Chapter 66

The hover car made its way to one of the outlying factory complexes, and was soon stopping by a rather nondescript looking building. As they entered the building, Lennon saw that it appeared to be a storage facility of some sort. They made their way to the office area, and once there Commander Ahmed started typing on the keypad on the desk. Then she looked at Lennon.

"Sir, I need you to say your title and name, then wait 3 seconds and do it again."

Lennon did as she asked, then she turned the screen toward him. "Please look here."

Again Lennon did it, and his retinal patterns were scanned. She then asked him to stand very still. As he did so, she typed in another command. Now Lennon felt a mild tingling sensation for a few moments. Once that was done, Commander Ahmed looked at Mr. Douglas again, and she just nodded.

Luke looked at Lennon, "We've done a complete scan Lennon, because we are about to go into one of our highest restricted areas."

Jeff now walked over to a storage cabinet, and took out a basket, and held it in front of Lennon. "If you don't mind Lennon."

Lennon looked at him for just a moment, then nodded. He began to place his electronics into the basket. Once he was done, Commander Ahmed cleared her throat a little.

Jeff looked at Lennon, "Lennon?"

Lennon looked at him for a moment, then he realized what they meant. He reached into a pouch on his belt and took out a hand sized cannister. He held it up for them, "It's actually my staff, but I will leave it behind."

"Thank you Lennon, for indulging our paranoia,"

Now Commander Ahmed hit her comm.-link. "This is the Captain. Initiate all systems. Go to full active mode."

"Aye aye sir. All systems on line, field fully active."

Lennon saw that Jeff and Luke were smiling now. Commander Ahmed looked at him, "Master Lennon, if you would follow me."

She pressed a button on her comm,-link, and a portion of the wall slid back to reveal another door. They entered the room, and he realized it was an elevator of some sort. He felt only a momentary pull as it started, and he felt they were going down, but how far he couldn't even begin to guess. When the elevator stopped, Lennon saw that they were in a large underground hangar. As they stepped out, he looked at Mr. Douglas as if to ask a question, but Mr. Douglas put up his hand. He, Jeff and the Commander now stood in front of Lennon, and Luke looked at him.

"Before you ask me anything Lennon, you need to know a little of our history. Some of what we're about to tell you, is only known to the people of our universe, and very few others. The rest to even fewer. So I must ask that what you're about to see and hear, you don't reveal to anyone."

Lennon looked at him, "I Pledge on my honor as Anla-Shok Na that I will not reveal anything you tell me or show me to anyone."

Luke just nodded, "Before we came here, our confederation was at war with a species known as the Kilrathi. They are a feline race that are highly aggressive and extremely territorial. "

Jeff quipped, "They would probably get along great with your shadows."

Luke nodded a little, "What most people don't know, even back home, is that about 10 years before we arrived here, the Kilrathi had developed a new ship. It was a scout fighter, and they took the idea of stealth to a whole new level. The ship had a new type of stealth field that made the ship virtually invisible. Both to electronic scans and visual sighting."

Lennon had an amazed look on his face, "How did your people defeat such ships?"

Commander Ahmed looked at him now, "We got very lucky sir."

"How so commander?"

Luke continued, "Well Lennon, the Kilrathi were still field testing the ships when they came across a flight of fighters from a Confed carrier. The Kilrathi immediately attacked, and managed to destroy one of the fighters, and damaged the other. But the Confed fighters also managed to destroy most of the stealth fighters. When the pilot reported what had happened, it was found that his data recorder was damaged, and he had no proof other than what he had seen. So his commanders didn't believe him. Two weeks later, his carrier was destroyed while he was on patrol."

Lennon just nodded and Luke started again. "There was one other lucky thing that happened about the same time Lennon. One of the Kilrathi clans, living on the planet Gora Kar revolted against their leadership and asked the Confederation for help. When our ships arrived, the local commander who was still loyal was ordered to destroy a small isolated base on the far side of the planet. Which he did with orbital bombardment, then he got out of there just as our ships were approaching."

Commander Ahmed continued, "I was with that battle group, and with the forces that were stationed on Gora Kar. When I heard that the Kilrathi had gone out of their way to destroy such an isolated base, I decided to check it out. There wasn't much left, but I did find some computer memory chips and some unusual crystals. Well, my commander at the time didn't think that what I had found was to interesting, so I worked on decoding the stuff I had found on my own time. It took me almost 10 years, and when I finally cracked it, I sent the Intel to my new Commander, Admiral Douglas."

"After I checked out her data, and then checked with Hershel to see if it was even possible, I forwarded the information to Confed. That was the last I had heard about it."

Now Jeff started, "About a week before we arrived here. One of our flights of heavy fighters were jumped by six unknown fighters. The ships kept fading in and out on my pilots scanners. So their flight leader took a chance, and ordered her pilots to use only leech missiles. The first ship they hit blew completely apart, it seemed that the fighters had very little armor on them. So when she saw one of them, she fired her leech missile, and had her Flight computer do a proximity detonation. This shut it down completely. They then had to destroy the other fighters, as they were now trying to destroy the damaged ship. Well our people towed in the damaged fighter, and the Admiral had Hershel and her people going over it almost before we got it on board. We were supposed to send it to Confed R+D, but a few days later we were here."

Lennon looked like he was putting the pieces together in his mind, "So your enemy had this new type of fighter, and I take it it was being developed on Gora Kar."

The others just nodded so Lennon kept going, "So when your people arrived, your enemy destroyed the base to keep their secret." Again the others nodded.

"And then before you came here, you managed to capture one of these ships."

.......

Now the Commander continued, "Well from the working fighter, and the data I had. We found out some very interesting things."

"Such as?"

"Well for one, the field needs a lot of energy to work. It also needs a very rare crystal to properly channel that energy. A crystal that is not so rare here."

Jeff continued, "And Lennon, as you know we have been studying your peoples technology since we arrived here."

Luke smiled, "We've learned a few things from your people Lennon."

Lennon gave him a puzzled look.

"It seems that your peoples stealth fields are very energy efficient. And they use some of the same principles as the kilrathi field. Another plus we have is that we've also located several large asteroids on which the crystal is rather abundant. So we started a project to combine the things we had discovered. A project that I think will be very helpful right about now."

Lennon looked at them now, "Are you saying that you have developed these kinds of fighters?"

Luke shook his head, then Luke looked at Commander Ahmed and nodded. Commander Ahmed pressed her comm.-link now, "Go to stand by mode."

As Lennon watched, the very air seemed to shimmer, and a large ship appeared. He couldn't believe his eyes, and he turned and just looked at the others. "This ship has been here the entire time?"

Jeff couldn't resist, he smiled at Lennon, "Gotcha."

Luke walked up next to Lennon, "Lennon, this is the CCS Spectre. The first ship to carry the new stealth shield system. As you can see, it is quite effective."

Lennon just nodded, "But what about when it is in flight?"

Now it was the commander who was smiling, "The field works just as well in flight as it does on the ground. But we're having a few problems with the field in hyperspace."

Jeff smiled now, "But Hershel's promised to get those worked out eventually."

Luke just looked at the others, "Shall we return to the Commanders office and figure out what we're going to do next."