by J. W. Kurtz
2217 C.E. - First CDF warship fitted with Neural-Navigation and Flight System (NIFS) launches. This new class of warship can now be piloted at high-speed in combat by a human pilot in an acceleration couch. Formerly, high speed combat was a preprogrammed routine of maneuvers or enacted by limited A.I. pilots.
2233 C.E. - Tilman Wray born in Berlin, Germany.
2250 C.E. - Combined populations of extrasolar colonies exceeds 200-million. Immigration from Earth to colonies is slowed as private corporations begin to charge large fees to Earth government blocs in an attempt to stem the tide of people flooding the colonies. It becomes apparent that the private corporation colonization expansion programs are having difficulty building settlements fast enough. As a result, smaller private and government operations begin efforts to locate further feasible sites for settlement as well as start their own colonization efforts in an attempt to circumvent the three major corporations that enjoy the extrasolar and terraforming monopoly.
2256 C.E. - Newly commissioned Ensign Tilman Wray graduates from CDF Fleet Academy Mars and is assigned to a local system patrol frigate, the CDF Alberta (PF-12).
2275 C.E. - In the 25-years since the orderly migration to extrasolar colonies were slowed due to corporate interventions, more than 50 new settlements have been founded within 100 light-years of Earth. These new settlements, colonies, and habitats are sourced, financed, and operated by Earth governments and smaller private corporations as a means to reduce Earth and Sol populations. The stars within 100 light-years of Sol become flooded with humanity.
2282 C.E. - After more than 50-years of service, FC-37 Ridley is retired from the CDF, struck from the fleet rolls, and sold as scrap to Interstellar Industries (I2).
2283 C.E. - Captain Tilman Wray resigns from CDF service. He is 3-years shy of retirement (30-years of service required). Upon his resignation from the CDF, Wray signs a contract with Interstellar Industries (I2) as a private contractor.
2283 C.E. - The former FC-37 Ridley leaves a private spaceyard operated by a subsidiary of Interstellar Industries (I2) under a new name and transponder code. She now operates under the name of Bellerophon. She is listed as an unarmed altered high-speed cargo hauler. The commanding officer of the privateer is former CDF officer Captain Tilman Wray.
Chapter 1:
May 17, 2286
Approximately 30-Light Years From Sol
Time: 13:33 (Zulu)
Black against black, the hull of the privateer Bellerophon hovered motionless in the vast nothingness that is the space between distant stars. Near absolute zero was a constant companion in this stretch of the void, with only the cosmic background radiation keeping this lonesome patch of nothing barely above 0 degrees Kelvin. A brilliant flash of perfect white, brighter than the brightest sun, abruptly turned the perpetual night momentarily into day. The radiant display of light and energy faded just as quickly as it have been born, the blackness of space casting the light from its memory with haste. At the epicenter of the sudden and explosive luminosity a craft, far smaller than the Bellerophon, hovered where once there was nothing but cold and dark. Massive engines, patiently idling in the airless silence, awoke fully to thrust the 700-meter long, 80,000-ton privateer forward on hot jets of electromagnetically induced plasma to greet her newly arrived guest.
Captain Tilman Wray glanced over the shoulder of the crewman manning the targeting and information station on the bridge. Wray wore a blank mask betraying none of the disappointment he felt upon learning the identification of the small vessel that had been pulled from her passage between the stars via the Siren Device deployed by his ship. Such time and effort and such a small catch. Just a Standard Class Courier Shuttle It was like fishing for marlin and reeling in a minnow. A few, very few, subtly muttered comments of disappointment were heard echoing across the large and mostly vacant bridge before the crew returned their focus to the matter at hand. Wray was pleased to see his crew so quickly return their composure and concentrations on their own, not requiring his intervention. He had handpicked every one of the hired hands from a very large pool of qualified and experienced candidates. He had yet to be disappointed by any of his selected crew hires.
He only wished he could afford to hire more.
