hurry." Ryder warned.

He flicked a couple of buttons and pulled power. And the ship came to a complete stop. 

"How long do you suppose is reasonable to wait before putting out a distress signal" asked Tilly

“Five and a half minutes” Bunny said shrugging her shoulders, “someone has to call it.”

“What is our message going to say” asked Benny “should we use a Ziion military code – do you think the Ziion Master could de-code it. What if the other ship can de-code it too”

“All we can do is try it” said Bunny

“SOS, malfunctioning ship, requesting permission to dock to repair.”  add to the code: warning =A , Incoming Ship = C, possibly hostile = T , eta 2hours =2.

Ryder prepared the code by misspelling the words to include the Ziion Milltary code in it. It now looked like

“SOS, malaunctioning ship, requecting permtission to dock 2 repair.” 

He typed it in and pressed send.

“Oh let this work” pleaded bunny

They resent the code 3 times before that got a reply

SOS

Dora was woken by an SOS alarm sounding at 4.20am, She eased out of bed and got dressed. They were way out on the edge of the Solar system but they would get an SOS about once a year. having nothing to really help they mainly just passed the distress message to whoever the person in trouble would suppose could come and get them.

She Read the message on her comm. So this crew wasn’t completely hopeless then, if they thought they could fix the problem. She sent back a message.: Who are you and state your business.

She then noticed that the message was very poorly spelt but unfortunately her gift was useless unless she was asking a person directly. She immediately went and knocked on Master Alex’s door. He was woken up by the same alarm. He opened the door in a hurry. “There is a hidden code! Quick we need to initiate lockdown.”

“Wait, What, why” she felt her gift start to pull at Alex

“The hidden code is Warning us, Incoming Ship, possibly hostile, eta 2hours It’s the most basic code used by Ziion Military.”

She almost had to run after Alex to the control room “Do you think this is a real threat?”

She asked

“I’m going to treat it like so, until I know otherwise”

He hit the button to engage the lock down measures.

He pulled up the radar to have a look, cursed at the old technology and opened a direct line with the ship that had issued the SOS. Now the radar was up he could see two ships just coming into range. One ship was indeed stopped while the other was coming straight towards the planet, and it was going way too fast to be a merchant or supply ship.

“Hello, this is Master Alex of Planet S610, Please report, who you are, why you are this far out and any intel you have on the other ship.

“Is this line secure”

“Yes”