by Aer-ki Jyr
“So I’ve also been informed,” Davis confirmed. “We’ve been running the numbers and it still looks like it will take them 2 months at minimum to cross the gap out to the asteroid belt. Your leading warships will arrive first, and I’ve already deployed some of mine to the area in order to encourage calmer heads to prevail.”
“We have no wish to provoke Star Force,” the Ambassador said truthfully. “But we will defend ourselves against any American aggression. We’ve already had one mining vessel go missing, and have no intention to allow there to be another.”
“Neither of us has been able to locate the vessel or debris thereof,” Davis reminded him, “so don’t start prematurely blaming the Americans. If they did have a hand to play in its disappearance, we’ll find out eventually.”
“I hope you do, but it has been six months and still no recovery. Not a sign of so much as a fragment of the hull? Or an emergency beacon? Your people designed the mining vessels we use, so you know their capabilities. They shouldn’t just be able to vanish unless there was foul play.”
“I know there is a lot of bad blood between your countries, but I’m not interested in guesswork. If anyone, the UK included, has been misbehaving and we find proof of it we’ll hold them accountable. You know that.”
“Our fleet movements are purely defensive, Director.”
“Possibly,” Davis differed. “You’re moving into a contentious zone. If your motives are purely defensive, that is your right, which is why I’m approving the transfer request. It is not, however, a license to begin poaching the American mining operations in retaliation. I trust your government understands this.”
“We do. But I hope you understand that it is becoming increasingly clear that the Americans are spoiling for a fight. If so, we are prepared to give them one.”
“Glancing down your ship list, I can see that,” Davis commented. “You’re dedicating the majority of your fleet to this redeployment.”
“Defense patrol,” the Ambassador politely corrected him.
Davis sighed. “I am well aware that certain factions have come to regard the asteroid belt as the wild west frontier zone, given the size and distances involved, coupled with the fact that we only have a minimal presence there and can’t keep an eye on everyone’s ship movements like we do here. But let me say, that we are not completely blind in the region, and that if you and the Americans plan to square off, then both of your contracts with Star Force are in jeopardy.”
The Ambassador nodded his understanding. “We take our business relationship with you quite seriously, and we have considered every angle of both the tactical situation and our obligations on part of our contract, but we feel that our…intentions lie squarely under the self defense provision of our agreement.”
“That depends entirely on what actions you take. Star Force will respond immediately to any illegitimate activities, regardless of who it is. I truly do not wish to have to send my fleet to hunt yours down on ‘capture or kill’ orders.”
The Ambassador stiffened. “We will honor our agreement to the letter. Can we assume the same for Star Force?”
“Of course.”
“Then I suggest you keep your eyes on the Americans. Our defense patrol is being established so we can watch where you do not have eyes…and to be in a position to respond immediately if there are any…violations.”
“As you wish. But be warned, simply crossing into your designated mining zone is not valid cause to destroy a ship. Intercept and stop it, if you wish, then notify us. Prove that the Americans are violating your territory and I will strip them of their mining privileges. Take the opportunity as just cause to start a war, and I’ll hold you both accountable.”
“We will gladly defer to Star Force when and where we can, but given the…lawless nature of the region, we may not have that option. Regardless of the future, our transfer order is accepted, yes?”
“It is.”
“Then if you will excuse me, I’ll relay the good news to our fleet commander. Good day, Director.”
“Good day,” Davis echoed as the Brit left his office. Once the man disappeared down the stairs he leaned back in his chair and let out a loud, heartfelt sigh. He’d been able to avert several potential international conflicts in the past decades, and not since the Chinese invasion of Luna had there been any major fighting, but he could read between the lines and knew that this showdown between the US and UK had been brewing for some time, with both sides intent on making it happen this time around.
One of the UK mining vessels had disappeared, which to his consternation his own fleets couldn’t locate. The asteroid belt was huge, but sparse, nothing at all like the public believed from watching scifi movies such as Star Wars. The belt stretched from Mars orbit out to Jupiter, with varying bands of higher density, all of which were still remarkably empty.
Star Force had established 7 belt starports for the use of the public to give nations access to select regions. These operations were mostly snatch and grabs, where a small asteroid would be located, flown out to, and ‘eaten’ by the ship in question, then brought back to a processing area or, for very small objects, processed on the spot with the unwanted material ‘regurgitated’ back out.
Mining territories existed as slices of a 360 degree circle/sphere centering on each of the belt starports, but overall the territory this covered was small, less than .1% of the entire belt. The mining potential was vast, but the technology hadn’t caught up with the dreamers yet, so Star Force’s accommodations to the various nations wishing to mine the belt was all they currently had to work with.
Star Force also maintained its own mining operations, some of which were much larger and actually were built attached to the larger asteroids, the primary site being on Vesta, a 570 km wide egg-shaped asteroid just below the threshold for becoming a planet. The Star Force outpost was actually cutting a hole in the side of the asteroid and building inside, gradually hollowing it out for future use while processing the materials harvested.
