by gerald hall
“Sir, it looks like we have some unexpected company.” Major Daniel Compton announced over the short-range command radio channel. Daniel was the commander of the privateer’s ground and spaceborne combat troops for Alec.
“What is going on, Major?” Alec asked after rushing in a minute later from his quarters and wearing little more than a long sleeve shirt over boxer briefs and a t-shirt.
“Brandon here picked up the arrival of a jump tender about twenty minutes ago. He was monitoring the base’s passive sensor array when the jump tender arrived into our star system. We had a delay in reporting because of the distance away to the vessel’s initial location. Anyway, it appears that she is carrying at least two large subordinate vessels on her docking collars. All three vessels are heading in-system, but one of them is on a bearing that will take them directly towards this moon.
We have shut down the fusion bottles for now to reduce our neutrino emissions as per procedure. But the station’s capacitor banks are now fully charged so we can defend ourselves long enough to fire up the bottles when necessary.”
“How long will it take these intruders to arrive here?”
“We are estimating about eleven hours before they will be able to orbit this world,
Sir.”
“First, tell Brandon that he did a good job spotting that jump tender.” Alec replied.
“What do you want us to do now, Sir? Obviously, we need to prepare to defend our new base here.”
“Yes and no. We do need to prepare to defend the base from the inside. But, I want you to turn off the automatic defenses. We are going to let them inside. Besides, Colin has not had the chance to repair those big steel doors to the main chamber yet.” Alec told his security chief.
“Why would you want to do that, Sir?”
“Because I want to find out what they are up to in a controlled environment. I want to be the one controlling that environment too. Our visitors already have figured out that this base exists, it appears. They just don’t know about us yet.
Besides, we can blow them out of space anytime that we want anyway when they approach, can’t we? I would much rather that we seize their equipment as intact as possible to keep for ourselves. Don’t you agree?”
“That is true, Sir. I will send out the orders immediately.”
“Thank you .It would be nice to add some more ships to our inventory if we can. This is especially the case if these ships are a lot more modern than the ones that we found here. Right now, I need to go back and get properly dressed. Then we can deal with our ‘guests’ in the manner that they deserve.”
The next few hours saw everyone from Alacrity and her subordinate vessels busily getting ready for battle from within the chambers of their erstwhile new home. This included cleaning up any trace of their presence inside the main chamber in the heart of the asteroid base.
Chapter Fifteen:
Pirate Jump Tender: Black Diamond
Near Zenith Jump Point.
YBP 1194 Star System, M 67 Star Cluster, Orion Arm
February 11, 2321
Black Diamond and her shuttles hung in space hours after their arrival in the star system that Jonathan Murrel's cryptic, maddened cries led them to. The G5V star was part of a cluster of more than five hundred stars within ten light years of each other.
"So this is where those numbers brought us to. It is ironic that when our ‘guest’ was talking about crabs, that he was actually talking about a star within the Constellation of Cancer. Without his information, it would have been like looking for a needle in a stack of needles. But damned if that star isn’t a dead ringer for old Sol. How far are we from Earth now?" Captain Farrow asked as he looked over a crewman's shoulder at the sensors' readouts.
“This star system is 2772 light-years from Sol, Sir.” The pirate vessel’s sensor technician quickly answered.
“That is a hell of a long ways from home. What else have you found out there so far?”
“Well, Sir. Our sensors have already picked up that the system has six occupied orbits. Two of the orbits were occupied by gas giants. The fourth orbit might have had a planet there once, but now there’s nothing more than a big asteroid belt. The world in the third orbit looks interesting though. She’s a little bigger than Mars, but not quite as large as Terra. But, she’s already appearing to have a hell of a lot of water present in her atmosphere.”
“What about anything else in the system that might hold a base on it?” The pirate commander asked.
"Sir. I've got eleven objects in the asteroid belt that fit the search parameters that you gave me earlier. They're all certainly big enough for someone to park a large combat tender inside of them. But we are continuing to get more information on that world in the third orbit. She’s definitely within the life-zone and has been confirmed to have substantial amounts of liquid water according to our sensors. That planet also has several small moons orbiting her.
The outer gas giant probably has several moons orbiting it as well. Unfortunately, that gas giant’s orbit has taken it to the opposite side of the star to where we are currently." The sensor tech said with a grimace.
"Somehow, I don’t think that the base is anywhere near that gas giant. Our ‘guest’ didn’t even hint at the presence of a gas giant in the vicinity of that base.
Sarah. Get our people ready to start searching for our objective. We're going to launch both shuttles to begin the search of those eleven asteroids. Whatever crew is the first to find the base will each receive an extra one thousand Terran credits per person. I will give this bonus once we grab everything that we can and sell it back to our usual fences. You will give the two captains the coordinates for the asteroids that he will be investigating." The captain loudly proclaimed.
Captain Farrow then walked over to Sarah and gave her additional instructions in a much quieter voice.
"I want you to personally take Buccaneer's Dream to that planet, Sarah. If there is a human outpost there or any one of her moons, I want us to find it first. I don't want to spend any longer here than I have to, especially with both of our shuttles deployed. We are just too damned close to the Lu’non border for my comfort. But we need all three of our ships searching, especially with so much area of space to cover.
