Seth and the others were finishing up their work. All the weapons and primary systems were up and running, and they were fine-tuning the electronics and putting the final touches on the paint job. The Deep Endeavor had a team of nano-bots that were programed to seal-off any hull breaches that occured while the craft was in anyplace where there was not enough oxygen for the crew to breath like space or the upper portions of the atmosphere. They had painted the craft camoflage and had specialy programed areas of LED's on the exterior so that, when they wanted to, they could change the affliction symbols on the aircraft. They could have the LED's show the single white star symbol of the US armed forces, a well-known independant space pirate gang's emblem, no markings at all, and a number of other things; this way, they could act like they were with nobody's side, pretend to be someone else, or show who they were proudly at a moment's notice.
As the last of the adjustments were made, tail gunner Cole Perkins happened to glance at the long-range RADAR scope and noticed a few blips coming in their general direction from the North-East. "Hey Seth! There's something on the RADAR, you better come take a look." he called out the open canopy. "What is it Cole?" Seth said as he climbed up into the cockpit and walked up next to him. Cole pointed at the blips on the LCD RADAR map. The distance marks indicated that they were about 75 miles out and closing. Seth took a closer look, "Hmm... looks like that bigger one is chasing the smaller one and the later is fleeing in our general direction. I think they're in range of the scanners, lock on to both of them and see if we can find out who they are."
"Already on it." Cole said. A minute later, both of the mystery ships appeared on the scanner's LCD; the first, bigger one was a Sharoni heavy patrol craft. The other seemed to be a home-made fighter plane; about the size of a 15-passenger van if you took off the wings and tail.
Seth took a closer look, then gasped. "That's Connie's Fighter!" he said before pounding a fist on the side of the console. "Dog-gone-it! I told her not to come after us!" Connie Perkins was Cole's twin sister and an old friend of Seth's. She built her own Fighter, The Lucky-13, and has been one of the best pilots in the resistance for almost a year.
"Robert, Jimmy, everyone! Get to your stations! We need to get in the air and go save Cole's sister, again!" Seth yelled out the cockpit window before shutting it and begining to start up the engines. In less than 2 minutes, everyone had put down what they were doing and was getting into their seats at each of their spots onboard The Deep Endeavor. Gabe ran over to the hanger doors and hit the open button; then, as the plane rolled past him, he jumped up onto the boarding ramp and sat down in his chair in the top forward ball turret. The plane rolled out into the evening sun and took off towards the North. They gained some significant distance before turning towards the other aircraft; they wanted to make the Sharoni aircrew think the had come from a different direction so to not reveal the location of the secret camp. They began to close on the enemy craft. 40 miles... 35... 30... This is where the fun begins... Seth thought as the two aircraft began to come into visual range...