Privateer's Moon

by gerald hall

  Another member of Phoenix’s crew reached up and handed Julian the fourth of his anti-tank rockets.

  “Do you think that you are up to returning the favor to those Lu’non bastards? Let’s capture their ship now.” She then said.

  Julian smiled inside of his armored suit.

  “Sure, I’d love to. Anyone want to come with me? I kind of doubt that they have any more of those damned armor suits. If they did, they would have sent them down to help capture our ship in the first place.”

  With Julian in the lead and a crowd of armed crewmen and women at his heels, they rushed inside of the Lu’non battler and captured it in a furious ten-minute fight. Two of Phoenix’s crew died when one of the Lu’non threw a hand grenade into their midst. But Julian’s use of his ‘door-knocker’ to breach the bulkhead door into the Lu’non battler’s engineering compartment, ended all effective resistance. A spray of gyrojet rounds quickly dispatched the single unarmored Lu’non in the battler’s small bridge, leaving the alien warship in the possession of humans for the first time.

  The other two Lu’non battlers also tried to latch onto the old human combat tender’s hull to aid their companion in the boarding attempt. But Phoenix’s gunners caught both of them in a deadly hail of missiles, energy weapons fire and mass driver rounds as the battlers tried desperately to match velocities and close the range.

  Both of the battlers were destroyed in less than thirty seconds.

  “Alright, warriors. Let’s go help Orca finish the job now.” Major Compton announced.

  Phoenix slowly turned towards the last reported location of the Lu’non combat tender, the captured Lu’non light battler still attached to the human warship’s hull,

  After about fifteen minutes, the sensor tech spotted Orca and the rest of the Lu’non warships.

  “I don’t know what is holding Orca together. My sensors show that she is little more than wreckage now. But it looks like she got that enemy combat tender first. Her spine has been broken in half. There’s still one more enemy battler out there. She’s almost as beat up as Orca but is making what looks like a straight suicide run on what is left of Colin’s ship.”

  “Are we in range for our spinal mount yet?” The major quickly asked.

  “Yes, Sir. We just entered effective range of it.”

  “Target that enemy battler and remove it from my skies, Mister Gridley. I don’t think that any one of us wants to be attending the funerals of those brave men and women today. So let’s make sure that enemy ship doesn’t reach Orca.”

  “Yes, Sir!”

  With the straight course that the enemy battler was using and the fact that her drives were damaged made the image of her erupting into a cloud of debris after being hit by one of Phoenix’s big ‘crowbars’ seem almost anticlimactic.

  Phoenix then maneuvered to what was left of Orca. The ancient heavy battler’s drives had failed after the final exchange with the Lu’non combat tender. So she was unable to maneuver to dock with Phoenix.

  “Hello, Phoenix. This is Orca. Can you give us a lift? Our drives seem to having some problems here.” Colin’s weary voice called over the command frequency.

  “Just hang on there, Orca. We’re coming to get you.” Major Compton replied.

  “Thank you, guys. Just don’t take too long. We are in bloody poor shape out here, I fear.”

  As Phoenix closed with Orca, everyone could see a long, gaping hole that had been gouged out of the starboard side of the battler’s hull. The rest of the battler was also badly damaged with many of her weapons wrecked due to enemy fire.

  “Holy crap! Get as many craft out to Orca as quickly as possible. They are probably going to need a lot of medical help too. Send all available medical teams while we are at it.”

  Major Compton was waiting at the combat tender’s main small craft bay when the first members of Orca’s crew were brought aboard. Among the first people to arrive was her captain.

  A bloody bandage covered one of Colin’s arms. Several others from his crew had to be carried out on stretchers.

  “I wanted to stay aboard, but my first officer insisted that I go since I was wounded and couldn’t wear a vacc suit. We got hurt bad in that fight for sure. I lost five of my crew during that fight. They all got sucked out into space when that damned Lu’non battler sideswiped us in an attempt to board Orca. All of the rest of us were injured in one form or another also.”

  “We are going to get all of your people taken care of, Colin. Just relax and let our people do their jobs.”

  “OK, Major. I don’t think that I have much of a choice in the matter right now. Anyway, it looks like you had a bit of a tussle here yourselves.” Colin commented after seeing all of the gunfire scars along the main passageway towards the bridge.

  “Nothing that we couldn’t handle with a little help from a Marine.” One of Phoenix’s crew laughed.

  “What kind of shape is that little Lu’non battler in that you guys captured?” Colin asked.

  “Not too bad. We managed to keep breakage down to a minimum except for the crew. We did our best to break them into lots of small pieces.” The big Marine laughed.

  “Well, I’m glad that you didn’t tear things up too badly. I really want to take a close look at their technology and to see about possibly refitting it for our use. That little bugger has some pretty interesting features that could be very useful for us, I suspect.”

  “It is a shame that you and Rita’s sisters were not able to get your new drones into operation in time to help us in this fight.”

  “Indeed. I have been so busy with other projects that also needed to be done. If the drones had been available, my battler might not have been so badly damaged. But, I think that we will eventually be able to put them to good use, one way or another.”

