Star Man 2: Star Rise

by I. G. Roberts

  Sixteen hours after exiting Cambridge, the four ships emerged in FR2-955E. Scans showed the System to be completely empty, so Thor and Forseti departed to find a suitable hiding spot while Theseus and Loki settled in to wait for the balance of their convoy. They had to wait five long hours before FNS Shurana arrived, followed twenty minutes later by FNS Fortitude and then twenty minutes after that by FNS Destiny. When all the ships were assembled into the agreed formation, the convoy set off towards the Jump-Point to Conomar. The trip across FR2-955E was completely uneventful, even boring, but Colin reflected, he was happy with boring for the moment.

  Once the convoy reached a point where no credible threat could emerge and cut the three slower ships off from the Jump-Point into Conomar, the two Cobras raced ahead and entered the Jump-Point bound for Conomar. When Theseus and Loki entered Conomar System two days later, they immediately began scanning for other ships. It wasn’t long before the Federation patrol craft found two unidentified ships heading toward the planet. The Cobras were running dark anyway so Colin didn’t think the other ships knew they had company in Conomar System yet. The other ships were too far away to be able to tell what they were, Theseus and Loki couldn’t detect the other ship’s IFF at that distance. Those ships were the only unexpected thing either of the patrol boats could detect. Colin didn’t expect the rest of his convoy to arrive for another ten hours anyway, so he asked Theseus to establish Laser Comms with Loki.

  When Commander Riley came online, Colin said, “Hello Suzanne, I’ve been looking at those unidentified ships. I think we should go and investigate them, see what their intentions are. If they are Pirates, they’ll most likely be on a raid. What do you think?”

  Commander Riley looked back at Colin then replied, ”I was thinking much the same thing when you contacted me, Sir. I was wondering whether you would wait for the others to arrive or go after them now. For what it’s worth, my vote is to investigate before we have the slower ships here in this System. Our other ships are safe in the Jump corridor right now. We just need to keep an eye on this location in case someone turns up here before our people are expected. Thank you for asking me, it means a lot.”

  “Suzanne, I’m talking to you because your opinion matters. If you thought we were putting the others at excessive risk by going, I’d take your advice on board and factor it in when deciding what we should do next. As you agree though, I’ll have Theseus send some Micro-Jump coordinates to Loki. We’ll stay dark, Micro-Jump to those coordinates, where I’ll drop a relay buoy. After I have that in place, we’ll head out onto the flank, and then we can challenge them. We’ll see how they react, before deciding what we should do next. How does that sound?”

  “That sounds perfect Sir. They won’t know what direction we’re likely to come from.”

  Colin worked with his navigator to choose the Jump coordinates and asked Theseus to send them to Loki. When everything was ready, the two ships made their Micro-Jump, emerging back into real space only one kilometre apart. The buoy was launched then the two Cobras moved out till they were on the flank of the unidentified ships. Colin established Laser Comms with the buoy. Now Theseus and Loki were closer, they could see the IFF the two unidentified ships were broadcasting, they were clearly not from the Federation, in fact, there were elements of the IFF data that were the same as all the other Pirate ships the Navy had encountered recently. Colin sent his challenge. There was a delay caused by signal lag then the Shields on both ships came on to full power, and they started active scanning back in the general direction of the buoy. Colin ordered both Cobras to move back further and engage full stealth. The buoy was too small and too distant for the Scans to pick up. Even if they could’ve seen it, they couldn’t destroy it without closing the range to the point where one of their weapons had the ability to reach its target. Colin and Suzanne sat and watched the reactions these ships were displaying.

  Neither of the ships responded to Colin’s challenge in any kind of reasonable time. Colin sent the message a second time, adding a statement that he would classify them as Pirates and fire if they did not respond within five minutes. Again, there was a delay of several seconds while the signal reached the Pirate ships, again Colin waited for several minutes past the time it would take for a reasonably prompt response to reach him. Once more, there was no response to Colin’s hail.