Orders were quickly passed to key departments throughout the ship and to the operational parties prepped for action. The boarding team needed to enter and secure the small ship, now just a kilometers distance from the bow of the Bellerophon, before the soon-to-be captured crew could be brought out of stasis-sleep and mount a resistance or attempt escape. The target shuttles primary shipboard computer also needed to be hacked and overridden in case there was any type of self-destruct sequence, programmed and set to be initiated upon the ship being taken in a scenario very much like this.
The belly of the beast opened and disgorged two small dangerous, sharp edged, looking assault skiffs dispatched for the boarding operation. Even though each skiff was diminutive, when compared to the far larger Bellerophon, they were individually still more than half the mass of their target. Sending two assault skiffs, bristling with weaponry, for the mission was very much overkill, but being prepared is never a sin, and two guns are always better than one.
The expertly skilled and experienced pilots guided their craft to the target. The first skiff took up a position a scant 50-meters from the thick view portals of the cockpit of the shuttle. White puffs periodically jetted from stabilizer thrusters as they fired to make minute adjustments to keep the skiff on a perfect station hover. With the skiff in overwatch position the chin turret, twin plasma needler cannons, locked onto the cockpit and prepared to fire given the slightest provocation. Risk taking was minimal out here in the void of nothingness. The first priority was to protect the Bellerophon at all costs. Even the slightest damage out here, far from support, could be catastrophic. A death sentence to the ship and her crew. If the vessel that was about to be boarded made any move toward the Bellerophon that was not initiated by a prize crew she would be blasted into oblivion and losses would be cut on this transaction. Nothing in a mission like this, a mission minded on business, was worth the ultimate cost.
In the utter silence of the airless vacuum the second skiff carefully and steadily closed to dock with the target. A flexible pleated construct, a boarding gantry, extended from the hatch of the assault skiff to the beckoning exterior airlock of the shuttle. A set of lights within the now secured boarding bridge changed from red to green as a pressurized seal was confirmed. Successfully mated with the airlock, entry was negotiated via a swift override of the weakly encrypted exterior lock of the shuttle and a team of four battlesuited boarders rushed aboard. The boarders, loaded for bear, quickly found their weapons were not needed as they cleared the small craft in pairs. This well practiced and rehearsed dance from hard dock to secured prize took under 45-seconds.
The computer specialist of the team, the same who had worked the weak lock to grant access to the shuttle, ran a diagnostic scan of the shuttles central core on the main interface located at the astrogation station in the small cockpit and confirmed that the ships engines were in a scrammed state and no overload had been initiated yet, nor was there a command in the autopilot queue to have one initiated. There was no self-destruct sequence to be had here. News which was always welcomed from the boarding teams perspective. A command was inserted into the ships computer to stop the revival of any crew in stasis-sleep. The small ship was quickly and expertly secured. The small hold and living space was more closely inspected and a fast yet thorough inventory collected. With no threats on hand, Kyler Bachman, leader of the assault team and now acting "Captain" of the prize crew signaled the Bellerophon.
"Bellerophon, Bellerophon. This is Assault One actual, over," Bachman called on the tactical net communicator of his helmet to the assault skiff docked alongside the shuttle. From there his message was relayed to the Bellerophon via tight beam laser.
The response was prompt and clearly heard in his headset. "Assault On
e this is Bellerophon Actual. Report mission status, over."
Bachman immediately responded to the expected order, "to Bellerophon Actual, mission is complete and the shuttle has been taken. No resistance. No threats. Computer has been put on standby and the crew revival has been placed on hold. The ship is ours. Prize Captain Bachman declaring readiness state three of The Corporation registered Standard Class Shuttle Osprey, over."
The blank mask worn by Captain Wray on the bridge of the Bellerophon broke slightly. If one had been watching closely they may have noticed the brief makings of a smile but, almost as quickly as it formed, the crack in his visage disappeared.
"Assault One this is Bellerophon Actual. Speak free and clear. We'll maintain on tactical party comms throughout. Acknowledged, no threats present or on the board at large." And with that the formality, a formality of military training, practice, and experience was over. Now they were co-workers speaking freely as if they were on a personal communicator call at the office.
