Star Force: Origin Series Box Set (13-16)

by Aer-ki Jyr

  They were on their own, and without his careful foreplanning the colony would most likely have collapsed by now. This definitely wasn’t an ‘on the job’ training experience because there was no safety net. Yes, Star Force was on planet to pull them out of the fire if they needed evacuation, but as far as the colony surviving and prospering it was all on them. There were no backups, no contingencies. It was sink or swim…and if you sank you were going home in shame.

  Fortunately Outlook was swimming, even if it was just the dogpaddle.

  A month ago Jules had passed the halfway mark in his 100 billion credit allotment, a bad sign considering he’d hoped to at least be partially self-sufficient by this point. Outlook did have a tiny amount of exports running, in the form of a trickle of precious metals being mined and sold on the Star Force market, but those credits coming in didn’t compare with those still flowing out. It would take him a long time to burn through the second half of that 100 billion, but the clock was ticking down regardless and Jules wanted to stop its progress sooner rather than later.

  Still working out of the mobile command center, Jules watched as a new transport came down from the jumpship that had just arrived in orbit carrying his most recent purchase along with his first supplement of workers that would increase his meager population by 15%. His mining operations had expanded enough to require the industrial reinforcements, which the Corvati board had been pleased to supply. He’d just read their return message, transmitted down to the colony from the jumpship as soon as it made orbit.

  Their tone, disguised as it may have been, was optimistic and praiseworthy. They congratulated Jules on how much he’d accomplished in such little time…yet to him it seemed like an eternity since they’d first arrived. In retrospect that was probably due to the long work hours and shorter days, which seemed to make time blur together in one long, unending train, but at least his efforts had been fruitful enough in their eyes to avoid any bureaucratic recriminations.

  Then again, being so far away probably helped in that department.

  Regardless as to Corvati’s true feelings, his additional workers were arriving and the mining apparatus coming down with them would double Outlook’s current capabilities…as well as replace a few broken pieces of machinery that hadn’t been properly calibrated to the idiosyncrasies of the Cornerian bedrock. That was one of the first little hiccups that’d occurred, and something they’d quickly learned from and added to the Corvati corporate planetary log, which would be used as a guidebook for all future operations on the planet, assuming this colony was a success and they were permitted future expansions.

  “Jules, the dropship Captain wants to have a word with you,” Uriel said, walking up behind him and handing over a small earpiece transmitter, which he accepted and slid into place underneath his moderately long hair.

  “Portman here.”

  “This is Captain Dryson. I was wondering where exactly you’d like your boat deposited. We can offload it here, but if you like we can also put it down directly into the lake.”

  “You can?” Jules asked, surprised.

  “Takes a good pilot, but fortunately I’ve got one. I just need to know where you want it and have one of your people onboard when we set her down so she doesn’t go adrift.”

  “Wonderful,” Jules said, getting anxious. “I’ll be right over and show you the coordinates myself.”

  “Good,” Dryson said curtly. “See you in a bit.”

  Jules smiled and headed out of the control center, turning to Uriel as he passed her by. “Get the dock crew on station.”

  In the belly of the Dragon-class dropship remained the final piece of the Corvati shipment, now that all the other equipment and machinery had been offloaded…a double-hulled watercraft that would serve as a mobile command center on the lake. Jules stood on the bridge, a small circular room atop the building-sized boat with an array of windows allowing him to look out in any direction. Beside him stood one of the dropship’s crewers, feeding instructions directly to the pilot up on the bridge as the dropship skimmed over the lake to the point where Portman had instructed them to go.

  Held in place by an inertial dampening field and gravity plates, the outer cargo door remained wide open, giving Jules a flying view of the trip out and over the forest to the edge of the lake, then down along the surface of the gentle waves that they were now passing over. Before long a small building with a dock poked its way onto the horizon of the shoreline and the crewer gave the pilot additional instructions over the comm.

  The dropship slowed its flight and approached slowly, stopping a few hundred meters shy of the pier. Then to Jules surprise it began to drop down…with the lake water gushing up over the edge of the doorway and flooding into the bay!

  “Relax,” the crewer told Jules, placing a firm hand on his shoulder, “we know what we’re doing.”

  Jules didn’t offer any complaint, but had the unnerving feeling that the dropship was going to sink and pull his boat down with it, but the descent was smooth and bottomed out after the boat became buoyant and the crewer relayed that information up to the pilot while heading out the rear hatch and topside on Jules’ boat to disengage the mooring lines. He came back inside a few minutes later and powered up the engines, then very slowly maneuvered the boat across the now flooded bay towards the opening to the lake.

  It wasn’t as tight a squeeze as Jules had thought, but the crewer didn’t take any chances and kept the edges of the boat away from any hazards, hitting the opening perfectly and trolling the boat out into the lake. Once clear, the Dragon slowly rose up with a waterfall spilling back out that Jules and the crewer watched from the boat as it lazily drifted on the sparkling clear lake.

  “I believe that fulfills your order?” the crewer asked.

