by gerald hall
“I think that I see why.”
“What do you mean, Brandon?”
“It is basically the situation of ‘for want of a nail’. Look over here where the main power plant is located.” Brandon pointed on the feed from the drone on his sensor screen.
A large, heavy metal casing with multiple pipes running out of it dominated the view. Around the base of the casing, the metal was heavily discolored as though it had been subjected to very high heat. Some of the pipe and surrounding metal frames were distorted as well. Alec soon noticed something very familiar with the equipment and the layout being depicted on the screen.
“That’s an old nuclear fission plant, isn’t it?” He asked.
“Yes, that’s correct. It looks like something that they had salvaged and brought up here. It even uses first generation solid fuel rods and either water or gas cooling. I guess that they couldn’t afford a fusion bottle or even a more modern fission plant.”
“Maybe the plant was left over from the people who originally set up the base inside of this asteroid. In any event, the plant looks like it had a massive failure, maybe even a partial meltdown. These people apparently didn’t have any sort of redundancy or any way to truly isolate the failing power plant from the rest of the complex.”
“If that was the case, the people here must have had to evacuate in a hurry and leave pretty much everything behind them.”
“It sounds like it. But after a hundred years or so, the worst of the radioactive contamination had to have decayed to the point of becoming harmless. We really didn’t pick up anything nasty on our sensors, did we?”
“No, Sir. We didn’t. There was also apparently a hydrogen explosion that breached a bulkhead sometime during or soon after the evacuation. This caused the atmosphere to be vented to vacuum.
Fortunately for us, that also removed a lot of the radioactive contamination from the area at the same time. If we do manage to run across a hot spot, we can use one of our powered exoskeleton suits to go in and clean it up. We will still have to set up a drone vehicle with engineer equipment to remove the last of the major reactor core debris. But we can put that all that to good use later.”
“What do you have in mind, Brandon?”
“With the shortages of fissionable fuels, especially uranium, most everyone has been going to fusion bottles for their power needs, in spite of the expense and fragility of the system. There have been a lot of surplus fission reactor equipment on the open market recently. The dirty little secret about it all is that there is another fissionable fuel available that can really stretch out the uranium supply and breed even more fuel along the way, thorium.
I know of at least two vendors located a few jumps from here that have unused fission reactors specifically designed for liquid fission fuel use with a combination of molten thorium and uranium fluoride salts. We buy one of these surplus reactors, have someone convert this uranium into a fluoride salt, have the same done with some thorium and we have an inexpensive, safe and reliable power source for here. It also has the advantage of not generating a lot of neutrinos for someone’s sensors to pick up.”
“That’s something to think about for future discussion. Now getting back to the situation here. So the Collective had a major reactor accident and had to leave here in a hurry. Why didn’t they come back?” Alec asked.
“Obviously, they didn’t get a chance. The Collective must have been forced out of their hidey hole by whatever happened here and ran right into a major fight shortly afterwards that wiped them out.”
“Well, this place belongs to us now. So we have to figure out what we are going to do with it.” Alec replied. This discovery was an answer to many of Alec’s prayers since he really did not want to have everyone living in a station made of old cargo modules.
Brandon and Alec were still discussing what could be done when Colin Sampson spoke up.
“It looks like the very sort of thing that the folks from Galactic Expeditions would be looking for. They are always searching for hidden bases or alien artifacts, that sort of thing.”
“Well, the ships and other equipment here look like they date back at least one hundred years if not more. Will they even be any use to us?” Alec asked.
“I don’t know for sure until I get a closer look at it. Most of this junk is hopelessly obsolete that it is good for little more than scrap metal. But some of these ships are at least built to military standards. We might be able to adapt that old military equipment for reuse, if we are lucky. Hell, I might even be able to use a goodly portion of the components to upgrade some of Orca’s systems.”
Colin’s last remark reminded Alec as just how old some of the equipment was that had been used on Colin’s big battler to get it running.
“We will first have to kludge together some sort of power source so that we can get everything running inside of here again, including life support.”
“Do you mind if I take a crack at it, Sir?” Colin Sampson asked and then continued with his idea.
“I had been looking at the video of those wrecks as I came in, Sir. When you and your sensor tech were talking about the problem with the main power plant, I had a thought about how a possible solution.”
“What do you have in mind, Colin?”
“I need to first take a close look at those wrecked ships in the main chamber. If we are lucky, I might be able to put together something from them with a little help from our own spares to get one or two of their smaller fusion bottles up and running. That should give us at least as much power as that old fission plant produced.
Once we get the lights back on around here, I will then work on fixing up some of the wrecked ships here so that we can add them to our little fleet.
As you recall, I have made a career of salvaging ships. A big part of that was learning to make use of old components to repair other things. I’d like to try it here as well. Based on what I have seen inside of here, we are looking at the better part of a small shipyard here. I can do a lot here for sure.
