by James Edward
“Again wow.” Lydia whistled. “What have I gotten myself into! Now what is my part in this? I am just a Starship captain that found office work.”
“Nonsense. I saw your file and your achievements. What you did to set up the world of Colony Base was nothing short of genius! Too bad the ungrateful bastards opted to leave and take their chances,” Ray stated. “I need you to be my XO. You will look after the day-to-day running of the company, especially while I’m away. You will handle many of my duties while I get to gallivant around plotting a scheming. I am the CEO, and you will be the COO. You will also be the picture that will appear on all company info. If the PRC saw me, they would be very suspicious, as I was just drummed out less than six months ago. If I now appear as the leader of a multibillion-credit company, it would raise anyone’s eyebrows. You will sit in on all policy and planning meetings and for the most part will recommend who would be good doing what. You also have carte blanche as to staffing to take some of the load off of you. Just remember every recommendation must be vetted through security. I don’t want to start with a nest of spies.”
“Shit, Ray, you don’t want much, do you?” Lydia grunted. “Okay, I can handle most of that as long as I get to pull some of my old people on board, and yes, they will be vetted first. This is pretty exciting stuff. Who else knows about the whole picture?”
“The recruiters, Lyn, Reg, Sergie, and Bruce, know that this is more than it appears, and the rest know little pieces of the puzzle. We will enlighten the ones we take to Zn2091 so that they are aware of why they are working so hard to develop things fast. The regular miners and refining engineers will be told very little, but the players that need to know will be told. Oh by the way, I want another name for our solar system than Zn2091.”
“Okay, I will get to work on making this all viable,” Lydia said.
Within two weeks, they had a small office building comprising four floors. Karen had worked hard to set up an office, and to her credit, it was falling into shape. Each department had a floor or half a floor depending on requirement of its staff size. Lauren had managed to procure a 120,000-square-meter warehouse that now was being filled with all sorts of odds and ends. Charles Redone had gone to Cappa Tauri and set up a small office with a small staff. He had already established the company and was in the process of confirming the total ownership of Zn2091.
The only sticking point seemed to be the freighters. There were a few available but not the size that Ray needed or in the dependable flight shape that would require a move to Zn2091. They were sitting around the table mulling this over when Reg said, “Do you know that there are five freighters sitting and rotting in the bone yard at the space yards at Reno? They are perfect for the job, but the Fleet decommissioned them and left them to drift.”
“Really? Maybe I can call my guy and see if they could get them released to me. Lydia, if we tell the chief quartermaster that we can supply fuel at a reduced rate for a set number of months to the Fleet if we get to purchase the freighters, I wonder what deal he would make,” Ray said. “I don’t want to involve the Fleet in this, as it gives them rights to come and inspect the refining process to ensure it’s up to fleet standards. Is there another way to get them?”
“Well we could steal them,” Lyn said. “They are unguarded and not listed in the active rosters. We all know that things disappear once they become inactive or are sent to the decommissioning pile.”
“We could have their identities swept and new ones issued that wouldn’t be traceable. It would solve our problems and give us a couple of extra as well. All we need are crews and a way to sneak in there,” Bruce said.
“I have a black ship,” Lyn said. “I can get you in there; it’s getting out that would be the problem.”
“Hell, I can get them out. We will just pull a solar drift until we are far enough away that our signature doesn’t light up the boards, and then we are gone,” Bruce said.
“Well, we don’t know if they have fuel and how much,” Ray said. “Lyn, can you get in and out without notice? We could go in and see which ones are usable and get those running. Bruce, Lyn, Kimberly, Sean, Gene, and five engineers will go and do a scout on each ship. You will have to EVA, so the engineers should be experienced in that. Maybe talk to Hammer and see if we have any marines that can sub as an engineer. Quick in and out to see if it’s viable. If it’s a go, then we will go back with appropriate skeleton crews to get them out. The next jump gate will have full crews that could man them and take them to Zn2091 for refit and change over. We will need a fuel tanker there as well.”
Two weeks later in the Reno system, Lyn was sitting at the table briefing the crew consisting of Ray, Bruce, Kim, Sean, and Lance on what was going on in the system. They had taken different routes to get to the last jump point where there was a fuel tanker and an overcrowded galley full of crews for the freighters. She had rendezvoused with the tanker and picked up the skeleton crews for this last bit of action in the hopes that the freighters could be slipped away without notice. As she slipped into the system, her covert ship was all but invisible to the scanners that were positioned around the system.
