by gerald hall
“Be sure to have all of the underwater habitats submerge their buoys so that they cannot be detected from orbit also, Joan. They will still have more than adequate supplies of food while down there. Their life support systems can generate enough oxygen for weeks if necessary, of course.”
“I just sent the message, Alec.”
“Now, all that I need is a deck of cards while we wait. Hopefully, we can get lucky and the Lu’non get quickly bored. At this moment, there is nothing that I would like more than to see them quietly leave without having gotten even a single hint of our presence here.”
But Alec would soon discover that he would need a lot more than a deck of cards to wait on the Lu’non vessels that had invaded this star system. The Lu’non did not leave right away.
Ten days into the incursion, nerves were becoming frayed within the station. No one could afford to come in or out, even to the surface of the asteroid-moon that served as the home of Alec’s privateer group. The only communications going in or out of the station came via the quantum devices on the surveillance satellites and within the planet’s underwater habitats.
“I feel like I have been trapped inside of a bottle that someone has put a cork into.” Joanna said as she stood in the station command center for more hours than she cared to admit.
“I know the feeling, Joanne. We just need to make sure that we can make it until these bastards leave. So, let’s look at the essentials. How are our organic supplies doing?” Alec asked. He had been spending even more hours in the command center than Joanna or anyone else.
“The luxury foods in the station are just about all gone now. We are still doing alright with the food from the aquaponics gardens though. Our indigenous production of foodstuffs remains fully sustainable. We might need a little water in a few months to replenish unavoidable system losses. But otherwise, our recycling and life support systems can handle our entire population without any difficulty. There are a few other discretionary beverages that we might also run short on if this siege continues for too. ”
“You mean that our ‘underground’ distillery industry is still thriving, but might run out of a few items after a while, don’t you?” Alec said with a laugh. People still loved to have something alcoholic to drink, no matter where humanity went. When people were feeling additional stress, many of them tended to indulge in drinking to a greater extent as well.
“Well, I guess that is true too, Sir. But there are still some people beginning to grumble about a lack of variety in the station’s menu. Not everyone wants to constantly eat fish, shrimp and green vegetables all of the time.”
“Don’t worry. I like to have a drink too from time to time. Remember, we also grow grapes and other fruits in our aquaponics gardens. They all can make a very fine wine too. Hopefully, we see the Lu’non leave here soon so that we can get back to business and a much more varied selection of foodstuffs.” Alec chuckled, bringing a badly needed sense of levity to the command center staff.
“I think that everyone here feels the same way. But they also are running out of things to do since we are stuck inside of here. Some of them are even volunteering to help Colin work on ships.
At least Colin has got a lot of work available with his various projects. I swear that he had to have picked up every single piece of broken ship that was in that entire star system before he came back home. There are ship components lying around all over the repair bays now. With such a wealth of available parts, he now thinks that he can get four of those eight wrecked Syndicate battlers that he retrieved operational eventually. With a few other new replacement components, he might even be able to fix a couple more of the Broadswords, he claimed also.”
“It’s amazing how motivating the threat of an assault on our home by genocidal carnivorous aliens can be, isn’t it?”
“Well, it doesn’t take much to motivate Colin whenever he sees a ship that he wants to put back together, you have to admit.”
The waiting continued for more than another week without any change on the part of the Lu’non. They still continued to patrol throughout the entire star system. The war of nerves aboard the privateer’s base was not becoming any easier to endure for the people inside.
“That is the third time that we have had one of those damned Lu’non ships pass close by this moon. I continue to worry that those bugs are going to detect that this moon has been hollowed out the same way that we did.” Joanne noted as she watched the image of the diamond-shaped vessel on one of on the station command center’s large video displays as the Lu’non flew away from the moon.
“We had a hint already that someone or something had been here though. At least the Lu’non don’t appear to have picked up anything. We’ve got our fusion power plants shut down and have gone to minimum activity everywhere within the station. Even though we are not using any active sensors, we are obtaining a considerable amount of information on these ships from our passive devices, both on our surveillance satellites and on the surface of this asteroid.” Alec noted before continuing.
“Colin’s been looking at the data very closely. He probably knows Lu’non technology better than anyone else here because of his work on the two Lu’non battlers that he refitted for our use. He only finished the second one a few days before these bastards appeared.”
“What did Colin determine?”
“He said that these Lu’non ships each mass about seventy-five thousand metric tons. They don’t appear to be quite as fast as his modified Lion-class battler. But Colin thinks that they are almost as well armed individually as his Orca II either based on the imagery of their hulls that we have acquired during their close passes of our home. Their sensor technology isn’t quite as good as ours according to what Colin discovered when he was working on Mosquito. In fact, he completely replaced the sensors on both Mosquito and a second Lu’non battler that he has been refitting with systems of human-technology because of the lackluster capabilities of the original equipment.
