by gerald hall
During these operations, we will need to avoid contact with their security forces to the maximum extent possible to reduce our exposure to losses and detection. We will also need to maintain a very low profile to preclude any Earth Fleet involvement.”
“Sir, that’s going to mean that we have at least some façade of legitimacy to our operations. We could call our spaceborne interdiction of colonial shipping ‘customs inspections’. Then we would claim that they were carrying contraband and seize the ships and their cargo perhaps?”
“That would probably work. But based on what Ms. Buckman has written here, we are going to have to be very aggressive, seizing as many of the colony’s jump tenders and cargo shuttles as possible. This expansion of our current covert campaign against the Kepler folks is going to be far beyond mere ‘customs inspections’. We are also going to have to engage the colonists far beyond our existing star system holdings.”
“Earth Fleet might start looking on that as pure piracy even if we claim that these ships were carrying some sort of contraband, Sir. I would sure hate for Earth to get involved in all of this.”
“I know. This is the really scary part. She specifically has stated that elimination of Kepler personnel during these operations is authorized.”
“That’s not going to be good, Sir. That’s tantamount of authorizing summary execution of innocent men and women. I do not wish to be accused of the mass murder of innocent captives. I am guessing that we are not going to be able to set up a prison camp for captured Kepler personnel, are we?”
“If we do, our boss here is not going to like it at all. That’s for sure. It’s also going to be an even bigger problem if we are conducting raids on Kepler orbital and surface facilities. They can’t know that our raiders belong to the Belair Syndicate.
Security on these operations will have to be absolute. Any raider personnel will have to have completely sanitized uniforms and equipment. Absolutely nothing must be on their persons that can tie them back to our Syndicate.”
“Hopefully, Earth Fleet will simply turn a blind eye to all of this, Sir. They do have a lot on their plate already to keep them busy. But, I have a bad feeling still that this is all going to turn around and bite us square in the ass.”
“Major, I have had that particular feeling ever since I first got that call from Ms. Buckman two hours ago. But, no matter how we personally feel, we still have our marching orders. So, let’s get to it and make the best of this particularly crappy situation, Lord help us all.”
Chapter Twenty Five:
New Hope Station
YBP 1194 Star System, M 67 Star Cluster, Orion Arm
June 15, 2321
Colin Sampson and Orca had stayed behind along with most of Alec’s technical staff as Alacrity jumped back coreward to recruit new personnel and trade some of the equipment that had been salvaged. Tessa and her battler had gone with him along with the recently acquired Conestoga heavy cargo shuttle that had been converted earlier into a disguised battler.
Now, Alacrity had returned with an additional cargo shuttle and several score of new recruits aboard her.
Alacrity slowly entered the lunar base’s central chamber and docked with a large cargo transfer tube. Just as soon as Alacrity had been secured, Tessa and her battler also came inside and were secured as well. Alec saw Colin waiting on him when the privateer commander stepped through the airlock. Alec did find it a little curious that he didn’t see anyone else though.
“Hello, Boss. I’m glad to see that you made it back in one piece, even without my Orca to watch over you.” Colin said with a smile as he greeted Alec and his crew coming out of the docked jump tender.
“Tessa did just fine. We actually spent part of our trip on the way out here on contract as escorts to a convoy heading spinward. That included carrying a couple additional cargo shuttles for several jumps along the way on our docking collars, for a reasonable fee, of course.”
“Sounds like you did well out there, Boss. What did you bring back with you?” Colin asked.
“I picked up this Dromedary-class cargo shuttle during this last sortie of ours. She’s a little worn and not nearly as large as a Conestoga. But she’s packed full of food, people and other supplies. You had raided Alacrity’s aquaponics bay pretty hard to restock the station’s system before we left. So we had to replenish her as well.”
“Well, we are back up to full capacity for the station’s life support now. How many newcomers did you bring back with you?”
“We have one hundred and seven men, women and children onboard the Dromedary waiting to enter their new home. Do you have enough decent accommodations for them now, Colin? I promised them that they would be coming to a place of safety and comfort to live and work at.”
“We have plenty of space for them now in the new living areas. I just hope that you are right about this being a place of safety, Boss.”
“What do you mean, Colin?”
“I was able to get all of the defensive systems around the entrance of the main chamber fully operational, including the fire control system. But with all of the other things that my team and I had to work on while you were gone, we were unable to do much with the old defenses around the rest of this moon. So we are still pretty light back there.”
“I guess that we will have to get that taken care of pretty soon along with setting up a new constellation of surveillance nanosats around here to watch for intruders. Until then, we will just have to maintain an especially low profile with our outside activities.”
“I understand. Anyway, I also got about half of the fighters back into some semblance of fighting shape. The rest are serving as a source of spare parts only now. I’ve identified three cargo shuttles and a medium-sized battler as candidates for refitting. The battler is an old Archer-class that carries almost as many missiles as Tessa’s boat, but also has a light spinal mount mass driver and a decent energy weapons array. But that Archer really needs some more modern equipment if she is going to stand a chance in a fight.”
