Chapter 14

SYSTEM AGC-187

TWO DAYS LATER

The Wisconsin approached on quarter impulse power. Nothing had showed up on sensors, but there were literally millions of objects in the system. The coordinates were about a hundred million miles inside the outermost shell of debris.

Jacobs looked at the screen, The distant sun was partly occluded by dust, ice, and whatever else was in this system. Looking to his right, Leonaidas was also looking at the screen and working the tactical system. The big screen behind him had the debris shell and the Wisconsin's approach plotted as well as the coordinates designated by the virus.

The sensors were able to pick up Pirate E's augmented warp trail, and confirmed that Pirate E was heading straight for system AGC-187. Hotchner had the warp trail along with the ETA for the system on his screens. Jacobs looked around, "Any indications that there are any Suprises?"

Hotchner was the first to respond. "Nothing on sensors. No unaccounted-for electrical fields, no power fields, nothing to indicate anyone else knows we're here."

Jacobs nodded. "A perfect place for a pirate base?"

Hotchner shrugged. "I wouldn't know."

Carter offered in, "Lots of places to hide. If I was being chased, I could lose somebody quickly here."

Santini countered. "Maybe, maybe not. With all that debris, you couldn't see well enough to see somebody approaching. Tough situation for a pirate base."

Silence followed for a while. Jacobs walked down to in front of the Helm/Nav console. "To quote a movie, 'It's too quiet'."

Leonaidas had a quizzical look. Jacobs turned around and leaned against the console and explained. "Something's not right here. The system is dead. Why come here?"

Leonaidas shook his head. "Maybe so, but they are going to be here in a few hours. What do we do?"

Jacobs answered. "Good question. Only thing I can think of is go inside and lurk where we can observe those coordinates. Any other ideas?"

Nobody offered any ideas. Jacobs nodded and turned around. "Alan, take us in and let's find a spot. JJ, please let the Claw know and to keep tight formation."

The Wisconsin continued its course ahead. Passing through the shell is an uneventful moment. There are noticeably more asteroids around, but it is not an obscuring cloud, at least in short distances. A ship can fly through this with no problem at all. It makes seeing from one side to the other a bit more difficult though because of the sheer numbers of asteroids. One of those rocks had a small sensor package on it. The computer was programmed to passively sense any power signatures and lock on cameras and take some pictures.

A few hours later, Pirate E came out of warp speed. As Pirate E approached the star system, it sent out a signal to the sensor package. The sensor package responded with a very tight communications signal beam directed back at Pirate E. The Captain of the Kruk looked at the transmission. Included were some images of that blasted starship that they had come across. Also included were some data on the power signature that the package had sensed.

The Captain was furious. "HOW DID THEY FIND US?"

One of his underlings offered, "They must have been following us!"

The Captain slapped him and made him fall against his console. "They got here before us! They KNEW we were going to be here! We have a spy!"

The sensor operator offered. "Maybe not, we know they have a lot of equipment on the ship. We need to look for something that would be transmitting coordinates we set."

The Captain calmed down a bit. "Helm, set a course for somewhere, anywhere from here. Warp 3."

The helmsman answered, "But sir!"

"DO IT NOW!"

Pirate E turned and went to warp. The sensor operator was looking at his screen over the transmitted data from the package and blinked. The Captain isn't going to like this, but he needs to know. "Sir, come take a look."

The Captain glared at him, but realized that the operator was probably just trying to do his job. Looking at the screen, there was a funny bump underneath the Federation starship. "What is that?" he said disdainfully.

The sensor operator explained, "I thought the same thing, so I'm going through all the images. A few images later, this shows up."

The image was of the Starship's stern and underneath it was the stern of a pirate ship. It must be the Claw. "Let's not break radio silence. We'll let the base know when we get there."

BRIDGE

USS WISCONSIN

Lt. Jareau looked to the side towards the Captain. "Sir, I just got a brief signal from the same bearing that the pirate is coming from."

Jacobs turned to her and asked, "Anything else?"

"No Sir."

Jacobs started wondering what that was all about. Octavian was standing up on the landing by the turbolift watching everything. It is interesting how you may change the setting, but things will still be the same. Octavian said, "I think we broke the tamper seal."

Jacobs turned to him and asked, "What do you mean?"

Octavian pointed to the Communication displays. "They had a sentinel. The Pirate signals the sentinel, the sentinel reports what it has seen, then the Pirate determines if it is safe to go on."

Jacobs looked at the communication displays. "No response?"

Jareau looked back at him. "It wouldn't be too hard to set up a directional return signal. After all, they would be concerned about somebody inside the system lurking, just like we are."

