by gerald hall
“We initially thought that this organization was nothing more than traders. The most noteworthy possession of the man leading it was only an old jump tender, we believed. But now, it appears that they are working as privateers with an authorized letter of marque. They have apparently had some limited successes that have stiffened the resolve of not only the individual Kepler colony that hired these privateers but also all of the others.”
“So you are trying to claim that this pitiful little band of brigands is all that is standing between us and achieving our goals? What have they cost us so far?”
“They have captured two of our jump tenders and several cargo shuttles. Several of these vessels that were captured from us have already been observed operating under Kepler colors now. We acquired that world from the original colonists about twenty-five years ago. These privateers also raided our warehouse facilities at Kepler-1544 and escaped with a significant amount of advanced military equipment.
“Yes, I know. The acquisition of Kepler-1544 is one of the few successes in that area in the past few years, unfortunately. Yet, even that has proven to be vulnerable because of the incompetence of our managers there. These brigands should have already been eliminated by now in any event. Do you know where they are operating from?”
“No, Ma’am. Not even our clandestine contacts in the Kepler colonies know where these privateers are based.”
“Don’t you think that we should find this base, Mister Peel?” Lindsey sarcastically asked.
“We have been trying, Ma’am. My operatives tell me that it is only a matter of time before we find it though.”
“We don’t have that luxury though, Mister Peel. I will need for you to immediately begin moving some of our armed vessels over towards the areas where these privateers have been operating.”
“That will require us removing coverage from other sectors where we have had some piracy issues though, Ma’am.”
“The managers of those areas will just have to find other means of protecting their ships then. We must always focus on our expansion efforts in order to increase our profits and influence. To put too much effort into what we already possess only leads to stagnation for this Syndicate.”
“Yes, Ma’am.” The Syndicate executive replied through gritted teeth.
“And Mister Peel…” Lindsey said in a voice as smooth as a fine whisky laced with hemlock.
“Yes, Ma’am?”
“Make it worthwhile to whoever finds the rock where this band of brigands is hiding under. These ‘privateers’ need to feel some pressure applied to them so that they will reconsider conducting any more operations against our interests. No one interferes with my business without paying a steep price.”
“I understand, Ma’am.”
“You may go now, Mister Peel.” Lindsey finally said with a dismissive flick of her hand.
At that, Martin Peel turned and left Lindsey’s office, trying very hard not to appear as though he was running as quickly as he could before her other shoe dropped.
Martin Peel’s next destination was to visit the Syndicate’s military operations office. There he found Colonel Banks and Major Rose working on a new set of operational plans.
“Hello, Sir. How can we help you?” Colonel Banks asked.
“I just got my head handed to me by Madame Buckman as a result of the situation with the Kepler colony. She is not very happy about the lack of progress that our forces are having against these colonists. She told me that the colonists have hired some mercenaries to supplement their existing security forces and attack our interests.” Martin tersely told the two military officers.
“We have heard that the Kepler officials had started hiring private contractors. But the most significant group that we had heard about was an organization called the Michaelson Mercantile Group. They are reported as having a single jump tender and a handful of cargo shuttles and obsolete battlers. The unit itself was only recently organized and had no battle record at all. This MMG had been assessed as being of little threat to anyone.” Colonel Banks replied.
“Well, apparently this MMG is a threat now. I was aware of them too, but also thought that they were nothing to worry about. Our esteemed Chief Operations Officer has now thoroughly disabused me of any such notion, I assure you. They need to be found and dealt with for all of our sakes.” Martin bitterly replied.
“We have all of our military units on the lookout for any Kepler-affliated units. I don’t know what else we can do, Mister Peel.”
“Why don’t you put out a bounty on these MMG folks? There has to be someone who knows something about them.” Martin noted.
“We can try that. But the Orion Arm is a very big place. A ship can stay out of sight for years, changing its identification, its transponder codes, even its paint scheme. There are literally hundreds, if not thousands, of cargo shuttles that look just like each other. Even the military battlers are not all that different in many cases except under close inspection.”
“Get the word out, Colonel. Make it worth someone’s while to stick their nose out and ask a few questions. Who knows what they might find out?”
“Yes, Sir. We will send out messages to some people that we know. They will spread the word quickly enough.”
“Well, that is a start. Our security forces need to accelerate their operations against the Kepler targets so that we can accomplish our goals before we have any more unexpected setbacks. It would be nice to not have Lindsey Buckman climbing up my backside wearing those sharp, steel stilettos of hers to reach her personal goals at my expense any longer. The experience has been far too painful for far too long, I assure you.”
Colonel Banks didn’t say anything in reply. He already knew what it was like to be on the receiving end of Lindsey’s withering ire personally. He did not wish it upon anyone else either.
Chapter Thirty:
New Hope Station
YBP 1194 Star System, Messier 67 Star Cluster, Orion Arm
November 4, 2321
“Hello, Boss. I’m glad that see that Alacrity and her crew have all made it back alright.” Colin told Alec as soon as Alacrity’s captain exited the airlock into the station.
