by gerald hall
It is also very important that Alacrity remains our primary jump tender because for right now, we are still operating in a clandestine role. She looks like a conventional jump tender because her weaponry is concealed until it is needed. When Phoenix is made public, everyone is going to know that we are openly going to war. I want to wait on that until we are completely ready, both with equipment and personnel.”
“I understand that, Boss. It even fits in with your desire to have more battlers. But, your explanation about the currently clandestine nature of much of our work makes the conversion of more cargo shuttles into Q-ships even more sensible too.” Colin responded with an edge to his voice.
Alec smiled for a second before answering. He could see that Colin wasn’t very happy. So Alec needed to calm the situation down quickly.
“Colin, I apologize. You are absolutely correct. We do need more Q-ship conversions. Hopefully, you will be able to put your skills at technical improvisation to good use in repairing and refitting some more of the vessels here into disguised warships. We certainly can use them out there.
But I have to emphasize that we also need more battlers for Phoenix to carry into whatever fights we send her into. So, I want you to do what you can to accomplish both goals. I will support you to the maximum extent possible. Another Q-ship conversion will be useful though for our current anti-piracy operations. That does make sense.
But I also want it so that when we have a fully trained crew for this incredible warship here, we will have the supporting ships necessary so that we can get all of our people back alive.”
“Just get me the materiel to work with and I’ll do what I can, Boss.”
“I just brought ten thousand tons of spare parts with me, Colin. Now, the rest is up to you to deliver what we need.”
“Thank you, Boss. I’ll make you proud.” Colin promised.
“Good. I also brought in another fifty thousand tons of food, fuel, consumer and luxury goods for the station as a whole. I’m sure that the shops in the habitation ring are going to be open late for the next few nights.”
“There will also be more than a few parties going too, Boss. People like to have a good time when the store shelves are full and they have prize money to spend.” A smiling Colin added.
“Just don’t have ‘too good’ of a time tonight, Colin. We all still have a lot of work to do tomorrow.” Alec warned, but with a friendly note.
“Sure thing, Boss.”
Chapter Thirty One:
MMG Jump Tender Alacrity
Star F-225, Messier 67 Cluster, Orion Arm
November 18, 2321
Alacrity sat within the rings of a gas giant in the fifth orbit around this red giant star waiting to see what might appear. Alec had received some intelligence from an acquaintance within one of the colonial navies that indicated that pirates had been using this star along one of the main interstellar shipping lanes.
So, Alec took his jump tender along with Hidden Blade, a cargo shuttle and a pair of battlers out to see what could be found there. It took twelve days of patient waiting, but it now appeared that the wait could be worthwhile.
“Look what we have here, Sir. There’s an unlisted jump tender lying doggo in that asteroid belt. How much are you willing to bet that is another pirate waiting to strike an unsuspecting merchant ship?” Alacrity’s sensor tech Brandon Kiel reported.
“Could be a pirate. It also could be a Syndicate raider ship too. We have to figure out which one it is, of course.” Alec commented.
“If it is a Syndicate ship, we have to make sure it belongs to the Belair Syndicate unless, it decides to attack us. Then all bets are off. It is still open season on any pirate band though.”
“Are we going to contact her, or just quietly sit here and wait to see what she does?”
“I’m feeling a little impatient today, especially since we would all like to get back home for a bit of a break. We are going to play potential victim this time and see how our ‘friend’ out there reacts to our appearance in this star system.
Ethan, do ahead and take us out towards the system’s primary jump point. I’m sure that jump tender out there is not going to sit there motionless for very long. Be sure to first set our transponder to one of our alternate Kepler registry identities first. Also, orient our hull so that the other jump tender cannot see our battlers at all. I don’t want them to know of our ace in the hole in case everything goes to hell.”
Alacrity began to nonchalantly accelerate out of her own place of concealment. Less than an hour after beginning to move, the other ship began to act.
“We are getting a message from that other ship on the standard communications channel. They are asking if we would like to do some trading while we are out here. They have picked up some excess goods that they would like to dispose of before they reach their next destination.” Alacrity’s communications tech reported.
“So, they are basically claiming that they have contraband items that they want to get rid of before it can get seized by the authorities? Hmmm.” Alec said before breaking out in a smile.
“That’s what it sounds like, Sir.”
“Ask them what they want to sell. Let them know that we have something valuable to trade with. Just don’t say weapons though. We wouldn’t want them to worry any. Be sure to sure our current identity that we are squawking on our transponder. ” Alec with a laugh.
The exchange took a few minutes to allow for the time for signals to travel the still extended distances between ships.
“They want to see our wares first, Sir. They are sending one of their cargo shuttles to our ship to save time rather than forcing our jump tenders to make the trip themselves.”
“Smart move of their part. Set up a rendezvous point and let them know that we will meet their shuttle there with one of our own, please. Hidden Blade will work out well for that purposes. In the meanwhile, let’s get our people ready to give these folks a proper reception, one way or another. Who knows? Our visitors might even actually want to do a real trade.” Alec said with a smile that spoke volumes of his confidence in the evil intent of the approaching visitors. He anticipated that the other crew would make the mistake of being anything other than being completely aboveboard in their dealings.