Jacobs shook his head. He then noticed Hotchner frowning at his readings. "Hotch, what are you looking at?"

Hotchner turned to point at his big screen. "I'm picking up the augmented warp trail now, seems like the pirate is turning and running."

Jareau chimed in, "Confirmed sir, just got a signal from the virus. It reports that they have set heading 360 mark 0, Warp 3."

Jacobs asked Agathon, "Mr. Hornblower, what is down that heading?"

"Nothing for a few light-years sir. "

Time to get out of here. "Alan, set a course back down the Pirate's incoming path, best possible speed. JJ, do you think we can duplicate their signal?"

Jareau pulled up the data on the signal that they received. "I believe so, there was a little interference, but I think that we can clean that up. What are you thinking?"

Jacobs pointed at the big screen. "I think the Pastor is right. We've spooked them and now they are trying to clear the area. Let's try to see what they saw. We know we can outrun them, outmaneuver them, so let's grab some intel on what they know about us. Hotch, can you plot the point that they sent the signal?"

Hotch nodded. "Reasonably so, yes."

Jacobs pointed to the big screen, "Alan, set a course for those coordinates, let's try to find out how we messed this up."

USS WISCONSIN

OUTSIDE SYSTEM AGC-187

The Wisconsin and Claw had been hovering in space while the Wisconsin tried numerous times to synthesize the signal that the Pirate had sent. It was proving more difficult than first anticipated. Jacobs looked at his people working the problem. Jareau had all the communications displays covered with technical data as she tried to recreate the signal. So far nothing had worked.

The breakthrough came from the Claw. McGee cracked enough of the Navigation computer to show that this system was one of several that the Pirates used to screen for ships trailing them.

Jareau turned to Jacobs. "The Claw reporting."

Jacobs pushed the channel button, "Mr. Agathon, what have you found?"

Agathon explained, "Mr. McGee found that this system is one of eight that the Pirates use as approaches to their pirate base. Pirates come into the system, send a signal, and a series of sentinels send data on all the recent contacts. The Pirates loiter, then leave, and check to see if anyone has followed them into the system."

Jacobs asked, "Can you send a signal to see what they have on us?"

"Yes sir, sending when you are ready to receive."

Jacobs looked at Jareau, and she nodded. "Go ahead Claw."

Over on the Claw, Lt Reeves sent the required signal. The sentinel immediately sent data back on the Wisconsin and Claw exiting the star system, along with their entry. Jareau received the encrypted data, and along with the data from the Claw, and now would be able to decode future transmissions. Everyone started looking at the data, most especially the pictures. The Pirates had very good pictures of the Wisconsin and even a few of the Claw.

Everyone on the bridge was looking at them on the main screen. Octavian shook his head at the quality of the pictures. "We went right by it and never found it. Those pictures could be used as publicity photos of the Enterprise class cruiser."

Hotchner was running something on his console. "Sir, from those angles, I can plot where the sentinel is."

Grimm offered, "We could blow it up."

Hotchner thought differently. "Or we could get it to work for us. Let's plant a bug and have it report to us as well. Some of that data is of the Pirate E approaching, turning and running. We could have the sentinel report to us any approaching ship, even negate Federation starships from the database so that they will think the coast is clear."

Jacobs liked this idea. "How close would we need to be to receive the intel?"

Jareau answered, "Locally, the transmitter is not interstellar."

Jacobs talked into the chairmike, "Mr. Agathon, send over the coordinates of the sentinels in the system. We have some work to do quickly."

SHUTTLECRAFT BRANDENSTIEN

SENTINEL #1

Jacobs was in his pressure suit sitting at the controls of the shuttlecraft. Basically, it was an easy mission. Just fly out with Maya and Jareau to hack and plant the virus that Hotchner had suggested. He decided to avail himself of the chance to get some stick time. This was the first of the six shuttlecraft scheduled to be converted with stick-and-rudder inputs. The way shuttlecraft were designed would make it impossible to have 'manual' backup, but at least you could have manual input to the fly-by-wire computer.

The Slayton, Williams, and Chiao were enroute to the other three sentinels for this system. The plan was that as soon as Jacobs was done with this first one, they would land back on the Wisconsin, and the Wisconsin would go pick up the other shuttles as they finished.

Jacobs liked the new shuttlecraft. The previous version had only three small windows facing forward. These were largely skylights, not useful for any navigation at all. He disliked the old shuttlecraft immensely. You couldn't see outside them at all effectively, essentially you had to fly with sensor readings alone. If you wanted to visually see outside, you had to open one of the window covers or there was a sensor display on an arm that you could move around. It was as if the shuttlecraft designer hated to fly, or wanted to prove that they could design pilots out of the system.