  “I would be happy if you could just figure out a way to keep the Belair Syndicate’s people from using those drones against us during our next battle. They could cause us a lot of problems.”

  “Don’t worry, Major. We have that problem already well in hand. You would be amazed what you can do when you have one of those Libertad AI’s helping you out. Of course, getting me some more human help wouldn’t hurt my efforts either.”

  “I’m sure that Captain Martinson is working on it, Colin. We already have nearly two thousand people living and working for the Boss at the station already, you know.”

  “Yes, but I’ve got maybe a hundred or so techs here who can help me with all of the salvage, repair and refit work. The rest of the folks here are either Marines, flyboys or some other specialized professional, not counting the spouses and kids that are living here too.”

  “Why don’t you try to recruit some apprentices from among our people who are not currently busy with other tasks, Colin? I’m sure that the training that you could give them about how these vessels work and how to fix them would go a long way towards improving our damage control drills aboard all of our ships. You could offer new apprentices a stipend or training wage as well. With the growing number of shops and other businesses inside our little hole in the rock station, there are certainly plenty of places for people to spend their credits.”

  “That actually sounds like a pretty good idea, Boss. But I still could use some more techs who already know their business to help me with all of this work that is piling up around here. This includes the work on the station’s facilities, you know.”

  “I promise you that we are working on getting you some more people, Colin. We just have to make sure that we don’t end up with someone who is not looking out for our best interests. That would be worse than simply being shorthanded.”

  Chapter Thirty Eight:

  New Hope Station

  YBP 1194 Star System, M 67 Star Cluster, Orion Arm

  January 8, 2322

  A still-wounded Colin greeted Alec after Alacrity’s return to the base.

  “What the hell happened to you?” a shocked Alec asked after seeing the wreckage of several v
essels secured along the sides of the main inner chamber. Four or five of the vessels were small, unfamiliar designs in various states of disassembly. However, the battered wreck of Colin’s battler Orca also was in the salvage area of the inner chamber.

  “Hello, Boss. We had some uninvited guests arrive while you were gone. But we were able to give them quite a proper reception though.”

  “Who were they, Colin?” Alec quickly asked

  “They were Lu’non raiders who arrived in our system aboard one of their Spear-class combat tender, Boss. We couldn’t just wait them out since they apparently spotted one of our ships heading down to the planet before our sensors could warn us. But the buggers didn’t leave here after we were done with them.”

  “How bad was it?”

  “My Orca got beat up pretty badly. Phoenix took some damage too, but her damage will be pretty easy to fix. We also lost three fighters and over thirty casualties. But even though we were pretty damned shorthanded, our people did incredibly well against those bug-eyed bastards.”

  “Will you be able to fix up your battler, Colin?”

  “I’m not sure that I can. I was literally sideswiped by one of those Lu’non battlers who tried to either board Orca or just plain ram her. Orca’s structure was pretty badly twisted by the impact in addition to the massive breach of her hull.

  Plus, as old as she is, the toll of all those years of operation, means that it is going to be very difficult to put Orca’s hull back to rights. Most of her weapons have been knocked out. Her drives are also badly damaged as well. I’m afraid that her fighting days are over. I’m going to have to scrap her.

  But I stopped that damned Lu’non combat tender from getting away before we were rammed by that enemy battler. We shoved a crowbar right down that combat tender’s throat and shattered her jump drive.” Colin proudly said.

  “If that Archer that you have been working on is ready to go, she’s yours, I promise.”

  “Well, Sir. I’m kind of anxious to see if I can refit at least one of those little Lu’non battlers that we captured so that we can put it to use for ourselves first. Who knows? We might even be able to piece together a couple more as well.” Colin said with a smile.

  “While you are at it, please let me know what you learn about their technology. I’m sure that this will not be the last time that we encounter the Lu’non. I want to be sure that we come out ahead then too. Our patrons at the Kepler colony would probably also pay substantially for information on Lu’non technology as well.”

  “Sure thing, Boss. We also found something else while we were searching through the asteroid belt for any other Lu’non ships or salvageable debris. We picked up a hot spot there”

  “What do you mean?”

  “We discovered an asteroid that had a significant radioactive signature. When we got closer, we found a two-kilometer diameter rock that had apparently been recently struck by another asteroid or even someone’s stray missile. The asteroid is actually a fragment of a previously larger body. But the impact has exposed a significant deposit of uranium. The spectrograph says that it is very high grade with a significant percentage of Uranium U-235.

  “How much of it is there?”

  “We won’t know for sure until we extract it. But our initial estimates are that the uranium ores there could make us all very rich. There is enough fissionable material to operate fifty thousand reactors for more than a century and supply the cores for a hundred thousand fission warheads.”

  “If anyone finds out about this, we won’t just have the Belair goons looking for us. We will have everyone trying to find us too.”

  “So want do you want to do about the asteroid, Sir?”

  “That part is pretty obvious. We need to mine that uranium as quickly as possible and put it in a safe place that is shielded from detection before anyone else chances upon it.

