He'd found the fleet, God damnit he'd found them.
He'd spent hours in supercruise, shooting up and down the shipping lanes trying to remain innocuous while watching who disappeared and where. It was tough for him, not interdicting one or two of the unarmed transport ships plying their trade to Davies High, but he had a job to do and the big man had trusted him with it.
"Show the guys why I call you Sneak," he'd told him quietly, away from doubting ears. "Find where these bastards are based."
So that's what he'd done. Him, little old Sneak, they'd never taken him seriously, but they would now. The big man always had of course, he'd recognised his potential all along.
It had taken a while to filter out the bulk haulers. Reorte was a rich system, it attracted more than its fair share of massive Anacondas and Type 9s, the shipping lanes were full of them, but he wasn't interested in those, not today. His eyes had been glued to the scanner, looking for any sign of low wakes, the tell tale mark of a ship leaving supercruise for normal space. After investigating a dozen or so, he'd come across a cluster in the middle of nowhere. Always four signals tightly packed, always the same area, and after a few minutes he learned as he watched, those same ships would reappear and streak back in the direction they'd come from. Back towards Almagro Port.
"Eureka," he'd shrieked into the darkness.
He'd dropped out of supercruise a few kilometres from where these elusive combat wings were doing the same, and then crawled closer, ever so slowly. Any hint of contact on the scanner and Sneak was ready to flip to silent running, he'd flicked the switch a couple of times already. The tiny Eagle was quiet enough to hide from civilians, but he knew a few tricks that made him disappear from military-grade scanners too.
Those tricks came with a cost though, like right now, it was getting cold in the cockpit as he finished tracing this path across the front of the carrier. The canopy was covered in ice and he would freeze to death soon if he didn't restart the systems pretty quickly.
"Just a bit further," he told himself through chattering teeth. The fleet carrier was still on his scope, half a minute more maybe, not long now.
They hadn't seen him, he was sure of that. He'd purposefully chosen a path that would keep him far away from the carrier's defence patrols. There had been no point risking them getting a visual, he only needed confirmation of the carrier, and he'd already known it was there. Why else would combat wings be rendezvousing at the same location in deep space.
He had to hand it to them, whoever they were, it was a well-oiled operation. Even the big man hadn't guessed at this many ships. Sneak thought he'd identified three wings traversing this waypoint from supercruise. Since he'd dropped in to skulk around, he was sure it was more like five or six.
"Two wings, maybe three," the big man had told him based on the damage they were causing. Well he was wrong about that. "They're likely meeting a fleet carrier, or they might have commendered a small surface port somewhere." He'd been adamant that they weren't operating out of an orbital, he had eyes watching those already.
The fleet carrier finally fell off Sneak's scope and there was no sign of the defence patrols either. He flicked a switch and the cockpit of his little ship came back to life. Even then, it was only essential life support he'd brought back online. He didn't need weapons deployed nor shields raised, anything that would generate unnecessary heat remained deactivated. The smuggler knew the dangers, he'd learnt his trade and earned his name the hard way, sneaking into heavily policed ports with whatever the big man had requested.
"It's like you're invisible," his patron had told him once. "You just slide on through the airlock without anyone seeing you."
'You better believe it,' Sneak chuckled to himself at the memory.
He hadn't always made it look that easy. The early days had seen him smash into station walls countless times, too scared to use his thrusters for fear of station security seeing him. Over the years he'd perfected his technique though: line up on target, turn off flight assist, boost once, then turn off all systems. Exactly what he'd done here, and he'd passed within 4km of the carrier with no one any the wiser.
There had been a nervous moment when a wing of Vultures flew straight by him. He'd watched them dock, very smooth they were too, and now they'd just re-emerged from the belly of the beast.
"Next time you come back, you'll have no where to dock," he told them with a knowing smile.
Sneak flicked another switch. He spoke for maybe a minute, then flicked it back off. Then he turned on his wing beacon, and waited.
Next: The Attack