Kalangu managed to acquire the probes without much difficulty. Kirrik spent several frustrating days trying to influence people to pull the right strings and dropping subtle hints about blackmail possibilities before he had any results. It was three weeks later before the thing arrived, during which time the probes searched for the base and the rest of the group discussed plans, slept, ate, and became increasingly annoyed with Marchero, whose insolent nature had apparently only been temporarily curbed.
"That's it?" Barbeth said incredulously when they met in a secure area of the station's docking bay to view the device. It consisted of a small grey box, several bundles of wire and two things about two feet high, roughly cylindrical in shape and apparently made up of random electrical and electronic components stuck to a central coil.
"Apparently so," Kirrik replied. "The box is an interface to the ship's computer, the other objects are fixed to the scanner and shield generator. It works by actively modifying shield output."
"If this is only a prototype I suppose there must be some down side to it?"
"Er, yes," he confessed. "It's the first thing they've actually built for the project. It only works with a Viper, and makes the shields very unreliable for actual defence. It hasn't yet been properly tested for use over long periods either. GalCop think they've solved these issues in theory, but it will be at least six months before they make a better one."
The most obvious of these disadvantages was that the Viper was a non-hyperspatial vessel. With the stealth device fitted to a hyperspace capable craft it could jump in quite close, but to carry a Viper a much larger ship would be needed. This would be detected if it ventured too near to the base, but jumping in at a distance from the target was not entirely safe either. It would have to wait for the Viper to return to it, and remaining in the area for some time would put it at risk of being found. The position was uncertain to within five AUs anyway, so a vessel without military grade receivers might jump in too far from the base to pick up the beacon's signals. With some reluctance the Navy agreed to provide a light carrier to transport the Viper after being convinced that a civilian-design ship would be too vulnerable to detection and attack.
Not long afterwards the probes returned, having found very weak navigational signals being transmitted from a point in interstellar space within the search area. In the hope that the mission would reveal something about the original loss of the Constrictor Kirrik was to pilot the Viper, accompanied by Marchero. The Viper rendezvoused with the carrier outside the station, and then they left for a place close to Esdi.
The carrier emerged from Witchspace into darkness. Esdi's star stood in bright yellow splendour but provided hardly any illumination. The Viper was held on an external docking clamp, its surfaces just a slightly lighter area masking out the stars behind, and only visible as a silhouette without eyes that had been resting in the dark.
Marchero and Kirrik were still on the bridge of the carrier, Marchero sat at the navigation station searching for the beacon. The receivers could scan a huge number of channels simultaneously and were incredibly sensitive, but there was no guarantee that they would be looking at the right frequency at the time of the pulse.
After half an hour Marchero announced "I've found it. Signal strength suggests it's at about eighteen AUs from here."
"Right, up you get then," Kirrik ordered her.
"Impatient cat," Marchero chided him. "We leave now and we might never find it again. I need to detect the next two pulses before I can predict the frequency."
"Well be a bit quicker about it," Kirrik growled. "Can't you make estimates of the next frequency?"
"Yes."
"Do it then, before I loose patience with you. And if you haven't anything useful to say in the mean time then keep quiet." Marchero chuckled to herself and turned back to the console.
It was another half hour before two more pulses were detected. Marchero insisted on spending another twenty minutes in order to find the next two so as to be certain she was predicting them correctly. Finally she was satisfied.
"Right, let's go," she told Kirrik. "And it might be an idea to change speed a bit. We're not close enough to see any movement in the signal position but the pulses are slightly Doppler shifted from their rest positions. Our radial velocity is several hundred kph backwards relative to the beacon."
They left the bridge, leaving the crew to make the speed adjustments and headed to the airlock between the carrier and the Viper. As they were about to climb through Marchero announced "I'm flying."
"No chance," Kirrik retorted.
"Single-pilot craft. There isn't room for both of us in the seat, and that's where I'll need to be to navigate."