by James Edward
Today he would leave for Gobi 5 in the Sermonog system to pick up the new crew. A freighter had been modified to allow for passengers and had been stocked with enough food and supplies for the trip there and back. Another freighter was prepared with enough fuel and power cells to start the ships. He had briefed everyone on their duties and responsibilities. Lydia as the XO, or in corporate speak, the COO, chief operating officer, had the tough job of running the show while Ray was gone. She along with Bev and Early would guide the crews through their duties and problem solve as best as possible.
“Okay, Bev, Early, and Lydia, keep it together until we get back. Be aware that I have no idea how many are going to join us, but I would think about a hundred new residents. Our code name for when we come through the gate is Jackstraw, and I will be Prime One. Any other fleet that appears, go into the usual corporation protocols.” Ray shook their hands and stepped through the airlock into Freighter Five and into the modified cargo hold. He made his way up to the bridge and stood at the doorway looking at Bruce Duely.
“Captain, permission to come onto the bridge?” he asked.
“Sure, Ray, come on board.” Bruce waved him over. “Meet Don Koprel. He will captain the freighter back, as I want to captain that cruiser. We are just getting that last person and equipment stowed. We have most of the crews billeted in cargo hold one, as that one was the easiest to seal and pump air into. Those guys are going to have to put up with a lack of privacy for a couple of weeks. We installed a pile of dividers so that when the other hundred or so crew comes on board at Sermonog, they will be about four to a room. The food is piled in cargo two, so once a day we will have to suit up and go in to get some, as there is no atmosphere in there or in cargo three where the fuel is.
“Of course hold four has the fifteen tons of silica that is our exchange fee. It’s in robot-controlled one-ton containers that will be dumped and returned, as per our instructions.”
“Okay, good. What’s the arrival time in Sermonog?” Ray asked.
“Six days, three hours to their gate, another four hours to Gobi 5,” Bruce stated. “If we have an easy time on the loading, then it will be six hours to the far gate and five days at jump speed five to Carver. Jump five is all this beastie will maintain, by the way.”
“Sounds good. I have made contact with Sinclair through Lyn to start the ball rolling.” Ray relaxed in the only remaining chair. “Let’s get underway.” Ray looked back on the conglomerate of welded containers and cargo holds that represented the space station and smiled. To anyone’s prying eyes, this would look like a shoestring company just barely making it, no threat to their assets. Old tugs, freighters, and patched-up shuttles. Not much of a threat.
Six days later, the freighter flashed through the gate and made its way to the appointed meeting place about a light hour from Gobi 5. They started sending out their signal in the general direction of the rendezvous point. Tensions heightened when they got no response for the first hour, but they were soon relieved when the passenger freighter Olsen responded. Olsen stated that they had limited radio range due to an antennae being damaged by the tug that pulled them out of the space dock. The meeting place was confirmed, and as Ray headed there, he ordered 360 scans just in case there was a trap waiting.
I’m getting paranoid, he thought. We’re a legitimate freighter just meeting up with a passenger liner, nothing more.
They had a visual sighting of the Olsen a short time later holding station at the rendezvous point. Some jockeying and maneuvering brought them alongside. Ray took in the damaged antennae and relaxed even more as they felt the final clunk of the docking ports meshing.
“Freighter Five, this is Olsen. There is a matter of payment for offloading your goods. We were instructed that you will supply us with twelve tons of silica, correct?”
“Roger, Olsen. Open your cargo doors and prepare for robot unloading. We will offload fifteen tons; the extra three tons is for this to be a discreet business dealing. Copy?”
“Appreciate the extra three tons. Log will show a straight-through flight. Never met you. Offloading started.”
“Copy that, Olsen. Good to work with you. Never saw you either.”
After thirty minutes, the exchange was completed, and down in the first cargo hold Ray could hear the noise get louder as people greeted each other and settled in. The last robotic container re-docked in cargo four and locked in. It was time to move on to Carver and pick up a fleet. Ray felt the excitement growing in his core as he contemplated the enormous task ahead.
