by Don Chase
STRAND
Book 2 “Delarus”
By Don Chase
This is a work of fiction. All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. Organizations and events portrayed in this story are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.
STRAND book 2 “Delarus”. Copyright © 2013-2018 by Don Chase. All rights reserved.
Chapter 1
“Ow, damn it! Stupid grav stabilizers,” Marcus mumbled as he banged his elbow while he lowered himself into the dark maintenance tunnel leading him into the bowels of the station. He hated having to be the one crawling around in these tunnels, but he was just an apprentice, so he was low man on the totem pole.
Being a maintenance worker on a mining outpost was not his idea of a dream job. He had grown up on Delarus station, but he was hoping to someday escape the boredom of living on a space station on the fringes of the Federation just outside the uninhabited zone. He had been an apprentice for almost a year now and had learned to travel throughout the station using only the maintenance tunnel system.
“Marcus, have you found the faulty systems yet?” Olivia, his dispatcher, asked.
“I haven’t even reached the area of the fault yet,” Marcus answered shaking his head. Obviously she wasn’t watching his progress on the tracking system. “What good is having a tracking system if no one pays attention to it?” he wondered to himself as he crawled along the aluminum ductwork.
“Let me know when you do, I’ll shut down the power to that section when you’re ready to replace it.”
“Will do.”
The Delarus was a medium sized station. It served as a resupply point for the miners in the area. For the last couple weeks the artificial gravity on the station had been acting up and no one had yet to figure out what was causing it. More often than not, it would be a faulty system board that just needed to be replaced on one of the gravitational stabilizers. Once replaced everything would be fine for a few days until another one would go bad in another section of the station. If no one figured out what was causing the burn outs, they would run out of replacement parts before the resupply ship could arrive with more. Even then, it wouldn’t be the end of the world. Anyone that lived for a long period of time on a station quickly got used to occasionally floating from place to place. Eventually, it would become a major issue if the station lost all of its artificial gravity.
At the moment Marcus wasn’t worried about the artificial gravity. He was hungry and he knew that if he didn’t finish up quickly he would have to work past the end of his shift. He hated working late because the pickings got very slim in the dining hall since a lot of the workers on the station changed shifts at the same time. He came to the end of the tunnel and stood up in the small, circular control room looking up and down for the right panel. Rubbing his stomach, it grumbled reminding him to pick up the pace. He nodded to himself as he located the right one and pulled out a socket wrench from his tool belt to open it.
Once he had the plate open he asked Olivia to turn off the power. The hum of electricity in the small room stopped moments after. He swapped the burnt out board quickly and closed up the plate. He told Olivia she could restore power as he slid the old board into the small pack on his back. The pack was tattered and had belonged to his dad who had been a miner. He heard the hum return to the room as he smiled and slid back into the tunnel.
Minutes later the grate in the wall near Olivia’s desk jiggled and fell off the wall clanging on the floor near her feet. She jumped with a yelp as Marcus slid out and stood, dusting his dark blue jumpsuit off. “Seven Hell’s Marcus!” she said.
“Sorry, I figured I’d just come back here and sign out,” he said, sliding his ID card over the scanner on the wall near the door.
“Could you at least give a yell next time? You scared me half to death,” Olivia said.
Marcus laughed. “Will do. I’m going to get dinner, you wanna come with?”
“I do but I can’t. I’m working a double; you can bring something back to me when you’re done.” Olivia smiled and batted her eyelashes at him. She was petite with long auburn hair and small features except for her eyes which were large, round and dark brown.
“I can do that,” Marcus said with a wide innocent smile before he turned and headed for the door, “I’ll be back in a little bit.” Olivia smiled to herself as she watched him leave.
He jogged down the corridor bobbing and weaving around the other workers that were ending their shifts. Everyone was heading to the dining hall to get food. He was younger and smaller than most, so moving quickly through the groups of chatting adults was easier. Once inside the large cafeteria, he grabbed a tray and got into line. He was happy to find out that he had arrived early; everything was still fresh and hot. After loading up his tray he looked around until he found what he was looking for.
“Hi mom,” Marcus said as he sat, plunking his tray down in front of him at the small table next to the plexi-steel windows. “How was work?”
Stella didn’t look old enough to have a son Marcus’ age but you could see her age in her eyes. “It was good hon, you didn’t wash up before you got here… again.”
“Sorry mom, I didn’t want to be late again.”
“Well you’re here now and you got your food; go wash your hands at least before you eat.”
“Yes mom,” Marcus said as he pushed himself up from the table. She watched with a small smile as he trotted off toward the washroom. He reminded her so much of his father. He’d been gone for nearly two cycles now, killed in a mining accident out in the nearby asteroid belt. Marcus had worked hard as a maintenance apprentice to help out as soon as he was old enough. She knew that he wanted to leave the station but it couldn’t be helped at the moment. As long as she kept working, they would provide food and a place for them to live. Marcus working helped to make their lives easier. She took his contribution and had been putting most of it aside so that they could find a home in a GF controlled sector someday. Finding passage to those worlds and still having enough to get a decent home wasn’t cheap. She figured they would have to stay on the station for at least another couple of cycles to make it all work out.