The form of a streamlined lifting-body hull of a Dromedary soon became apparent as the cargo shuttle closed into visual range a little more than two hours later. The twelve-thousand ton cargo shuttle cruised easily at 1G acceleration towards Hidden Blade.
“It figures that so many pirate bands would use a Dromedary. They are among the most common cargo shuttle designs in the entire Orion Arm. It makes it hard as hell to single out a pirate band on the basis of the ships that they use.” noted by Lieutenant Martin Wallace, the new commander of the disguised battler Hidden Blade.
“We will be able to handle anything that they throw at us, I’m sure. I am just anxious to get on with it.” The leader of Hidden Blade’s boarding team replied.
“Patience, Sergeant Kline…patience…. We will unleash your dogs of war just as soon as we determine that these folks are up to no good. Once they tip their hand, we should be adding another one to our collection.” Lieutenant Wallace replied with a confident smile.
The two shuttles gently docked a few minutes later.
“Remember, everyone. We play nice until either we get a positive ID that this ship is completely out of our hunting parameters or that they are bad guys anxious to shoot at us. Understood?” Sergeant Kline ordered his twenty-three boarding troops.
They all quickly nodded in agreement, weapons hidden in cases or in easy reach as the airlock doors began to open.
Four personnel; three men and a woman, walked into Hidden Blade’s main passageway. A pair of Lieutenant Wallace’s crewmen who were openly waiting greeted them. Other than some concealed handguns, these two were unarmed. The rest of the boarding team lay in wait, hidden from view. Some of them were actually already behind the visitors after the l
atter had entered the disguised battler.
“Hello, there. I’m Terrance. It is my understanding that you have some goods that you would like to dispose of before you reach your next destination. My ship works for one of the Kepler colonies. Perhaps we can make a deal for what you have to offer?”
The second that Terrance mentioned the Kepler colony, the woman in charge of the visitors changed her expression. She was obviously alarmed now as were her three companions. They had all started to pull out their sidearms in preparation to defend themselves. But she was surprised to see Terrance begin to smile instead.
She looked around to her companions, only to see that they were being disarmed by four heavily armed boarding troops that had slipped behind them. As she looked back towards Terrance, she was shocked to see another heavily armed man now standing between Terrance and her.
“Shhhh..” Sergeant Kline told the leader of the armed Syndicate crew as he quickly disarmed her. She couldn’t have warned anyone inside of the Dromedary anyway. Lieutenant Wallace had engaged a sophisticated communications jamming system that spoofed the other ship’s radios into thinking that no communications were being made at all.
As the four visitors were being taken into custody, nearly twenty other personnel from Hidden Blade rushed into the Dromedary and captured the handful of other crewmembers that were still aboard her.
“That was easy. We didn’t even have to fire a single shot this time.”
“Gee, I wonder why? These are all people from the Belair Syndicate. They really do have contraband on their ship too.” Sergeant Kline laughed.
“I suppose that the captain will have to figure out what to do with all of these prisoners then.”
“Well, they do belong to that Syndicate that we were hired to fight. The Kepler folks should be able to take these prisoners off of our hands then. Until then, we just put them into cold storage until we can drop them off.”
“Well, what do we do next?” Sergeant Kline asked.
“I guess that we are going to employ our usual SOP on what to do after we capture a pirate cargo shuttle. Only this time, it’s going to be used against the Syndicate ship.” Lieutenant Wallace replied.
“Well, the Trojan Horse tactic still works well even after over two millennium. So why mess with a good thing? I’m sure that those Syndicate raiders would love to obtain a Conestoga. But we would probably do better going back with their own shuttle alone. We just have to convince them not to try for a hat trick with Alacrity. It would be a little hard for those people out there to believe that they could be that lucky.”
“So, we just take their Dromedary back to them. Hidden Blade can stay behind and pretend to have completed their transaction with us. She can easily move up to support us if necessary.”
“Yes, just give me a minute to take the sampling of their voices and create a fake video message to our ‘friends’ jump tender letting them know that everything has gone off according to plan. According to our new ‘guests’, they don’t have any duress codes set up anyway. Then we just travel there quietly and say hello in our own ‘special way’.” Sergeant Kline said with a laugh.
Less than an hour later, the newly confiscated Dromedary was on the way towards the Belair Syndicate jump tender. But now, she was full of heavily armed boarding troops from Hidden Blade. Since the Dromedary cruised towards the jump tender at the same comfortable 1G acceleration, the journey would take a little more than two hours, just as before.
“I’ve got an Equus-class jump tender in sight on my visual sensors now. It’s not very large, but still a valuable prize to take.” A sensor tech detached from Hidden Blade announced to the boarding team. Lieutenant Winters had chosen to also come with the Dromedary along with enough additional crew personnel to act as a prize crew for the anticipated capture.
