"That decision is still months away. Master Hallik thought it would be a good reward for you to see me again before I go in for the next round of surgeries. I'm told there will be six altogether. The next one will be number two. His medical team has given me excellent care. The master himself has visited at least a dozen times."
Jamus sat back, shaking his head. "I can't believe you're back. And how is it Hallik has had citizens of the empire working on an aware Human without them turning him in?"
"I asked him the same question. He said they are highly paid and he has dirt on them all. They can't cross him without taking themselves down too. So long as the pay is there, they won't question the work."
"Well this is excellent. We have to have you back. If only for morale."
Bersa was standing behind him. "Congratulations, Mr. Turnbull. Your stunt, while extremely risky, solved a major problem. From your video feed we were able to get the badge number of the super in charge of the hydraulic shaft. He has happily joined the Hallik team and will be well paid for doing so."
"So the hydraulic fracturing has stopped?"
"On the contrary. The hydraulic mining apparatus will now be used in three shafts, with the proceeds of the other two shafts being laundered before payments are made to Master Hallik. As an added consequence, Master Hilgress' reported production numbers will be back in line with other averages. No one will suspect anything unusual is happening there for years to come. And our cause has been greatly enriched."
Over the three months that followed, another eight missions were undertaken. All but one proved successful. An unrelated accident had required a withdrawal of Jamus. No punishment was deemed necessary or administered.
Hallik was giddy with the progress the team had made. His shuttle landed outside the training compound and he waddled into the classroom building. A broad smile covered his face.
"Come. All of you."
The group stood.
Bersa asked, "Has something happened, Master? We are in the process of preparing for our farming endeavor. This will be the first time out for Greta and Kerena."
"The preparations can wait. Come, I have something to show you."
The group walked from the building and up the shuttle ramp. They were then hustled into the benched room where Hallik had first questioned them. The rumble of gravity drives followed as the Greft lifted up through the sky.
Hallik said, "I made a purchase for us with the monies this team has already brought in. We will be moving our operational headquarters."
After a wormhole jump, the ship slowed as it approached an orbital station.
"Welcome to Beta Canterra. It's an old Human science station. It was abandoned as being useless shortly after the overthrow. The planet below is somewhat hostile to life and will never be settled. The station itself was too costly to move or to continue to operate, so it was shut down. It's been bought and sold a hundred times since then, mostly as a collector's curiosity. It has been owned by several emperors over its lifetime."
Bersa asked, "And you bought this for us to use?"
Hallik nodded as they pulled into a docking bay. "Yes. It's perfect. It's out of the way from the trade routes. Logs show there hasn't been a visitor in this system for a century. And the planets have been designated as poor for mining purposes due to their climates, and toxic due to various plants that foul the atmosphere with spores. We should be able to operate from here with complete anonymity. Back on Caloran, my comings and goings were continuously logged."
Jamus said, "So we were on Caloran after all."
"Yes. It was economical at the time."
Lights in the bay came up as a great door opening out into space began to close.
Hallik grinned. "Perfect. The first power station has been restored. Two more and we're in business."
The bay door boomed as the precision steel met its frame. With a hiss, the pneumatic seals closed it off from the black void outside.
"Excellent. Power station two is now online. One more."
Hallik brought a structural image up on the wall of the shuttle. "Twelve decks. Approximately two square kilometers of space. And it's all ours to make use of."
An indicator showed the third power station lighting up. The environmental systems slowly came to life. The sound of air rushing in was piped into the shuttle seating area where they were gathered.
"The atmosphere is coming online. The water and recycling system will follow. My team has given me an estimate of thirty minutes before it will be safe to go out. Isn't this exciting? You will be the first Humans to walk this station in ten thousand years!"
Dester asked, "Will we be confined to a single deck? That's a lot of space."
"You will be free to roam the entire station. I will be tasking an assistant with giving a half day of instruction on the station, its features, how to maintain it, basically everything you will need to know to live here on a continuous basis. This will be the main operations center for our organization. The facilities here can support up to five hundred people."
"So we're expanding?"
"Possibly. As of right now, you are still my only team. I'd like to get another dozen mission successes before further contemplating an expansion."
Minutes later, a chime sounded and an aid delivered news of the station atmosphere being ready for occupation. The hatch door unsealed, and the ramp lowered. An excited Hallik was the first down on the deck.
"Hmm. Musty."
His aid nodded. "Yes, Master. I'm told any smell will be cleared by the end of the day. I have a tour prepared if you and the team are ready to begin."
Hallik smiled. "Please, take it away, Gwad. Tell us about this bay."
The Brekan aid cleared his throat. "The Beta Station has two such bays, along with two externally connecting ports. Personnel are generally brought into the bay while supplies come in through the ports. When the light, halfway up the wall and circling this bay, turns yellow, you have two minutes to clear the area. When red, the atmosphere will be removed and the bay door may then be opened or closed. When green, the door is sealed and the atmosphere breathable. You only need worry about yellow. That means it's time to exit the bay.