I am sending you on Carol Traeger's ship also because she has a lot more available cargo space than Hidden Blade. She can take in a lot more salvage because of this. If you and Carole find something first, I'm going to immediately order Hidden Blade back to the jump tender here to provide security for us.
If Carol finds more than what she can carry, we'll have her come back here. Then we will send Warren Marshall and Hidden Blade out to load up the rest of the booty. It may not seem fair, but I need Hidden Blade's sensors out there because she has our best sensor suite in addition to having our heaviest weapons. Otherwise I wouldn't be sending her out there at all. While Black Diamond is very well armed for a jump tender, I feel a lot more comfortable out here in the wilderness with Hidden Blade's weapons nearby to give me cover.
I'm also ordering Hidden Blade not to deploy her fighters unless absolutely necessary. We can't afford to waste the fuel right now. Plus we still have a shortage of qualified fighter pilots in any event. There's no need to risk those assets in the middle of an asteroid belt if we can avoid it."
In the ship's sickbay, Jonathan could see all of the activity through the door's viewport. He had already learned that the pirates had gleaned information from his own narcotic-enabled rants on the location of the old Red Star Collective naval base. He felt that he needed to take a chance and leave the pirate band now. He had spent weeks figuring out how to access the door lock and short circuit it. He saw that the main adjoining room in the sickbay was now unoccupied.
Jonathan pried open the door circuit access panel with a small metal tool that he had scrounged up from one of the drawers. Then he shorted out the control circuit. The door immediately opened up for him. Jonathan quickly looked around before quickly s
lipping out without anyone seeing him. Before leaving the sickbay area though, Jonathan closed and locked the door behind him so that no one would immediately notice that he had escaped. Jonathan found a hostile environment suit and helmet in a nearby storage locker. He put them on and then blended in with the rest of the pirate crew moving out to the shuttles, his face obscured from view by the tinted helmet visor.
"Which ship should I go to?" he asked himself as he saw the dozens of suited men and women moving towards the shuttles. Then he saw a very familiar petite, blond-haired woman heading towards one of the shuttles, her helmet still tucked under her arm. Jonathan smiled and carefully slipped unnoticed into the line of people entering the airlock behind Angela as she went into Buccaneer’s Dream.
Angela herself wasn’t quite sure why she decided to join the crewmen boarding the armed Conestoga-class cargo shuttle. She just knew that she needed to get away from the Black Diamond. Maybe, she would find out what she really needed to do with her life while somewhere inside of one of those asteroids.
Chapter Sixteen:
Shuttle Buccaneer's Dream
Approaching Asteroid Target #4
YBP 1194 Star System, M 67 Star Cluster, Orion Arm
February 11, 2321
“We just received a recall message from our jump tender.” The Conestoga’s communication tech reported to Carol Traeger
“Do they say why?” The shuttle’s commander asked.
“They say that their sensors have picked up something inside of one of the moons of that planet that they were investigating. They did not want to approach too closely with Black Diamond herself, so they wanted one of our shuttles to do a close inspection. We were the closest one, so we got picked.”
“No one wants to have their precious jump tender risked if there is another vessel available that is more expendable, I suppose. OK, people. Let’s get this boat turned around so that we can find some treasure.” Carol quickly ordered.
A few moments later, Sarah Bucholtz walked into the shuttle’s bridge after noticing the change in the vessel’s course and acceleration.
“Did we get a change in orders from the Boss, Carol?” Sarah asked.
“Yes, Ma’am. We are going to inspect one of the moons of that planet that our jump tender was going to. I guess that the Black Diamond’s sensors picked up something suspicious there.”
“Alright. Hopefully, we have finally found what we were looking for out here in the wilderness. Please let me know when you find something. I still need to catch up on about three days’ worth of sleep. So I am going back to my bunk for now.”
“Yes, Ma’am.” Carol quickly answered. She was more than happy to see Sarah leave the shuttle’s bridge. The pirates’ second in command made nearly everyone a little nervous with her presence.
A few hours later after accelerating at nearly one and a half gravities, Buccaneer’s Dream arrived at the moon in question
"Coming up on the target here, Ma'am. Radar, lidar and thermals are picking up some anomalous readings inside. That object’s density is far lower than it should be." Terri Muldoon reported from her sensors station. The tall pale redhead's voice showed increasing excitement as she continued to provide more details.
"Get our optics locked onto the surface of that object as we close on it. I need to see every detail." Lieutenant Traeger ordered as her dark eyes focused intently on the information being fed to her from Terri's sensors.
"Yes. Ma'am. I'll have a visual readout on it in a minute or two."
An image started to appear on the main viewscreen as Terri sent the input from her optics to it.
"Well, I'll be damned...." Carol quietly commented as the first of the images came into focus.
The moon now appeared to have been a captured asteroid. It wasn’t round at all either, more shaped like a fat potato. The surface was pockmarked with impact craters all over its surface though. The moon strangely also rotated slowly along its long axis as well.
