"The Ghost of the Gate, the imperial lightweight escort cruiser of the latest Galleon-F series, has been in standalone flight for the third week now. However, it could be called a flight with a great stretch. The warship was hanging motionlessly on the outskirts of the star system of Bakur and was waiting. None of the crew knew what it was. Even the commander, Grand Captain Rand Telro, a stocky shoulder-strapped officer with a wide, almost round face, decorated with a small beard and barely marked sideburns, remained in the dark about the purpose of this space ambush. He was, of course, familiar with the loci and immediately realized that their location was chosen for a reason near the "convenient point" of entry into hyperspace. Here the metrics of space allowed to leave on FTL speed with the big economy of energy. In the same area with a high degree of probability any ship, coming to the finish line from certain directions, should finish. It was strange: except for the Burned Worlds, which turned into dust twenty five thousand years ago, there were no star systems on these vectors. Of course, a competent pilot could use this point to jump in a different direction - the vector of Ratataka or Endor - hoping to avoid meeting with the fleet patrols. But if the fugitive is expected, the ambush tactics should be quite different: to spread a subtle sensory network, and the cruiser itself to hide behind a natural object, the benefit of only two hundred thousand clicks had a massive asteroid. Open near the point waiting only for a guest. Or, as suspected Telro, pretend to be a scarecrow in the Alderaan garden. Seeing the mark of the cruiser on the radar, the fugitive will turn away and try to use another point. Or he will jump "from the virgin land", if his hyperdrive allows... An unclear situation, as it is easy to guess, made Telro nervous. As he was nervous and the presence of outsiders on board. It was they who in this flight commanded what to do it, the grand captain, the ship, and what not to do. Three days ago, the Ghost of the Gate had a real opportunity to help two other ships in the fleet to take the smugglers' vessel, launched from the sixth planet of the system. The smuggler easily broke away from the corvettes of the planetary defense and danced his jizz - went to the FTL, and did not know that the ship was drifting nearby, specially designed to intercept such targets. Telro could get it with one short throw. But "these" categorically forbade the grand captain to do anything.
If the passengers were Navy intelligence guys, Telro would have quit worrying about that. How can you think of any reason to have "eyes and ears"? The less you know, the more you sleep. But now the grand captain had to deal not with intelligence, but with other people. Actually, they couldn't be called people, either. Not in the sense that they belonged to another species, even if it was not humanoid - all sorts of Humans and nonHumans Telro, just treated well. No. They were all on the same person, and the officer on special assignments in the rank of captain of the army, and his two attackers. Clones. None of them even had a human name, just an identification number, even an officer named Thirty-four Twenty-three. He was the one who knew the goals and objectives of the cruiser now. As Telro suspected, the tasks were far from noble. The senior assistant and old friend of the Grand Captain, First Lieutenant Shiv Dula, had the same opinion.
The rest of the Ghost of the Ghost's crew did not burden their brains with such complex matter. People - and not quite people - were bored with the teams. On board they got used to a completely different life. For urgent flights on alert to intercept, escorting convoys, patrolling, when each of the shifts is in full alert, and the sensors of the ship are scrounging through the third and third spaces in search of the enemy. Tense watches, silence, ready to explode at any moment bells of loud battle, able to lift from the bunk and the dead, it is understandable. When the watch composition is minimal, and the rest of the team, lieutenants and ensign are loaded to the fool's eye by training classes and continuous device to do something, it becomes dreary. In the same way it is possible to be engaged at a mooring of base, there it is possible to go in dismissal there, and among the civil personnel always there will be someone who is not averse to spend time pleasantly. In general, the team resembled a flock of sleepy autumn bees, which have nowhere to go, but also to hibernate, it seems, early.
The trainee also missed the trainee, the cadet of the Naval Academy of the second, or rather, almost the third year of training Tarn Ordo. The native planet Ordo was called Kalevala and was in the Mandalore system. Tall, beautiful young man with blond hair, expressive blue eyes and a courageous profile, he was crystal-clear, like most Mandaloreans, stupid, energetic, witty, liked the girls, and women noticeably older than themselves, too. He was an excellent man, the hope of the imperial navy, as this category of cadets was called in the academy,
