by Chris Hechtl
“Try us,” Chief V'x'n said dryly. When the mastiff turned to him, he signaled first-level amusement. “What do you have to lose?”
“Okay … sure, I'll play along, why not,” Mister Salazar drawled. He pulled out a list and then flipped through it. When he got to the right page, he started to list parts. Most of the parts listed were electronic in nature, though there were a few parts like replacement servos and some massive fittings for hydraulic lines.
The Veraxin chief engineer checked the inventory though his implants. “You are right; we don't have them all.”
“See? A waste of time,” Mister Salazar said with a shrug as he flipped the list closed and then stuffed it in his inside pocket.
“But we will when we finish replicating the missing parts. That is, if we have the raw material. The rest we can draw from inventory, and I can replicate replacements later,” the Veraxin finished.
“What? Wait, you can do that?” Mister Salazar asked, stunned. “You have a replicator??? A working one, with keys? An industrial one??!?”
“We are a Federation warship. Of course we do. We have more than one replicator on board actually. I'm not sure about the dimensions of some of the parts, I'd have to check,” the engineer replied thoughtfully.
“Oh. You are serious??” Mister Salazar seemed excited.
“Yes.”
“You have no idea what this means! We can keep her flying … if the parts pan out …,” Mister Salazar tried to dampen his own enthusiasm and restore his poker face for the negotiations. “I um, mean … that's great,” he finally said.
Lieutenant Parker smiled politely. “You'd be surprised,” she said. Mister Salazar stopped himself and looked at her. “Sorry. I remember a couple decades ago when my family was in the same situation. A ship similar to this one came by with a Federation admiral. Our station was about to collapse. Our former sleeper chief engineer was old and ill, and he was the only one keeping things together effectively. The admiral showed up with that ship and it was like a gift from the gods!” the XO said as she shook her head. “I was just a kid then but I remember the excitement. Anvil is completely different now than then, I barely recognized it.”
“So, are you saying the same will happen here?” Mister Salazar asked.
“With trade, membership undoubtedly, but also careful investment and time … it can happen,” the XO replied with a nod. That made Mister Salazar very thoughtful. “Of course, to ensure the investment pays off we need to find the pirates and eradicate them.”
“And you are going to do that?”
“Yes,” the XO said with a humorous look to the others on the bridge.
“Well, good luck with that. You've got your work cut out for you,” the mastiff said with a shake of his large black and brown head.
“Why thank you.”
“You're going to need it,” Mister Salazar said dryly.
“It is a bit more than Lady Luck's blessings,” Thelma interjected. The native representative turned to her. “It is also hard work, education, and grit to see it through. We need more people with those qualities, people willing to rebuild, willing to stand up to the pirates.”
Mister Salazar looked thoughtful for a long moment. “That is very interesting. But until we see a reduction in piracy, I'm afraid we'll have to remain neutral,” Mister Salazar said apologetically.
“Well, we've destroyed one of their ships, so we've got a start on that,” Captain S'th said. “We'll just have to build off that,” she said eyeing her crew as Mister Salazar blinked at her in fresh astonishment. “Right?”
“Aye aye, ma’am,” the bridge crew chorused.
The Neodog shook his head. “You people are nuts,” he said quietly. “But hell, if you think you can deliver the goods …” he shrugged. “One man's insanity is another man's reality I guess.”
“We'll make a believer out of him yet,” Lieutenant Parker said with a brief smile to Thelma and the others.
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Just before Beta convoy jumped out of the Gamma-Delta-Echo star system, a bright light at the Alpha jump point announced the arrival of another ship. The arrival time was actually a month prior, but Captain Mochadeyn didn't complain. It meant that most likely Mercy Mission of hospital ships had finally arrived in the sector. If his numbers were right, they had to have been hauling ass in the third octave of Gamma band to get there in one year from their transit time.
As his navigator began the countdown to jump, a small ship jumped into the star system. He paused the countdown and waited as the courier crossed the star system. She brought news that the formation of eight ships from the Federation had indeed arrived. She had been held in reserve until the staff on the four hospital ships had managed to get a handle on the plague in Alpha. She downloaded the information and then had been sent off to relay it to the other planets as well as to Commodore Logan.
The Beta convoy's crew was elated right up until the Sojourner class courier had passed them and then jumped. “Everyone's in a tearing hurry,” Captain Mochadeyn complained. Still, it was good news to know that Good Hope, Florence Nightingale, and their consorts, support ship, and escorts had arrived.
“The cavalry is here,” PO Breval said.
“They have indeed,” the captain murmured. “Hopefully, they will turn the tide,” he said as his navigator resumed the countdown to jump.
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Belfast's next stop was Tau-11MX73. There they passed a massive space station complex built from a massive molecular furnace and factory ship. The giant ship had once been the Henry Bessemer, named for a human industrialist who, prior to spaceflight had created blast furnaces to modernize and mass produce steel. Her hyperdrive had failed in the star system so she'd been converted into a space station. The station was called Bessemer or HB for short.