  “I believe it does,” Jules echoed, shaking the man’s hand. “That’s one impressive delivery.”

  “We aim to please,” he said as the Dragon finished emptying out and the crewer had another brief conversation with the pilot, prompting the dropship to start drifting their way overhead.

  “Nice place you’ve got here. Perfect for some skiing,” he said as the dropship eclipsed the sun and a ladder extended down from above. “Wish I could stick around a while and help you break her in.”

  “All work and no play, huh?” Jules joked as the man grabbed hold of the bottom rung as it drifted over the top deck.

  “We’re professionals, so we don’t mind too much,” he said, stepping up, “but we also hate to pass up a good thing.”

  “I understand. Consider yourself with a permanent invitation for the future, but you’ll have to bring your own ski gear, because we don’t have any.”

  “I may take you up on that,” he said, throwing a quick salute before climbing up the ladder. A hand reached out at the top and helped him inside, then the ladder retracted and the massive doors began to slide shut as the dropship gained altitude and headed off across the lake away from shore and up into the sky.

  “I really want one of those,” Jules said aloud, marveling at the dropship’s sheer size and design. Shaking his head in awe he turned around and stepped over into the bridge hub again, taking the helm and trolling the boat over to the pier where his people were waiting. With some help they got the boat moored and Jules lowered the cargo boarding ramp from the aft section that served as a landing pad/cargo platform as he traded places with the woman that would be serving as the boat’s pilot on a regular basis.

  “Sweet ride, Cap,” she said as Jules handed over possession of the helm and bridge.

  “That it is,” he said, going topside again and peering down over the observation platform’s aft rail as the first of several large buoys were being loaded onboard via forklifts driving out onto the pier and up the ramp onto the boat without too much visible give from the weight redistribution. The buoys had arrived in the dropship as well, and had been transported over land to the dock during the offloading.

  Each was a miniature hydrogen produ
cing station, equipped with wind, solar, and wave energy collection equipment that would produce electric current instantaneously to power the electrolysis of the lake water. The buoys would then collect the resulting hydrogen into tanks that the boat and crew would periodically collect. Their hydrogen production on land had been inadequate so far, so Jules had decided to make the addition of lake buoys after getting approval from Duke Hightower since their boundaries had technically only extended to the edge of the water.

  Several more boat crew came aboard after finishing the first load of four buoys, leaving the remaining 36 for subsequent trips out onto the lake.

  “Staying or going?”

  Jules turned around, having been lost in thought for a moment. “Ah, I’m riding along on the first trip. Wouldn’t do to get a new toy without enjoying it for a while.”

  “You want to drive?”

  “No, no…I’m strictly a passenger on this cruise,” he said, smiling as he felt the gentle, cool breeze coming off the lake competing with the heat of the sun on his skin for dominance. He sucked in a deep breath, already feeling good about having made this purchase. It had seemed a bit over the top just to run out to the buoys and back, which smaller craft could have accomplished, but he’d wanted one large, more or less unbreakable piece in his supply chain that he wouldn’t have to worry about…the large party deck on top had just been an unexpected bonus.

  “Sunscreen then?” she joked.

  “I’ll manage, thanks,” he said, smile intact, as he turned his full attention back to the lake as the pilot retreated into the bridge and worked with the pier crew to get them underway.

  As the boat started to move and the breeze increased Jules got the sense that Davis had been right about this being an ideal spot for a resort. He’d been so busy that he hadn’t had the time to really soak up the scenery, but then again he hadn’t been out on the water before either. Yes, this was going to be an ideal location if and when he could push his infrastructure to the point where he could establish a proper resort and begin accepting tourist traffic. That day was long in the future, but it comforted him to know that the location he’d been given had the potential to be very profitable if he could get this colony firmly established.

  And that fact made all the annoyances he’d had to face over the past year more than worth the trouble.

  5

  July 9, 2261

  Epsilon Eridani System

  Corneria

  Manfred Ilsa rode the freight elevator up to the nighttime surface, cursing his blasted memory every meter of the ascent. He’d forgotten his emergency locator again, and the mining foreman had sent him back up to get it out of his locker before he’d let him get to work in the subterranean tunnels, docking his pay for the number of minutes he wasted going back up to get the safety device. In case of cave-in or other emergencies the locator could be activated as a powerful beacon or short range comm device, making it an essential piece of their daily work garb.

  Manfred hadn’t meant to leave it behind, knowing it was just hanging on the hook in his locker underneath an extra shirt where he couldn’t see it to remind him to put it on. He was as angry at himself as the foreman, because the only reason he’d come out here from Earth was for the pay. Five or six years of work would set him up with a tidy little retirement back home and the sooner he got to his requisite amount the better, and little deductions like he was incurring now were putting his departure date further and further back.

  It was his own fault, he knew, but he needed to vent on something or someone, so everything that passed through his mind got a verbal licking…including the incompetent idiot tipping over one of the container crates on the loading dock as he tried to remove it from the top of the stack as Manfred came up the elevator. It cracked opened in a loud clatter, spilling solid metal bars all over, some of which slid out towards his feet. With each weighing 85 lbs, the danger of injury was extreme and the man deserved every bit of the vitriol that Manfred sent his way.