"As you can see, a number of offices line the area. Each is sealed when the bay is open. I think we can safely assume they were used for bay management when the station was in use. The second bay is identical to this one, only on the opposite side of this station. The external ports are extendable and retractable. They will connect to a standard docking port on all the ships of the Markux Empire."
Hallik nodded. "Fascinating."
Gwad led the group out into a hall. "The administrative deck is deck one. Deck two is dining, recreation... much like our white building on Caloran. Deck three, just above us, is storage. Deck four, this deck, is transport, communications, and security. Just below, decks five and six are again storage. Deck seven is housing. Decks eight through ten are science. Deck eleven is engineering. And deck twelve is maintenance, utilities, and power."
The group followed Gwad as they made their way up a stairwell. "Every deck has a backup power unit and its own environmental system. Should a breach happen anywhere on the station, the deck where it happened will be immediately sealed off from the others. Every deck can be isolated on its own. I believe I read where the individual sealings were designed to also prevent the spread of death or disease should a science experiment go awry. Apparently the collection and study of pathogens was common. And the planet below is supposedly loaded with them."
Dester pointed down. "We won't be going down there, will we?"
Gwad shook his head. "I am not privy to that information."
Hallik said, "We have no business down on the surface at this time. Gwad, please continue."
The group entered the administrative deck. The center of the room was a hundred meters long by fifty meters wide. The floor was covered with desks, consoles, and short storage cabinets. The outer walls were lined with offices. The ceiling
was ten meters high.
As was seen when glancing out at the other decks on the way up, the interior of the station was a bright white. Floors were dark and made of a spongy underlayment with a thin tile-like topping, yielding a surface that was firm and yet comfortable. Ceilings were a soft gray, with lighting sunken and embedded as to not cause any glare unless one looked directly up.
A twin accent stripe covered every wall up near the ceiling. The deck number was included every five meters in the stripes. The accent color for each deck was also embedded in the floor color. The environment as a whole had the appearance of being warm, bright, and clean.
Gwad proceeded to a table in the center of the room. "Here. Each of you will have a management bracelet. It has your comm, your security access to the different decks, and controls for lighting."
The aide tapped on his bracelet, and the lights above the group dimmed and then brightened. "Within your work area you can make adjustments as needed. If you notice the light that rims the ceiling, you will see that it is currently a warm yellow. Toward the time of day that will be designated as dusk, the lighting will turn orange before slowly fading off.
"We are also in a geosynchronous orbit above this planet. If you notice the bright section of the rim-light, that signifies the position of the sun relative to daytime. It seems the Humans took care to make this station acceptable for long-term living. The logs suggest work assignments lasted five years or more."
The tour moved quickly from that point, descending through each deck until the power rooms were reached on deck twelve. Three giant fusion reactors were spread equidistant apart. Two Talion engineers walked about with touch-pads, taking notes and discussing display readouts.
Hallik grinned. "Remarkable. Ten thousand years and the reactors are able to light right off."
Gwad shook his head. "Not exactly, sir. They were run for several hours after you initially purchased her. A number of repairs had to be made to bring them back to this level of operation. I'm told that within another ten days they will be back to original specifications. The hydrogen fuel on this station should keep them powered for two years or longer."
Gwad turned to the others. "That concludes our tour. If you have any questions, I'd be happy to answer what I can. You can also log into the station maintenance system from any console. Or any of the station’s systems for that matter. For the time being, you will be restricted to read-access only. We're only getting a handle on many of these systems ourselves."
Jamus asked, "The science decks, we moved through those pretty quickly. Any reason for that?"
"As I indicated earlier, this station was used to study many of the pathogens on the planet below. Some of those may still be aboard. Until we have a full accounting of what's here, I would ask that you restrict your visits on those decks to sightseeing from the main hallway. Do not open closed doors or unseal containers. There are detection systems operating on those decks, but my understanding is they are limited. We don't want to kill ourselves here, so please be cautious and careful."
A comm came in to Gwad. He nodded his head in response. "As a special surprise, we'll be proceeding back to deck two. I'm told a meal is waiting for us in the dining area, courtesy of the Greft's chef, and of course Master Hallik."
A small feast was enjoyed by all before Hallik and Gwad departed for the shuttle and other business. The group was led to deck seven, where each would be allowed to choose their own quarters. Crew accommodations ranged from a pair of suites for upper management, to rooms similar in size to the rooms at Caloran, to rooms with up to eight bunks and a shared bath.
Jamus stood looking into a suite.
Bersa approached him from behind. "The others have voted. The suites are ours."
Jamus slowly nodded. "Tell them thanks, but I'll be taking a standard room. If Daniel is able to rejoin us, this suite can be his. He's given the most of each of us."
Bersa smiled. "You are a man of compassion, Mr. Turnbull."
"Yeah, just don't get on my bad side. I can be a bit like Dester when it comes to that."
"The group views you as their leader. Even Mr. Marr."
"They just don't want the responsibility of decision making, and I can't blame them. I feel a tremendous weight on my shoulders every time I send one of them on a mission. And relief when they come back whole."
