Capture

[Xing]

Isabelle calmly took the device and nodded once, teling she was ready for the transmission. She passed her hand through her long blonde hairs, a gesture to hide her stress. It wasn't going as she planned at all...
Finally, the holocam began recording her image.

"This is general Isabelle Kaitlynn, to Liberty authorities. I am currently prisonner aboard the Order's vessel within the shield perimeter."
She paused, the time to organise a bit her thoughts.
"I am at this moment serving as a hostage. The commander of this ship requests the following in order to keep me alive."
was there a way to talk about his life with more coldness than that Isabelle thought with a chilling feeling...
"Disable the Infinity Shield to let us out. Do not send any ships to pursue us. Do not engage us. Do not try to follow us. If you follow these instructions, they promise to send me back, alive aboard a zoner vessel."
She said these statements with a completely dispassionated voice, as if it was mere formalities.
To be truthful, she wondered what would happen to her. After all what hapenned, commander Travis, logically, couldn't let her go anymore, especially if they intended to retreat back within order space. If that was the case, her life was probably...
No, she really didn't wanted to think about the outcome.

--
Colonel Gerald Black was furious. It was probably the only reason that kept him from dealing with the annoying LSF agent that punched (he really punched, nothing less!) a senior LSF officer in the face. The situation was critical enough like that, and now he needed to whip around discipline?
To keep the LSF commander busy from being distracted by the agent, he dragged him to his own console, and asked for insights from his staff.
"General Kaitlynn is being held hostage aboard the Order warship. You have heard their requests, what do we do?"
Everyone of the high ranking officers looked at each others, anxious.
"We can't allow them to run away with such a high ranking officer of the navy. She's too important to be made prisonner, and know way too much about military intelligence of Liberty", Black added. "That leaves us with two option, moving to make her killed anyway, and destroy an important Order warship. Or try to rescue her."
All the man nodded reluctantly for the rescue option.
"We can't abandon her. Should it be for the sake of our honour, we canno't allow the daughter of John getting killed because we lacked the courage to act.", the admiral of the carrier LNS Constitution II said with profound dignity.
The anonymous LSF commander (his stare made it very uncomfortable to ask him anything, even his name) looked at everyone of the men, before answering in his deep baritone voice. His control over self was so good, the recent insult he received didn't even seemed to reflect in his manners.
"The real problem is, how do we save general Kaitlynn. They threaten immediate execution if we follow them. Same, if we try to get there."
Before anyone replied, he continued, in his seemingly permanent cold and efficient voice,
"Evidently, driving in our fleet to rescue her, will not be a success. Too easily noticed, and would get the general killed. We must hence put our bets on a covert operation."
Colonel Black nodded in agreement.
"So, are we all in agreement to let them go for the moment?"
Seeing no opposition, Black punched in the red button over admiral Alban's chair, deactivating the Infinity Shield.

"I hope we made the wise choice..." he whispered.

--
Isabelle sighed as she saw through a view port the golden shield disappearing.
She looked around carefully. Travis obviously lied on her release. In all logic, he would never let a naval officer who saw so much about his ship to go. And if they indeed were to enter Omicron Minor, then Travis was a fool to let her go.
Her eyes observed sharply her environment, looking for a way to escape. Maybe if she fought her way to the hangar, she would be able to blast the door of the bay and run away in a...
I don't know how to pilot...
She had to find a way damn it! Run on AI controlled flight path if needed - heck, even force one of the pilot aboard if necesary!
She never felt her life so close to death as of now...

--
In the control room of St Mitchell, the activity was still strong. At that rate, Black estimated they'd need a whole convoy of the coffee the LPI clowns used to keep everyone alive...
Holomap, datapad, security files, everything was flying from one side of the room to another, as officers ordered this and that for their planning.
"The hole to Omicron Minor is estimated here. It moves slightly depending of the star gravitational and electro magnetical activity, but it should be around here. What we will do, is to post 2 squadron of the new Raven Avenger, along with 2 Raven Rhino class attack shuttle. Each shuttle will hold soldiers of the 106th and some of our best LSF operatives available."
The LSF commander nodded, as Gerald made his briefing.
"I am volunteer to command the LSF men for this mission."
Gerald nodded. Whatever the allegations Patterson made, the man certainly had a lot of gut to take on such suicidal mission.
"Good. Now, we can't be sure what will happen next. Either, they head for the far away borderworld at some unknown destination. In which case, I'm afraid we will be forced to go the hard way, that is, force-land aboard the ship, and hope to reach Kaitlynn before they execute her." He paused, looking sinister. "Which, let's not make ourselves any illusion, will be highly unlikely."
"If we are lucky however, they will most probably moor, and send her on Toledo. Probably will they try to interogate her before either killing her anyway, or releasing her as promised. Whatever the outcome, we can't have her to be interogated, so we must act very fast."
Two holoprojector activated, one showed the strange Raven Avenger: it was a sleek, Avenger type fighter with weirdly shapped opaque black pieces of armor all over the body that covered it all. To an untrained eye, the ship didn't even looked like an Avenger anymore unless you looked with a lot of attention.
The other projector showed a Raven Rhino, with similar modifications to the original freighter.
"These are some of our first production fighters with cloaking capacities. We can't be certain they will perfectly well. Longest we've managed to hold the cloak field was about 20 minutes, take or add a minute. However, they use the newest fusion nuclear reactor available: their radiation signature will be about impossible to detect."
He sighed, trying to hide his fatigue. It was now, what, 36 hours without any sleep?
The coffee really tasted like nightmare after the he-forgot-how-many-cup-already...

"Let's hope the operation will be planet side."
As the officers turned away, he stopped the carrier-commanding admiral.
"Please... tell John about his daughter. He must know."
The man nodded, looking troubled, as he went away.

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