“Okay, here’s what we know,” she reported. “The observation post is set at the far end of the system. It’s comprised of two corvettes, five maintenance bots, and a command post consisting of a small crew to man the remote-controlled observation posts. The corvettes only scramble if they get a flag from a maintenance bot or an observation post. The maintenance bots travel around checking on the mothballed ships and ensure that there is minimal power on some of the ships and that the interior maintenance bots are keeping the internal system in working condition. They appear to do random sweeps in the warship area, but for the five freighters, we have been here watching for two weeks, and they haven’t come this way yet. Maybe they won’t or maybe they will be coming today or tomorrow. It was too dangerous to hack into the main computer to see what their schedule was in case we were flagged. You never know if a bored operator might be sitting at their desk paying attention when we hacked. The observation posts are movement-sensor operated. A small object like a body will get past it, but if we move the freighters, one of them will flag the command center.”
“Hmmm, good and bad,” Ray said. “It means that we can check and see if the ships are workable, but it means also that the OPs need to be knocked out or a diversion of some sort. We will not be able to outrace those scrambled corvettes—and believe me, the crews will be eager for the task just to shake the boredom. Any ideas?”
“The OPs must do a maintenance cycle occasionally. We could sneak over there and activate its cycle, but that doesn’t tell us how long it will be down to do that. Option two is to have this ship move over to another OP and cause it to flag, sending the corvettes out after Lyn,” Sean suggested.
“We could also slowly, over a period of time, drift the freighters out. Move them slow enough as not to flag the OPs,” Kim added.
“What is the AGW protecting here?” Ray asked. “To answer, it’s protecting its warships and as a secondary point supply ships if there is a need for either. So the most expensive asset will be a warship. If we identify an old frigate and fire a Kew into it or redirect a small rock into it, the crews will respond. I would think that their attention would be fixed enough on that to move the ships. As well, there would be enough expanding debris to confuse the OPs.”
“Shit, man, you want to blow up a frigate!” Bruce exclaimed. “That would open a massive can of worms when all the facts are gathered. It will cause the incident to go all the way to the admiralty. As well, it will tighten security here so we can’t steal anything else later.”
“Well, what’re are options then?” Ray shot back. “We need those ships, and we need them sooner not later. Our time line is getting shorter, and we need to be able to escape the AGW scrutiny soon.”
“Okay, there is another way, I think,” Bruce said. “It follows
your line of thinking but will do better than destruction. Lyn, can you go out system or to the edge and set up a big asteroid—say a 10,000 kiloton—to pass by the command center as close as possible but not to injure it. They will have to abandon it for a day or so as the rock does its close pass. Therefore, there will be no one manning the sensors. We can pull the ships out and be gone while they are busy with the flyby. The closest OP can be disabled or switch to a maintenance cycle while we pull away, and then one of us can switch it back on.”
“Okay, viable and our best shot,” Ray conceded. Turning to Lyn, he asked, “Can you find and set up a rock to do what Bruce suggested?”
“Not much of a problem. We can do a scan and get it set up in a couple of hours, but for the rock to be authentic will take about two weeks for it to arrive.”
“Okay, we are a go for this. It will cause us no end of logistic problems with the tanker, but we can send it back with a better return date. In the meantime, while Lyn is gone, the rest of us will EVA to the targets and reconnoiter. I also want a team that will check out that OP. Everybody get ready EVA in one hour,” Ray ordered.
CHAPTER 4
Stealing the start of a fleet
ONE WOULD THINK THAT SPACE was cold, still, and silent, but in reality there are noises coming from everywhere—click, hisses, and more. The solar winds blow over planets and push dust clouds around, but it is cold. Ray and his group had opted to check the OP and because of that the closest freighter. The other crews were in their EVA sleds and had disbursed into the blackness. Each crew would maintain its silence until the job was done. The system had a small white dwarf star in the center and some barren planets, but they barely showed up. What did show up as little pinpricks of light were the five hundred or so derelict starships that floated in their cold graveyard. Ray wondered why they weren’t just broken up and sold for scrap to be reused for another purpose, but the military machinery moved slowly, almost glacially. Somewhere in some think tank, someone came up with the idea that to mothball ships for the future use was a great move. Actually, it wasn’t, as the longer they sat, the more they deteriorated and the more out of date they became. Anyone manning those ships in the time of war would be annihilated by the more modern, heavier-weaponed ships. Perhaps that was the idea, to have the enemy spend their ordinance on the fodder ships, allowing the better ships to close and engage. Who knew?
The EVA sleds were just big enough to hold a three-man crew. They actually had to lie down, and the center man operated the air jets to maneuver the sled. They were all plugged into a canned air supply that supplied air to the crew. A small heater supplied warmth to their suits. These sleds were good for about a day but could be stretched to a day and a half if required. It shouldn’t take more than two to four hours for the crews to locate and enter the freighters and do their preliminary checks.