"As do we all."
"So what makes me special, Bersa? Why do they look up to me?"
"I suspect it has something to do with you being aware for as long as you have been. Your thinking is clear. It's given me insight into what a Human-run empire would have been like. I'm afraid my species, the Girda, would have been delegated to many of the menial tasks."
"You seem smart enough."
"I am an exception among my people. My educational scoring placed me in the top 3 percent of all the non-Human species. And here I am with five Humans, supposedly average Humans, and you are all equally as intelligent. In some ways more so."
Jamus chuckled. "We have our dumb moments. And I'm sure we had our share of deviants and criminals. All you have to do is look at the Great Betrayer for that. Do the records show what he got out of that? A palace? A billion credits?"
"My understanding is that he disappeared from existence. Historical records say he was to be celebrated and rewarded, only he was never heard from again."
"Might have been one of his own got to him. I know he wouldn't last long if I got my hands on him."
Kerena approached. "Everyone’s selected a room. Will we be getting back to training? The next mission is mine and I want to be fully prepared."
Bersa smiled. "We are now on Empire Standard Time. Days will be twenty-four hours in length. There will be three meals per day instead of the customary four. Meals will be at 6AM, noon, and 6PM. Classtime will begin at 6:30AM and run until 8:30PM. Today, however, is your day to roam about and do as you please. It is 5PM EST. You have three and a half hours to do with as you will. In the morning we will continue with your training."
Jamus tapped Kerena on the shoulder. "Come on, we'll go check out the science labs. Let's see if we can unleash a plague or something."
Dester came up behind them. "I'm going with. Gotta be something interesting down there. Why else would they build this entire station out here?"
An elevator was taken to deck eight. The floor was divided into several conference rooms, offices, a storage area, and four large, sealed labs.
Dester walked to a terminal. "I'll see if I can find out what it was they were looking at here."
Kerena walked to the lab windows. "Two of them appear to be clean. These other two definitely had something going on." She reached for a door handle.
Jamus hurried forward. "Whoa, whoa, whoa. Don't be opening that."
"It's been nearly ten thousand years. And this station was shut down for most of that. This whole place would have been freezing. Nothing would survive in there."
Jamus chuckled. "Since when did you become an expert on space dynamics?"
"I've been reading everything I can on space. Did you know, if we were to go outside, the radiation from that sun would kill us? And the cold would kill us. And the vacuum of space would kill us."
"Well, we'll stay inside then. And I'd rather not take a chance with opening this door. A toxin doesn't have to be living, you know. Could just be a simple poison, floating on dust in the air."
Dester said, "Lab 2 was experimenting with an airborne spore called Lyset. Caused uncontrolled growth of brain cells in lab animals. Don't think we want to go in there."
Jamus tapped his comm until he had connections to everyone. "Nobody goes into any lab until we've fully determined them to be safe. We have one that has a nasty spore in it, which means it can float. And we don't want it loose on this station with us."
Bersa joined the comm. "We have a shuttle landing if everyone would come up to bay two."
The members converged in the hall outside. Several minutes passed while the bay door closed and
sealed. A green lamp over the door going into the bay lit at the same instant the door lock flipped open. As the group walked in, the shuttle ramp lowered.
Hallik's team of doctors walked down onto the deck. Seconds later, Daniel Pike appeared in a wheeled chair. Jamus hurried up the ramp to help him down.
"Didn't expect to see you here."
Daniel replied, "The doctors are all being moved and I go where they go. I'm told deck ten will become a medical bay. I'll be the first patient. Any future injuries to the team can be taken care of right here on this station."
"Have you already seen it? The station I mean?"
"Not yet. First time here."
"I'll take you on the tour."
A smiling Jamus Turnbull rolled his young friend along as the others greeted him one by one. After all decks were visited, they returned to deck seven.
"I saved this suite for you," said Jamus. "Should have ample room to move around in that chair."
Daniel grabbed his forearm. "Glad to be back with the team. I missed you all. Master Hallik told me I could supervise the maintenance crew once they’re brought aboard."
Jamus nodded in approval. "I'm certain you'll do a fine job."
Chapter 8
* * *
In the three months that followed, another dozen missions were completed, all successful. Hallik had risen a full rank on the wealth scale for Betuaon State. Three Brekans, two Talions, a Leuchen, and a Sevada remained above him.
On Beta Station, Daniel had undergone two additional surgeries. The injuries, except for those to the spinal cord itself, were all healing without issue, and a new motorized chair had been constructed for his use.
The relationship between Greta and Martin continued to grow. An announcement of the two becoming husband and wife was expected at any time.
Hallik sat in the new lounge across from Jamus. "Mr. Turnbull, I was wondering if you would have interest in a spouse?"
Jamus chuckled. "You trying to get rid of one?"
Hallik smiled. "Actually, yes. One of eight. Her demands on my time while at home are unfair to my other wives. I would rather have dissension by one than seven, so she will probably be placed back in the pool. She's attractive, and younger. There are many Brekan executives out there who would be proud to call her their own."
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