“Things are looking pretty nice around here. I saw that we have a lot fewer space ships inside of our main chamber than ever before.
“My people and I have been breaking down, scrapping and repurposing as much as we can from those old ships as possible. All of the accommodations sections of the scrapped ships have now been cleaned up and moved inside of our habitat ring sections. That has more than doubled the number of available living spaces for personnel and more than quadrupled the amount of volume in terms of living quarters. In other words, not only can we hold more people, but each individual one of us also has more space too.”
“What about the hulks of the scrapped ships themselves?” Alec asked.
After we have stripped them of every single useable component, I shoved the remaining metal into our induction furnace to melt it down before refining it into ingots. I found the furnace in one of the smaller chambers off to the side of the main interior compartment. It has made a huge difference in what we can create here.
We are able to make custom metal allows with these refined metal ingots. Then we make use the resulting metal alloys to cast new components using our industrial 3-D printers. The plastic scrap components from the vessels that we can’t use elsewhere in their current form are broken down by thermal depolymerization and later reused in other applications. There are literally hundreds of new components within this station that have been manufactured with materials from the scrap ships that used to be in the main chamber.”
“I wonder if the previous occupants were as creative with this equipment as you have been, Colin?”
“Oh, I am certain that they were. But I suspect that they focused mostly on keeping their fleet operational rather than upgrading the facilities of the station that they lived on. This place was rather spartan when we first arrive
d here, you have to admit, Boss.”
“Yes, Colin. You have done quite a bit to make this place a much more livable place than its previous condition. But I do have a unit to run out there as well. Do you have any more working ships for me to use now, Colin?”
“That is a subject that I want to talk with you later about when you have time, IN fact, I’ve got something very interesting that I want to show you, Boss. Please come to Repair Bay Bravo Three when you have a chance. Of course, don’t forget to be wearing your vacuum suit. That area is one of the unpressurized areas.” The old spacecraft salvage expert replied with a knowing smile.
“Sure, just give me a few minutes to get caught up with what else has been going on around here while I was gone.” Alec said before heading off to his personal office.
About thirty minutes later, Alec met Colin just outside of one of the large repair bays.
Colin walked over to a large control panel and flipped several switches on it. A large steel door split open with the two halves sliding to either side to reveal the contents of the large repair bay. Because the large bay was still unpressurized, everyone still wore some form of vacuum suit.
A large, dark grey shape loomed under the lights that shown down from both sides of the repair bay. A powerful fusion drive was clearly evident on one end of the roughly lozenge-shaped hull. The vessels’ multiple docking collars attached to her heavily armored hull were easily visible in the lights. More than a hundred of Colin’s technicians and engineers stood proudly in formation next to the massive ship.
The sides of her nearly five-hundred meter long hull was studded with weapons turrets, missile tubes and small craft launch bays. The weapons extended all the way to the bow where a large weapons aperture for a heavy spinal mount mass driver was visible. Sensor arrays of various types all over the huge vessel’s hull could be seen amidst the numerous weapons mounts too.
“That’s not a regular jump tender. That’s a full-blown combat tender, Colin. You told me several times before that all you had inside of that bay were a bunch of spare parts that you had salvaged from our scrapyard. I remember that you also said that you were possibly refitting an ‘ancient’ jump tender.” Alec said after he saw what was inside the repair bay.
“Well, both were true, in a manner of speaking, Boss.” The salvage expert replied with a knowing smile.
“Am I ever going to be able to trust what you tell me, Colin?” Alec said while shaking his head.
“Well, I prefer delivering a lot more than what I promise, Sir. That’s what good technicians and engineers like to do. That way, no one will be ever be disappointed with the end results.”
“I see. I guess this is where all of my people had disappeared to while I wasn’t looking. If they are anything like you, I suppose that they are proud as hell of what they have accomplished, as well they should be.
Anyway, so what is the history on this ‘bunch of spare parts’?” Alec asked.
“Apparently, one of the Red Star Collective combat tenders had been crippled in combat and their jump drive had failed returning home. They brought her inside of the station to make repairs. This Bulldog-class combat tender had not completed those repairs at the time of the reactor accident and had to be left behind during the evacuation of the station. She had been stashed away in one of the back repair chambers when I found her. That’s where I left her while I was looking for parts to fix her up.”
“It’s hard to believe. But that ship is nearly twice as big as Alacrity. In fact, this ship is almost three-quarters as big as one of Earth Fleet’s Leviathan-class combat tenders. Why didn’t you tell me about her? Something that big had to have been the flagship of the Red Star Collective at one time, I’m sure.”
“I wasn’t entirely sure that I could get everything to work together, Boss. Plus, I love surprises. Don’t you?”
“I certainly love this one. What else can you tell me about her, Colin?”
“To start with, she has twelve docking collars in four rows of three. Her docking collars are capable of handling the largest battlers in service too. She also has internal bays for six full squadrons of aerospace fighters and ten small craft.”