From what we have already learned, individually these ships are fairly formidable. As a group, they are certainly a force to be respected, if not feared.”
“Does he think that they are all jump ships? That would explain why they aren’t as well armed or as fast, ton for ton, as one of our battlers.”
“Not exactly. The Kepler people apparently had obtained some intelligence on these ships or something similar to them a year or two ago. Colin thinks that based on this intelligence and the information that he have obtained through the observation of these vessels, that these ships have a distributed jump drive architecture. The big question now is whether or not they have to organize into a twenty-four ship matrix in order to jump of if they can accomplish this with much smaller subunits like perhaps four or six ships together.”
“I wonder if they are snooping around here because of that Spear-class combat tender that we defeated here. The Lu’non could be suspicious that a ship of theirs might have encountered something here that was able to defeat it.”
“Well, we did fight and defeat an earlier ship. Colin has also assured me that every single trace of that ship visiting us had been picked up and either recycled or shoved into the star. So these Lu’non haven’t found a single thing to shows them that another Lu’non ship visited here, much less that it died here.
The camouflage screen that we put over the main entrance door appears to have been well worth the time and effort that we put into it. At least, the Lu’non have not tried to fly through it.”
“Well, it does make it look like the entrance to our main chamber look like the floor of a crater instead of a deep cavern. It is radar-reflective and infrared reflective in addition to being a visual camouflage screen.”
“But if the Lu’non decide to take a shot at it, that screen will be shredded as it were a piece of paper. We really do need to build a real armored door to protect that entrance sometime. We just haven’t put the resources into it because we have relied on our stealth and our organic weapons to
protect ourselves instead.”
“Right now, all that we can do is watch, wait and prepare in the event that they do discover us here.”
Another eight days pass by with the Lu’non continuing to fly through much of the star system. There had been a few more close passes of the planet and the orbiting moon where the privateer’s base was located. But there was still no apparent indication of the privateers having been discovered. All the while, people worked frantically to prepare for a possible attack while tensions remained high.
Alec had spent virtually the entire time living in the command center since the arrival of the Lu’non. He simply has someone bring a cot so that he could sleep in his office in the command center. Alec and many of the others who worked in the command center simply had their meals brought in so that they could continue working in case the worst happened and they had to fight.
“Colin’s people have been working as hard as they could to get more of those ex-Syndicate battlers operational. But even with all of them operational, we simply will not have enough firepower to overcome all of those Lu’non ships. Our best option is still to stay quiet and wait the Lu’non out.” Alec insisted.
“People are still growing more anxious, especially the younger women on the station. They’ve all heard the horror stories about what the Lu’non have done to human females of childbearing age.” Joanna responded.
“People need to understand that the Lu’non in the system right now cannot possibly have enough personnel available to conquer this station. We now have over one hundred trained Marines equipped with powered armor suits. We also have enough small arms to equip every man, woman and child several times over.”
“I suppose that we could put some of this anxiety to good use. We could arrange for small arms and urban combat training for any interested civilians and other non-combat personnel. That way, they could be prepared to assist in the defense of this station in the event that the Lu’non discover our presence here and decide to attack us here.” This would also have the side benefit that the training would help our ship’s personnel in defending our ships during boarding actions or fighting as infantry if we have to fight on a planetary surface.”
“That sounds like a grand idea, Alec.” Joan interjected, her avatar smiling as she seductively showed off her curvaceous figure.
“I would have to agree. It would give our people something to do besides work and worry about the Lu’non lurking outside of our front door. We will need to find an empty chamber or two to set up as a firing range, of course. But this is fairly easy to do.”
“Alec, I am picking up something unusual on my outer system sensors. The Lu’non ships are starting to bunch up into small groups.” Joan suddenly announced.
“How small?”
“A couple of the groups are of six ships. But the other groupings appear to be made up of four ships.”
“Are any of the groupings near the station now?” Alec asked.
“No, Alec. They are all now in the outer system past the fifth orbit. I have some additional information coming in from the electro-optical sensors on my satellites. The vessels are definitely docking together in what appear to be symmetrical geometric configurations.”
A few moments later, Joan gave a supplemental report, her voice revealing the most excitement since the Lu’non appeared in the system.
“One of the groups just disappeared. I have a confirmation of an outgoing jump signature.” Joan excitedly reported, a smile appearing on the avatar’s face for the first time since the Lu’non appeared.
One by one, the small groups of Lu’non matrixes jumped out of the star system until all of the alien vessels were gone. While word quickly spread of the Lu’non vessels’ departure, there was still considerable anxiety about why they spent so much time in this star system. Everyone wondered if they would come back again also.
“We need to send some scouts out to see if there are any Lu’non ships that might have stayed behind.” Joanna insisted.
“We wouldn’t want to send out any manned vessels for this. They would be too obvious.” Alec noted.
