“Admiral Turner, Basestation Control. The Bounty is docking for another load. Should be out of here again in an hour. The Red Pepper is on approach. Are they going to be able to make another round trip or should we call this it and take down the last factory.”
“Call it final and hope we can squeeze another round in. Is the transport Squadron still headed for New Home?”
“Yes sir. Right on time. They are less than a half hour out. We have our own pilots on them with their navigation systems dead so they can’t find it again but they will know we have another base Admiral. You sure you don’t want to bring them here with the Bulk Carrier and transship the materials. The Captain of the Bulk Carrier headed this way is going to tell the Vice Admiral anyway.”
“No. We don’t have the time and New Home needs what they are carrying. As far as they are concerned if everyone follows the script, they will just think they are dumping everything someplace in the middle of the cloud leaving it there to be picked up later. They won’t know it is New Home or anywhere near the Bubble. And even if they suspect, it will be a long time before they can talk to Vice Admiral Ditzen to tell him with them headed back to the martialing yards I am sending them to.”
“Very well Admiral. Oh you have got another request from Jeeves to report to your cabin on the Red Pepper. The message says it is very important Admiral. Fact the message says it is Admiral Halsey’s orders. Which has to be impossible Admiral.”
“Ya I am sure it is since we are still out of contact with The Rock.” Shaking his head. This was the 6th time he had gotten a message from Jeeves back on the Red Pepper to come see the old AI. Each message getting more insistent, even desperate but now using Admiral Halsey’s name was going too far. Jack’s irritation at Jeeves insistent demands with him already running ragged from one problem to the next with no time to go out of his way to board the Red Pepper just so the old codger could sit and chat added to the fact that he had just gotten used to being called Captain and now they were insisting on Admiral of all things every time he turned around. “And quit calling me Admiral Damn it. As soon as that fool presents whatever Orders he comes up with I will be just a Captain again. Until we go AWOL and then I will just be a deserter with the rest of you.”
Jack continued on toward the outer hull and rows of Armored Gunsleds. They had been able to produce another thousand Armored Gunsleds that were no longer really just gunsleds with an additional kit added to them and the one already produced. They were actually spacecraft now with their own open space propulsion systems in long fat poles or canisters down the sides along the bottom corners. They still looked like boxes with sharply sloped flat bows and long flat slab sides with a ramp hatch at the back and a squat 3inch gun turret on top. They were still more armed and armored transport than fighter. Able to carry 12 fully mechsuited marines or 10 tons of cargo making them much more than simple sleds now. With the original 910 sleds now numbering well over 2,000 with trailers little better than shells the same size as the transport that could carry 20 tons of supplies added to their assess in chains, they turned out to be quite versatile. Over loaded, with them programed to follow the leader in 10 sled squads or trains, Jack watched as the Armored Gunsleds’ drivers turned pilots with a couple hours of Simm time, checked their slaved train of sleds while they waited for orders to depart.
Continuing past the Gunsleds Jack started jogging. Jeeves last call invoking Admiral Halsey’s name eating away at his mind. He finally had a few minutes so maybe he should stop by the Red Pepper and see what was so damn urgent. Maybe the old man Jeeves or even Zoot had a way out of this mess so they didn’t have to go AWOL and become fugitives just to keep from being the Vice Admiral’s tortured Slavesor even stay alive. Even though it was Jeeves and Zoote that had told him he had to go AWOL in the first place instead of just killing the SOB.
Jack jogged along a line of cargo canisters that had a new form of cargo sled that resembled more of a frame than flat sled attached to their tops that amounted to several poles around the edges with a driver’s seat hanging half way down at the front left corner. A hundred cargo boxes were lined up end to end with a short pole between each box forming one long flexible train. Jack watched as another group of individual piloted 50 foot long Cargo Container Boxes were being flown up from the cargo holds and in between ships docked around the deck’s edges to join several new trains being assembled as Jack jogged up to a (10 by 40)foot flat decked sled that was picking up the drivers as they climbed out of the control seats of each box after nosing up to the cargo box ahead of them in the train and sliding the short pole hanging out in front of the sled into the receptacle in the back cross beam of the sled ahead.
Stepping onto the personnel sled as the last of that batch of cargo box drivers jogged up. The sled rose up and then dropped toward the deck below as it turned over. Jack looked up to the lines of cargo containers already running around the edge of the overhead and smiled. Everyone new that sleds were only for short range ground transportation. You could never take them very high or far between charging’s. Certainly the Vice Admiral would never think that they could go a quarter of the way around the Bubble or what was turning out to be a Dyson Sphere (a big ball around a sun). Just not the kind most people thought of as a Dyson Sphere. No one could live inside this Dyson Sphere (for a few thousand years anyway), but the outside was turning out to be something else.