We now have some military ships here that I think belonged to the Collective and had been brought back here because of battle damage. Those ships were obviously here awaiting repair. But I also see quite a few civilian ships, mostly cargo shuttles, here in the main chamber at the same time. I believe that these ships had been boarded, captured and brought here for salvage or sale. They are probably still in relatively good shape even if they are not currently operational.”
“I would imagine that the Collective had a lot more of the civilian ships here, but that they used them to help with the evacuation. The only reasons that I could imagine that these ships were left behind were because they were damaged and unable to leave or because the Collective didn’t have enough crew available to man them, Colin.”
“As I mentioned before, I still think that there is a very good chance that with the equipment here, that I could piece together a working power plant, if you will let me, Sir.”
“Let me look at the situation here a bit more closely first, Colin. If it continues to look as promising as it appears, I will give you a shot at being a grease monkey once again. OK?”
“Sounds great to me, Sir. Just give me the word.” Colin confidently replied.
“Is there anything else that we can do with the equipment and ships that the Collective left here? It looks like they took every ship that could still fly when they evacuated their base here.”
“I have to agree, Captain. It looks like a damned junkyard on the surface here. We’ve dozens of cannibalized jump tenders, shuttles, fighters and battlers here. None of them are operational from what we can tell at this point. To add to that problem, the most modern of these vessels that we have found here is still over one hundred years old. But we do have a lot of potential resources to work with here. I think that we just have to use our imagination and a bit of hard work here, Captain. There could be some diamonds in the rough that we just haven’t uncovered yet.” Colin interjected with a note of opt
imism.
“What are you suggesting then?”
“Well, first we need to do a detailed survey of exactly what we have here, right down to major subcomponents. With that information, I can look at what treasures that we actually have right under our noses.
Back in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century, the Americans on Earth stored many of their old aircraft in a central location where they would be preserved due to the location’s low humidity. Then, when they needed spare parts for other aircraft that were still in use, they would go back to this ‘boneyard’, select the appropriate part, inspect it and then ship it to where it was needed. The Americans also did the same thing with some of their warships, but to a somewhat lesser degree.
Now, we have our very own boneyard right here. Sure, the ships here are old, but some areas of naval technology have not changed significantly in over one hundred years.” Colin quickly explained, the growing excitement clearly evident in his voice.
Alec silently thought for a few moments. Colin did have a point about the possibilities here. However, if Colin was busy piecing together more ships for the group to use, he couldn’t be commanding his battler at the same time. As old as the Colin’s battler was, it remained a large powerful unit that Alec badly needed if he was going to be effective raiding enemy shipping for his colonial patrons and for the prize money that each captured or destroyed vessel brought him. Just as Rita had explained months earlier, Colin still loved working on ships in spite of his desire for a little adventure and combat.
“Did they leave us enough equipment here to be able to do anything with what you have found, Colin?”
Colin just smiled, spread his arms out wide and said, “Look around us. Sure, the previous occupants left us a spot of a mess to clean first. First, we have to get the power turned back on. Then we can inspect whatever is behind those large airlock doors over there. But we have all the makings of good-sized refit base here! We also have a repair gantries, scaffolding and who knows how many tools and shops inside.”
Of course, Colin was right here too. But it also became very apparent that Colin was a lot more comfortable and happy working on ships than anything else. That was why he kept talking about the ships and shipyard that had been discovered in the main chamber.
“You want to run all of this for me, Colin?” Alec reluctantly asked.
“Sure, Boss. I’d love to do that.”
“Just one question then. Who is going to command Orca on missions while you are back here working on ships for me?”
Colin stopped and thought for a few moments. This was something that he had failed to consider in his excitement over the discoveries inside of the hidden base. After all, going out into battle was the reason why Colin signed on with Alec in the first place.
“While I hate to miss out on the fun, you might have to find someone else to command the Orca while I am fixing things here. I would still be getting my share of the prize money from any operations involving my ship, wouldn’t I?”
“Yes, you would. The payout scheme might have to be a little different though. But I’m sure that you could make it up with whatever you can make operational here or at least though any payments that I would make for repairing and upgrading our ships, current and later acquisitions. I do certainly plan on expanding our force as much as is feasible.”
“That sounds fair enough to me. We will just have to work out the details, Sir.”
“But, before you do that. We need to do a real ‘hands-on’ examination of this facility. Since our drones haven’t set anything off, I believe it is safe now for us to walk through here and find all of this base’s secrets.” Alex told the others.
Alec went out into the newly discovered base along with several teams of personnel from his ships just a few minutes later. They still carefully walked through the various passages just in case, not knowing if the trickle of power that the base was continuing to receive could activate any ‘unwelcome surprises’ though. The asteroid base was so large inside that Alec was unable to visit many of the large side chambers to see what was inside of them. He would have to leave all of that to Colin.
