Star Man 2: Star Rise

by I. G. Roberts

  “I don’t think they were thinking of anything but escaping me while they could still do it. You know, I embarrassed James and his parents terribly last night. I don’t think anyone ever called them on their behaviour like that before. I did it in public as well which didn’t help at all. And we had some guests like a representative of the Federation Council and the President of Cambridge here. I must admit, they really know how to take stupid to new levels.”

  “And I was a part of all that, Sir. I’m so embarrassed and ashamed.”

  “But Katie, you were smart enough to front up, claim responsibility and apologize for your actions quickly. Other than when I frog marched you and James into the study, I don’t think anybody would have even noticed you were involved. Certainly, after James’ parents burst into the room, all the attention was on them and James.”

  Anne came to the door and called them in while the food was still hot. After breakfast, Colin departed for Naval Headquarters in Harmon. On arrival, Colin was shown straight to the Commodore’s office. Both Sonya and Henry were there when Colin entered the room. Sonya waved him to a chair, and both she and Henry sat as well.

  Sonya said, “Colin, the reason I asked you here today is that we are reorganizing the command structure here in Cambridge. Henry here will be in overall command, and I’m going to take over control of our assets in Space. We are splitting our Cobras and Taipans into two groups. You will be responsible for one of those groups. Siobhan will be your 2IC. Carl will be in Command of the other group with Suzanne Riley as his 2IC.”

  Some of the dispositions Colin had heard about over the last few days now began to make sense.

  Sonya continued, “In the short term, of course, Colin, you and Suzanne need to prepare for escort duty. Since you returned from Conomar, we’ve refurbished all the escape pods the Pirates used to eject from Melia and reinstalled them. Melia has been renamed FNS Fortitude and will be going along with you for resupply purposes should you need it and to bring a load of missiles back from Cotoni. It’ll be an excellent opportunity for us to test out some of the ideas you have along these lines.”

  “Very well ma’am. I take it you have a Captain and crew for FNS Fortitude?”

  “Yes, we do Colin, Captain Umat Raganathan will be commanding Fortitude, but all the Cambridge owned ships will be under your orders. As it turns out, Fortitude is quite a powerful ship in her own right. We’ve upgraded the Shields as much as we easily can but haven’t had time to do anything else. You are to pick up as much as you can in the way of munitions at Cotoni. Load up all ships with as much as you can cram inside. We’ve ramped up production here, but if the Peschal Alliance attacks in the force we’re expecting, then we expect to need every missile we can lay our hands on.”

  “Understood ma’am. I’ll bring back as much ammunition as I can obtain while we’re in Cotoni System. FNS Fortitude is heavily armed in her own right, so she is capable of a credible self-defence. We’ll be able to use the Cobras as a mobile force if necessary, that’ll give us the best of both worlds. With Fortitude, Destiny, and Shurana all being Warships, and our Cobras, we’ll represent a credible task force for this trip. Is there anything else?”

  Henry said, “Colin, you know what you have to do out there. Get back as soon as you can. We’ve had a few unidentified ships poking their noses through the Jump-Points, then reversing course and leaving since you caught that spy ship. On a couple of occasions, we’ve also detected a signal that originated from the planet, so somebody here appears to be sending the Pirates information. We’ll also have the last two Cobras planned for Cambridge System Defence available in less than a month, though they’ll need a little time to bring them up to a point where they’re as capable as the rest.”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  “Now Colin, because you are going to be commanding half our Patrol Boats on your return, we are promoting you to Senior Commander. We’re doing that, so there can be no chance of arguments about who has the highest rank. You and Carl will outrank every other Officer in Cambridge System with the exceptions of the Cruiser Captains, Commodore Nicholson and myself. You have earned the rank Colin, you have done more for the Federation since you woke on FNS Destiny than most Naval Officers ever achieve in a lifetime of service. Both Commodore Nicholson and I think you will go a long way in the future, probably further than either of us.”