  Around the 18th explicative there was a bright flash, followed by a burning sensation in Manfred’s chest that stalled further comment. He looked down in shock and horror, seeing the charred hole in his uniform along his left flank as blood began to pour out, soaking the surrounding material.

  “No…son of a bitch, no,” he whispered, clutching to the wound to try and stop the bleeding as a second flash manifested on the perimeter of the flood lights, hitting him in the upper chest and putting an end to any further words. He crumpled to his knees, then tipped over forward onto the concrete. A few seconds later a thin pool of blood oozed out around his body, marking the spot of his death on the loading dock for weeks to come.

  Sometime around 3am Jules woke to a loud knocking on his door. Being a light sleeper it roused him instantly and within a few seconds of regaining clarity he recognized the urgent power behind the knock as a sign that something was wrong.

  He pulled his thin blanket off and walked over to his quarters’ entrance and opened the sliding door with a press of the wall button, finding Uriel waiting for him.

  “What is it?” he asked. The look on her face told him that it was serious.

  “Two men are dead…out at site 1.”

  Jules face went slack. “How?”

  Uriel hesitated. “We think they were shot.”

  “Get Bates up here,” Jules said, referring to his chief of security as he turned around looking for a pair of shoes he could slip on.

  “Bates is one of the dead men,” Uriel said, sniffling.

  Jules turned back around in shock. “What? What was he doing out at the mining site?”

  “No one knows. No one knows anything right now,” she said, tears starting to leak out of her eyes as she tried to remain composed.

  Jules held up a hand to steady her…and himself. “Alright, let’s take this by the numbers. Assemble the senior staff, get security on maximum alert…if they aren’t already, and get Jennison to examine the bodies. I’ll meet you there after I get better dressed.”

  Uriel nodded and scooted off, leaving Jules to hastily drag a uniform out of his closet and pull it on as his mind raced through the possibilities. There were only a few weapons in the colony, all of which belonged to security. If Bates was all the way out at the mining site then something had to be up, and it was likely that the killer was one of the security team, which was going to make this mess even worse.

  To date there hadn’t been so much as a single altercation amongst the colonists and Bates had joked that he was being severely overpaid for his role here. Apparently he had been wrong, and Jules wished earnestly that he was still alive and able to help him sort all this out. The fact that he was one of the dead men really unnerved him, above and beyond that fact that he had just lost two of his people.

  He grabbed a pair of shoes and forced himself to take the time to lace them up properly before rushing out the door, down the stairs, and across the street to the command center where the others were still gathering. He spotted Greggory, the second highest ranking security officer, and made a beeline to his position.

  “What do we know?”

  The man shook his head. “Not much. Two dead, killer’s whereabouts unknown. We think this happened about four hours ago but we can’t be sure because the bodies weren’t found until the shift change. They were on the loading dock. Ilsa was apparently sent back topside to get a locator beacon he left behind then never came back down. They found him dead just outside the elevator shaft. Bates was found on the far side, some 300 meters away, so we’re thinking it was two separate incidents. We’re pulling a weapons check now.”

  “You have guards posted?”

  Greggory nodded. “On the armory, dropships, and command center.”

  “Where’s Jennison?”

  “Not sure…probably attending to the bodies.”

  “What about a head count?”

  “Everyone at the mine is accounted for, and there are no vehicles missing.”

  Jules
shook his head. “Pull a full head count. I want everybody in lockdown until we find the shooter.”

  “Alright, we can try that,” Greggory offered. “But it’ll have to be voluntary. I don’t have enough men to cover every building.”

  “Keep everyone in groups then, even if they don’t have a guard. I don’t think this is a conspiracy, though in truth I really don’t know what is going on.”

  Uriel walked up beside the pair, an even more urgent look in her eyes as Jules turned towards her. “We didn’t think to look before now. I don’t know how in the world someone could have pulled it off, and with the murders nobody thought to check…”

  Jules put a firm hand on her shoulder to stop her rambling. “Check what?”

  She bit her lip, almost as if she were about to get scolded for doing something wrong. “The ingots on the loading dock are gone.”

  Jules blinked, unsure of what he was hearing. “Gone how?”

  “They’re not there anymore,” Uriel said, not sure herself.

  “How many are missing?”

  “Unless our numbers are wrong…but I double checked them with the foreman…there were 18 crates waiting to be transferred over to the factories. They’re all missing.”

  Jules released her shoulder and took a step back. “What the hell is going on here?” he said, looking around at the four other people in the command center holding similar conversations as they tried to piece together the growing mystery. They all stopped and turned to the colony director as his voice raised.

  “Tell me how someone can move 18 four-meter square crates. I thought all our vehicles were accounted for?” he asked, turning back to Greggory.

  “They are as of ten minutes ago.”

  Jules threw his hands up in the air. “Where could they have even put them?”