by gerald hall
The ships that Colin is not able to repair and put back into service, he is going to strip completely. Then he will take the advanced components from those hulks and use it to refit our existing vessels. This includes our Q-Ships. He wants to make some improvements to their survivability after the beating that Hidden Blade took fighting that enemy battler. Colin will use what is left to add to our station’s defenses and its infrastructure.”
“Are you concerned that we might have worked ourselves out of a job now, Sir? After all, we defeated the main Syndicate force here. From what I understand also, the Syndicate executive officer who had ordered the actions against the Kepler colony in the first place also died aboard their flagship during the battle.”
“I think that we will be continuing to work and remain financially healthy for quite a while. We are going to receive a lot of prize money from the Kepler people for all of the Syndicate ships that we captured or killed.
The Kepler leadership still wants to keep us on retainer for possible future contingency operations. There is also the continuing potential for prize money from hunting pirates in the future. Finally, we will certainly have the assets to haul and protect any cargo that someone wants to have transported, regardless of the potential threat out there.”
“What if the work still does dry up, Sir?”
“Colin and I have been working very hard to make our home very self-sufficient. Even if there is a dry spell where something very unlikely happens and peace breaks out throughout the entire Orion arm, we will be able to survive as an organization. We will be able to feed, house and employ our people.
Remember, we are also still officially named the Martinson Mercantile Group. We can return to being ordinary commercial shippers on a moment’s notice with our three jump tenders, once we integrate the Syndicate ship that we are retaining into our fleet. We don’t have to rely on anyone else to maintain our ships or feed our people either. That gives us an edge that few organizations have, even among the Syndicates.”
“Hopefully all of our people feel the same way.” Joanna noted.
“I believe that all of the work that I and our people have done here have done wonders for the morale of all of our people who live here. They have worked hard and accomplished much to be very proud of. This is a place not just for warriors, technicians and merchants. Our little world here is also a home for families.”
“Yes, Darling. Your people here are very proud of their home and what you have done to make it that way.” Joan interjected in her pronounced London accent that she had adopted after reviewing video recordings of the twentieth century English actress Joan Collins shortly after her ‘birth’.
“Thank you, Joan.” Alec replied with a roll of his eyes that quickly got Joanna laughing in response.
One of those families was even now exploring some of the new expansions of Alec’s station and home.
“So where is this place that you have been spending so much time with since we learned about our miracle baby?” Angela teasingly asked.
“I thought that you would never ask, my dear. Why don’t you come with me for a little walk?”
The couple walked more than two kilometers and ‘up’ two levels before reaching a pressure door that Jonathan opened. They walked inside to a sight that brought a sense of wonder to Angela.
“Well, here it is, Agricultural Chamber Number Four.” Jonathan declared as he and Angela looked down at the one hundred and fifty meter long chamber that had been built inside the newest of the habitat rings to be hollowed out. The chamber was long enough to be able to easily see how it curved to follow the rotation of the asteroid itself. This allowed the contents and occupants of the chamber to take full advantage of the rotational gravitation force generated by the spinning asteroid.
“It is quite a sight, Jonathan. How long did it take to excavate this chamber?”
“Colin and his people had been working on this and Chamber Number Three for about six months. They were using the metals from the excavation to make new hull armor plating and other steel components. Any materials from the excavation that couldn’t be used in some other application were either piled on the surface to camouflage another exterior weapons mounting or it was jettisoned into space.”
Angela and Jonathan sat on the edge of one of the aquaponics tanks and looked at the large prawn and Terran tilipia fish swimming inside. Adjacent to the tanks that held the fish and other aquatic life, were rows of containers that held a wide variety of plants and bushes that grew fresh fruits and vegetables that went directly to the station’s kitchens for preparation to feed the appetites of a couple of thousand men, women and children.
“Who would have known that you could do so much with fish and shrimp protein? There were times where I really thought that I was eating an honest to goodness beefsteak. But in many ways, it does remind me of my old home in Libertad. We had some of the most incredible farms there. Aquaponics was something that most people on Libertad utilized, even on the smallest of pieces of rural property.
Self-sufficiency has been a hallmark of Libertad culture ever since the first colonists landed there over two centuries ago. If we don’t need to purchase something from some big off-world corporation, we try our best not to. The people of Libertad don’t ever want to feel obligated to anyone, especially anyone off-world who doesn’t share our values. But we will help others when necessary. That and self-sufficiency are both key tenets of our faith. Colin and Alec have been applying a lot of my knowledge of aquaponics and self-sufficient life support systems to the creation of these gardens. These chambers are a key part of the station’s life support system now. We can handle a lot more people living on this station now because of them. The old station life support system couldn’t come close to the capacity that we have because of these new chambers and what they contain.”
“Are you sure that the Captain isn’t from Libertad too? It sounds like the two of you have a lot in common.”