  Finally, Colin contacted Commander Riley again to ask her how she thought they should proceed. When Suzanne received the call, her mind began racing. She had heard Colin was a good CO, now understanding began to dawn why people thought so. Commander Gordon sought out opinions from his subordinates and factored those ideas into the decision-making process. Suzanne suggested that Theseus and Loki should shake the ships up a little to get their attention. It was a good suggestion, so Colin implemented it. This time, though, he planned for the two Cobras to light up the Shields just before reaching the unidentified ships. Colin had used the close passes while dark a few times now and felt it was time to adjust the tactics. Loki and Theseus would be out of range before anyone on the target ships could react, and the Shields would protect them against any likely threat long enough for the two Cobras to be out of range. The two unidentified ships were far enough apart, Colin and Suzanne decided to pass between them. The Cobras arced up and over before increasing their speed to 0.6c. Just before passing between the two ships, the Shields on the Cobras lit up, then they raced between the unidentified ships, causing significant buffeting for the Pirates manning them. This time, the Cobras were on the receiving end of weapons fire. None of the weapons did any damage to either of the Cobras, but it did signal weapons free to Colin and Suzanne.

  When Theseus and Loki were far enough away, they re-engaged stealth, then reversed course and launched a spread of missiles to coast toward the enemy ships. As soon as the Cobras had adequate separation from the weapons, Theseus and Loki Micro-Jumped to a location forward and above the enemy ships. They launched another spread of missiles back toward the enemy ships then Micro-Jumped once again. Throughout these maneuvers, Colin had a timer running on his screen. When it clicked over to zero, the coasting missiles were activated. At the same time, Loki and Theseus began an attack run on the Pirate ships. The plan was for all the weapons to arrive on target within about a minute of each other. As it turned out, the plan worked flawlessly, the Shields on the two suspect ships were battered down, and the crews suddenly decided it was time to surrender. Colin couldn’t blame them; another attack would have seen both ships destroyed. Both crews were ordered to abandon ship, with Colin promising to pick them all up as quickly as possible. These were both smaller ships so did not have the large crews that some of the other Pirate ships carried. The crews on both the ships complied with Colin’s orders immediately, their Captains knew they were outclassed, and the crews were becoming mutinous.

  As the escape pods cleared the two ships, Destiny, Shurana, and Fortitude arrived in the System. Colin called Sophon Carlon on the FTL Comms System to request assistance to pick up prisoners. Carlon laughed, telling Colin he was going to put every Pirate in known space in prison the way he was going. Colin retorted that was only his job after all, and if the universe had no more Pirates, then he could live with that. Carlon laughed again as he directed the three ships toward the escape pods. As it turned out, there were one hundred Pirates in this batch, and as these Pirates were recovered, the Troopers in the four ships began immediate interrogations. In the end, it turned out that sixty of the one hundred people the Federation ships rescued were basically slaves. They were so thoroughly broken, there was no way the idea of staging a mutiny could have ever entered their heads. These sixty were all confined on FNS Destiny. The remainder were all taken on board Loki and Theseus. Once again, Colin prevailed upon the Captains of the other ships to help provide prize crews. Colin felt it would be a mistake to leave these ships drifting here, abandoned. He even briefly considered giving them to the people of Conomar so they could fight or run for help if attacked but neither
ship was well armed or fast enough for that.

  Hangelore, Peschal Alliance Space

  Another thirty ships entering the Hangelore System. These thirty would make up the ninety Warships Suhmarlin Hazilsor needed to finally mount his offensive. Hangelore is over three weeks from the nearest target, six from the primary. The main fleet also had to give the two smaller task forces time to wreak havoc deeper in the Federation to focus the Federation Navy’s attention there. The plan was to run exercises and training en route to the target Systems so the ships could all learn to work together and protect each other. Suhmarlin held three meetings that were attended by all the ship’s Captains. One meeting took place for each of the three task forces. He intended to lead the primary task force but had trusted lieutenants to lead the other two fleets. It was imperative to ensure all the ship’s Captains understood their aims.