"Roger that, Captain. Do you have a clean feed from my camera?" Bachman asked. "If so I'll walk you through what we have here in detail."
"Go ahead Kyler, we have a crystal picture on the bridge. Give us a tour of that minnow," Captain Wray replied.
From his chair on the bridge of the Bellerophon, Wray sipped real Earth coffee, an extravagance he allowed himself from time to time, from an aged and chipped navy grey mug with the name "FC-37 RIDLEY" stenciled in bold black block letters. He sat back and watched the tour narrated by Bachman showing live on the center of the three large screens located on the bulkhead at the front of the bridge.
"I'll start in the hold, Boss," Bachman began as he panned his helmet mounted camera to take in the small very space, "these Standard Courier Shuttles used by The Corporation are not much for cargo. We know their primary mission is hauling data cores, secured information, and VIP's quickly back from A to B. Again, according to registry, and the big letters painted on the side of this bird, this particular shuttle is named the 'Osprey' so I'll call her that from now on." The camera zoomed in on a few miscellaneous items as Bachman moved his inspection closer for the viewing pleasure of his audience, all the while narrating what he found. "Ten by ten by ten. No data core present. But...but I think we have a Minervan relic. Small box here. Looks to be 30cm by 30cm by 30cm. A cubic foot or so. Of course, if it's Minervan it's damn old, but like all their relics, they look brand-fucking-new just like this one. There appears to be two slight sunken pressure switches or button on either side and..." The picture zoomed in as Bachman moved closer for further examination. As he got closer the image went to static and comms were temporarily lost. After a moment the image returned and comms were restored but with some waning static in the audio and pixilation and distortion waves in the image. Both improved as Bachman backed away from the box. "Wow! You back online, Boss? My suit, scanner, everything went offline for a second. My suit CPU is rebooting...shit everything is rebooting. You reading me, Captain?" the nervous voice of Bachman asked. His cool and jocular tone now absent.
"We read you, Kyler. Image clarity is returning to five-by-five status. Some distortion to both picture and audio when you get closer to that box and then you cut out completely. Recommend you keep your distance. Whatever's in that box doesn't like electronics much. Don't touch it."
Bachman paused before responding as he was running a scan with the multipurpose datapad from his kit. "Roger that, Captain. I'm getting some radiation readings here. Nothing extreme, thank God. The scanner goes all wonky the closer it gets to the relic. Yeah...keeping my distance. You don't need to tell me twice. Low level x-ray and some fluctuating and resonating spikes. Scanner says magnetic resonance of some kind. 'Cannot identify' it says. No heavy gamma or anything dangerous or high enough anyway for the scanner to tell me I'm dead."
"Well...we'll let the I2 folks figure out what it is. If the scanner can't ID it from the database then the good news is that it's probably valuable. Something new," Wray took a sip from his cooling mug of coffee. "What else? Doesn't look like much else in there."
The image again panned the room. "Nothing of value, no. There's some hiking and emergency gear piled here. Some foodstuffs and rations. A couple items from one of the bags here," Bachman continued as he opened a backpack and pulled out a couple long shinny items with points, "these appear to be bullets. Like from an old-time propellant gun slug-thrower. We found a couple of those antiques, loaded mind you, in the common space and stasis-sleep cabin. I haven't seen these in a long time except in the entertainment vids. Interesting antique but hardly what we were looking for in regards to loot. That box seems to be it."
"So no data core?" Wray asked. It was standard practice that a data core with backups was carried on hops from Minerva to the home offices in the Sol system.
The camera panned around once more to take in the small space and the few items within, "this is what it is, not much room in here to hide anything, and as you can see, it was all hastily dumped in here with not much care to order. Those primary and backup cores are the size of a person. It would stand out. This is what it is in the 'hold,' if that's what you want to call it. If there's nothing more you want to see here, nothing that catches your eye, I'll move on to the main common cabin, cockpit, and then the stasis-sleep cabin," Bachman stated. With the speakers in his helmet quiet, no reply forthcoming, Bachman took the tacit approval to move on.
