by James Edward
“As you will, Captain,” the commander said. “All is in order. I will also need to scan in the certificate issued by the admiralty for the release of these ships.”
Ray handed him the rest of the paperwork. After it was scanned and officially recorded, the commander saluted and returned to the shuttle. Two minutes later, Ray was summoned to the shuttle. There he was taken to the command center at Carver Station. Upon disembarking, Ray saw the large figure of Jeb Juliard standing at the docking port.
“Jeb, good to see you. Permission to come on board?” Ray smiled as he saluted and then pumped Jeb’s hand.
“Hi, Ray. Good to see you. Come on in,” Jeb said as he griped Ray’s hand. “Retirement suits you; you look energized.”
“Who retired? I just went to a different employer that is twice as demanding.” Ray laughed. “But tell me, what happened to you and the crew after my arrest?”
“Well, Fugs tried to get me to turn on you, and when I refused, he banished me here. Lily Braden, our tactical officer, was demoted and transferred to some other ship out on the rim. They put Andre, our old engineer, on an orbital station in the Jovan system. The ship went to the breakers almost as soon as it hit port. Fugs wanted no evidence to contradict his. The rest of the crew was transferred out to various ships and jobs. This was supposed to be my punishment for not supporting the prosecution, but it’s a great job really. The history here is amazing. I was surprised when a person by the name of Vixen asked me to do some work for her.”
“Well buy me supper, and I will tell you a long tale. One question. How loyal is the crew here?” Ray asked.
“Well, there are a few layabouts, and of course the majority were banished here for either screwing up or refusing to sell someone out. I would guess their loyalty to me is probably about 70 percent, to the Fleet 40 percent, and to the AGW 20 percent. For the most part, if you don’t push too hard, they will do what they are told, but I would guess that they wouldn’t be too shy in selling you out if it benefits them. Lt Collins is here because his father opposed some captain’s promotion. He is a good officer and a good lad, dedicated. He, you could trust. The others …” Jeb laughed. “Carry a blaster. That’s it in a nutshell. Let’s eat. I’ll show you the station while we walk to the mess. My cook is a good guy and doesn’t have an agenda, just working on retirement.”
Ray saw that the station was disciplined and well run. He wasn’t surprised, as Jeb as his XO was a stickler for a clean an orderly ship. The mess was quiet, with the cook only looking out to see why he had to wear a clean apron. They enjoyed the meal and were left alone to go over details while they sipped their coffees. Ray spent a long time explaining to Jeb what was happening and to prepare for the coming civil war. He surmised that some of these ships would be taken out of mothballs in a year or two, and when that happened, he would know that the shit had hit the fan.
Jeb in turn brought him up to date on the Fleet scuttlebutt, including the deteriorating conditions of the Fleet and the loss of a lot more people to discharges, court martials, and retirements. There was word that the pirates were back to full-force raiding, and the non-aligned worlds had been threatened by someone. The best of the Fleet were out on the rim, so the dregs were now in control of most of the inner core space lanes.
“Oddly enough,” Jeb stated, “I was considering resigning my commission when I was contacted by a special agent. This black ship suddenly appeared about a klick off the docking port and demanded access. Since it sported the required codes, we allowed it in. The officer that came on board was a woman. Although she was stunning, her eyes told me that she could probably kill all of us before we could react. Her uniform indicated that she was a commodore from the Provost office, but I recognize a covert agent when I see one. Well, she was above my pay grade, so I sure wasn’t going to make a fuss. Anyway, she introduced herself as Lyn and demanded to see the database for all ships in the bone yard. She spent about two hours in the computer room downloading the ship’s database and doing whatever.
“She came up to my office before departure and thanked me for my time and patience. She then said that the entire visit was classified and that everything was purged from the station logs. Sort of the ‘we weren’t here’ deal, leaned over the desk, looked me straight in the eye, and said, “Ray says to say hi.” They left shortly after, and we spent a couple of hours trying to find out what they did and rebuilding the day’s log to fill the two-hour gap.