Too bad few people would ever even hear about what was now probably one of the top 10 wonders of the Universe. Even the damn Vice Admiral evidentially had no idea that the Basestation he wanted to destroy was attached to a Dyson sphere and not an asteroid planet or moon from what he had said. Jack had been ordered to redact all mention of the sphere from his future reports when he had received an answer to his first report to Admiral Halsey when they had finally gotten long range comms up after the Bubble had been created. While his original report to the Admiral had been classified ultra-secret with only the top Admiral’s with a need to know even knowing about it and evidentially before Ditzen found out about Jack the aliens and the Station. Though that had not stopped Vice Admiral Ditzen from finding out about the wealth of minerals around the Station even though it was never explained why the concentration of metals around the Station was there or that it was not just sitting on an asteroid. Jack knew it would not take long for even a moron like Ditzen to figure out about the bubble with him in charge of the New Basestation only a few miles from the hole spewing gases and lighting up the Cloud. But that was no longer Jack’s problem.
Jack watched one of the already assembled cargobox trains drop down from the overhead and follow them out between two docked Battleships and drop over the edge of the Cargo deck slowly filling with marines and crewmen from the Vice Admirals Squadron. The train following them down the side of the Basestation before it lifted off to move out across the open metal covered field between two of the colored beams still shining up into pin point torches of light reflected in the haze created by the original explosions that dug, cleaned and etched the bowl shaped lenses in the Sphere. The pinpoints vaporizing the gas as it drifted across the superheated concentration of light creating the torch above every blasted hole. Looking at the torches Jack still could not believe they had survived the torpedoes as he watched a train’s tail light in the distance disappearing low towards the horizon hundreds of miles away. It was some big ass sphere.
Jack stepped off the Sled as it touched down in one of the locks in the lower half of the Basestation with the weary drivers as the Red Pepper slid up to the next lock over to start loading the equipment and supplies they were stripping from the Station. Sections of the last Factory with all its mounting hardware and base frames were lined up and ready to go cluttering most of one side of the deck. The last thousand of over ten thousand cargo containers with essential equipment and supplies from the lists continued to come up or down from the various holds in both Battleships to have the new sled frames taken from their stacks, attached and driven up to the trai
n assembly deck at the top of the station for the Vice Admiral to see and get the wrong impression. Forcing him to waste time looking for them close to the Basestation instead of where they were going. Jack knew it was a waste of time even trying to hide the fact that they were abandoning the Station to him.
Jack was taking no chances though it was probably impossible for anyone to find New Home unless they knew where the original mining station was in the first place with the trillions of square miles of surface area covering the sphere to search even if the Vice Admiral knew they were not close by. Especially what they would be hiding in. Though it was going to take some time to get everything under the cover of the natural domes. New Home was being made from what looked like the rest of the trillions of square miles of rocky jagged surface if not for all the ships and the growing piles of construction material and supplies sitting out in the open at the moment. Eventually someone would be able to fly directly over New Home with sensors and not find them but that was possibly years in the future. Though they did not have years nor could they simply hide. They still had a war to help win even if certain humans where starting to feel they needed to hide and not help.
Walking into the Red Peppers Personnel lock with the boson pipe cutting off as his foot touched the deck, Jack saluted the Colors and the Officer of the Deck. Admiral Arriving was blasted all across the ship. Jack was immediately deluged with more last minute problems. Turning his Comm back on he started to deal with them on his way down to his Cabin as he kept getting intercepted. Half of it ship’s business the First Officer could not take care of. After all he was legally still the Red Peppers Captain even if he had been mostly absent for weeks on end. Finally holding up his hand to quit the Officers starting to line up. “Come on guys let me get down to my cabin at least and my desk. Makes it a lot easier to work instead of standing here in the passageway.” Jack continued to answer questions as he walked but had to put many of them off to do some checking. He already knew they were going to have to leave a lot behind that included some of the last minute things that suddenly no one could live without. But that was what you got when you only had hours to evacuate two Spider Hulks made into a Base Station only hours before. He needed to look at the lists and schedules to find out what they could trade for something that was suddenly needed, if they could or even wanted to trade. Leaving something else that was just as important behind. What they needed was more time and more ships and...
Wondering where he got the idea that everything was settled and he could take a peaceful walk Jack sat down at his desk. Checked the progress of the gathering crews on the new Docking/Cargo deck at the top of the Station he started changing the remaining lists, adding and subtracting and hoping he did not cut or leave something behind they could not live without. Though he had found out over the last 6 months that having too few of some things was sometimes worse than not having any. Adding to his problems was the fact that some things people wanted to ship now could be made with the factories when they finished setting them up later. Though the problem was that he did not know what could and could not be made later or what if left behind, would prevented them from even getting the damn factories operational. He simple had not enough time to learn what could not be left behind safely. While he added a few important things he could not believe had been left out at first, the requests and problems started getting ridiculous and he finally cut everyone off and said live with it. He wasn’t changing anything else as his steward sat the first decent meal he had seen or smelled in days in front of him making both his mouth water and his stomach growl.
The Lieutenant shoed everyone out and Jack sat back and started to pig out as the Lieutenant joined him. Looking up at her Jack smiled. “Last meal for the Condemned right Lieutenant.”