  “Thank you, Sir, ma’am. One thing I should remind you of is the prisoners we’ve left on Conomar. We promised to pick them up and take them somewhere else when we left them there. The people on Conomar don’t have the resources to house and guard them indefinitely. Should I pick them up and transport them to Cotoni?”

  “That’s probably not a bad idea Colin. Even though we could leave them there legally, the last thing the people on Conomar need is a bunch of prisoners making life difficult for them. Split them up with some on each of the ships. We’ll give you a couple of platoons of Troopers to guard the ones who are transported on FNS Fortitude.”

  Commodore Henry Fraser added an additional rank pin onto each of Colin’s Collar tabs. After the small ceremony was over, the three Officers sat in the office talking about the preparations already being made within Cambridge System. While the addition of defensive measures to Cambridge Station and the shipyard was mostly completed, the Engineering Staff were continuing to add tweaks, improving the ability of these two facilities to defend themselves against an attack until mobile assets can drive the attackers off. Neither facility had any offensive weaponry because analysis showed it wouldn’t add anything to the ability for defense and there were concerns such an addition might prompt the Pirates to simply bombard the planet below.

  The mines captured by Colin and Carl several months before in FR-1427A had been studied and reprogrammed so they would ignore ships with valid Federation IFF's and could only be activated, or deactivated by the Federation Navy. Most were now deployed around the Jump-Point into FR-1427A, along with twenty static weapons platforms. The weapons platforms were all heavily stealthed, so they were very hard to see on Sensors. They were unmanned so carried only minimal Shielding and had only enough maneuvering capability for station keeping and to turn toward a target. It didn’t matter if the platforms were destroyed after they had fired all their missiles. These weapons platforms were mainly designed to unload every missile they had at a target. Each platform could launch forty missiles at the designated target almost simultaneously. They were triggered remotely from a Taipan or Cobra with the correct codes. The controlling ship would send the spatial coordinates of the targets followed by the trigger codes, and the platform computers would do the rest. The platforms had some sensor capability, so once they were given targets, those targets could be tracked. While they had a sophisticated computer on board, it wasn’t an AI, those were far too valuable to waste on expendable weapons platforms.

  The Jump-Point into FR-955E had thirty of these same launchers in place, so if an incursion came from that direction, those Pirates could be hurt badly as well. Of course, at both Jump-Points, the AI’s in the Federation Navy Warships would be providing the targeting data and dealing with the minutiae of controlling the weapons platforms. The senior commanding officer at the scene was the one who would ultimately give the order to fire. In addition to the fixed defenses, Cambridge System now had, or would within the next few weeks, ten Taipans with two still at Lahoshar, eight Cobras, at least till Theseus and Loki returned from escort duty and the three Sandon Cruisers, all in all, a decent defense capability for the System. The Jump-Capable ships provided a mobile strike capability. The Taipans and Cobras were so fast they could just run away if things became too hot for them. They could even outrun all the currently available missiles and Rail-Gun rounds, and although they couldn’t reach light speed, it would only take about thirty seconds before they were out of effective range of energy weapons such as Lasers. While Colin had every confidence in the people who were staying behind to defend Cambridge, he still worried they might not have enou
gh firepower to stop the Pirates reaching the planet and devastating it. In the end, it all hinged on their intentions, on whether they wanted to destroy the human owned world, capture a lot of slaves, or take over the System entirely. As the three of them discussed the System Defense arrangements, Colin had a thought.

  Colin said, “I’ve just had a thought. In the past, we’ve done a lot of damage to the Pirates by carrying out close passes while under stealth. The problem with that tactic is the ships doing the close passes are very vulnerable because the Shields are stepped way down. Since a few Pirates escaped from an engagement a while ago, I’m sure they will have been analyzing what our people were doing. I can think of several relatively simple countermeasures the Pirates could use to make this a dangerous tactic for us in the future. I recommend we modify it to bring the Shields up to full, timed perhaps ten seconds before the closest pass. The Pirates won’t have a lot of time to react, and our ships will only be visible and in range for a very short period.”