“That ‘Ray says to say hi’ piqued my interest. I knew it was you she was talking about, and I knew there was more to come, so I decided to stay and wait to see what was going to happen. I got an eyes-only flag a couple of weeks later that said to find and prepare those ships, that a person by the name of Vixen would be sending specific instructions and documents.
“The gist is that you are all coming to move the ships to the breakers in the Slave system. All documents are right, and all paperwork is proper, all signed by Fugs himself. If it is ever twigged that the ships were illegally removed and not destroyed, then I will be the goat, so you better have a job for me.”
“Wow.” Ray sighed. “You were right about Lyn; she could and would kill you before you could even start for your blaster. She is one of us but works through a parliamentary secretary on command of President Ericson. As of right now, it’s legal, but when it hits the fan, it will be considered an act of piracy and spacing.
“Our timeline is two years to the collapse of the lawful AGW, six months for the PRC to wrest control, and within a year from then, a civil war that will tear the empire apart back to planetary systems and fighting one system against another. It was one of the reasons to remove loyal competent officers so that when we do go up against the Fleet, they will have the weapons, experience, and firepower. The advantage for us is that we are in the process of establishing a free base, and we will have the firepower to defend ourselves with competent officers to command the ships. We will be a haven, and then we will be the opposition. Getting eighteen ships is a huge step forward.”
“What is a bunch of obsolete ships going to do against the best of the fleet?” Jeb asked. “Even with the best officers, the Fleet has eighteen old ships won’t last an hour.”
Ray held up his hand. “Whoa. I am aware of that, but we also have just about every retired, downsized, or fired scientist that the AGW bean counters working for the PRC have gotten rid of. They are making strides in weapons, armor, shields, hyper-drive, and metallurgy. In two years, we will have a completely different class of ship that will be able to slice through our fleet. Our firepower will even overpower a dreadnought. Our speed will dumbfound the opposition, and our shields will take a direct hit from a tiger. Of course a Kew will kill us, but not even a planet can withstand them.
“Our base is about to cede from the AGW, and we don’t expect a ripple from the government or the PRC. They are both too involved in their own plots to think a system with no habitable planets or moons is of any strategic or economic value. Of course the PRC will want to have a look at us and decide for themselves whether it is worth the effort to take over. Therefore, a couple of warships, even old ones, will discourage them. We think that either a visit from Great Ursa or pirates will be the order of the day. Either way, we should be ready.
“It’s heating up, Jeb, and it’s not going to go away. Millions will die in this war, maybe even billions, and a planet or two. Lyn and others I don’t even know are out there putting out fires and starting a few to deflect interest away from us. Vixen is waging a covert computer war, and Weatherfew is trying to deflect Fugs and trying hard to save a segment of the fleet. Every planet and system has agents for and against slowly ramping up. I would expect even here you will get transfers in that are more loyal to the PRC.
“I would really like you to figure a way, without drawing any attention, to separate workable ships with scrap. Those dreadnought should never move again; they need to be rendered unusa
ble. If possible, I would like to come back and get some heavy cruisers and the battleships. The more in our fleet, the less that the PRC will get. Make no mistake, the PRC will start to look at these yards soon. They have pseudo control over eight planets already, so once they can isolate a shipyard and get rid of Weatherfew and a few other players in the admiralty, they will order the ships moved to their site for refurbishing. Anything that could kill our loyal people needs to be taken out of service permanently.”
“Crap, you don’t pull your punches, do you, Ray?” Jeb said. “I’ll see what I can do, but moving anything here is always logged, so unless you can get this Vixen to erase the database from wherever she is, it will be traceable. I can rig a few mines and such on the Dread’s, especially on the engines and reactors, but that will take time. You would be better off to pick up everything you need in a raid and blow up anything left. After all, we only have three corvettes here for patrol purposes; we sure couldn’t do anything against a war fleet.”