“Not necessarily Admiral Turner.” The Hippie Zoote appeared next to the desk and even though her voice had warned Jack, he still jumped a little as she appeared.
“Ok. What do you mean by that Zoote?” A little bit peeved that the first quit peaceful meal he had had in ages and probably his last was being interrupted. “And what the hell kind of name is Zoote anyway?”
“I am one of the few series Z-001 Supper AI’s ever built with an organic processor. The fancy calligraphy on my case made Z-001 look like Zoote. Does that answer your question Admiral?” Looking and sounding like she was taking a breath as her chest moved. “As for the first question. You can’t let the Vice Admiral Ditzen take over Command of the Station at this time.”
“Really, the only way I can see that happening is to shoot the SOB and you said I can’t do that.”
“I have talked to the Detroit Epsilon and the orders he will present to you are fake forgeries.”
“Daaa. Tell me something I don’t already know Brains. Of course they are forgeries but he is in charge of security and I don’t think there is a Comet in hell’s chance I can prove that anything he produces is forged. At least not here and now. Now leave me alone and let me finish my steak in piece. I have work to do and little time to do it. Besides I haven’t had a steak in 7 months.”
“Yes I see that you are moving. That is why you need to keep Ditzen from taking over the station for now until you can get everything New Home needs not only to survive, but flourish. You need at least an additional month to do that.”
“And how am I supposed to do that? Besides we have already gotten most of what these Battleships can give except for more materials. So even if we had the time, striping the damn Station to the bulkheads would still not help that much. Not to mention losing our main food supply until we can get new crops growing in the new domes. It took over 6 months to get the Station operational and we are starting all over again without the decks and ship structures the Battleships provided. I am told it will be at least a year before most even have quarters to live in.”
The Domes they were moving to at the mining sight were just bare bubbles in side of the bigger bubble’s wall. Created by a Comet caught in the initial explosion’s shock wave that created the Diamond Bubble or sphere in the first place. The comet fragments of ice were sandwiched into the molten carbon expanding wall and spread out across the wave where they gasified to blow and inflate the bubble domes across a thousand square miles of the sphere, some domes were filled with poison gas depending on what ice was caught in that part of the bubble as it expanded. They had found the mountain range of bubbles only a month before and had only started a mining station there a week before. Which was why it was still fresh in Jack’s mind when the need for someplace to hide arouse.
Jack took another bite and without tasting it as he threw down the fork. “And I don’t appreciate you invoking Admiral Halsey’s name just so you can tell me shit I already know. We will be gone from here in another hour or too if I can stall long enough but it is going to be a year before we can be of any help to the Republic because of this move. I hope they can hold out that long. At least by then we should have a few weapons that will help if I can figure out a way to get them to Admiral Halsey to be produced in time.”
“What about the long range Communication systems you are leaving behind. You are going to need them.”
“It would take a week to pull them so we are going to blow them up along with a good chunk of the equipment on the station we can’t take. Eventually we can produce everything with the factories we are taking once we can turn the domes into someplace we can to do it in. That is our main priority now is taking what we need to live for the next 6 to 9 months while we clean out and connect the domes and build up New Home.”
“You can’t blow up the Comm equipment. Admiral Halsey needs you to take that with you so we can stay in communications.”
“What the hell you talking about. There is no Comm traffic in or out of The Rock and we are not about to start transmitting a signal that can be traced even if we had the long range Comms.”
“Your Comm department has developed a long range Comm that is not traceable. I am talking to you now over it. I am with Admi
ral Halsey now.” Admiral Halsey sitting behind his desk appeared on the side of Jack desk across from Zoote to the right of Jack.
“Zoote I told you not to divulge the secret Comm to anyone at this time.” Admiral Halsey said not very happy at all.
“It was paramount to convince Jack that he was not alone or he would have allowed Vice Admiral Ditzen to drive him and humanities only chance to survive into hiding. With a 77% chance that powers that Jack cannot control would keep the Colony from ever reaching out again to help anyone let alone the Republic in time to prevent humanity from losing the war and extinction.”
Jack looked over at the Halsey. “I already knew about the trace less comm Admiral. What I don’t understand is how you got the only other transmitter/receiver.”
“He doesn’t Jack. When I was on the Bulk carrier prison ship I found the transmitter when I was recoding the Basestation’s Point Defenses and sent a carrier wave along with the signal down the laser tunnel that provides a way to send and return data to and from the Admiral’s private secure long range Transceiver.”
“You were the one that almost got us killed? What took you so frigging long?”
“I burned out my core on the prison ship and had to reboot my main program in my back up core at The Rock. Sorry, if I had not been in such a hurry and got carried away overclocking my core, I would have been done in plenty of time Jack. I was so afraid of you getting killed I got stupid.”
“Ok. You are going to have to explain how it is possible that a computer can be afraid or get stupid later. Right now I need the Admiral to send me orders officially countermanding any orders old numb nuts has made up taking the Station away from me.”
Battleship Destroyer 2 (Battleship Destoryer) Page 70