“Colin, you and I both know that old and working is far preferable to newer and still stuck in space dock.”
“That is very true, Boss. But I would love to get everything that we have fixed up with the best tech that we can find so that we can do our people right. That way, when our people have to fight, they are a lot more likely to win and survive too.”
“You are certainly right there. Please make me a list of what you will need to bring that Archer and everything else back to rights, Colin. I will see what I can do to fill it during my next trip coreward.”
“Thank you, Sir. I will.”
Alec took a look at the long list of items that Colin requested, before looking up at his main technical chief.
“That is a hell of a shopping list that you have for me, Colin.”
“I know, but if you can get it filled, it will be well worth your time and effort, trust me.”
“Incidentally, Colin. Where is everyone? Usually, this area is full of people going back and forth.” Alec asked.
“Well, everyone is pretty busy at the moment. We’ve had a lot of projects going on here while you have been gone. You know, fixing up the station….refitting ships, that sort of thing.”
“OK. Just don’t wear everyone out while I am away. I don’t want a mutiny to start up because everyone here has been overworked.”
“Trust me, Sir. Everything is working out fine here.” Colin replied with a proud smile.
Chapter Twenty Six:
New Hope Station
YBP 1194 Star System, M 67 Star Cluster, Orion Arm
June 21, 2321
Jonathan and Angela had managed to convince Colin to give them some time to fly down to the planet below to do a little reconnaissance below for possible technology finds. The two requisitioned a small four-man shuttle to fly down and began to prepare it for the flight.
“Are you sure that you are OK flying one of these craft, Jonathan? I can fly the shuttle too if n
ecessary.” Angela said as she went through the pre-flight checklist.
“Yes, I will be just fine. With your aid, I have recovered quite a bit from what that ‘thing’ did to me. Anyway, I am looking forward to finding that base that I was told about.”
“I thought that you said that there was an underwater installation down there, Jonathan?” Angela asked.
“That is what I was told. One of our other scientists had found it or at least had discovered indications of its location. But I never got to see the underwater installation myself before we were hit by the Truists. Most of my people died within the first five minutes after one of their missiles hit our jump tender’s bridge and living quarters. I survived because I was in another part of the ship at the time. We still had enough air pressure so that I had time to put on my vacuum suit.
You already know the rest of the story about what happened to me afterwards.” Jonathan said, not wanting to revisit the horrors that he endured during his interrogation aboard the Truist ship.
“Perhaps I understand them all too well myself, Jonathan.” Angela responded.
“What do you mean, my Angel?”
“Shortly after my ship left Earth Fleet and joined the True Way, all of the crew had to go through special training on one of the space stations that had also defected from Earth Fleet. This training was supposed to prepare us to resist interrogation in the event that we were captured. Every member of the crew had to go through the training, though I think that it was more focused upon the members of the crew who had not originally been part of the True Way.
The training was portrayed as being as realistic as possible. Which in my case, meant that it was very ‘unpleasant’ indeed. There were certainly times in which I was convinced that the people conducting the training were little more than sadists who enjoyed their work all too well.” Angela said as a chill ran down her spine as she remembered what she had gone though.
Jonathan thought for a moment as he looked at the pained expression on Angela’s face. It was obvious that she had also endured something terrible that she had not told anyone else about either.
“Yes. I suppose that you would indeed understand some of what I endured. There were also times where I felt the same way. And then, things got a lot worse as they became the stuff of nightmares.
But now, we both are free of our nightmares and the people who caused them, my Dear Angel. We survived and are now stronger than ever before. That is what is most important.” Jonathan said with a loving smile before turning his attention back towards the shuttle’s controls.
Angela hoped that she could be as confident as Jonathan about being stronger after having endured the horrors that she went through herself.
The little shuttle flew down through the atmosphere and into a thick layer of clouds near the first location that Jonathan wanted to inspect. Just as the shuttle broke through the cloud cover, Jonathan’s eye caught something on the shuttle’s multi-function display screen.
“I just picked up something on our sensors, Jonathan. It appeared to be a mass floating on the surface for a few moments. But just as we got closer, it simply disappeared.”
“Did you get a lock on its last location, Angela?”
“Yes, it did. If I hadn’t been looking in that direction in the first place, I would have missed the contact altogether.”
“Please give me the coordinates so that I can fly down and get a much closer look. I have a feeling that whatever you picked up is still down there somewhere.”
Jonathan flew the shuttle to within two hundred meters of the ocean surface. But they still could not see anything on the surface now.
“I’m going to put the shuttle down on the ocean surface and sit for a while. We should be sufficiently buoyant to float for a while, I think.” Jonathan said before slowly cruising down and making a soft landing on the ocean.
