Book of the Guardian 3: The Last Mission by Ben Winston Page A

destinations," Mark added and the computers added that information to the image as well. Finally, Mark directed the computer to add in the facilities the Admiral had told him about. That was when they discovered three more facilities had also gone dark. One of them a major communications relay station that had been servicing an entire sector of the Kingdom.
    "Lay it out for us Admiral," Mark ordered.
    "Yes, Sire," The man replied. "Beginning about an hour ago, with the loss of the Telleram Six Nova Observatory, or TELSNO, we have systematically lost several expensive facilities in the Kingdom's delta quadrant, sector nine. While this sector of space is along the Tammerain Border, it is far from the main thrust of their attacking forces. While the possibility of accidental failure has been ruled out, we honestly can't pin this on the Tammerain either. We have no information from these facilities prior to them going off-line, and there was no hyperspace signature to indicate ships jumping into that system.
    "Each of the facilities destroyed had the ability to provide the crown with real-time strategic data in the event of war. The sector itself is sparsely populated, and with the surveillance capability of those facilities, we have very little in that sector in the way of defensive force. Currently, there are several scout ships in transit to some of these locations to determine what happened to them, and hopefully discover why they did not capture any data on the attackers.
    "Now, the forces of the Tammerain know we have the ability to detect ships in hyperspace crossing the border, however, they also have no idea what the range on that is, or even how we are doing it. It could be that they believed these facilities had something to do with the system, and felt they needed to take them out in order to safely cross the border without being seen."
    "That would work for this sector, and maybe the next, but not the whole border, Admiral. More troubling to me is how did they take these out without us not even seeing them?" John asked.
    "My apologies, Lord-General, I thought you would have gotten the notice that the Tammerain have cloaking now," the Admiral replied.
    "I did, Admiral. That's not exactly what I was talking about. Each of the facilities in question is more than a light year from the border, and spread even further apart. We've detected no unaccounted hyperspace events in that sector at all. How are they getting around?" John asked.
    "Sire?" Gloria asked meekly.
    Mark smiled at her. "I told you, you could call me Mark."
    "You did, but this isn't personal. Sire, the scout ships that are going to investigate these events; why not have them stop two or three light hours short of the facility and focus all their sensors on it. Shouldn't that give you an idea of what happened?" Gloria asked.
    John chuckled. "The Temporal Witness; the event itself."
    "If the sensor platforms themselves didn't record what happened, then how would stopping to record the event help us?" the Admiral asked.
    "The listening post had passive, omni-directional sensors, but for the most part, it was focused on Tammerain space. If something could have come on any other vector, there is a good chance the passive sensors simply didn't have time to record or report anything," Chloe explained. "The other installations were civilian installations that had an extra module added to them in the event we need to use them for something. In most cases, they had no sensors other than their primary ones, which were most likely focused on whatever mission they had been on when they went dark."
    "Ahh, I misunderstood their functionality," The Admiral said, nodding to himself. "If you will excuse me a moment Sire, I'll issue new orders for those scouts."
    Mark nodded to him, and he stepped out. "Chloe, have you gotten anywhere with that code from the Tammerain Capitol World?"
    "Yes and no, Sire. We did get it broken down, and it is definitely not normal computer code.