“Well, when or if we do that, you will have to come along. You would be executed if you stayed,” Ray mused. “We could always make it look like a pirate raid and you were taken captive. At least that will allow you some leeway.”
“I like the idea of getting the serviceable ships ready, and I could mark the ones that could be repaired so that you could do some target practice,” Jeb agreed. “By the way, Vixen has given me the name of Junkman for any correspondence. I could ask her to help set up things, I suppose.”
“No!” Ray said rather quickly. “She has enough to do without adding to her worries. This will be done by us. When you are ready to get out, send a message to the Conrad Group, asking for the CEO and saying you have some products for sale. Maybe list them as fuel barrels, one for each ship. Next time we come here, we will be coming in as a raiding group. The staff members that you recommend will be taken with us, and the deadwood will be left behind to raise the alarm. There should be no trace of us by the time the core Fleet gets there.
“I will talk this over with some of the other captains and let you know. By the way, I will be captaining the Endora. Findlay and Bruce Duely have the cruisers. They others will grab what they can. We also have Fred Arness; that man is a genius on a reactor core. I will ask for their input and see if they have a brighter idea.
“In the meantime, I had better get my crew on the Endora and get her hot and ready. The freighter will supply fuel to all ships that require it, and the rest will be fueled up once we are underway. I expect that this will take less than two days to complete the project, thanks to you gathering them all here.”
“Okay, I will be in touch. We need to finish the documents before you leave just to cover the station’s ass,” Jeb said as he rose. “The crew here is all aware that you have come to pick up ships to haul to the breakers at Longstat. As long as nothing goes wrong to raise their suspicions, we should be fine.”
The next two days were a flurry of activity of starts and restarts, fueling, and moving the ships into position for a launch to the gate. Ray, Fred Arness, and a picked crew were getting the Endora up and ready to launch as well. Sixty years of decay had made its mark on the old hull, but the engineers sixty years ago were a careful lot. They had done a wonderful job of preserving the inside of the ship. The entire ship had been put under fifteen pounds of nitrogen pressure. With no oxygen atmosphere, there was very little decay; this was called pickling. Once a year, a service bot had come by and topped off the nitrogen. The engines had been greased, oiled, and pickled as well. They old dead engineers had made the Endora ready for a restart. It didn’t take them long to have the engines hot, nitrogen pumped out, and converters started to make oxygen. The electronic had decayed, and some systems weren’t reliable, but by the late afternoon of the second day, they were ready to get underway.
Ray contacted the rest of his little fleet and ordered them to head to the gate. It was impressive to watch the two big repair ships Boxer One and Boxer Two gracefully swing about and head away. The ammunition ship Matilda looked more like an inverted catamaran, except at a massive proportion. The twin engines on each leg of the catamaran-styled ship flared to life, and it too followed the repair ships. The rest of the ships flanked on either side of the large ships shot away, followed by the cruisers.
Ray had met with Jeb again as they finished off their paperwork, and he passed forward a plan for the acquisition of other ships later on, along with the removal of any of the loyal crew who wanted to go. It had been decided that Lyn would be the contact, and as soon as Lyn, Jeb, or Ray heard that there was a plan to pull ships out of Carver, the plan would be set in motion. Ray had bid farewell to Jeb and moved the big ship away from the dock. Jeb watched as the old war wagon’s main engines ignited, and with a fiery blast of delight, the ship pulled away from its sixty-year-old grave and headed into the darkness.
“How is the old girl holding up, Fred?” Ray asked.
“She’s purring like an old tiger,” came the reply. “We can hold her at flank speed in system and maybe hyper five at the jump; she should hold together. There are a lot of systems that are not working or not turned on, but the core systems are good. You can thank some pretty dedicated engineers that mothballed her for that. She is space worthy even today after a sixty-year sleep.”
“Roger that. Increasing speed to flank,” Ray said as the station dwindled away into a mere speck of light.