The ship had been basically a six-kilometer-long, one-kilometer-wide cylindrical converter forge where raw material was fed into her open bow and then processed material filled the tanks in her midships and stern to be off loaded when she made port or was visited by another ship.
Prior to and during the Xeno War, the ship had been owned by a mega corporation and had been working the Pi sector when the Xeno war broke out. She had fled the war, but then when the crew tried to return to civilization to hook up with their parent corporation, they had been directed to the nearest shipyard to help with the war effort.
The ship had been forced to flee several star systems when the Xeno fleet had arrived to rampage through it and destroy everything.
During their last narrow escape, the ship's hyperdrive had been damaged by a close jump. The crew had managed to nurse their ship to the empty star system and then had gone into stasis, expecting rescue.
Tramp freighters passing through the star system had eventually found them a few decades later. The freighters had rescued some of the crew to fate unknown. The remaining crew had tried to salvage their ship. Eventually they had turned it into a factory station and trade depot.
Twice in the past fifty years the station had been temporarily taken over by visiting pirates. Both times the pirates had been malicious and sadistic with the stationers before boredom or interest in new hunting grounds had made them leave.
The last time the pirates had visited they'd left a lot of damage in their wake. The molecular furnaces were shut down. Blast furnaces had replaced them, but the star system lacked a lot of easily accessible natural resources. She was reliant on trade to survive, and trade had begun to dry up with fewer and fewer ships coming around to do trade.
On Belfast's last stop, they'd helped a little bit, but Captain S'th had been impatient to leave once they had cloned the station's computers and combed through it for information. Now she decided they had sufficient fuel from their last stop to bypass the station all together and keep going.
Chapter 36
Captain Chen grimaced as his tagalong lumbered slightly behind and off his ship's starboard flank. Booty'licious was as fat a
ss and slow as he imagined she would be. Their clockwise journey was taking three, no, four, hell, maybe five times longer than it should, the captain grumbled internally.
The boxy Tauren tramp freighter that Seydlitz had been saddled with escorting had the supply of plague pods tightly sealed in specially controlled compartments within her holds. The small plastic winged pods resembled maple seedlings. The various viruses that made up the plague were housed in the bulbous body of the pod. A passing shuttle would drop them over a population center. They would then flutter to the ground and then break down over several days of exposure to UV radiation. By that time, the shuttle and Horathians would be safely long gone.
Captain Chen liked the method of distribution but wished his people could just spray the plague into the atmosphere. To do that though, they'd have to do it below ten thousand feet to make certain the various viruses didn't freeze … and there was no telling if the shuttle and crew would be exposing themselves to the viruses in the process. The powers that be had guaranteed that they wouldn't afflict humans, but the captain had no interest in exposing his people.
He also didn't want to expose his so-called allies. The crew of the freighter were not happy about the job, and he'd had to compromise by letting them fill their ship with booty first before they would spread the virus. He wasn't certain what would happen if one or more of them were exposed and brought the plague on board their ship. Nothing good he knew. He also knew that it wouldn't bode well for his ship, Fancy, and 8116 when the Neo pirates found out the truth about T-4 and why they were doing it.
All he could do was hope and pray they would be long gone by the time they found out. And if the Neos got the virus just as they were leaving, all the better he thought coldly.
Tau-O79XP had so far been the one system he thought truly worthy of receiving their dose of plague. He knew that just dosing the planet should be enough to spread it to the star system's space colonies over time as well if the natives were careless. If they managed to survive and quarantine one or more habitats, well, the admiral had ordered that the space colonies be left alone.
He wasn't happy about working with Neos and aliens. He was happy to be away from Tortuga, so perhaps it was a good thing that his consort was slow. She also needed fuel more than Seydlitz did, which was annoying. They'd had to stop and refuel in Tau-2X78. They were going to have to linger there anyway since there were two inhabited planets in the binary system; he just wished that Captain Patterson, his Neochimp counterpart had been smart enough to mention his fuel state in Tau-O79XP. They could have gotten the fuel a hell of a lot easier and cheaper from the space colonies there.
Their next stop was Tau-FRX76, another agro colony. From there they'd have three more jumps until they arrived at Dead Man's Hand. The pirate base would be welcome to some; he wasn't so certain it would be for him and his crew.
Every time he interacted with the Neos who called themselves Horathians, he expected to be found out. There was no problem with Booty'licious, if the ship could suffer a mischief in transit. In fact, he'd been tempted to arrange one once they were done their loop. It would be so sad for the ship to be lost on her last leg of the long journey … but he put the temptation aside, at least for the moment.
Making port in a Horathian-controlled place was more hazardous to his ship and crew than dealing with the lubbers he thought acidly. He wished fervently that he could just drop the mission and run for home. It was sorely tempting he knew, but he didn't have the supplies to do it … and with the plague distributed along the path back to the Trajin cluster and Rho he wasn't certain he'd be able to scrounge them up.
“What a revolting situation this is,” he muttered under his breath. His ops rating turned to him, but he just gave the man a cold look. The rating grimaced and ducked his head to go back to attending to his station.
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Captain Joe Hammer brought his Salem class heavy cruiser Saladin into orbit of Rolling Meadows and then sent out the call to the lubbers below.
