Chapter 29 The investigation.

Before the probes executed the reentry their sensors picked up a ship that looked like a small military vessel approaching the planet.

Then they lost contact with the probes as they reentered the atmosphere and burned up.

They spent three days in the system refueling and Simon had to talk with the Zendari captain who was always asking how much longer will it take for them to leave.

Also after getting over the fire power problem Mikael and Steuner wanted to know what was up with the colonel and tauri stuff and why didn't the Zendari captain call his bluff?

-It's all from the TV show and also there is no way for anyone to know all the species and systems in the galaxy.

Add to that the tale about the maps we got from the federation and he most likely took us for some freshly added system especially when we came from the direction of the federation space.

After thinking about it for a while both of them had to admit that it was a great idea as they got what they wanted without having to fight over it with the Zendari ship.

-Remind me to watch this show when we return to earth.

Mikael said with a smile.

After three days their tanks were full so Simon initiated communication with the Zerndari ship.

 -Captain Verix I'm happy to report that we have collected enough fuel and will be leaving soon.Thank you for allowing us to refuel and we will update our maps so that no one from our system will intrude on your territory again.

-Thank you Colonel O'Neil and have a safe journey.

The alien said with a relief in his voice.

Some time later all three cruisers jumped out and the alien captain was finally relieved ,he even noted that the tauri system officers seem to be true to their words and he advised caution but also courtesy in any future encounters.

He never realized that there is no tauri system and he had been played by the humans from the Sol system.

In the meantime on the planet JK 18557 a federation officer and his team arrived at the ground zero of the explosion and were conducting an investigation to explain the incident that had taken place there.

They spent the last three days taking measurements and readings.

According to the logs there were two humans and 1 of the lizard species living around this area but they couldn't figure out how they managed to trigger an explosion of this magnitude.

-Sir, we have a preliminary report about the explosion.

One of his subordinates came to report.

-What does it say?

-According to our analysis the cause of the explosion was a class 4 reactor going critical.

Our best guess is that they found some fuel in one of the wrecks that were standing here and tried to activate a generator they also found inside but the reactor was damaged and went criticall the moment they activated it. Not knowing how to stop it they probably died in the resulting explosion.

-Thank you for the rapport but i think that there might be something more to it than that.

I saw the rapport about the humans and they are a very adaptable race,but they don't like being imprisoned so i think that they might have tried to escape using one of the ships that were here, the question is did they succeed and the explosion was a way to cover their tracks or did they died trying.

The officer said.

-Sir, with all due respect.You are suggesting that beings who are not qualified to even join the federation somehow managed to repair a ship that was a wreck and used it to escape and also that they detonated a reactor to cower their tracks.

That's impossible no matter how I look at it. There is no way for them to understand the technology required to pull this off, not to mention that they had no way to obtain star maps.

And even if by some miracle they did manage to achieve all of that then the explosion was still most likely caused by them trying to launch the ship and losing the control of the reactor output.

-That might be true but we need to know for sure so I will assume that it was an escape attempt and if it was then they would want to leave the federation space as soon as possible.

He pulled out a star map on his data pad and pointed to a system nearest to the border and another that was outside the border.

-Sent a ship to these systems and inquire about a ship that might have come there for refueling and was outdated.

The officer ordered.

-Yes sir.

The subordinate said and went to execute the order.

He returned two days later.

Sir, in the first system there was no ship for the last couple of days and in the one outside of the border there was a Zendari vessel making a claim for the system and the only ones that he saw were three cruisers from some backwater called tauri system that came there for refueling but all three look like a brand new ships,they even sent me images of the ships.

He handed over the images taken by the Zendari along with the data they collected on the ships.

The officer took a look on the images and it really looked like the same class of the ships and all of them were a battle cruiser class ships the other data showed that they were heavily armed and armored unlike the federation ships that used mostly energy weapons these three had some kinetic weapons and they really looked like they were brand new.

He newer heard of the tauri system but that meant nothing especially when there were some new species joining the federation almost all the time.

-It looks like you were right, they probably died either trying to activate a reactor or trying to escape.

It doesn't matter now as they are dead and we know what happened so let's get out of here.

The officer had to admit that the evidence supported either of the theories and it didn't really matter which one was the truth,what mattered was that they died and didn't escape.

So the case was closed, the rapport was written and the officer and his subordinates went back to their usual duties.

He dismissed the three cruisers as the escape ships because no one had even dreamt of piloting a cruiser single handedly.

Not to mention that the ships really looked like military vessels from some small system and he couldn't imagine that the people from the planet that didn't even have in system ships could build a star ship, not to mention three of them.

He had a hunch that something didn't add up in this case but all the evidence showed that they died and the case was already closed.

At the same time the three ships were now in transit and their pilots had no idea that their choice to have their own ships and all of them identical to one another just saved them from being hunted by the federation navy.

Having full tanks they could use their FTL drives for almost two weeks non stop but they decided to drop out of the FTL flight every seven days to refuel other than that they spent the time playing chess and other board games over the comms,studying the database or training.

The flight in the FTL didn't require their supervision and was mostly automatic.