  One chief problem faced by someone like Hazilsor was that Pirates tended to be an independent lot and didn’t like taking orders very much. To combat this, he believed in taking all leeway from the Captains so they couldn’t go off raiding. Three days after the last ships arrived, the entire fleet formed up before Jumping out of the System headed for the Federation.

  Conomar System

  The convoy, led by Theseus entered orbit around Conomar. On his previous visit, Colin had promised the Navy would return and pick up the prisoners they had to leave at the colony last time he visited the System. The authorities were quite relieved the Navy was back. While the prisoners hadn’t been deliberately causing any trouble on the planet, the need to feed, house and guard them placed a significant strain on resources. The one upside of having these prisoners available was that some projects were undertaken that had previously been postponed due to the lack of a suitable workforce. The small fleet spent three days shuttling prisoners between Conomar colony and the orbiting ships. All the prisoners were accommodated on FNS Fortitude and FNS Destiny. Colin didn’t put any of the prisoners on his two most recent acquisitions. Really, they weren’t much bigger than yachts, but they were prizes and could be broken up for scrap, or sold. At least these two ships wouldn’t be available for raiding any longer.

  When the prisoner transfers were finally complete, the two Pirate ships recovered and the two Cobras re-armed, the growing Convoy headed out toward the Jump-Point leading deeper into the Federation and Cotoni. By the time they exited Conomar, they had already been away from Cambridge for over seven days.

  Lahoshar

  FNS Magni and FNS Kurama returned to Lahoshar after a two-week patrol around Lahoshar System. The two ships hadn’t left the System because their orders very explicitly stated they were not to. The authorities here had been keeping their Cobras in the System, which was a mistake in Captain Wolf’s opinion. Still, he wasn’t ready to disobey his orders, not yet. When Magni and Kurama entered orbit, new orders were transmitted to the Captains. The crews were to have a few days leave, and the Captains were summoned to the planet for high-level meetings. Only skeleton crews were to be left on board the two Cobras for this period. Provisions were made to rotate people down to the planet, so everyone had a chance to rest. Captain Kirkor Wolf and Captain Lani Camon boarded a shuttle for the world, wondering why they’d been summoned.

  After they had landed, the two Captains found a ground car was waiting to convey them to their meeting. In the end, they were taken to Government House, where they met Prime Minister Haliban Saudra and Commander Cusi Dalmanon. The two Captains entered an office to find the others were already there waiting for them.

  Cusi said, “Thank you for coming so promptly. As you know, we’ve had some Freighters coming through the System over the last month. There have been a lot of reports of activity in various parts of the sector that we consider to be suspicious. There have been a lot of sightings of unidentified ships heading for the fringes of Federation space, a direction that any regular Federation registered ship would avoid at all costs unless going to a legitimate Colony out that way. In most cases, an analysis showed there were no genuine Colony's in the direction the unidentified ships were heading.”

  Cusi brought a map of the region up and continued, “We have decided you two should take your ships on this route, looking for signs of Peschal Alliance ships heading this way. Our big concern is that they may be massing for another attack here. If they are, we are going to need as much time as possible to prepare. Your task is to look for such a fleet, and if it exists, and appears to be heading to Lahoshar, you are to try and beat that fleet here to give us as much warning as possible. If you find a fleet, and it is not heading for Lahoshar, then you are to track it. We will leave it to your discretion to decide what you’re going to do at this point. Of course, if we’re all lucky, you won’t find anything and will be back in a couple months with everything being quiet. The Deity knows I’m hoping this patrol won’t find anything. You are to depart in one week, that’ll give you time so you can allow your crews to take some leave and let you fill your holds with supplies and ordnance. Okay, do you have any questions?”

  Both Kirkor and Lani shook their heads, they understood their orders. Wolf was happy then, he’d been wanting to do this for some time.