"Let's continue our search. According to our source, there is some sort of big opening in the asteroid, maybe leading to some interior chambers with more goodies for us to plunder. Maybe there aren't any vessels out here, but there could be some hidden treasures inside." Carol noted.
"Do you think that we should let the Black Diamond know what we have found, Ma'am?" Terri asked tentatively.
"Yea. I guess that we better but not before we find the entrance to this supposed base inside of the asteroid. For all that we know, this place is just a decoy rather than the real place that we are looking for. I don't want to have to make a second call to Captain Farrow to tell him that we were mistaken, especially not while Sarah Bucholtz is on our ship to hear it too."
"What do you want to do next, Ma'am?"
"Let's swing around the long end of that asteroid and continue to scan it closely. If there is as much as a pebble out of place down there, I want to know about."
The Conestoga began to slowly work its way around the perimeter of the big asteroid. The shuttle’s sensors were already providing a tremendous amount of information about the asteroid.
"The asteroid is roughly oblong in shape with a maximum length of thirty-five point seven kilometers and a maximum diameter of fourteen point nine kilometers. Mass spectrographs already indicate that it is an M-Class asteroid with heavy concentrations of iron, nickel and other heavy metals. We are also picking up some trace radiation that is consistent with nuclear fission."
"Someone could make a ton of money mining out that asteroid." one of the bridge techs commented.
"Another good reason while this might be the place that we are looking for. Continue with your scans, Terri." Carole calmly ordered.
"Hey. Look at that huge crater on the one end of that asteroid. It's almost a full kilometer in diameter."
"I know. Let's go down and take a closer look at it. It looks terribly deep for a natural crater, I think."
"I agree. That's a very deep crater there, especially down the center. It narrows down a bit as it gets deeper, Ma’am." Terri noted with a growing tone of excitement in her voice.
"OK. Al, go ahead and start a slow approach towards the center of that crater. Configure for landing when we find a good spot to touch down. Someone better go wake up Commander Bucholtz too."
"Aye, aye, Ma'am." The 'Dream's' pilot answered as he carefully spun the shuttle around so that it was now approaching the asteroid stern-first with the landing gear extended.
"There's one hell of a big hole down there. I can't even see the bottom yet. There's no way this is natural. The hole is at least five hundred meters wide." Albert Cross noted as he continued piloting the 'Dream' downward.
"Turn on the hull floodlights. I want to see with my own eyes what we are getting into. Take it nice and easy going down, Al." Carole quickly ordered as the 'Dream' started to disappear within the crater's walls.
The large shuttle continued to slowly travel down the passage. It was clear from the sides of the walls that it had been excavated by machinery. The edges of a massive iris valve could also be seen at the point where the natural crater interfaced with the artificially constructed chamber into the interior of the asteroid.
The 'Dream' had traveled two kilometers into the interior of the asteroid when the chamber began to widen substantially. The floodlights began to illuminate huge gantries and metal frameworks that stretched out for more than sixteen hundred meters. Six huge iris valve doors were on either side of the massive chamber that the 'Dream' had entered. There was no telling what was on the other side of each of those two hundred and fifty meter diameter metal doors though.
"Those bays are big enough to put an entire combat tender inside of each of them. Do you think that we might find one inside, Lieutenant?" Terri asked.
"I kind of doubt it. If there's no one left alive here, I don't think that they would have left behind any serviceable jump tenders behind. The only possibility that we will find one was if they had some sort of epidemic on board here or o
ther disaster that killed everyone before they could leave."
A chill went down the spines of everyone on the bridge at the thought of this possibility.
"But I don't think that is what happened, Terri. There are just too many damaged ships waiting inside of either for spare parts or to be cannibalized. There's not a single jump tender among them except for that skeleton of a corvette-sized vessel down there. No....these people either all abandoned this place or didn't even have a jump-capable ship available to evacuate the personnel here at all. If the latter, they all just died for lack of food, water, power....who knows what else." Lieutenant Traeger continued.
“That radiation reading is also stronger inside of her, though it is nowhere near lethal. Based on my scan of the composition of the isotopes, the really nasty stuff decayed decades ago.” The shuttle’s sensor tech noted.
“OK. I guess that means that it is safe to go inside now. Let’s find a way inside, shall we?” Carol asked just as Sarah Bucholtz walked onto the bridge.
“I see that we actually found something of interest here. What have we learned so far, Captain Traeger?” Sarah asked as though she was the one making the discovery.
“This appeared to be some sort of naval base hidden inside of an excavated chamber within this small moon. We were just looking for a place to dock before sending out our people to investigate further, Ma’am.”
“Very good. Please continue with your work, Captain.”
“There's an airlock causeway over there, Ma’am.” The shuttle pilot pointed out.
“Very good. Al. I want you to move us over there and dock with it." Carol ordered.
"Roger that, Ma'am." Al eagerly responded with a smile on his face. In fact, everyone was beaming in spite of Commander Bucholtz’s intimidating presence on the pirate shuttle’s bridge. The pirates were all already counting the credits in their minds that they would be getting for the salvage that they had already seen inside the main chamber.