The new shuttlecraft had great wraparound windows, almost as much visibility as a Raptor. Jacobs had talked to Starfleet about building them with the manual inputs, to which they said no, but he was free to modify them as his mission needed. Carter and Santini started working on the plans to create the inputs, but due to the other pressing modifications to the Wisconsin, work on the shuttlecraft were delayed. They took the shuttlecraft as standard shuttlecraft and planned on modifying them later.

The only thing about these new shuttlecrafts was that it had one big door in the tail section. It lowered down and took forever to open. Jacobs did not like the time it took to open, and was not sure the overall usefulness to having the door on the rear wall. It made this job of hovering above the asteroid with Sentinel #1 so difficult he had to put it on autopilot. Now if there were controls directly in front of the door looking aft, that might be easier to work. If memory served, the original United States space shuttle had a similar arrangement for docking. Maybe it will be good to talk with Dom about this.

It did feel a bit non-chivalrous to be letting the women doing the grunt work outside, but they really were the two best for the job. McGee was shaping up to be the best hacker he had ever seen, but his talents were needed on the Claw. Lt. Maya would do fine hacking and her science knowledge will probably come in useful. Hopefully, by the time they were done, they could pass on the info to the other teams before they rendezvoused with the other sentinels.

All teams had a Badger along with them to look for booby traps. Lt Thomas Magnum was outside finishing up looking the sentinel over. "Nothing on this one. I would have thought they would have had a self destruct device."

Lt. Jareau thought aloud, "They probably have a tamper program to wipe the memory clear. Maybe they were worried about a self destruct device accidently going off because of a stray rock hitting nearby. There is an awful lot of activity nearby."

Maya was looking at the overall setup. "Very simple system. There is a phased array antenna for sending and receiving signals. Passive sensor system that senses and images any power system. The most sophisticated part of the system is that it's housed in a casing meant to dampen electrical signals."

It did not take long for the team to hack the computer and insert the program. After inserting the program, they started checking to see if it was working properly. The computer was properly recording the Claw, but not the Wisconsin and the nearby shuttlecraft. Jareau was impressed. "Maya, it's working great. From what I see in this picture, the Wisconsin is blanked out. All I'm showing is the Claw."

Maya answered, "I set the program up so that it wouldn't take any picture of Federation ships. If a Federation ship was in the photo, then it will simply make all pixels that have the ship black. It won't work if the ship is in front of a star or other object, but it's better than nothing. I wanted it simple."

Jareau smiled. "I'm beginning to think this 'Keep it Simple' should be our motto. The Captain keeps stressing that."

Maya observed, "He does that with everything, does he not like complex plans?"

Jareau answered her, "No, not really. Even back on the Wolverine, he wanted to keep things simple. He said that he couldn't comprehend the complex ones."

Maya tended to be naïve sometimes, and the crew liked giving her a bad time about that. "He can't comprehend complex plans? How can a person become a starship Captain and not understand complexities?"

Jareau was just finishing packing up, decided to start a joke. "He doesn't understand complex ideas. He relies on simple explanations. Less words is more. You even have to talk slowly with him." Jareau was waiting for the Captain to chime in, knowing that it was an open channel.

Jacobs smiled at the banter and jumped in, "Ladies, remember I'm here. Not only do explanations have to be simple, I prefer words of one syllable."

Maya looked quizzically at Jareau and responded, slowly, "OK, sir"

Jacobs was ready for the zinger, "That's two syllables Maya."

Jareau started laughing, then everyone else. Maya got it and realized she had been had. This was her first real time spent with the Captain, and at least he had a sense of humor. She could appreciate humor, but rarely saw the joke coming. Maya finished up laughing, "Yes Sir."

Jacobs was laughing too, "That's more like it Maya. If you ladies are finished, let's get back to home."

The other modifications to the sentinels were done without any problems. Once everyone was aboard, course was set to close the distance with Pirate E.

BRIDGE

USS WISCONSIN

Jacobs was looking over some reports on ship readiness. The mood in the bridge seemed better than when Pirate E left system AGC-187. Hotchner looked up from the science console, "Detecting a change in Pirate E's course. I think they are heading to the system ahead and to the left."

Jacobs set the report pad down. "JJ, any word from the virus?"

Jareau shook her head, "No sir, not a single byte."