  Haliban Saudra commented, “Don’t take any unnecessary chances on this mission. We don’t need or want you to sacrifice yourselves, especially if there is no chance of you stopping them. If the worst case happens, run for the nearest place with a decent Naval presence and yell for help.”

  The two Captains departed. Kirkor hadn’t been at Lahoshar for very long. He knew about the idea of overloading the Cobras to extend their legs and give them a little more firepower and had given this information to the Lahoshans. The Lahoshan’s had run with it, even making a few minor modifications to the ships that had already been delivered, so the storage was more efficient and easily accessed.

  Chapter 14

  Cambridge

  Dave Bach stood in line listening as the Sergeant bawled Keg out for yet another piece of stupidity. A lot of people didn’t like Keg very much, but nothing seemed to faze the man. Dave couldn’t understand why the Sergeant was wasting his breath trying to convince Keg that he was an idiot. Keg just didn’t care what the Sergeant said or thought about him. A lot of the other people on this training didn’t like Keg much, but Dave did. Of course, the fact that Keg took Dave under his wing and eventually convinced the others that Dave was no different to any of them helped. With Keg, what you saw was what you got, and what you got was your own damned fault. Dave knew the man was in fact, very very smart. Keg had often solved the problems facing this group of trainees during training, but Dave noticed someone else would often take the credit for Keg’s work. Abusing Keg was a complete and utter waste of breath, all the man heard was blah blah blah, he just switched off. Trying to hit him was like trying to hit a large tree, all you would achieve was to hurt your hand, and he wouldn’t even bother to retaliate. But when the chips were down, Dave knew Keg would always have his back.

  The next day, this intake of recruits was to graduate. The last two weeks had been splendid for Dave. He’d been called into the Commandants office, and when he arrived, he was told he’d been granted four days leave. The Commandant didn’t look angry, she even suggested Dave see her assistant for help booking some accommodation before dismissing him.

  Dave walked out to the clerk's desk, she smiled at him as she handed him his orders. She told him he needed to report to Headquarters to see Commodore Fraser before commencing his leave. Once all the bookings were made, Dave was given the keys to a ground car and told to scoot. At the time, he couldn’t work it out, why was everyone so nice to him. All he needed now was to find out where Julia was staying so he could go to see her. That could wait, though. First Dave would do as ordered and go to see Commodore Fraser as ordered. Even with all the military protocol he had to observe, Dave was much happier now he was here in Cambridge. His trial went better than he had any right to expect and having to serve out his sentence in the Navy was no pu
nishment at all.

  When Dave arrived at Headquarters, he went in to the reception desk where he showed his orders. They didn’t make Dave wait very long before he was escorted to the Commodore’s office. When he arrived, a man and a woman, both Commodores stood waiting for him. As soon as he saw them, he braced t attention and saluted them just the way he’d been taught. Both the officers returned his salute.

  The woman said, “At ease, Cadet. I am Commodore Sonya Nicholson, this is Commodore Henry Fraser. The reason you have leave and are here right now is because Commander Gordon asked me if we could arrange it for you. I checked with your Commandant, and she told me that you are one of the top cadets in your intake. The reason you had not been given leave before, was because some people had concerns with the way you came to be here. Those people have had the error of their ways pointed out to them. Julia has been asking when she can see you again, so we have no problems with telling you where she is staying. We can assure you she is safe and well. You do need to know, Julia is not as subservient as she was when she arrived here. The girl is your equal in every way, we’re giving you this chance, don’t mess it up.”

  “Yes ma’am, I understand. I’d picked up the changes in Julia from her letters, believe me, I’ve never treated her like a slave except when it was necessary for me to protect her from others.”

  Henry handed Dave a slip of paper with an address on it as he said, “Julia’s staying at this address, go see her, just make sure you are back on your training base before your leave expires. People without your background can sometimes get away with being a couple of hours late from leave. You won’t be able to, not yet anyway. Now get going and spend the time with your girl.”