Quicker than she would have expected Marcus returned, wiped his wet hands on his jumper and sat down. “Happy now?” he asked as he shoveled food into his face. He was growing so quickly these days that he seemed to want to eat constantly. Stella just watched him with a smile and shook her head.
As they left the cafeteria together a short while later Marcus grabbed two pieces of fruit. “You know you’re only supposed to take one,” she scolded lightly.
“It’s for Olivia, she’s working a double.”
“Ah okay, well that’s different then.”
The two dropped off the fruit to a grateful Olivia and continued on their way home. The hallway became carpeted as they crossed over into the residential area. It was the only distinct difference between where the people on Delarus station worked and lived. The long, curved hallway continued on as they stopped in front of a plain door. Stella glanced up at the sensor above the door frame. There was a quiet woosh of air as the door slid open.
The apartment was small; there was only so much room on the medium sized station. It had two bedrooms, bathroom and a small kitchenette that opened up into a living room. Stella kept it tidy with the one exception being Marcus’ room. He was like most teenage boys and had a tendency to drop his stuff where ever he felt like it. She had managed to stop him from doing it in the main area of the apartment; his room was another matter entirely.
Stella sat on the couch and tapped the arm chair control pad opening the compad display a few feet in front of her. She ki
cked off her shoes and leaned back with a sigh as Marcus walked toward his room. “Don’t forget your lessons tonight,” she said over her shoulder.
“But I was gonna go out for a bit.”
“Lessons.”
“Yes mom,” he said as he closed the door to his room.
Marcus let out a huff as he trudged to his bed dropping himself into it heavily with a thud. He tapped a control pad on the edge of the frame and the compad heads up display flashed to life above him with the days lesson plan ready to go. He studied for almost two hours before drifting off, dreaming of a life as a Galactic Federation soldier traveling from system to system looking for adventure.
Talis entered the communication center of the station with his steaming mug of tea in one hand and his compad in the other. His co worker Corgan noticed him enter and shook his head with a grin, “You are never on time are you?”
“Technically I’m always somewhere on this station so I see it as I’m always on time. I just may not be at my assigned post, but I am at work. It’s not like he’s here yet either.” He set down his tea and compad before quickly logging in on his keypad. He was only seven minutes late. Sooner or later Rihn, the station chief, would reprimand him… again. He wasn’t sure how many more warnings he’d get; he didn’t relish the idea of being demoted to something below where he already was. He wasn’t even sure there was anything below where he was. Talis figured at the very most they’d fire him and ship him off the station. That wouldn’t be so bad except Talis owed some powerful people a lot of credits and preferred to stay out here on the fringes of inhabited space.
“Let me guess, it’s been quiet?” Talis asked over his shoulder as he settled in.
“Mmhmm, as always,” Corgan answered. The two were in charge of all of the incoming and outgoing communications on the Delarus for their daily ten hour shift. Talis had been onboard the station for almost five cycles while Corgan had been there less than one. Talis’ old partner had retired and shipped off to his home world.
“I saw Lanie on my way here,” Talis said, swiveling in his chair.
“Yeah, how’s that going?” Corgan asked.
“I think I have a really good shot.”
“Did you actually talk to her today?”
“No. I think she smiled at me as I walked by her.”
“Really?”
“No, but I’m getting pretty good at convincing myself.”
“Just try saying ‘Hi’ one day, she might surprise you.”
“Or I could just fall over dead from a heart attack from doing it. I’d say the odds are about fifty, fifty either way on that one.”
Corgan chuckled as Talis checked his monitor for updates or anything that the last shift missed as part of his daily start of shift checklist. He may always be a few minutes late, but he took his job seriously. Once he saw that everything was as it should be he settled into his chair and took a sip of his tea. “Do we have anyone scheduled inbound today?”
“Nope, that’s never stopped any of these miners though. They come in when their hold is full and not a second sooner.”
“True enough.”
It was roughly two hours into Talis’ shift when the console made a beeping sound. He looked up from the compad he was reading and nodded to himself as he marked the blip on his screen. Delarus was a sleepy station. The resupply ship wasn’t due for days, so he was sure that the blip on his screen was another miner on their way with a cargo hold filled with any one of fifty different ores.
He returned to and finished what he had been reading before he tapped away on his keyboard to verify the detection of the incoming ship. He thought it odd that the ships identification tag hadn’t registered when it had tripped the beacon; it did happen sometimes. As he input his authorization code he paused when he heard a second beep. Glancing over at his monitor he noticed a second ship with no ID tags had tripped the long distance beacon the Delarus had set up. They used it to keep track of the incoming mining ships in an attempt to keep traffic to and from the station smooth.
He stared at the screen for a long moment as the two blips separated. The larger ship slowing and almost stopped, while the second sped up and corrected course to head directly toward Delarus. He had been on the station for over five cycles and had never seen a mining ship with a secondary ship in tow, much less two without ID tags. They did all have emergency vessels or fighters, but this second ship seemed far too large to be either. He wondered why he hadn’t heard a distress call before they would launch their emergency vehicle.