  We still have that one chamber sealed off that used to house the old station fission reactor. That is where we will place the ore that we are able to extract from that asteroid. But we need to make use of the material in our LFTR liquid-fueled nuclear reactors and to make more nuclear warheads for our own capital missiles. I’ve already looking into creating a prototype SILEX isotope separation system that uses lasers to separate the U-235 from the uranium feedstock.

  I want to make absolutely sure that if anyone does find us, that they will regret the day that they were born after we are done with them.”

  “I will get things rolling on that, Boss. We are probably going to need a couple more experts on nuclear engineering and weapons design.”

  The weapons design part is easy. We just reverse engineer the nuclear warhead that we took from the Truists when we captured Hidden Blade. Finding a nuclear engineer to manage the enrichment of the uranium ores that we collect will be a little harder, especially with our peculiar security needs. We can’t let this engineer know how much ore we have or where we got it. Otherwise, a strike like this will most certainly get out into the wild. You already know what that will mean, Colin.”

  “I sure do, Boss. It was a pretty close run thing with that Lu’non ship that paid us a visit. I don’t need that to happen again around here anytime soon.”

  “Speaking of the Lu’non. How are things going with that first captured Lu’non battler, Colin?”

  “I’ve had to strip out all of her weapons. Their power requirements are far different than our standard systems. Her life support and sensor systems have also had to be completely replaced too. So much of their hardware was pure crap anyway. But she’s got damned good engines though, I have to admit.”

  “What about her exterior? We don’t want someone takes potshots at our new acquisition after they have mistaken her for a Lu’non warship.”

  “I thought that we might attach external missile pods like what Tess’s battler uses. That should break up the Lu’non battler’s original outline enough to avoid mistakes in identification. Then we can add more anti-ship and point-defense anti-missile lasers to replace her old equipment. The original Lu’non weapons were numerous, but quite inferior to our latest equipment.”

  “That sounds like a good plan to me. I am assuming that you have all of this available from our available stores already?” Alec asked.

  “Sure, Boss. I knew that you wanted to get this ship operational as quickly as possible. While there were some things that simply had to be completely replaced, I tried to make the refit as simple and quick as possible.”

  “How long do you think that it will take you to finish, Colin?”

  “Now that we have all of the repairs complete on Phoenix, I will have enough personnel available to get everything done in about three weeks.”

  “Be sure to package up all of the old Lu’non stuff that you took off that battler. I will take it to someone from Earth Fleet or the Kepler colonies to do a technical analysis on it. I would imagine that we could make a few extra credits and some good will along the way by doing that too.”

  “We will have to come up with a name for this ship too, Boss.”

  “How about ‘Mosquito’? It is, after all, a former Lu’non ship that is small in size but that be quite deadly, especially after delivering its ‘viral’ payload of boarding troops.”

  “You know. That is a pretty good name for her, Boss. I like it. I like it a lot.” Colin laughed.

  “Alright then. She’s officially the ‘Mosquito’. We just have to get her ready for combat, train a crew and give her a new paint job. This Lu’non paint scheme really doesn’t say much for their tastes in colors.” Alec said with a sour expression before returning to a much more humorous tone.

  “How about the other projects inside the station that you and your minions have been working on, Colin?”

  Colin chuckled at the mention of the term ‘minions’ concerning the more than two hundred engineers and technicians that now worked in the station or onboard the various ships of the small privateer fleet. They did tend to look at Colin with a certain s
ense of awe after seeing what he had managed to do with such limited resources.

  “I guess that I should start with our power systems. We now have a total of five main energy power generation units that are operational. We have two LFTR reactors that have providing the base load for the station. Together, they produce over one thousand Megawatts of power. I have also installed three fusion reactors that we salvaged from decommissioned ships. They can add another fifteen hundred Megawatts of power when needed.

  They all have been tested and work quite well. But I prefer relying upon our LFTR reactors as much as possible. When we need additional power for weapons, then we can turn off the fusion reactors. But when we turn them on, we do emit a lot more neutrinos. We also have to maintain a good supply of hydrogen to fuel the fusion reactors when they are online. The LFTR reactors can keep running for years on the same basic fuel load if necessary.

  Anyway, Boss. All of the baseline power is used by our habitation areas, our workshops and other baseline life support requirements.”

  “What about those life support additions that you told me earlier that you were working on?”

  “We have quarters inside the station now for over three thousand people now. My people fixed up all of the quarters that the Red Star Collective had used before, added scores of shipboard staterooms from cannibalized ships and started building brand new living quarters areas as we have hollowed out additional chambers along the habitat ring. This gives us a lot of room for growth as necessary.

  We have also expanded our aquaponics and hydroponics areas as part of our general expansion of our life support capacity. We are growing dozens of different fish and shellfish for food here in our aquaponics. But that is dwarfed by the variety of fruits, vegetables and even nut-bearing trees in our gardens. Some of those aquaponics garden chambers are already more than a hundred meters in length. I think that we have thirty or forty people now who now work pretty much as farmers. They are still useful as techs if we need them for other tasks, however.