Jacobs looked at the tactical screen above Leonaidas. The updated course was displayed along with a range error circle. It was a relatively good fix on the Pirate. "Looks like we're down to our last contingency. They must have found the virus. TC, bring us to course 257 mark 20. Hotch, can we do warp 7 without being detected?"

Hotch nodded, "At this distance, yes."

Jacobs stood and walked to the ready room door. "TC, bring us to warp 7. Leo, you have the Conn. I'm going to draft a message to Starfleet.

STARFLEET HEADQUARTERS

ADMIRAL KIRK'S OFFICE

Kirk started reading the latest message from the Wisconsin. After action report on the rescue of Tahiti went as he thought it would. After that was where it became interesting.

"I had a brief talk with Hammel of the Huron. It did not go well at all. I think he got defensive over a simple question concerning how fast they reacted to a beam-in. Then he wanted me to render assistance, which I denied. The reason is simple, if we went out of the range we expected we could detect Pirate E, we could lose them. The Huron in my judgement was not in dire need of help, so did not warrant abandoning our duty to our mission. No doubt Hammel is going to make a complaint about my not coming to his aid, and that is the reason why."

Kirk smirked at that and said to himself, "He already has."

The message continued, "Our planted virus allowed us to get to system AGC-187 before the pirate, but we inadvertently were picked up by a sentinel system and he left. Appended at the end of this is a file locating sentinels for other systems and the method on how to hack them for our purposes. Basically, the pirates use these systems to screen for other ships that might trail them to their pirate base. Crewman McGee is credited for successful hacking of the database to find out these waypoints. I propose that Starfleet send a ship to hack these other systems for our clandestine use against pirates in the future.

"Currently, we are tracking the pirate via the augmented warp trail. Evidence suggests that they have found and removed of all our homing beacons and have found our virus. Somehow the virus has been circumvented and we are no longer collecting information via the virus. We intend on tracking them to whatever system they go to, collect intelligence, and perform a rescue.

"We are also working on the theory about the pirates. For their security, their base may not be in the database as 'Base' or 'Home' or something like that. They also may never actually set course for the base. Pirates may go to one of these checkpoints, and when clear, simply set a course and speed from memory and after a certain amount of time, they are at the system. The base is probably in the database because the navigation computer would have to calculate orbital rendezvous, however the actual base is probably referred to as an asteroid or something. To quote somebody, you hide a tree in the forest.

"Let me know if you need anything else, all data referred to is appended this report. Jacobs out."

Kirk sat back and thought a bit. He was glad that the Wisconsin took that bit of advantage in planting those augmenters. Kirk doubted anybody else would've thought of that much less went to the trouble. The tough thing is going to be this incident with the Huron. Kirk remembered Captain Hammel well, the guy just rubbed him the wrong way right off the bat years ago when they met during Kirk's time on Enterprise. Hammel had been a first officer on another ship. Kirk had to come to their rescue on a landing party. Hammel was to supposed to rescue a landing party from some relative primitives. The Prime Directive didn't apply there because the Klingons had prior contact with them, so the primitives knew about aliens. Hammel took his security force, dressed in 'kill-me-red', and walked right into the village with phaser pistols drawn in broad daylight and went up to the hut where the hostages were held. Transporters couldn't be used because of some natural mineral interfered with them, so their plan was walk in, grab them, and leave.

The plan went awry when they stopped in front of the hut. Hammel yelled for the hostages to be released, to which the natives had responded by springing traps from under the sand that pulled the team off their feet. All of them were dragged about thirty feet and lost their phasers. So now it was up to Kirk to free them all.

Hammel had a tendency for grandstanding, especially when he thought he had the upper hand. Kirk decided. "Captain Jacobs, I've read your report. My comments on your work are exemplary, keep it up. No doubt you will find the base soon. If there is anything Starfleet can do to support, please let us know. I am going to task a ship for your suggestion on the pirate sentinels as soon as possible. As far as Captain Hammel, I am going to open an inquiry to that whole incident, including how his ship ended up in that condition to begin with. You will probably need to give some testimony, so be ready when the JAG office contacts you. For what it is worth, I've seen your transmission with the Huron, and I wouldn't have been as nice as you were in telling him to take care of his own ship. Keep up the good work, Kirk, out."

Kirk then searched his personal database and found the person he was looking for. He started a message to Samuel T Cogley, Attorney at Law. "Sam, hope you are doing well. I have a good Captain that may need some legal help in the future. His name is Joshua Jeremiah Jacobs, no kidding. His parents had a sense of humor. Anyway, he's Captain of the Wisconsin, doing very well, but may be getting into some political heat and may need some cover. Let me know if you can help. Thanks, Jim."