  Commodore Nicholson looked thoughtful for a few moments then said, “Okay Colin, I’ll relay that to Siobhan and Carl. They’ll be commanding all the ships capable of that while you’re away.”

  After Colin had finished reviewing the System Defense arrangements with the two Commodores, he left for home to start thinking about how he should structure the convoy for the trip back to Cotoni. When Colin arrived home, he found the three women were all there, drinking his beer and laughing together. Colin didn’t mind them drinking his beer, as long as they left him some, and he knew they would have. The cleaners were finished and had left, so Colin grabbed a beer for himself and went out to the patio. As he walked through the door to join the ladies on the patio, Anne picked up on the increase in rank immediately. She Jumped to feet with a big grin to congratulate him. After greetings had been exchanged, Colin excused himself before going to change into more comfortable clothes. That done he grabbed another beer for himself and rejoined the ladies outside. Colin could see that Katie had relaxed a lot since he left for the city earlier. As Colin sat quietly, relaxing with his beer and listening to the women talking while thinking about the upcoming trip, considering all the scenarios that came to mind. Anne could see Colin was in reflection and knew he would be planning their next trip. She knew a lot of people thought Colin was always just pulling rabbits out of the hat when he came up with all these insane tactics to beat the Pirates. Anne knew different, she knew every tactic Colin ever had, came from a lot of hard thinking and analysis. Anne also knew the three of them weren’t bothering the man. If they were, the Commander would just take himself off somewhere else, or ask them to give him some privacy.

  Colin sat thinking for some time, relaxed by the background conversation taking place around him when he concluded that a conference with the other Captains who were to be accompanying him on the trip would be required, so everyone knew what to expect, especially if they ran into trouble along the way. Colin hadn’t met Captain Riley or Captain Raganathan yet so felt a need to make their acquaintance before departure. Naval headquarters could arrange for them to meet him, so Colin contacted the support staff there to ask for a meeting with Captains Riley and Raganathan at his home in the morning at 10 AM two days later. Colin asked the headquarters staff to tell the two Captains that they could expect to be there for at least the entire day and should come prepared to spend the night. He also asked Headquarters to request Captain Carlon and Captain Haron to come at 1:30 PM on the same day, suggesting the four Officers should all expect to be staying overnight at his home. Late that afternoon, Anne and Katie left to return to the city. When they were preparing to leave, Anne told Katie they would call in at James’ house to pick up her things. When Anne called to check that it would be okay, Samantha said James had already taken Katie’s things and given them to Mrs. Sinclair, Katie’s mother.

  The following morning, Henry arrived at Colin’ house as promised. As soon as he arrived, Henry suggested they lock the house, then led Colin and Julia down to the basement room where the entry into the bolt hole, as Colin termed it, was located. They opened the door into the chamber, and after entering the passageway, Henry carefully closed and locked the entrance in case someone turned up while they were busy elsewhere. Once again, as soon as the door was closed, there was a clunk in the mechanism and a dim light filtered down from the accommodations themselves. Henry began relating the history of the house to Colin and Julia. Before the house was built, the previous owners were visiting the property, trying to decide on a home design when they found a tunnel. They looked closer, it appeared to be left over from a mine, perhaps one from the very earliest days of colonization, although when searches were made of the records, nothing indicated the existence of a mine anywhere around there. The new owners were curious, so they decided to explore and see how far the tunnel extended. They took bearings and measurements along the way and realized it reached all the way to the other side of the mountain, perhaps four kilometres away. When they reached the other end, they found the entrance was almost entirely blocked by a cave in, except for one small passageway that opened into a beautiful little valley. Later, they purchased the valley, along with some of the surrounding countryside as well, mainly to keep an escape route clear if it was ever needed though they would often go there just to enjoy the solitude. The idea was to leave the area as wild as possible. Then they carefully created a wall over the entrance to the mine at the end where the house was to be built. The owners made it look like they had started to build the house, but the project became too big for them, so they called in the builders to finish what they had begun. While the house was being built, they would travel to the entrance at the other end and over several months, managed to create a door to disguise it. Now, if you didn’t know what was there, and what to look for, you would never find the door, it has blended in perfectly with the surrounding rock.

