As we were traveling I was reviewing the data I received from the bugs that I planted. For now it was basically just them being interrogated by the investigators. Though I did hear that they didn't expect that she would survive the attack. This confused me as even if I wasn't there the situation was under control. It might have taken longer without me but they still would have been taken down.
I would continue to listen for a while. I would also make sure to plant bugs on all of the other ships. Just in case.
We continued on with the meetings around the galaxy. We weren't even half way through. There are a lot of planets.
A few months had passed after the attack and we were making good time. We only made it through a fourth of the galaxy's outer planets. As we were going to the next meeting our ships were suddenly pulled out of Sub-Space and the space surrounding the ships solidified making us unable to warp space. We found ourselves facing a couple of light cruisers all around 500 meters long. They fired at us.
Our shields were raised before their shots could hit the ships. We immediately returned fire. A battle ensued. We fired up the engines and tried to get out of range while the enemy tried to keep us in range. While they chased us they sent out dozens of drones. Each of them came quick and flew beneath our shields attacking the hull and engines. None touched me or the Kennedy-Class. My turrets shot down the drones before they could fire a shot at us.
Our ships were faster to accelerate than the light cruisers. We got a nice lead in acceleration on them but they were quickly catching up in speed. I was using some of the most advanced technology available to the ship to discreetly fire off shots to disable the light cruisers by opening very small wormholes to fire some shots through. This was some of the advanced tech available to the ship at its current size. Another piece of tech available is the ability to expand its size and upgrade itself.
The small wormholes also allowed Aldion to access their systems and place programs that would allow us to listen to any conversations on the ship and track the ships. While I was slowly and secretly disabling the light cruisers and Aldion copying their data the rest of the escort were fending off the drones and trying their best to leave the range of the spatial solidifier. Their shields were also close to falling with all the shots coming in from the light cruisers.
Some of the ship's shields fell as soon as the last of the drones were destroyed. The ships, except for mine and Nadiras, were damaged from the drones. Though small and weak, enough drones could deal a lot of damage to smaller ships. These damaged ships were closer to the larger ships as they were more support based and helped spread the spatial warping to the entire escort.
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Eventually some of the light cruisers began to show signs of malfunctions and system overloads. Eventually all of them showed these signs and some of their engines failed. Though still moving they were like dead fish in water. After a bit of chasing all of the cruisers were disabled and we were able to shift into Sub-Space and warp away. Most of the ships were only slightly damaged, though some were close to being disabled themselves. We had to stop at the nearest spaceport in order for these ships to get repaired.
We had to spend a couple of days waiting for the ships to be repaired. After they were ready we left and continued on our way. During the repairs I planted numerous listening devices on each of the ships. These were planted into the ship's systems and would listen in to any conversations that took place in the ship.
We had to have a mole within the escort. The available technology in the milky way was not advanced enough for them to know our exact route. There are thousands of Sub-Space corridors that lead to the same place and though you could monitor these corridors in the empty spaces between galaxies, there were just too many in the actual galaxy.
After reading the copies of the data that Aldion acquired I found out that there was a mole in one of the main combat ships. The mole was also part of the guard detail. I contacted Nadira and sent her all the information I had.
"Are you sure that this person is a mole?" She asked. The person in question is a part of a highly trusted organization called The Crimson Moons. They rarely fail their assignments and highly adhere to their contracts.
"I have sent you all the evidence I have. I could be even more sure if I questioned her, but unless I read her mind or looked into her soul then I could never be too certain. It's entirely possible that she isn't even aware of her actions and could be under an outside influence. The universe is full of mysteries after all." I said there was little I could do without them being in front of me in person.
"Hmmmmm." She hummed in contemplation, thinking over what she could do. She spoke up shortly after. "I want you to monitor her for the time being. Should she try anything funny immediately contact me. I don't want to be taken by surprise when I don't have to."
"I highly disagree with your choice. By imprisoning her now we could find out whether or not she is being influenced and if not we just stopped her from leaking anymore info." I said with a frown on my face.
"While I value your opinion, I am giving you an order. With you monitoring her we could find out what info she is leaking and use that to our advantage." She said with an authoritative voice.
"And how would we use that leaked info to our advantage? We can't trap them as we don't know the enemies full capacity and power. On the other hand they know nearly everything about us. We could use the info to avoid them, but we could do that anyway without leaking any info. Your decision makes no sense to me Ma'am." I spoke with a stoic expression. She paused after I finished and then started to think.
"You are right." She said with a sigh. "Capture her and imprison her on your ship. I made an oversight on my part. I expect you to keep monitoring everyone still?" I nodded at her question. "Good. Thank you for your hard work."
"No problem. I shall take her into custody as soon as possible." The call ended.