In the end, the capture of the Equus-class Palomino was even more anticlimactic than of the Syndicate cargo shuttle. As soon as the first of Sergeant Kline’s boarders appeared onboard, the crew of the jump tender immediately surrendered. The crew of the Palomino weren’t even armed at all when their cargo shuttle docked.
“These people were completely clueless. They had absolutely no security measures in place at all when we arrived.” Sergeant Kline said with a sense of both relief and dismay.
“I am just happy that we didn’t lose any of our people this time.” Hidden Blade’s commander noted after sending off messages to both Hidden Blade and Alacrity, informing them of the successful capture of the jump tender.
A few hours later, Palomino was sitting motionless next to Alacrity and in the possession of a prize crew. Alec was announcing what he was going to do with his unit’s newest acquisitions.
“We are going to chill every one of our prisoners down and put them into therapeutic torpor for now. That way, they will be sleeping during the rest of the trip and will not require us to guard them. Since we now have a new jump tender and cargo shuttle on our hands, we need to take them to our employer. The Kepler people will take care of the rest, including the prisoners. All we need to do is collect our prize money for the Equus and the Dromedary as well as their cargo. I thought about keeping them, but they are too small to be of real use to us as raiders, to be honest. We can’t afford to allocate one of our scarce battlers to protect the Equus either.
Once we deliver these ships and their cargo, then we can resupply, get a little R&R and afterwards go back into space for a while. We all need a little time with a real sky over our heads anyway, don’t we?” Alec told the rest of his crew.
“The prize money from them won’t hurt our pockets either, will it Sir?” Brandon gleefully commented.
“No, Brandon. It won’t hurt at all. Just try not to spend it all in one place.”
“I’ll try not to, Sir.” Brandon laughed as he turned and walked away, leaving Alec to think about recent events.
Alec’s own credit account was also quite healthy as well after the addition of all of the prize money and payments from his employers. Even so, he was spending almost as much as he had been receiving. Most of the purchases had been for equipment to refit the ships and outfit his people.
Alec didn’t begrudge spending the money though. He wasn’t married and didn’t have any children that he was aware of. Instead, he saw the expenditures as being an investment in the unit as a whole and especially in the men and women who now worked for him.
Alec pondered over this for a few more seconds. Then he smiled.
Chapter Thirty Two:
Belair Syndicate Headquarters
Proxima Centauri B
Proxima Centauri Star System
November 23, 2321
“We lost another jump tender and cargo shuttle a few days ago. They were operating as part of our paramilitary forces when we lost contact with them. Two days later, one of our agents at the Kepler-186 colony reported that our vessels arrived at the colony’s orbital station. Our vessels had been captured by units of the Martinson Mercantile Group.” Major Rose told his superior, Colonel Banks.
“Lindsey Buckman is going to go ballistic when she finds out about this. We are supposed to be capturing Kepler vessels for our use, not the other way around.” The colonel grumbled.
“We are going to have to redouble our efforts to find and destroy these privateers, Sir. But we are going to need additional help finding them first. So far, none of our sources have been able to locate where these privateers are operating out of or where they might strike next.”
“I suppose that we have no choice. We will have to increase the bounty on this MMG. Hopefully, if we throw enough credits around, they might loosen some tongues and jog a few memories about these MMG privateers.”
“You know that Lindsey is going to demand a lot more than that, Sir. She’s going to want us actively hunting these privateers with our own ships too.”
“We are doing that already. But if we try to expand operations devoted exclusively to eliminating these privateers, we will have to divert res
ources away from other important missions. This includes taking ships and personnel away from the offensive operations that she mandated be taken against the Kepler colonists, not to mention security operations that protect our own settlements and facilities.”
“Sir, we could hire mercenaries of our own to protect our outposts and other outlying facilities. That could free up some of our own ships and troops to undertake other missions.”
“That will be very expensive for us. We will have to find way to pay for those additional forces.”
“This is why significantly boosting the bounty on the MMG will be so much more cost effective. We don’t have to pay a single credit until the information that we get leads to the discovery and neutralization of these privateers. Then we just hand Ms. Buckman the bill. If the mercenaries don’t come up with anything solid, they don’t receive a single credit.
“The only problem with this is if we don’t get any useful information at all, Major.”
“If the bounty is high enough, we will have so many people looking for the MMG that we are bound to find something that we can leverage to eliminate the privateers as a threat, once and for all, Sir. Plus, if the bounty is high enough, there will be a lot of attention drawn to it. Lindsey Buckman will have to notice it too. If she likes it great. If she doesn’t like it, then she will have to make the decision to cancel or lower it. Then, the responsibility for its failure will be on her instead of us.”
“That is true, Major. But also remember that if the Syndicate offers such a high bounty, it will have to justify having done so. That could lead to too much attention on our activities against the Kepler’s.”
“There are times where I would prefer a nice, simple war instead of all of this clandestine garbage. There are far too many rules and too many lawyers involved in an operation such as what we have been ordered to conduct.” Major Rose grumbled.