“The solution is very simple.” Joan announced. “We send out our new drone fighters. They are already very stealthy. It would be simple enough to fit them with the same sort of quantum communications devices that my satellites have. If one is discovered, the Lu’non will not know where the craft came from, would they? As far as they are concerned, it could have come off of a scout ship.
Besides, I believe that we can defeat one of those smaller groupings of Lu’non ships, I’m sure.”
“Perhaps so, but the questions that remain include why did the Lu’non come here with what has to be one of their most advanced naval forces and why did they break up into the smaller groups before leaving? Are they going to back here? We will have to be on constant alert if so.” Joanna remarked.
Her comments put an immediate chill in the air. It meant that potentially any movement to and from the station could reveal its presence to a Lu’non force in the system. That could endanger everyone on the station. But Alec did not want to abandon this base, especially after all of the time and hard work that had been put into making a secure and relatively home for his people.
“Then first, we have to make sure that we know when we have visitors quickly enough so that we can secure the station and all of its travel before we are spotted. That will mean that we have to deploy a lot more early-warning satellites throughout the system.
We will also have to significantly improve our defenses here so that if the Lu’non or anyone else detects us, we will be able to destroy them and repel any attempts to invade the station itself.” Alec explained.
“I am still curious about how the Red Star Collective managed to avoid being detected by the Lu’non while based here. Surely, they faced the same risks as we do now.” Joanna wondered out loud.
“The Lu’non have been expanding their areas of operation ever since humanity first encountered them. Perhaps, the Red Star Collective never had a Lu’non visit here simply because the Lu’non had simply had not bothered to go this far into the border of human space a hundred years ago.”
“I suppose that is possible. Just our luck that the ‘bugs’ decided to expand into our space now.” Joanna wryly replied.
“Yes. But we also have some powerful friends now too as a result of our actions. The trick is letting our friends know about what the Lu’non are up to without telling them about our secret base here. The Kepler people wanted to know if we saw anything new with the Lu’non already. I’m sure that the analysts at Earth Fleet Intelligence would also love to learn about this new Lu’non technology also.
So we just tell them that one of our ships was traveling through here when the Lu’non arrived. Our ship simply went silent and watched using passive sensors until the Lu’non left.”
“But if either Kepler or Earth Fleet begins creeping along around here looking for the Lu’non, we won’t be able to conduct any operations at the same time.”
“We will just have to make sure that we have enough ‘eyes’ set up in the system so that we can see anyone from either side coming in with plenty of time to button things up around here for the duration. As much as I wish that we could find some rationale for either of them to give us advance warning of any patrols in this star system, it would only serve to alert them that our base is somewhere nearby.
But if a Kepler or Earth Fleet patrol would encounter a Lu’non patrol in our star system, it might serve as a very effective deterrent against the Lu’non. The Lu’non might also begin to believe that someone else other than us was responsible for their missing ship. Then they will stop looking for it here.”
“You’re right. We will just have to get word out to Mister Wisp and to Earth Fleet with what we have learned. We will also tell them about our suspicions that the Lu’non may be planning on using this system as a staging area for raids. The occasional appearance of an Earth Fleet task force just might be enough
to discourage the Lu’non from visiting us again. We will have to set up a cover story in the event that they do see one of our ships here though.”
Epilogue:
New Hope Station
YBP 1194 Star System, M 67 Star Cluster, Orion Arm
January 14, 2323
Life was beginning to return to normal on the station with the departure of the Lu’non. One of the privateer jump tenders had already left with half a dozen cargo shuttles to procure fresh supplies for the station. But there remained a sense of concern among the station’s inhabitants in spite of the shoals of additional surveillance satellites that had been recently seeded throughout the star system to enhance the privateers’ ability to detect incoming visitors.
“I hope that Alec’s message that he will be sending to his Kepler friend and his contacts at Earth Fleet will have the desired results.” Jonathan Murrel noted to his wife while they sat down for dinner at the station’s central dining facility.
“I hope so too. We will certainly need allies against the Lu’non or anyone else who wishes us harm. We cannot merely sit in isolation like the people of your homeworld and hope that no one comes to harm us.”
“My dear angel, my world does not merely wait in isolation. Those who truly know us also know that we are quite capable of defending ourselves. That is why even the Belair Syndicate did not dare attack us, in spite of our resistance to their unwelcome overtures. Of course, few people in the rest of the Orion Arm knew of what the Syndicates have tried to coerce us to do in opposition to our beliefs and values.
Angela waited until there was no one else seated nearby. Then she quietly spoke.
“You know, Sweetheart. I had always heard that the people from your world really didn’t want much contact with the rest of humanity. There were all kinds of stories that the people of Libertad treated their planet like a shrine and wouldn’t allow anyone to do anything on it.”