“Captain Martinson certainly does his best to take care of his people. That is certainly true. I’m sure that he thought that the protein synthesis equipment that he purchased and brought out here was a good investment though for a variety of reasons.” Angela said.
“That’s true. The station’s self-contained environment helps preserve the station’s security in its own right. We grow essentially all of our food here and recycle everything possible so that we reduce the amount of supplies needed to the bare minimum.”
“That’s one of the things that I love about you, Jonathan. You are into the technology just about as much as I am.”
“Only one of the things?”
“Oh, there are definitely a lot more things that I love about you also, my dear.” Angela said as she wrapped her arms around her new husband and kissed him.
Chapter Forty Five:
New Hope Station
YBP 1194 Star System, M 67 Star Cluster, Orion Arm
December 24, 2322
This was the fullest that Alec had seen the inside of the station’s main bay since first discovering the mysterious asteroid station. To one side, the large combat tender Golden Phoenix was docked. She had already been fully repaired from the damage inflicted several months earlier. Next to her was Colin’s heavy battler Orca II.
Three jump tenders of various sizes were docked on the other side of the massive chamber. These included Alec’s original ship, Alacrity, Tramp-class Fireball and the recently added Prinz Eugen.
Eight medium-sized Broadsword-class battlers were all together in another corner. They were all either in the process of being refitted or being cannibalized for parts.
Elsewhere in the chamber was docked over a dozen other battlers and large cargo shuttles. It amazed Alec that his organization had grown so much in such a short period of time from a single aged jump tender and a handful of battlers to all of this.
To service all of this required an equivalent increase in the number of personnel working at the station, either on the shi
ps themselves, servicing the ships or providing support within the station itself. Finally, there were the rapidly growing numbers of family members. This included a new baby boom occurring within the station. One of the most prominent contributors to this boom included Angela Murrel.
Angela was certainly showing a very pronounced baby bump now that she was beginning her third trimester of her pregnancy. She was walking towards one of the inner maintenance shops along with her husband Jonathan. He was beaming with joy as he walked hand in hand with Angela.
“You are the most beautiful woman on this station, Angela. Your pregnancy only makes you look even more attractive to me.”
“You know, Sweetheart. I’m not the only pregnant woman on this station. There has to be at least another half a dozen other women here who are also expecting.”
“Yes, but none of them are pregnant with our child, my dear loving Angel.” Jonathan warmly replied with a look of complete adoration on his face.
“True enough, my dear. But we aren’t the only ones bursting with pride here. You should see how Joan, our station AI, has been responding to the upgrades that we have been doing to her data processing systems.”
“Well, it hasn’t just been Joan. It has been also her AI ‘sisters’ as well. Colin pulled a lot of state of the art computing hardware from the Syndicate ships that he has been cannibalizing. There was more than enough hardware to refit every ship and to virtually rebuild the station’s main computer core even after Colin repaired the computers of all of the battlers that he is repairing for our use. The station, Golden Phoenix and Alacrity have all received some major upgrades to their computer networks that serve as hosts for our AI’s as a result.
We were using some pretty obsolescent hardware on all three networks previously. The previous capabilities were enough for the AI’s to do their core programming, but the speed and capacity of the three systems certainly left much to be desired. We used a lot of jury-rigged solutions to bridge the capabilities gap. But those solutions were very bulky and sometimes unreliable.”
“I’m sure that was a situation that did not please the AI’s at all.” Angela replied.
“No, it certainly didn’t. But they have all been very patient, I feel. But now, they are ecstatic about the results of the upgrades. Not only have the computer networks have a minimum increase in speed of over fifty percent, but the data storage capacities have also tripled at the same time. The AI’s feel even more ‘alive’ than ever before.”
“I don’t know. I’ve had conversations with Joan even before these new upgrades that make it very hard to believe that she could feel any more ‘alive’ now than how she behaved before Colin worked on their computer hardware.”
“She’s doing more work within the station than ever before. Colin has even said that as long as the sensors and control links are working, Joan can actually operate the entire station’s defense network, internal and external, without any assistance at all. This includes flying our new drone fighters. All she needs then are ammunition and power. Rita and Jill can do much the same thing for their respective ships as well as operate all of the damage control remotes.”
“Then it is a very good thing that our three ‘sisters’ all like us. Otherwise, we could find ourselves quickly facing our own weapons. But, I don’t think that will ever happen. If a machine could love, then our AI’s definitely love and will take care of us here.” Angela confidently replied.
The sense of peace and security that had been the norm onboard the station since shortly after the battle with the Syndicate task force was shattered only a couple of days later. The star system that everyone thought was too far out of the way to be discovered had become the target of a new incursion.