Ray and his two-man crew reached OP 3 as the stenciling on the side indicated. This post was active and running sensor sweeps. It took Ray and an engineer an hour to dismantle the outer covering and get into the area where the sensor’s computer program worked. With a little effort and some luck, they were able to install a sub-routine that convinced the sensors that they were operating and would send false information back to the command center that all was quiet here. This would mask their movements with the freighters. It gave them a narrow corridor that they could use to move the freighters without worrying about their movements being sensed. They hazarded a guess that OP 2 and OP 4 sensor fields probably overlapped into the sensor field of OP 3, thus giving full coverage. They would still use the diversion, as this would take eyes off any sensor alarms and give them an opportunity to do a burn without alerting the command center tech or scrambling the corvettes.
It took another hour to bolt all back up and move to the nearest freighter. This had a large number two painted on its side. Ray took over the sled controls while the engineers moved to the outside forward airlock. The first engineer set a tether line into the outside tether clip and started working on two release clips mounted beside a panel just to the left of the airlock door. After a little fumbling, he managed to get the clips released and the panel open. Inside was a release lever, hand crank, and hexagonal shaft. Flipping the release lever and fitting the crank over the shaft, he started to crank the handle. Slowly the airlock door eased open. When it was open, he reset the crank and panel back into place and entered the airlock. When he returned, he gave Ray a thumbs-up, and both engineers went into the airlock. Ray tethered the sled to the ship and joined them at the airlock. While the airlock cycled through its pressurization sequence, they got their tools and instruments ready to do an inspection.
With a hiss, the ready light turned green, and they spun the door open. It was pitch black and very cold, and the air pressure was very low. After taking some readings and doing a sweep for anything that could be dangerous, Ray nodded to the two men.
“Right,” Ray said. “I’ll head up to the bridge, and you guys head to the engineering section. It would be faster to go outside again and take the sled over to the engineering airlock. Walking in the dark here for five or six hundred meters is too risky. Besides, you need the sled to haul the fuel cell booster.”
“We’ll be in touch, sir,” the big marine engineer said as they turned back to the airlock.
Ray slowly made his way up pitch-black, unfamiliar corridors. It wasn’t like a Fleet ship, all clean and scrubbed. This corridor was littered with junk. Old cables floated in the vacuum, and cabinets with their doors ajar and parts lay on the floor. Ray’s helmet lights lit all of this up, but with a bulky suit, quick movement was out of the question.
He finally made his way into the bridge. Again it took a while to get the doors to slid open, but eventually he managed to get onto the bridge. It was a spartan bridge—a half circle of consoles with a captain’s seat set in the center with its own console. The chairs all appeared to be metal and bolted to the floor. He figured they had to supply their own cushions to suit their own comfort and tastes. The consoles appeared to consist of communication, navigation, environment, cargo, sensors, and a small console for tactical for shooting the occasional asteroid or deterring boarders. Engineering must have had a control in the engineering section, which would make sense, as the engines were five hundred meters away. Ray was about to key his mike to ask the engineers for a report when the radio crackled alive.
“Engineering, we have reach the engineering bay. The engines are of course down, and we have 17 percent battery power. We will require 20 percent battery power for a start, so a problem. Other than that, all seems to be in order.”
“Damn, can we try starting at 17 percent?” Ray queried.
“Negative. We need to have that for reactor start; anything under that will cause the reactors to fail.”
“How can we bring the power up to 20 percent?” Ray asked.
“We will have to bring in a full-charged battery and install it in the loop,” came the reply on the radio.
“Okay. Next question, what is the size of the batteries that we will need, and what is the weight? Also can they be transported on an EVA sled?”
“No, these are one-ton batteries,” came the reply. “They will have to be brought in through the cargo bay closest to the engineering section. There is usually an overhead chain lift that will work for us to offload and move it to engineering. I figure that it will take an easy hour to manually open the cargo bay and at least three hours to bring in and hook up the battery. After that, it’s another hour for the engines to get hot enough for a fuel/fusion reaction. All in all, five hours, but you had better plan on six. That will tax our EVA suits, especially with the work effort, but we can recharge the air from the sled. We will also have a bigger crew, so one crew can remove a dead battery, and the other can bring in a charged one.”
“Okay. Can we just pull the new battery into the power room and hook it up and not worry about pulling out th
e old battery?” Ray asked.
“Negative. No room and the temp cables are about as thick as your arm. In the cold, there is a possibility of cracking the coating on the cables and power leaking. We pull one battery while the crew is pulling the cargo bay doors open. Best solution, sir.”
“Roger. Do what you can to prepare for that contingency now and meet me at the airlock,” Ray ordered.
Shit, Ray thought. If all the freighters were in the same or worse condition, then it was possible that they were in for a full day of replacing and recharging. This could put the covert ship in jeopardy, as they would have to move the batteries. He needed to talk to the senior engineer and Lyn to see where or how they could modify their plan. Delays would heighten the possibilities of being noticed and/or caught.
Back at the covert ship, Ray convened a meeting with all the affected parties. He stood at the head of the table and faced the engineers and other crew.
“Okay, you all know the problem, and this is time for solutions. Engineering, what is your input?” Ray asked.