From this location Star Force also had snatch and grab mining operations heading out and picking over the local area, but far away from the nations’ zones. Given how much of the playground was available, it hadn’t been deemed necessary to set up directly next to one another.
However, one of the 7 national zones had the Americans and Brits sharing adjacent slices, which was where the trouble was occurring. Each slice radiated out from the starport far enough that radar tracking became impossible, leaving the various nations to their own reconnaissance in exploring and harvesting the local field. It was in these blind, lawless areas that they’d been flexing their muscle, knowing that Star Force wouldn’t be looking over their shoulder…or so they believed.
Davis had some intelligence about those regions that he’d never made public. It was insufficient, but gave him some key facts to work with. For starters, he knew that there were ‘ghost’ ships in the region, flying without transponders, which was a violation of the Star Force mandate. A few distant observations were all he had though, for whoever the ships belonged to was covering their tracks well, and no unaccounted for vessels could be identified in the official traffic logs.
Another tidbit of information that had come his way was the location of a mined out asteroid outside of the designated national mining zones. It had been a freak find, given how many were out there, but the football field long rock had clearly been at the mercy of power tools, excavating a cavity that his own miners had guessed contained a large gold deposit, based on micro-fragments of the metal found in the surrounding material.
While he didn’t technically have the authority to tell the nations where they could or couldn’t mine, it had long been established that all ships had to carry transponders for safety reasons, and the business arrangements between Star Force and its national and corporate customers required exception-less use of the devices, so if mining operations were being undertaken outside of the Star Force appointed zones, they should have been ab
le to track the ships locally, if not from afar, according to what size of transponder they were broadcasting on.
The British Ambassador could very well have been correct about the Americans. Ever since President Mendez had taken office back in the 2060s, the United States had ceased to be a backer of Star Force, but they still maintained a sizeable business relationship. They also maintained business ties with the anti-Star Force block, both corporate and national, essentially having a foot in both worlds and straddling the fence artfully, all the while seeking to expand their powerbase and holdings.
They weren’t the only ones. Star Force had approximately 1/3 of Earth’s nations in the support category, with only half of those that Davis considered to be true allies. The bulk of the international community fell into the client category, the Americans included, who did business with Star Force on a regular basis but was not politically aligned with them, and more often than not socially and politically opposed them on one hand, but kept ordering ships and services with the other.
That left a handful of nations that were outright opponents of Star Force, led by the Chinese, and were confined mostly to Earth orbit, with a few territorial possessions purchased on Mars. As the rest of the planet moved forward with the colonization frenzy, the opposition had been left behind, unable to keep technological pace with Star Force’s improvements and raw construction capability. As a result they had been reduced to minor players beyond Earth, but maintained a strong economic foothold around the planet and on Luna, which still was the heart of the space-bound economy.
The Russians mainly kept to themselves, and were marginal Star Force backers. The Japanese fell neutral, preferring to neither praise nor condemn the mega space corporation while they pursued their own national agenda as a major and regular customer.
The Brazilians, however, were an avid supporter and exclusively used Star Force technology. He doubted that they or the Australians would risk penalties by running ships and operations without transponders. They’d grown in power by holding to all of Davis’s rules, and all indications pointed to that continuing to be their national policies well into the future.
Then there was a slew of second tier nations, some on the rise like the Brits, others on the fall like the French who had basically abandoned all territorial aspirations, selling off their holdings on Luna and Mars and focusing on building/purchasing orbital habitats to offload their growing terrestrial population as a last ditch endeavor before legislating reproductive limitations, such as China had done in the previous century.
India was in a similar situation, being the heart of the overpopulation problem on Earth, but they saw space colonization as not only the solution to the problem, but an avenue to rise to glory. They were another nation that Davis would have tagged as a slow riser, held back initially by lack of funds but slowly overcoming that deficiency as they opened up more and more space-based operations.
Most nations didn’t have the means to go rogue just yet, the problem was that some of Star Force’s competitors had advanced far enough to enable these countries to start thinking along those lines, and the more they advanced the less certain he could be as to who these ghost ships might belong to.
Regardless, the Americans and Brits were set to go at it, following a long string of incidents stretching over the past two decades. The two countries who once quoted each other as being the closest of allies had apparently decided to stretch back to their roots and reembrace the two wars that had bracketed the Americans’ birth as a nation.
The Brits didn’t have the largest warfleet, but they did have one of the best, and were deploying most of it into the asteroid belt, purchasing piggyback rides on Star Force inter-planetary starships to get them there. The Americans did have the largest fleet, after Star Force, and had sent a significant portion of it into the inter-planetary void between Earth and the belt, enroute to ‘secure’ their mining rights against trespassers.
Due to the travel time involved, Davis figured he had a couple of months to head off this fight and had already had the Archons dispatch a fleet larger than both the Americans’ and Brits’ combined into the general area in the hopes that its presence would discourage, or at least delay what seemed to be an inevitable clash. Meanwhile, he’d planned to get to the bottom of the illicit mining activity and have some answers to throw before both countries so he could take away some of their political firepower.