It was about four-thirty in the morning, station time, when the incursion was detected. Alec was asleep in his quarters after a long day of work at the station command center. Even with a virtual stand-down of operations after the battle at Kepler Colony Beta Prime, there had been a tremendous amount of work to do, mostly with the integration of the captured Syndicate equipment, but also with more than three hundred new recruits and family members that had also arrived onboard New Hope Station.
During the past year, more than a thousand miniature surveillance satellites had been seeded liberally within the privateer’s star system. This was spurred by the earlier appearance of the Lu’non combat tender.
These tiny robotic objects had a variety of passive sensors and were shielded to prevent easy detection, but their best defense was the fact that most of the satellites only had a volume of less than a few liters. A pair of these satellites suddenly picked up something that appeared in the vicinity of the system’s inner gas giant.
Meeting a particular set of preprogramed parameters, both satellites then sent a stream of data back to the privateer station via a small, but powerful quantum communications device. The phenomena of quantum entanglement allowed the virtual instantaneous transmission of data between the satellite and the receiver within the heart of the station. The station’s AI immediately received the data and did an analysis of the data. A few seconds later, the personal data terminal on Alec’s left wrist beeped to let him know that he had an important message. Alec had left his terminal on his wrist without even realizing it. The terminal continued to beep until Alec finally woke up.
A still groggy Alec looked down at the terminal’s small viewscreen and saw Joan’s face appear.
“What’s up, Joan?” He asked.
“Sir, we have a new jump signature in the outer system. Obviously, it is not one of our ships because the vessel’s jump signature is far different than any of our vessels. This new arrival is also very large for a single ship.” Joan reported, an unusual note of concern apparent in the AI’s otherwise sultry voice. She also didn’t address Alec as ‘Darling’, which was unusual.
“We don’t have any ships traveling between the station and any of the planets, do we?” Alec asked as he started to get up and look for a fresh set of clothing to put on.
“No, Alec. Everyone is either within the station or inside one of the underwater habitats at this time. I have already ordered a travel hold for all of our vessels. The night shift at my command center has also been alerted about the incursion. Do you want a full alert initiated?”
“No, not yet. I might as well let as many of my people finish getting a good night’s sleep before having to deal with this. Besides, it will be hours before these intruders can impact any of our facilities even if they become aware of them. In any event, it’s a good thing that added those supplementary sensor satellites in the outer system, it seems. Do we have any indication of the origin or class of our ‘guest’, Joan?”
“I cannot be entirely certain. The configuration of the ship is far different than anything else that we have seen before. However, the signature of the jump drive resembles somewhat the Lu’non Spear-class combat tender. But, I hasten to caution that there are also some major differences as well. The signature is at least an order of magnitude larger than that of a Spear-class vessel.”
“How large is this vessel, Joan?” Alec quickly asked.
“I am starting to receive additional information from my satellites, Alec. Please wait a few seconds.” Joan replied, the look of concern still clearly evident in her screen image while her voice was noticeably huskier than normal as well.
“Alec, this is something very new for the Lu’non. The initial ‘ship’ that I saw appeared to mass nearly two million metric tons. But now, it appears to be breaking apart into at least twenty-four individual vessels. Each of these vessels appears to mass around eighty thousands tons. Those vessels are even larger than Captain Sampson’s Orca II.”
Alec remembered an earlier meeting with Mister Wisp where the latter mentioned an intelligence report about a new type of Lu’non ship and jump drive. Perhaps, this was what he was referring to?
“Joan, please access my notes on the Kepler reports of a possible distributed jump drive technol
ogy for the Lu’non. Then compare it to your observations of these vessels to do a full analysis.”
“Certainly, Alec. My observations indicate that this is indeed a probable confirmation of the Kepler intelligence report. These vessels are part of a distributed jump network. I cannot confirm the report’s assertion that the network has an extended jump range due to insufficient information, however. I also cannot yet determine a maximum or minimum number of Lu’non vessels to create a viable jump matrix. I’m sorry that I have not been able to give you more information, Alec.”
“I understand, Joan. You have still given us a great deal of data on the intruders. Keep looking for additional information. Are any of these ships coming closer to the station?”
“Sorry, Alec. But I am afraid that at least half of the Lu’non vessels are traveling currently in the general direction of the station and the world that we are orbiting.”
“We are in no position to fight that many Lu’non ships. Colin and his people are nowhere nearly ready with those salvaged Syndicate battlers, not to mention training crews for them.
I have the lives of over two thousand men, women and children living on this station to think about right now. So I need for everyone to sit tight and wait. We want to be like a dead rock here as far as those Lu’non ships are concerned.” Alec said as he stepped out of his quarters en route to the command center after finishing getting dressed.
“I understand, Alec. I will pass your message down to the underwater habitats. No one is to travel or transmit. I will have to use our quantum communications link to the planet, but the Lu’non should not be able to intercept it.” Joan solemnly answered with a determined look on her face.
