"They're dropping out of z-space," says Myitt tersely, her attention on the colorful screens hovering in front of her. "We're fully cloaked, and I'm going to set the ship's systems on auxiliary power. We don't need a Blade Ship picking up any residual heat signals from our engines." She taps a couple of icons, sliding them to one side, and the cabin's lighting dims. A whirring noise indicates the ship has shifted full remaining power to the cloaking device and the z-space drives, making the floor thrum under their feet. Once they emerged into real space their main engines would be able to do little else than provide very basic thrust and maneuvering; their risk of being detected increased exponentially the more powerfully the engines were used.
Silently and invisibly the Cruiser materializes back into real space, floating along some distance away from the Blade Ship.
"Hah hah!" Myitt crows. "How's that for tailing someone? We're lucky we didn't emerge right on top of them!" She looks back at Zoshonel, Mar and Kara. "Is everyone okay?"
Kara nods. "I'm still in one piece," she says, looking a bit green. The jump had been rather quick, a necessity when z-space was ready to shift again at any moment. She grips the weapons controls but doesn't press anything, cautiously maneuvering the red triangle that indicates where it is aiming. It hovers erratically, drifting from one end of the glowing white holoscreen to the other, passing briefly over the blue flashing signal that indicates the Blade Ship.
"That's odd," Myitt murmurs. "He's raising osmotic shields. And here I thought he didn't care about the environment." Her communicator beeps and she answers it hastily.
"Myitt? Come in. Hello?" Corliss' message from at least an hour before had finally made its way through z-space to catch up with them.
Myitt hails him, recognizing the signal was outdated. "Hey, did you call? We're following him and I'm scanning for any outgoing transmissions. Of course there are like, a million. Where are you? Maybe our friend Temrash knows where Council-bound outgoing messages are sent?"
---
After a short delay Corliss receives the reply. "Yeah, mate, we're sort of on Gaz's ship, Temrash, Breekan, Shal and the boy are here," he responds. "Temrash is having all messages not already received by the Council put on hold, but that's gonna raise one helluva red flag. We do have the Council's most current codes." He transmitted the codes.
---
"Excellent," Myitt breathes, narrowing the string search for z-space transponder relays down to ones that have been recently sent or are currently being sent with that tag attached. "Let's hope he sent them directly and not to a signal point." After a moment of searching, she scowls. "Damnit, there are several returns. Exceedingly well encrypted. I can't read them, but I can try to stop them."
---
"You do know that's treason, don't you?" Corliss replies slyly.
---
Myitt slides a number of glowing icons to the side, heart hammering in her chest. It had become a race against what was faster: The signals being sent with the Council codes, or her own devious anti-transmission encryption. A sort of virus that scrambled codes into nonsense, with one catch, it had to find the message first. There was no way of telling whether Seran had already sent the signal in the few minutes before the Cruiser had emerged from z-space, but Myitt was an optimist--for the time being. She sat back, scanning the readouts, waiting for the returns. Five of the eight outgoing messages had been stopped. Six. It held at six, with two slipping through toward their recipients.
"Cor, ask Temrash if he's had any luck," says Myitt quietly.
---
"Will do. Temrash?" Corliss calls down from the manual weapons array. "Myitt's trying to stop any outgoing signals, have you had any luck stopping transmissions on the receiving end?"