“Olsen finished receiving. We are disengaging from your docking clamps. Thanks for the bonus and say hi to Vixen. If you need anything more, call us through Vixen. Olsen out.” With that and a repetitive clunk as the docking clamps reversed polarity, which forced the Olsen away from the magnetic docking port, the Olsen drifted away from Ray and the freighter. Soon Ray saw their star drive light up, and they moved away rapidly until they were just a pinprick of light like so many other stars. Ray ordered the five up to running speed and set a course for the far jump gate. In a week, which is about all the sanitary conditions the freighter could manage, they would be in the Carver system. Ray figured it would take at least three days to get the ships hot, fueled, supplied, and ready to move out. He still wondered what or how Sinclair would manage to cover their tracks and how they would manage in Carver with the station there watching them. Time would tell, he supposed.
He was sitting in the spare environmental console, which was the only chair left on the whole freighter, deep in thought when Bruce nudged him.
“Someone wants to come up and say hi to you.” Bruce smiled, eyes bright with pleasure. “Someone we both know.”
“Bring him up,” Ray said. “Who is it?”
“You’ll see,” was all Bruce said as he waved that someone down the corridor.
Ray’s eyes widened as the first captain that he ever served under strode onto the bridge. Ray leaped to his feet and saluted the old warrior and then shook his hand. “Captain Findlay, sir! Welcome aboard!”
“Captain Hunter, it’s a great pleasure. You have come far from being the Jonny Swab on the old Vincent. Did you know that I had Bruce as a swab before you?” Lester Findlay beamed at him. “Are you the one responsible for getting me out of that retirement hellhole and back into space?”
“Well I guess that I am.” Ray grinned back. “Jonny Swab, what a name for a wet-behind-the-ears academy graduate ensign. All I did do was wash the bridge deck.”
“Yeah, but you listened, and that’s what your primary job was—to listen and learn. To understand the stations and be able to assist if one of my people was overwhelmed or injured. Keeping you on the bridge polishing, you learned the way of a starship bridge. A big difference from the desks and screens at the academy.” Findlay grinned. “Did you know that they have cut that out of the academy training now? The academy processes them out at an alarming rate with hardly any of the training that is required. But I digress. I understand that we have a mission?”
“What do you know?” Ray asked a little cautiously.
“Well, I was contacted by a certain gentleman that we all respect, Weatherfew, and asked to put together enough personnel to fly and operate approximately eighteen starships of the obsolete class. The plan was that we were all going to the academy reunion on Wolf 5 as it was not sanctioned by Fleet. Wolf 5 being a free world was ideal, as it wouldn’t ruffle any feathers in Cappa Tauri. Anyway, on the way there about three days from now, the ship is going to suffer a catastrophic core breach and will be lost with all hands. Since Wolf 5 doesn’t have the resources to mount an investigation, it will be chalked up as death by misadventure. Fleet may fly by, but since it’s out of Fleet’s jurisdiction, they won’t send much. So it appears that we are all dead. Mutters will be on safety of ships, pirates, and of course incompetence, but it will just disappear as it is of no importance that a bunch of h
as-beens have disappeared in the great blackness.
“Weatherfew did brief me on certain aspects of the project, but it is more smoke than mirrors and nothing very tangible. I have about eighty-five officers and engineers in the hold greeting some of the youngsters that are already sitting there. So what’s the scoop?”
“In a nutshell, we are going to Carver to pick up—read steal—eighteen starships that will be waiting for us there. I see your expression, and I will get to the nuts and bolts of the next week as we fly there. From there, we will take the ships to a certain system where they will be refurbished and rearmed. These ships will be the core protection of our system and will supply support for our legal freighting and gas recovery business. In reality, we are gearing up for the fall of the government and the civil war that is going to ensue. In short, this is a black op on an empire scale. This has also been sanctioned by the president and ordered through Weatherfew.”