Jonathan prepared an inflatable dinghy and placed it on top of the shuttle’s hull. Then the two privateers sat inside of the small watercraft and waited.
Jonathan and Angela sat there in the shuttle, not knowing how long that they would be there. An hour passed and nothing happened. The second hour of waiting had almost ended as well before Angela saw something begin to appear at the ocean surface about two hundred meters to starboard.
“That looks like a great big buoy out there.” Angela noted.
“Yes, it does. Look what’s hanging down below it. That is some sort of umbilical that is leading down to something else much deeper in the ocean. That umbilical is certainly huge though. It looks like you could climb up to the surface from the inside.”
“I think that umbilical is designed to bring fresh air to whatever is below it. There also appear to be solar panels and sensor systems covering the buoy’s upper surface. It may also be a communications relay as well.”
“I haven’t seen anything like that before. But it makes perfect sense for a clandestine station. That buoy looks like it is at least twenty meters in diameter too.
That gives it a lot of room for equipment and a lot of buoyancy. Curiously, the underside of it appears to have some sort of ballast tanks attached to it.”
“Those ballast tanks do explain what we saw earlier. The buoy has to have sensors on it that warn it when it is being scanned. If it picks up anything strange, the buoy immediately floods its ballast times and disappears below the surface to hide. Then after a while, it blows out some ballast water like a submarine and returns to the surface.”
“This is all fascinating. But we really need to go deeper to find out what this umbilical is attached to.” As Jonathan piloted the shuttle to slightly more than one hundred meters under the ocean surface.
Shuttles like the one that Jonathan and Angela were flying in were just as capable of traveling underwater as they were through space, within certain limits. They couldn’t go too deeply because of the incredible pressure of the water below a given depth.
“I am picking up something to the starboard side below, Angela. Come take a look.” Jonathan called, the growing excitement in his voice clearly evident.
“Wow! This is incredible.” Angela said as Jonathan piloted the shuttle even closer to the underwater base.
The installation looked a lot like a massive starfish with six equally spaced limbs, especially with all of the sea life that had established it upon the installation’s surface. The numerous oceanic organisms growing on the underwater habitat served to also conceal it from easy observation. Jonathan didn’t know if that was intentional or simply due to the base having been neglected for at least a century if not much longer.
Upon closer inspection, the facility looked more like two huge starfish made up of a central core and six cylindrical modules emanating from it sitting on top of a third ‘starfish’ that was even larger with much longer ‘arms’ than the layers above it. The umbilical that the shuttle had followed downward was attached to the top of the uppermost central core. About a hundred meters away was an active geothermal vent on the ocean floor. An artificial object was sitting on the seafloor next to the vent and what appeared to be an armored cable ran from that object to the central core of the bottommost level of the habitat.
“We have got to go inside of here and explore it first, Jonathan.”
“I agree. We just have to find a place to get inside from. I think that I have found what appears to be a lockout chamber door on the upper surface of the top ‘layer’ that doesn’t have too much sea life growing there.”
Jonathan carefully maneuvered the shuttle on top of the central module, slowly angling to avoid making accidental contact with the nearby umbilical line. After a few seconds, Angela and Jonathan felt a mild thump as the bottom of the shuttle made contact with the top of the core module.
“We have a good seal with our airlock now. We should be able to enter into the facility through here. It looks like it has a manual opening mechanism that we can manipulate from the outside.”
We better take our vacuum suits and
O2 bottles just in case though. We don’t know what kind of atmospheric mix that they have down here.”
“Good idea, Angela.”
After the shuttle airlock door was opened, Angela and Jonathan stepped down onto the upper surface of the core module. Angela then immediately began working to open the core module’s upper door. It took her about five minutes to figure out the opening mechanism, clean the sea life out of the way and pull open the locking lever. The latter task required some help from Jonathan and a short two-kilogram sledgehammer.
Neither Angela nor Jonathan realized that they already had an outside audience as they worked to open the door.
After they got the door open, Jonathan climbed down first. Angela followed, closing the door behind herself in case the seal between the shuttle and the base was breached somehow. Opening the inner door was much easier than the outer door. Afterwards, they both climbed down inside what appeared to be a fairly pristine habitat.
Angela looked down at the readout of the handheld sensor that she brought down with her.
“The sensor says that the air is alright to breathe. With the exception of being at a little higher pressure, it is chemically identical to the atmosphere on the surface.”
Jonathan didn’t waste any time in removing his helmet and breathing the air inside the underwater installation.
“The air here is still pretty fresh, though a bit humid, I think.” He said, confidently smiling at Angela who then followed suit and removed her helmet as well.
“It’s nice not having to wear that darn thing all of the time. I still have to put it on though if I am going to use the helmet Heads Up Display though.” She replied.
“I know. But for now, I’m going to enjoy a little freedom and save some of my suit’s air for later. Let’s go check things out around here now.”