The trip to Conrad Base was fairly easy, with only one ship going down due to mechanical failure, but thanks to the repair ships, they were able to get the part into the repair bay and have the repairs done. On Conrad Base, the sensor operator jerked as his screen lit up. He checked his readings and started counting ships that were coming through the gate. One … two … three … four … five … sixteen, seventeen, and eighteen! It was the fleet that they were expecting! He keyed his console mike and spoke into the headset.
“Gate Sensor to Station Command, we have traffic at the gate. Approximately eighteen ships of various sizes, including four heavies,” he reported.
“We should be getting radio contact soon,” Early said. “Coms, send out a welcome to our arriving CEO and fleet. Inform the fleet that all is ready for them at Sloman for the smaller ships, but the heavies will have to park and orbit for the time being.”
Ray and the rest of the fleet received the news, and after a flyby passed the station to show off the ships, all but the Endora departed for Sloman. The Endora moved to dock at the station. Ray was in a hurry to get there and catch up with the news. He had to get in contact with his board as soon as possible to see what the progress had been. He had the feeling that he had to crack the whip a lot harder than he was. He hoped that R&D had come up with something to help modernize these new (old) ships. He was surprised when a shuttle sped away from the station and headed to the old battleship. He was even more surprised when the shuttle started to orbit the ship. Moments later, it sped away, trying to catch up to the rest of the fleet. Ray turned to the coms operator and said, “I wonder what that was all about.”
“They seem to be taking readings and hull scans, sir,” was the reply.
“Well, I suppose that will be ongoing for the next little while. Inform engineering to keep the engines hot after docking just in case we need to depart quickly. Oh and invite Fred to join me upon debarking. I need to show him around the station as soon as possible before he departs for Sloman,” Ray instructed.
“Roger that,” the nav operator said. “Engines hot. Chief engineer to the debarkation port.”
Ray caught up with Fred Arness as he was getting ready to depart the ship. Fred looked tired as he and a small crew of four other engineers had babied the four monster drives and all the other systems. This usually took a dedicated crew in the engineering level of about 150, but the five had managed a miracle and not only got the great beast there but without any catastrophic failures or other upsets.
“Ah, Ray,
” Arness said as he joined Ray at the airlock. “We arrived safe and sound, and for the most part, the tribute should go to the engineers that mothballed that wagon. They did it and my profession proud. That ship was ready to go back into battle if need be from a standing start. Whoever prepared her should get a medal. I do have a long list of recommendations for the refitters though. But that can wait a little bit. I am interested to see this conglomerate of crates and containers that you pass off as a station.”
“These crates and containers are space worthy, Fred. That I can assure you.” Ray laughed. “Have you given any more thought to my proposal? I am going to meet with the board and would like to have you along.”
“Amazing the way you interlocked the containers together like that. That took some knowhow,” Fred said as he admired the welded-up container. They continued to move along the corridors, and Fred took in the station. “It is rudimentary for a station, but it is serviceable. I see lots of fail-safes, which is good, as these crate have a tendency to buckle over time.”
“Avoiding the issue?” Ray asked with a cocked eyebrow.
“No, if you offered it a week ago, I would have turned you down, but over the last week, when we weren’t putting our fingers in the preverbal dike, you managed to bring me up to speed on the operation and the long-range operation. I know that I can be more effective running engineering than being just a ship’s engineer. I will take the job and will move my staff to Sloman.
“I am eager to get those repair ships working so that we can bring all the ships back to life. I will be having many bloody battles with the R&D boys to ensure that they don’t ruin a perfectly good starship. I am old school and have been retired for years or so, so the going is going to be a little tough. The one saving grace is that I know Sergie. I got him into Fleet years ago.”
They entered the boardroom, and Ray started greeting the men and women there. Fred stood near the doorway hatch and looked over the faces of the elite team. Suddenly the room erupted with a bellow.