“God, I love an adventure!” Findlay beamed. “I feel as young as a swabbie again. If it is a government-sanctioned job, which a certain recruiter alluded to, then I am all for it.
You must know that most of the crew back there are old retired Fleet officers or engineers. They also have no ties to anyone at home, as most of us have either lost our mates or have never married. We give up kids and distant grandkids, but for the most part we all leave nothing behind.
“That is why they came up with that core failure plan. There will be a freighter that will scatter parts and pieces out in the area of the ‘explosion,’ and we will cease to exist. Some were asked to retire, some were forced to retire, and some just hit the right mark and retired.
“I have been doing the math in my head as we were talking and figure that you have a skeleton crew at best for this endeavor. This will be a very short staff, maybe an engineer or two depending on size of ships—a captain and a couple of nav communication officers.”
“We will be slaving most of the navigation to this freighter as we will be almost full crew here and the system here is upgraded to the latest specs,” Ray responded. “What we will need is for the Captains to double up on duties with communications and navigation. Two engineers per ship if required, especially on the bigger ones like Boxer One, Boxer Two, the battleship, and the ammunition ship. I could scrimp on the cruisers and down, but if any ship gets into problems, we will tractor it home.”
“Okay, let’s gets started then,” Findlay said eagerly. “Oh begging the captain’s pardon. Once a captain, always a captain. Hard not to give orders.”
“Yeah, it’s hard with four captains on this tiny bridge. Don Koprel here is the real captain of the Five but tolerates us, barely.” Ray laughed. “But we are running at max speed now and will be at the jump gate in a few hours, ready for the week jump to Carver. I just hope that the sanitary systems hold up, or it’s going to be a wretched trip.”
“Well, we have about a bunch engineers down there, so if the shit hits the fan, there will be lots of people to jury-rig a system,” Bruce said with a wry grin. After the laughs died down, Findlay took his leave to make sure that he had a berth, and Ray settled once again into the navigation chair and watched the progress toward the jump gate. He also pinged the surrounding area to see if anything was nearby. All was right with the world as they continued on.
The entry into the Carver system was uneventful. The overcrowded crew of Freighter Five was still behaving with incidences. For the most part, they spent the time reacquainting themselves with policies, protocols, and procedures of running a starship. Over the course of the week, Ray, Findlay, Bruce, and a couple of other of the senior staff had worked out the ship assignments.
The engineers went over specs for frigate, corvette, destroyer, and cruiser engines. A select few were moved onto the huge engines of Boxer One and Two along with the ammunition ship Matilda.
Fred Arness, a retired engineer specialist, was selected to fire up the sixty-plus-year-old engines on the battleship Endora. He, in his day, was considered a wizard on ship engines and had risen to the challenge of tackling the antiquated power plants. It could even be said that he was ecstatic to get the opportunity to delve into the old manuals and run simulations on the limited computers of the freighter. He had gathered a team of four other engineers to help with the simulations and to get up to speed.
There was a general pairing off of people to start learning their jobs for whatever ship they had been assigned. Ray figured that they were so into climbing the learning curve that they didn’t have time to be bored or complain.
By the time they entered the Carver system, they were all ready to do their jobs. It was amazing how things had come back to them; for the most part, Ray could see that there was a growing confidence in their faces.
CHAPTER 6
Picking up some warships
RAY KEYED IN THE CODE, as it had been supplied to him by Sinclair Marsden, and waited for a response. There was a general tension on the bridge, which at the moment was rather overcrowded with ships’ captains and other onlookers. No one had any idea what the plan was to get the ships away, and they were relying solely on what Sinclair had set up. In the meantime, they waited tensely for a response from Carver Station. There was a collective jump when the speakers suddenly blasted alive with a response.