“Hello unknown vessels,” he said politely, “I’m not registering your ID tags, can you verify them for me so I can fix the system?”
Silence.
“Unknown vessels, please respond with your identification tags. Do you copy?”
Silence.
“Maybe their comms are down?” Corgan said from the seat next to Talis.
“It’s possible. They’re still pretty far away, so we’ll give them some time to get it together. We’ll keep an eye on them and give them a call again when they hit the next beacon,” Talis said.
“And if they don’t respond to the hails then?” Corgan, who was relatively new to the station, asked.
“If they still don’t respond we let Station Chief Rihn know and he’ll probably send out the fighters to do a fly by to make sure everything is okay.”
“With all the equipment going wonky lately I’m sure it’s just some sort of glitch,” Corgan said.
“You’re probably right,” Talis said as he kept an eye on his board as he sipped at his now cold tea.
Chapter 2
The behemoth ship seemingly popped into existence from nowhere. It sat dead for several moments before the engines came to life silently in the depths of space propelling the ship forward. Moments later a smaller ship launched from the side of the gigantic ship and tumbled into space before its engines kicked in as well, righting itself and streaking off as the larger shipped slowed again almost to a complete stop. Neither ship seemed to notice the small unmanned beacon floating nearby. What the beacon didn’t pick up were the three other ships that launched from the opposite side of the mother ship and soared off into the depths of the uninhabited zone.
Uninhabited space wasn’t exactly uninhabited. It was just the area outside of Galactic Federation’s jurisdiction. There were many beings that lived and worked out in the uninhabited areas; miners, pirates, mercenary security forces and station workers. They just had no protection afforded by being under GF rule so they faced a much higher risk and potential danger in their daily lives.
The further one traveled into the uninhabited zone the more likely they were to find trouble, or even worse that trouble finds them. The people that lived out in these parts liked their privacy or were running from something in the GF controlled sectors. In some cases both. Even the most diehard uninhabited zone residents stayed within a reasonable distance to the edge of GF controlled space in case anything went really wrong.
The three ships were large yet they moved with a speed that made them look more maneuverable than a small fighter. They flew in a tight formation for a long while before splitting off in three different directions. At the rate they were traveling at least one of them would find sentient life before too long.
The mining ship Brickton sat silently above a large asteroid, its’ tethers holding it solidly in place. Its’ three large drills boring deep into the core of the hunk of space rock while the umbilical chute sucked the semi precious ore up into the large rectangular hold in the middle of the heavy mining vessel. They had been working this deposit for days and looked to soon be done.
“The hold is just about full Cap’n,” Jenah said over her shoulder. She was in charge of inventory on the mining ship Brickton
“Thank ya Jen. Okay boys let’s start shutting it down,” Captain Rolen Tiber announced to his crew as he stood watching the forward screen.
Within a few minutes Jenah signaled that the hold was indeed ful
l and the dull roar inside the ship slowly faded off as the control team shut down the massive drills that were buried in the asteroid the Brickton was tethered to. “Withdrawing drills,” one of the crew members announced. “Releasing tethers,” another crew member said. There was a thud as the poly-fil cables retracted into the ship.
Rolen nodded to himself as he did some math in his head roughly estimating how much he’d make on this run. The malenium ore he had collected wasn’t the rarest out there but he had found some decent deposits out beyond the edge of GF space. So far he hadn’t found any trouble in this part of the uninhabited zone and wanted to keep it that way. “Zack, we’ll be heading out in a bit if you and the others could start running perimeter sweeps,” he said into his headset microphone.
“Sure thing,” Zack replied. He and two others made up the security force for Captain Tiber’s ship. The mere presence of the three escort fighters was enough to make any pirate think twice about attacking the mining operation. It was an expense that Rolen was happy to pay for. “You heard the man boys, time to go to work.” Zack said as he and two others got up from a table in the galley.
The escort fighters were hard docked to the outside hull of the mining barge. Mining ships tended to travel great distances and be gone for decent lengths of time. The larger ships tended to have hard docking ports for smaller ships so pilots could be housed on the mining vessel since they were out and away from planets and stations for long stretches. There was a sharp hiss as the three ships broke the vacuum seal as they pulled away from the larger ship.
The three ships formed a loose wedge and flew away from the mining barge. They would travel out a bit and then circle back while they conducted their scans to make sure no other ships were in the nearby vicinity. It was a dull job, but the pay was good.
The fighters were old GF models that were still in good shape. Every few cycles the Galactic Federation would update their fighters and sell off some of the older ones that were being rotated out of service. They were all stripped down and had their weapons systems removed. Once you got a hold of one though, it was easy enough to find someone to fit it with an updated and possibly upgraded weapons array. The fighters in Zack’s escort team had two missile racks holding a total of eight missiles and two forward facing cannons under the chin of each fighter.