He also conceded the point that it might not matter, in which case their fleet would be there to protect the other nations’ facilities and ships from the fireworks, and be in a position to intervene if and when necessary…the dynamics of which he was leaving up to the Archons.
No matter which way he sliced it the situation was bad, and how he dealt with it would set a precedent for the other nations with squabbles amongst each other that had been gradually working their way to the surface, some of which had become emboldened by the friction between the Americans and the Brits.
He needed to get ahead of the situation, which was why he’d asked the Archons to send an expedition into the field to track down the missing British ship and uncover what was really going on beyond Star Force’s radar detection zones.
Davis just hoped they found the answers in time, for with the American fleet already having gotten underway, the clock was now officially ticking.
4
January 22, 2107
“We’ve got something,” Rafa said, tossing a data chip across the cabin only to see it arc to the right and fall into Morgan’s hand. The Viper-class inter-planetary starship was currently undergoing its braking maneuver prior to arriving at Starport 4 in the asteroid belt, creating the binary gravity effect that held Morgan’s feet to the ground as well as pushing her back into her seat inside the small cabin she’d been assigned for the duration of the trip.
The acolyte effortlessly stood up against the awkward gravity and grabbed a data pad, inserting the chip and accessing the files. Rafa leaned against the wall, also seemingly unaffected by the gravity aside from a slight tilt to his stance.
The report had been sent from Roger, who was overseeing Star Force’s warfleet in the asteroid belt in preparation for the American/British showdown that appeared to be forthcoming. The fleet had been spread out across the most likely places they suspected the ghost ships to be, based on prior crossings, and they’d picked up another sighting. Roger had ordered the target tracked at range and over the past 2 days it had been cherry-picking asteroids for consumption, then rendezvoused at another before retreading approximately the same geographic region.
As the Star Force cutter had kept its distance and followed the ship back out again, it caught a brief signal from another ship rendezvousing at one of the same asteroids. It only stayed briefly, then disappeared outside sensor range, but the location of that particular asteroid had been tagged and Roger dispatched a ship to investigate the area.
Morgan flipped through a host of reconnaissance photos, noting the small base attached to the half mile wide asteroid, along with Roger’s speculations as to it being some kind of supply depot.
“Sounds like our ticket in,” Morgan said, pulling out the chip and inserting it into a slot on the rim of the video screen. With a few button presses she had the photos enlarged on the TV for closer inspection.
“If they’re not running active radar we should be able to get in close,” Rafa commented, pointing to the back side of the asteroid. “So long as we time it right. Roger is redeploying a few more ships to give us a detection perimeter around the base.”
“A quiet one, I hope. Spook them and we lose the link.”
“He’s playing it coy. I doubt they even know they’ve been detected. We’ve picked up faint radar bounces from their ships, which seem to correspond to a low powered, forward-mounted array.”
“To target the asteroids.”
“Exactly,” Rafa agreed. “If our ships keep their distance and don’t start screaming active radar, they shouldn’t be noticed, and ev
en if they are there are plenty of rocks out there to confuse their sensors with.”
“I don’t like the fact that we’re broadcasting any active radar signals, but I guess Roger knows what he’s doing. We’ll need an extraction team standing by in case this goes south…and those drone warships aren’t going to cut it.”
“I’ll inquire,” Rafa promised. “How are you doing?”
“Twitchy,” Morgan admitted. The downtime wasn’t something she was accustomed to.
“I know the feeling. It’ll pass quicker if you run your guts out on the track.”
“I’ve been taking a couple of hour runs each day.”
“Want a pacer?”
“If you can keep up.”
Rafa smiled. “Let’s go.”
Morgan frowned. “The gravity’s at the wrong angle.”
“That’s what makes it fun,” Rafa said tauntingly, retreating back outside.
Morgan raised an eyebrow then grabbed her running shoes and a pair of socks out of a side drawer and followed him out barefoot, sensing that they were about to play a game of cat and mouse and he wasn’t about to let her have any advantages.
She followed him through the ship, not having much trouble with the odd gravity angle but stopping here and there to pull on a sock while still keeping her fellow Archon in sight. By the time they got to the ship’s track she had both shoes on, but unlaced, and Rafa took off running to gain a lead.
Morgan knelt down and quickly tied her shoes snug, then took off in pursuit, more than willing to play chaser.
“Seal checks,” Rafa asked as the three Archons floated towards the hangar bay doors.
Morgan had already run through her armor’s checklist, but double checked her atmospheric integrity anyway.
“Tight,” she reported through the helmet comm.
“Good to go,” Taryn echoed from within her red armor, which matched the set Rafa was wearing. Morgan was the oddball, wearing the identical equipment but painted with the acolyte silver color scheme, giving her a dull chrome armor that only she had earned the right to wear.