His comm people had picked up unusual chatter from the planet including discussions of a mythical visit from the Federation. He sent down a shuttle to extract their usual tribute. His ships needed fuel and provisions so he could skip the next two stops. He was hungry for something, but the jump line between Virgin's Holes and Tortuga were very picked over he knew.
A few hours later he started to hear reports from his people on the ground that the Federation forces had indeed visited the planet. It didn't make sense, but the locals had new equipment and even video of their visit.
The knowledge they'd squeezed out of the lubbers made him bring some of the more talkative ones up to his ship to interrogate them personally. It took hours, but he was finally convinced of the Federation convoy. Once he was certain he'd extracted everything he could, he'd had the bodies spaced.
The convoy was a juicy target indeed, but there was the question of her escorts. All sources pointed to warships guarding the fat freighters. He didn't like the idea of tangling with someone who could fight back. Unfortunately, the lubbers had no clue what sort of warships they were talking about, just names of ships that had been mentioned.
The bigger question and more troubling one was the news of the plague. As his people brought in gear, he puzzled over what the lubbers had told him. It didn't bode well for some visits he thought.
Pirate ships had a finite limit on size and mass of the plunder they could take. Therefore, they were choosy about what they took from a planetary population. Usually fuel and basic provisions, plus the odd doodad or sparkly someone picked up. If a planet was known by someone to harbor other riches they would come back often until they cleaned the place out.
His people managed to grab a lot of the gear the Feds had dropped. A lot of it was prized; the computers and databases alone would be worth something in Tortuga's markets.
the shuttle lifted the captain made certain to threaten retaliation if the terrified lubbers ever cooperated again with the Fed forces. It would make them think twice about giving away information about his ship he knew.
“Cap'n sir, are we going to give chase?” the Neochimp XO asked.
The captain's fingers traced a scar on his cheek and then flexed his right hand where he was missing some fingers from a fight in the dome. “No,” he finally said. The XO's eyes flickered in disappointment. “Me thinks we be bringin' such news to the Admiral. Such a rich target be too much for one ship alone,” the captain said.
“Aye,” the XO said turning away.
“And the plague?” the tactical officer asked. That caused a minor stir around the bridge.
“The lubbers said a small ship passed with the cure. We may need that for ourselves,” a rating on the bridge muttered.
The captain grunted at that idea and stored it for later. The cure would be useful for him … or to sell to others. Or, he kept his expression blank as he sat back and thought of another idea. He could come up with a concoction and sell that as a cure. Doc could whip something up in his lab he was sure, he did a good trade with amphetamines and such; surely he could think of something that would work or appear to work on the cheap? As long as he wasn't around when the buyer found out, he wasn't really protected … his lips quivered in a not quite nasty smile. He could very well imagine a competitor or two getting such just deserts.
Let the buyer beware indeed he thought coldly.
“Set course for the Tau-1183 jump point,” the XO said. “By your leave of course, sir,” the Neochimp said, turning to bow slightly in a fawning gesture to the captain.
“Aye,” the captain said, flicking the fingers of his good hand as he thought about what he could do, what logistics might be needed, and what might happen if he did it. “Profit indeed,” he murmured softly.
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Admiral Ishmael grimaced as he watched the shuttles moving in and out of Cenarius' gravity well. They had been forced to stop in the Tau-CN22S star system to re-provision … which meant hunt
ing for some. He had ordered the planet to be made exempt from the plague for the time being since it was his favorite hunting spot.
He hadn't realized so many carnivores needed so much meat for a long run, and of course everyone preferred meat that was fresh. The crews also needed downtime on the planet since they weren't likely to get such time on the march ahead. Not without risking infection from the plague.
The ships had fuel, but some hadn't taken on enough stores when they'd jumped. Also, some of the smaller ships limited the speed of the fleet in sublight and in hyper.
Blowing off rust with working up exercises as a task force was also an ongoing process. It was the first time in over a century that he'd done it, and he was well aware he was rusty. So were his people, they were too set in their ways, too focused on hunting prey that didn't fight back. Well, this prey had teeth. Teeth and claws of their own.
His current plan was for the smaller ships to sweep the system and secure the jump points to prevent escape. Black Death would be the mace that would go through the enemy ships like shit through a goose.
Captain Gutt's report of his battle in Tau-49436 played out in his head again. The enemy ship had tried to hack the Neoorangutan's ship to get over the mass disparity. It made him wonder about that. It had also made him order that all communications systems would be air gapped. They'd lose something in transmission ability, especially sending telemetry, but it was a necessary safety measure. He didn't want his fleet to get hacked.
Break down of wall of battle. Plan to pick up marauders along the way, but each time they might slow him down further.
He scowled and stroked his chin and beard as he thought about where the enemy had most likely ended up. They would go for something central, something dependable with a lot of resources. There were only so many star systems that fit that bill. He had a list of eight potential star systems that fit that bill. Of the eight, three of the star systems were agro colonies light on space resources. Personally, he wouldn't want to have to deal with a gravity well filled with hicks who thought electricity was like magic.