  After the builders had finished the house, the owners reopened the entrance in their basement and set up everything as it now stood. Henry knew about all this only because he was on the ship that rescued them and he befriended them, helping them to settle into Cambridge society. By the time they built the house and completed their safe rooms, Henry had a wife and child. Because he was often away with the Navy, they swore him to secrecy, then showed him the arrangements they had made before telling him to have his wife come to them if Pirates invaded the System. They also went to the trouble to disguise the entrance to their back door out into the escape tunnel, so if somebody did find a way in from the house, they would only find three empty rooms and a bathroom. Henry showed Colin and Julia where the exit was, and how to use it. Altogether, Colin thought the previous owners of his house had shown a healthy dose of paranoia when they built all this, but then when he gave it more consideration, they couldn’t be blamed, not with their background. The previous owners had left a small electric cart parked there so they could get to the other side quite quickly, leaving any pursuers a long way behind. They all boarded the vehicle, which could carry five at a pinch and Henry showed them all the way to the other side. The door mechanism on the inside there was obvious, both to find and use. Henry gave them a couple of paper maps showing possible escape routes if they ever needed to go to that extreme.

  This escape route opened new possibilities for Colin. He realized he’d need to make a few additional purchases before he left the System. If Julia, and whoever she happened to have with her needed to run, they would need full tactical camouflage gear, gear that would minimize their heat signature as well as blend into the surroundings. Such clothing was quite easily obtained on Cambridge, because almost everyone was either in the military or militia, even most of the women. A lot of Cambridge’s infrastructure is located in hardened bunkers or could be moved to them very quickly, but some things just could not be hidden, and if it could be seen, its defenses could be overwhelmed with enough firepower. When they all arrived back at the house, Colin invited Henry to stay for dinner. He agreed, so they all began putti
ng the meal together. Julia felt so comfortable and safe with these men. They had always treated her with respect, and never once did one of them try to touch her beyond an affectionate pat on the arm or shoulder. With their help, Julia’s understanding of what being free really meant was progressing. Her education was moving along quite well, she’d been able to sit for exams in some subjects and pass because of the things Dave taught her after he bought her at the slave market. The dinner was an enjoyable one, with a lot of laughter but late that night, Henry left to go home.

  The next morning, Suzanne Riley and Umat Raganathan arrived as ordered and on time. They’d taken the hint that they were staying overnight and brought changes of clothing. When they arrived, Julia showed them to their rooms and checked to see if they had any special dietary requirements. Julia them told them Commander Gordon would meet them on the patio once they had settled in. Of course, being Naval Officers, what they heard was, ‘Commander Gordon will meet you on the patio immediately.’

  When they arrived on the patio, a very urbane Colin said, “That was quick. Would you like something to drink? I do have some tea and coffee. I won’t be allowing any alcohol till this evening, though.”

  Julia arrived and took their orders. Many foodstuffs from Earth were available here in Cambridge because successive survey missions had taken a wide variety of crop and even animal samples from all over the globe. As the years passed, the people here, with a lot of help from Federation scientists had been able to take these samples and turn them into viable crops. The two Officers cautiously sat in the chairs Colin indicated, waiting to see where this was going. Colin watched them as they found a place. Both were wearing their uniforms on the day. Suzanne is quite a small woman, only about 1.6 metres tall with pale skin and short blond hair. She has a slim but well-muscled build, an attractive, lively face, and brilliant blue eyes. Colin also detected a substantial command presence. This woman was no weakling. Umat is tall, about two metres in height, with light brown skin, brown eyes and black hair. He also has a slim, well-muscled build.