Time for some more? I think so!
Call To Arms
"Incoming distress signal."
Those three words were enough to push the entire Loxford Base command complex into full alert. The communications officers triangulated and traced the signal, the sensor crews checked their networks for contacts and the liaison officers scrabbled to find their readiness lists.
"Who is it and how bad?" Commodore Langford was senior officer present.
"An independent merchant. They've got an unidentified contact on an intercept course." The non-com at the comms station replied.
"Confirmation?" Langford knew that emergencies weren't the time for long speeches. Keep it short and simple.
"Confirmed." Came the reply from the sensor crew. "Looks like a modified
Tidespool being chased by a heavily modified
Javelin."
'That could be a close fight, depending on the modifications.' Langford thought to herself. 'Probably come down to crew skill and tactics then. With a pirate crew verses merchants that makes it a massacre, unless we can get there.' Out loud she asked. "Time to intercept?"
"Assuming current speed and course interception will occur in 30 minutes." The chief of the sensor crew answered.
"How long till the QRF launch and intercept?"
****
The QRF, or Quick Reaction Force, is a feature of any organisation that has to escort convoys or patrol too much territory with too few ships. At it's most basic a QRF is a group of ships at their home base kept ready to depart.
A more advanced method is too keep a force patrolling out around the main trouble areas. This roving force can rapidly divert to any problem or emergency far faster than a docked QRF, as its engines are already started and its crew at their stations.
Sadly Force G lacked the ships for the second method and had to make do with the docked ships method.
****
"Captain Newton swears that he can get
Turbulent launched within 3 minutes. Interception would be 35 minutes after that, assuming the speeds don't change." The QRF liaison officer replied. "
Kingfisher and
Hardy were on 15 minutes notice and haven't been alerted."
'38, more likely 40 minutes' Langford though to herself. 'Close, but they'll be too late. Even so
Turbulent might be able to catch those pirates, if not save the merchants.'
"Order
Turbulent to beat those times." She told the QRF officer. "And have
Kingfisher and
Hardy step up to 3 minutes notice."
Turning to the convoy liaison officer she asked "That convoy is over stuffed isn't it?"
The officer nodded, it was standard practice to over protect the monthly convoys to discourage pirates.
"So, if an escort was to peal off and intercept could it make it to the
Tidespool i time?"
The officer had got the drift before Langford had finished speaking and was tapping away at her console. She looked up with a grin "If you diverted one of the frigates they'd make it in 28 minutes."
The whole mood in the centre, which had been falling through the floor, suddenly lifted. There was something they could do.
"Then what are we waiting for? Comms, signal the convoy and order one of their frigates to divert." Langford wasn't immune from the mood change. A ship that had been doomed now had a chance, and they might bag a pirate ship as well.
"Captain we're picking up a general distress signal. It's from the
Tidespool." The call came up from the comms desk.
"Ohh f...."
****
The first mate of the
Night Star hated giving his captain bad news. He tended to take it quite badly. And then take that out on whoever was nearby, normally the person who'd just given him the bad news. Still it was his job, and if the Cap'n found out he
hadn't told him it would be worse.
"Cap'n, the prize has just sent a general distress signal." He announced, angry, if not surprised, at how much his voice was trembling.
"Damnation and NovaFire! That's just what I didn't want. Calling the navy, fine! But not that!" The cries of rage echoed off the walls of the bridge.
Captain Hayles was not a happy pirate.
****
"Loxford base contacted and distress signal sent Captain." The communication officer onboard
Tidespring reported.
'OK that's all the bases covered.' Captain di Matteo thought to herself.
She had, in fact, covered too many bases.
A great yell, almost a scream, cut across the bridge. "Captain! Sensors are showing multiple hostile contacts swarming out of the asteroid belt, all on an intercept course!" The sensor officer was almost in hysterics.
The world suddenly started to swim around Captain di Matteo. Nothing seemed real. It couldn't be. No-one got attacked by swarms of pirates, it just didn't happen.
Then some long forgotten words of wisdom, dispensed by a dead former captain back when she was a young second officer, came back to her. 'When in pirate country never, ever, send a general distress call. It's like blood to sharks, but worse. Far, far worse.'