“So we will not have to carry additional fighter support modules on her docking collars?” Alec asked.
“No, you won’t need to unless you want to go especially fighter-heavy for some reason. I have also upgraded the combat tender’s armor over her critical areas. I cannibalized a lot of that armor from the pirate jump tender’s hull that we scrapped, sent it through the induction furnace and manufactured brand new armor plates for this ship and others. The ship’s existing armor plates have also been remanufactured using the latest alloy formulas for greater protection.
So, this ship is a lot more survivable now than even when it was in its original configuration, I assure you, Boss.”
“I should hope so. This ship will most certainly be going into harm’s way, probably as my flagship, if it is all that you claim it to be.”
“I am very confident that she is. She even has a more potent weapons array than what Orca, ‘Tessa’s Challenge, Tomahawk and Hidden Blade all have combined. This includes a very powerful spinal mount mass-driver. All of the weapons are as close to the current state of the art that I could make them too.
Suffice it to say, a lot of those items on those earlier shopping lists that I gave you ended up inside of this ship.”
“Well, I am certainly glad that you were able to put all of my money to good use, it seems. I’m sure that you didn’t do this all by yourself though.”
“Of course, not. I had a team of technicians helping me with this project since shortly after we found this place. Obviously, I had to make them all swear that they wouldn’t tell anyone else about what we were working on down here. You see a lot of the people involved in this project standing right here. They are very proud of what they accomplished here too.
I also had a lot of help from that new technician Angela and her friend Jonathan from Libertad. Of course, Rita cloned her source code for me to install in the new vessel’s computer control systems. I think that Angela and Jonathan have already convinced the new AI to call herself ‘Jill’.”
“I’m glad to see that Rita was so cooperative in allowing you to clone her source code. A lot of Libertad AI’s are very reticent about ‘reproducing’, you know. They think that it takes away from their uniqueness.
“Rita seemed very interested in having another sister. In fact, she now has two. We finally got the station’s computer network upgraded enough for the installation of a full-fledged AI. Rita’s other clone sister literally jumped at the chance to take control of station operations.”
“OK, Colin. Tell me what this new sister of Rita’s is named. I want to know that I will be facing the next time that I am in my station’s control center.”
“Oh, her name is Joan. You can easily tell her apart from Jill or Rita. Jill’s avatar is a beautiful blonde with this cute dimple in her chin. Joan, on the other hand, is this gorgeous brunette.”
Alec sighed for a moment.
“I probably won’t have time for real, live, in the flesh ‘girl’ problems after spending all my time with Rita and her sisters. In any event, it looks like all of you have been very busy while I was away.”
“You could certainly say that, Boss.” Colin said with a laugh.
“I guess that we are going to need to recruit some more battlers now. You and your people certainly have something here to be very proud of.” Alec remarked.
“Thank you, Boss. As far as more battlers go, perhaps I have something else in mind. Then all you will need are more people.” Colin said with a smile.
“You have more battlers that you think that you can refit, Colin?”
“I have been working on that pirate Archer that you brought back here a few months ago, Boss. I still need more parts for her before I can properly finish the job. But, I was thinking of perhaps fixing up two or three of the larger cargo shu
ttles that we have back here into Q-ships instead. They can be used to carry cargo when necessary, but can be a nasty surprise for anyone that you encounter. You and I have both supported such an idea in the past too. The shopping list that I will need to refit the shuttles will also be a lot less expensive than my previous one.”
“How about this, Colin? Take the best candidate for refitting into a Q-ship and do what you described. However, we still do need additional battlers if we are going to be involved in any straight-up battles with syndicate or Lu’non warships. Q-ships are just too fragile to survive in a pitched battle. So let’s get that Archer fully operational first. Then you can do another Q-ship conversion for us. After that is complete, go work on any battler hulks that you think that you can repair and put back into service with your remaining resources.”
“That is going to be a little more difficult since the previous occupants didn’t really leave me any more viable battlers to work with other than that battered Archer that I have already been working on. But I will see what I can do, Boss.”
“Thank you, Colin. I brought you some ‘gifts’ that I trust will help you finish these little projects of yours. I hope that you haven’t given your latest creation a name yet. I think that I already know the perfect one for her.”
“What’s that, Boss?”
“I’m going to call her ‘Golden Phoenix’. But I’m sure that we will all end up calling her ‘Phoenix’ for short though.”
“Well, any form of Phoenix seems an appropriate name since this warship has been reborn as a result of your efforts, Colin.
The only bad part is that we are going to have to keep her here for a while. I know that you are proud as hell about what you have put together here, Colin. Alacrity is still going to have to be the ship that everyone sees out on patrol.”
Alec could see a hint of dismay on Colin’s face with that pronouncement. So Alec continued with an explanation about the reasons for his decision.
“We are going to have to fully train a crew for Phoenix before we can take it out on any missions first. We can’t afford to send such an important ship out while handicapped by an inexperienced crew.