“Freighter Five, this is Carver Station. We understand that you are the maintenance teams that were sent to get some ships underway to the breakers yards. Please forward your manifest for the required ships, and we will send you our manifest to compare.”
“Manifest? Shit, I don’t have a manifest!” Ray said to the packed room. “We will have to wing it some way.”
“I have a file that was given to me before we embarked,” Lester Findlay said. “Perhaps I should run and get it.”
“Yeah, that would be good. Maybe some of the paperwork will be in there,” Ray agreed. “Coms, acknowledge the station.”
When Findlay returned, he broke the seal on the package and emptied out the contents. Inside was the list of ships by serial numbers and names. Also there was a dossier for four people, three captains, and an engineer. There were also orders signed by Admiral Fuggoret that ordered the listed ships to be removed from the standing list and sent to the breaker yard for dismantling and scrapping. Ray sent the list and serial numbers to Carver Station and waited for a response.
“Freighter Five, this is Carver Station. Confirmed your list as a match for ours. Proceed to designated coordinates and wait,” the voice over the radio stated. “A shuttle will meet with three senior captains and an engineer specialist so they can present their papers as per the standard protocols.”
“Roger that. We will proceed and wait for transport,” Coms replied.
Ray, Bruce, Lester, and Don Korpel went over the files on the captains and engineer. They were listed as senior captains and engineering specialist. The captains’ papers were authentic, but these captains didn’t exist as far as Ray or Bruce could recall, so probably neither did the engineer, but they were the personas that the three captains needed to adopt. Fred Arness was on the bridge too, so they handed him a file and told him that he was going to be the engineer specialist. It didn’t take long for them to be relatively up to speed on their respective captain personas, and they were ready when they arrived at the coordinates.
Most of them took the time to gaze at the hundreds of Fleet ships that were sitting quietly like old sentinels waiting to be woken up. Some had sat for a hundred years or more, some only a few years. Some were huge ships, dreadnoughts, heavy cruisers, and then there were corvettes and frigates by the hundred that sat and waited. Occasionally they could hear someone say a name in recognition of a ship they recognized or knew of. There were exclamations of “There’s a Reliant Class Battle wagon!” or, “Look—a Starburst fighter!” or, “Is that’s the Longstreet? It fought in the Corridor Skirmish when my dad was a lad.” Every once in a while, they would see a
ship with so much battle damage that it was just scrap, the side ripped open, plates blasted away, wiring and tubing floating out holes. They all knew that that ship had fought hard and had died hard, take a fair chunk of the crew with it. There were oohs and ahs and sometimes silence as they passed busted warriors. Soon the crews had enough of looking at the dead and drifted back to the cargo hold to get ready for departure.
Ray and Bruce watched as the shuttle maneuvered over the forward airlock. Within one meter they activated their magnetic grapple and sealed into the lock. Two minutes and the shuttle opened the lock. A lieutenant commander walked on board and saluted the captains that were on the bridge.
“Good day, sirs.” He smiled. “Much like a customs official, I require the paperwork. It will expedite the process of exchanging the ships. Who are the four designated consignees?”
“That would be us,” Ray said as he handed Sinclair’s paperwork over to the commander. “I do hope that these ships aren’t scattered all over the bone yard.”
“Thank you, sir,” the commander said as he took the papers and started to run a scanner over them. “You are in luck. We ran an exercise this week and pulled them all over here, so for the most part they are just outside. The Endora is a different matter; she is way over at the other side of the yard. We have put a power unit in her to start the warm-up process, so it should be an easy start. We have assigned you a shuttle so that you can get to your ships.”
“That is very helpful, Commander.” Ray smiled. “Who is the commander of the station if I may ask? I would like to commend him on his efficiency.”
“That would be the newly appointed Senior Commander Jeb Juliard, sir,” the officer stated.
“Jeb Juliard? I know him. Will you pass on my compliments? Say it’s from an old friend from the Faraday Cluster?” Ray said.