A couple of minutes later, Brandon Kiel and Joanna together approached Colin with a datapad in his hand. Almost immediately, the young sensor tech began to quickly brief Alec while reading from his datapad.
“Whoever built this base and placed it into orbit here certain knew what he was doing, Sir. The base not only has a wide interior hollow core to service and store ships inside, it also has a variety of other well thought-out features as well.
There are several large compartments along the sides of the main chamber that clearly have air-tight doors. They look big enough to hold a large cargo shuttle or battler inside. A couple of those chambers may even be large enough to hold a jump tender. I am guessing that they are all intended for maintenance purposes so that repairs can be done without the need for bulky pressure suits.’
“Is that all, Brandon?”
“Not by a long shot, Sir. When we started our survey of the base’s outer passages, we discovered some more very useful information. The main chamber is surrounded by a series of hollowed out tubes that run parallel to it. With the slow rotation of this moon, the base literally is generating its own centrifugal gravity for the occupants here. We have measured the force at the other rings at being around point eight G. There is an inner set of tubes, but they are only generating about point four G inside them.
It makes for a very comfortable walk, Sir. Since the whole moon is spinning, there is no need for artificial gravity plates to keep everyone’s feet on the floor.” Brandon explained.
“Excellent. That means that we don’t need to use any power to maintain gravity with this system. At the same time, the central chamber is still at Zero-G for ease of movement. What else have you found, Brandon?”
“We found what looks like is the station’s aquaponics system. It looks like it is on its last legs though. Most of the vegetation has died off along with the aquatic life that helped maintain it. It doesn’t appear to be using Terran flora and fauna, but it is pretty close though.”
“We will have to get some samples from Alacrity’s aquaponics systems out there to jump-start the station’s system so that we can sustain the life support system here, Joanna. We are also going to need to replenish this station’s atmospheric gases and water reserves.
We will need to get Alacrity and her battlers tucked inside one of those large chambers as quickly as possible. Colin is going to need the space inside of the main chamber soon.”
“Yes, Sir. I’ll get a team working on the aquaponics after we send a shuttle down to the planet to harvest water. We can then electrolyze some of the water to give the station some oxygen and hydrogen for our ships’ fusion reactors. The rest of the water will be for life support and aquaponics systems.” Colin’s second in command replied.
“That sounds like you have a good handle on the situation then. Go for it.” Colin replied with a smile before leaving Alacrity’s bridge to go to his personal stateroom. He had been awake for nearly twenty-four hours and was exhausted.
The initial survey work continued on for the next week with Colin and about twenty other technicians crawling all over the station and the various pieces of equipment that it contained. After that survey was completed, Colin went to see Alec aboard Alacrity to let the latter know what else had been found. Alec was back on Alacrity’s bridge reviewing a stack of survey reports from the teams searching through the installation.
“Sir, it looks like we were damned lucky coming into this place. We just found a series of hidden defensive weapon installations around the entrance to this facility. They were linked into an automated fire control network that was designed to activate whenever any unfamiliar vessel approached. Some of the weapons are certainly large enough to inflict serious damage to a battler or a combat tender.”
“Why didn’t they engage us then?” Alec asked.
“They didn
’t have sufficient power with the failure of the station’s power plant. The only power generation that we currently have is a tiny amount of solar power from a concealed solar mirror system. That lack of power is the one thing that kept those weapons from firing upon us. They were old, but otherwise, given sufficient power, they were still quite capable of doing what they had been designed to do.” Colin noted.
“We certainly can’t afford to leave this situation as it is. We are spending a lot of time here instead of being out on the border performing the mission that we were hired to do. But this base here has the potential of being a real game-changer for us. It could also be an albatross around our necks too, if we are not careful.” Alec said.
“Well, Sir. Just as soon as we get a real power reactor up and running, I will work on getting our defenses operational again. I’m sure that you don’t want any personnel left behind here being totally helpless when Alacrity and I go out on operations.” Colin replied.
Chapter Fourteen:
Inside the former Red Star Collective Base.
YBP 1194 Star System, M 67 Star Cluster, Orion Arm
February 11, 2321
True to his word, Colin found that a couple of the junked cargo shuttles still had intact fusion bottles. As quickly as he could, Colin and a team of two-dozen technicians had opened up the hulls of the small shuttles and pulled out their power plants. The fusion bottles were quickly moved near the station’s main power transfer node and connected up. An improvised fuel and control system was then constructed for the ad hoc power system.
Within three weeks, the station had enough energy to power up all of its operational major systems, including several capital anti-ship weapons. Life support was also fully brought back to life. Everyone was very glad to finally not have to live aboard their ships any longer too.
The reactivation of the station’s systems did not come a moment too soon as it turned out. Alec was awakened from a deep sleep by an urgent message from the station’s command center.