Star Force: Sav (SF51) Read Online Free PDF Page B

before we’re really in trouble?”
    Morgan shook her head, but didn’t answer. Both Humans
watched and waited for more than 20 minutes, but the streams continued to come
in and the fleets formed up into groups that spread out around orbit…including
some that were coming in their direction. They didn’t appear to have noticed
them yet, but get close enough and their sensors would pick them up, stealth
ship or not. Zenniza orbit was getting cluttered,
which was going to make it difficult, if not impossible to head back down to
the surface to go hunting for more Hobbits.
    “Let’s get going,” Morgan finally said, not wanting to
take the chance of being discovered.
    “I don’t think we’re going to be able to come back for
a while.”
    The Archon sighed. “I know. We’ll have to go back to
hitting up their outposts.”
    “Thought we’d picked them dry?” he asked, making final
jump preparations.
    “Well,” Morgan said, eyeing the ship counter as it
finally crept up past 10,000, “I get the feeling they’re going to get some new
blood in soon.”
    “Point,” he said, keying the gravity drive and
shooting them off away from the planet. The sensor feed went out, leaving them
without any intel about how many more ships were
coming in.
    As soon as they got back to the Tigerzord Morgan headed up to the bridge and got the Captain to get them
moving in towards the star. She wanted to sneak back into planetary orbit and
have a look at how many ships had arrived, but didn’t want to tip their hand as
to having been in the system. Traveling to the star always had that chance, but
to date the Skarrons didn’t have any detection platforms set up to monitor
traffic, so the only way they’d know that there was a Human jumpship in the
system was to have another ship nearby at the time. With quick in and outs it was possible to enter and leave unnoticed,
though it was a gamble each time they did so.
    Morgan and the Tigerzord had been insystem for more than 9 months plucking
out Hobbits to bring back, so the number of trips they were making through
stellar orbit wasn’t many and she hoped the Skarrons had no idea they were even
here, but there was no way of knowing for sure. Dropping into planetary orbit,
even the extreme high orbits that their binary drives were capable of placing
them in, would be like waving to the enemy. The infiltrator was small enough to
sneak around, but a jumpship was another matter entirely.
    None of that mattered when they got to the star
anyway. It had been several hours since the infiltrator had left planetary
orbit and Morgan assumed the incoming Skarron convoy had completed arrival…but
it hadn’t. What she saw on the sensor display was like a kick to the gut by the
Black Knight.
    There were ships still coming in from outside the
system, visible as tiny specs on the sensors along a specific jumpline some 58
degrees around from their current position, and a HUGE pool of ships around the
star gradually transitioning over to the jumpline to the planet. The computer
tagged in excess of 270,000 and there was no way of knowing how many more had
already parked in planetary orbit or were still to come from deeper inside
Skarron territory.
    There was no way they weren’t going to be spotted, so
time was of the essence. There would be no more Hobbit fetching from here. She
had to get back to the ADZ to warn the others immediately for this was no mere reinforcement. The Skarrons were going to drop
the heavy end of the hammer on them…and even now she still didn’t know just how
large that hammer was going to be.
    “Get us out of here,” she ordered the Captain, sitting
back in her command chair and beginning to run the naval numbers through her
head versus their various defense positions along the border.

 
 
    4

 
 
    June 29, 2546
    Solar System
    Earth

 
    Bo stood in the middle of the ring, his body
stationary but his mind ablaze with telekinetic control signals. All around