The view back on the Bellerophon showed a rhythmically swaying image as Bachman navigated through the main corridor, really the only corridor, of the small craft. Quickly the image came to the common space just behind the cockpit of the ship. The image panned left to right and then back to the left where the narration by Bachman continued.
"Again, there is not much here. It looks like they shared a meal before going to beddy-bye and they didn't feel like policing up their mess. But from the looks of their gear, lack of a transported data core, and other notes of interest I will get to in a moment, I would guess that this ship isn't on an approved mission. In fact it may well be that we've taken a ship that was herself taken. Wouldn't that be interesting?" Bachman asked rhetorically.
Wray took in the view silently while looking for anything that stood out or didn't belong. Anything out of the ordinary. If he was going to park the shuttle in the hangar he wanted to be 100 percent sure it harbored no threat.
"Continue the tour if you please."
"Copy, Boss. Touring," Bachman said as he again returned to narration mode as the tour guide. "A couple items of note in the common area. A couple weapons. A Dyna-55 with a low charge and...I don't even know what it is. My weapons history only goes back maybe a hundred-years. A weapon of some type that looks like it takes those old bullets I showed you in the hold back there. I can tell you it's loaded because Chavez over there" and the camera shifted up to show a tall battlesuited figure across the room shrug his shoulders, "felt the need to fiddle with it. I guess he saw an old vid that had something similar so he thinks he rates as an expert. Anyway, he discovered if you pull this knob up and then back you can access the magazine. A small magazine but a loaded magazine nonetheless. We're happy here that he didn't accidently discharge the thing...no telling what it would'a done. We're in our suits so a depressurization would have been survivable but there's no telling if this thing could've done some serious damage to the boat. The scope atop this fella is non-digital. I think it's metal and glass. Old. Just old stuff." Bachman replaced the old rifle he was showing to the camera back atop the table where it was found.
"Okay...huh. Wasn't expecting to find an Earth museum piece on that boat. Minervan, yes. Human, not so much. Well...doesn't look like anything else of interest. Keep Chavez away from stuff that can go 'boom' please. Proceed to the cockpit if you don't mind," Wray directed. He soon found he was leaning forward in his chair on the Bellerophon bridge in an attempt to take in every detail and perhaps catch something that the team over on the shuttle, on the Osprey, had missed. The weapons, both modern and
historical, intrigued him. The fact that the modern plasma pistol was low in charge spoke volumes in that it said the weapon had most likely been fired. Pieces of a puzzle.
Wray continued his careful viewing as the small cockpit quickly came into view. Only three seats in a cramped space. Pilot. Co-pilot. Astrogator. There was no captains chair like on the bridge of the Belle'. The pilot of a shuttle was the captain unless of course one of the VIP's, a higher-up on the corporate ladder, felt necessary to "assume command" and give orders over the shoulder of the pilot. Wray wondered, if on those probably not so rare occasions when a pencil necked pointy head took charge, to throw their weight around no less, just how much "turbulence" the shuttle encountered to keep the VIP back in their seat in the common area. He grinned to himself at the thought.
The view of the cockpit got up close and personal with the astrogator station as Bachman sat down in the seat and accessed the Osprey's primary computer. The resolution of the camera was such that a clear image of the data Bachman was viewing on the astrogator computer was able to be read on the display back on the Bellerophon with relative ease. Since there was still the possibility and threat of a backdoor virus, as a kind of latent defense, the standard procedure was forego linking a captured ships computer system to the Bellerophon until it was absolutely certain there would be no damage to the systems on the Belle'.
"While Chavez, Ayad, and I were inspecting the rest of the ship, Marie was going over the systems in the cockpit and as you can see," Bachman began as he cycled through course readouts and plots for the benefit of the captain and observing bridge crew, "she found something very odd." The display paused on one particular readout, "what we are looking at here is the destination. See anything wrong with it?"
