Antoc System -- DaGama Covert Base
28 June
"Jump detected!" the shout rang out across the command center. Commander Palmira Agostinho practically flew through her office door into the room. She had mostly become accustomed to the very light gravity here, but excitement had gotten the better of her. "Report, Salomão," she called, weaving around workstations to approach the sensor station. The detection was not unanticipated, but given a nineteen-week window of when to expect this arrival, the waiting wore on the nerves. Especially when no one was sure they had guessed right about the system where this test would be made. Their source had stopped providing information before the shakedown location had been determined, but there was a short list of systems that could be used, and this one was the most isolated.
It was nice when the brains in the head office got one right.
"Nominal post-jump speed, about 81 kps. Exit angle matches a jump from Betre System. I think we've got our fish."
Agostinho grinned. "Well, let's see about reeling it in, then."
Lieutenant Vasconcellos came running in from the hangar, out of breath but still in respectable form. "Did I hear right? Fish on?"
"Fish on, Stephen," the commander confirmed. "Get your teams loaded up. Departure in twenty. Follow the plan, and bring us home a big prize!"
He gave his superior a slanted grin along with a lackadaisical salute. "Aye-aye, ma'am!" He didn't wait for the salute to be returned, too anxious to remember courtesy. His shouts to the boarding party could be heard diminishing as he headed back the way he had come. "All right, you apes! Time to earn our pay…"
"Tina," the commander said, turning to her operations officer, "scramble the on-deck teams and transfer our tactical data to the shuttles."
"Aye-aye, ma'am." The response was much sharper than the laid-back Marine lieutenant had managed. The sound of the claxon announced the completion of the instructions.
Agostinho seated herself calmly in the center of the flurry of activity Pathfinder's arrival had created. It was an odd sensation that after so much time spent planning and waiting that when the moment arrived everyone was frantically busy except her. The only thing that she was directly responsible for now was more waiting, hopefully waiting for the success of her and Lt. Vasconcellos' planning.
The plan itself was simple in its design, as all good plans are. Always, the devil is in the details. The DaGama Family had known about Project Argo almost from the beginning. One of their corporate plants, Agostinho didn't know the man's name, had managed to get himself assigned to the secret venture early on. A high priority had been given to any information that would allow DaGama to take their first steps toward building an extraterrestrial presence. The four remaining Families who had first discovered the secrets of jump points: Warner, Sterling, Fermi, and Portales, had monopolized the opportunities these presented. DaGama, and a few others, were no longer content to pay the high tariffs to ship to these other markets. With the new technology they wouldn't have to; technology that had just come swimming into Agostinho's net.
The information the undercover agent had provided had been sufficient for DaGama Aerospacial to start their own development effort, but insufficient in technical details for any measurable accomplishment.
Eventually those in charge had decided that they needed more expertise in some areas than they had available in house. A joint venture was proposed, and accepted, with the Forrest Family, who had similar ambitions of expanding their influence. Among Forrest's diverse holdings was a very advanced jumpnet research and development team. Advanced, but still a decade behind where Warner had managed to progress.
So DaGama provided information gathered from Project Argo, and Forrest provided the experts to make use of that knowledge. The results? Not what either Family had hoped for. One test, forty-three deaths and the loss of the test ship.
It was at that point that clues crept into the working relationship which indicated that Forrest, now aware of Argo, had made their own contacts there. And worse, their contact was able to supply them with more technical detail than they were getting from DaGama. With their own source of information and most of the experts in that field of study, outside of Warner Gateways, the DaGama Family was smoothly moved out of the loop, evicted from the partnership they had created.
Well, no self-respecting DaGaman was going to let that stand unchallenged!
Before their source had stopped providing intel, they had learned that Warner had made a successful test of their system on a limited scale, and that they were approaching readiness for a full-scale test. It seemed, from subtle clues that Forrest had somehow arranged to take possession of the full-scale test ship after the system was proven. The general consensus on the DaGama board was that Forrest had co-opted the captain of the ship.
The operation that Agostinho was leading had been designed to cut themselves back into the picture. DaGama may or may not be able to reverse engineer a self-jump system, but if they were the ones with ownership of said system there was no way that Forrest could leave them out in the cold.
"Oeiras to Control, request clearance to depart," the annunciator broke into Agostinho's reverie.
"Clearance granted, Oeiras. Go scoop us up a fish."
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