The Episilon’s Dawn jumped into the system known as Y6X-3H2, coasting at a relatively sedate pace of .1c. They were here to surveil the system, so there was no hurry. The trajectory they were on would take them just outside the orbit of the most distant satellite orbiting their target planet. The planet formerly known as Y6X-3H2-4 had been recently renamed Eden’s End on the STO’s space charts.
They could maneuver without giving away their position if they needed to using their cold gas thrusters or even their concealed ion thrusters, but that shouldn’t be necessary unless their orbital charts were way off. The other option was to wait until they were out of the line of sight of the planet to light off their main drive.
“What do we have, Ensign?” Captain Krieger asked while sipping on some fresh coffee. They had been in the system for a full day, so their passive sensors should have picked up something even though they were still quite far from the planet they were here to take a peek at.
“Not much yet, Captain. Optics has marked three ships sitting in a parking orbit quite a distance from the planet. The charts confirmed that as a possible Lagrange point. There was also a gunship in the system, but they have since left. The active transponder from that ship registers it as belonging to the Hawks of Ganos.”
The fact that a mercenary gunship was still hanging around was a good sign. His orders were to see what was going on out here. But if it turned out to be a pirate stronghold in the making, he had orders to remove it with extreme prejudice. “No surprise there, we knew they were working with the mercenaries. What else?”
“There is a small station in orbit around the planet. The computer says it matches a standard refueling design.”
“When did our report say the Hawks came out here?” He could have sworn the report said it had been less than a year.
“A little over ten months, Sir.”
“Well, aren’t these people rather industrious? Is that all?”
“No, Sir. There is also a transponder for a mining ship called The Moonlit Destiny. The STO database has the ship tagged as quarantined and not allowed at public ports.”
“That’s the official story on the ship? What’s the unofficial?” A quarantined ship carrying an actual disease would have spread through the news outlets like wildfire. The fact that it hadn’t meant this was some bullshit from STO leadership.
“Unofficially…” the officer paused. “The ship was registered at Petrov station right before the pirate attack.”
There it was. The ship had either escaped right before the attack or during it. If they were upstanding individuals, they would have gone to the closest STO outpost to report the incident. And someone in the STO leadership decided to bury the problem instead of dealing with it. Typical. Vitor just shook his head at the incompetence of that decision. Politicking at its finest. It’s why he turned down any offers to rise above the rank of Captain. He still had to deal with internal Navy politics, but he didn’t have to deal with the governmental bullshit.
“What about the planet itself?” he asked after taking another sip of the soothingly hot beverage. The warmth flowed through him, temporarily banishing the slight chill that seemed to always accompany military ships.
“Nothing yet. The atmosphere is too hazy to pick anything up. But the computer is compiling an image of the surface. We should have it by the time we do our closest flyby.”
“Excellent. While the computer is doing that, get me more information on those three parked vessels.”
***
“We have positive IDs on those three ships, Captain.”
It had taken far longer than he would have liked to get that information, but it wasn’t like they had anything else pressing. That didn’t mean he wasn’t going to find out why the information was delayed so long. “Ensign, care to explain why it took so long to get positive IDs?”
The young man blanched slightly. “The ships have been heavily damaged, sir. When I ran them through the database, it didn’t return any results. I tried the search a few more times, I even had the computer do partial reconstructions. …It wasn’t until I remembered the fifteen pirate ships we were trailing a month and a half ago that I finally got a hit.”
Vitor nodded. He knew the ships were likely the remains of the pirate fleet, but sometimes you needed to let your crew make their own mistakes and learn from them so they could grow. When they weren’t under threat of attack, it was a perfect time to push those lessons. “Keep that in mind for next time, Ensign. What ships are out there?”
The man nodded. “I will, Captain. The first ship is Arkonis Anazi’s vessel, the Headhunter. The second ship belonged to his third in command. No name on record for that ship. The third is a small corvette or large gunboat class ship by the name of the Absolution. The Captain we have on file for that ship was declared dead six months back, so we aren’t sure who is the current Captain.”
“Considering they are sitting there with their reactors offline, my guess would be nobody, Ensign.” The man’s face turned red. “So,” Vitor continued, purposely ignoring the man’s embarrassment so as to not cause him anymore. “We have three former pirate ships, with no crew. Three returned to their rendezvous point. That’s six. Where did the other nine go?”
“Um… they were all shot down, Sir. There is significant orbital debris around the planet. Our surface map has also marked six debris fields large enough to have been a ship. One looked to have landed but wasn’t able to take off again.”
“A single outdated troop transport did this?” If that was the case, it was beyond impressive. These weren’t the most well-equipped pirate ships he had ever seen, but fifteen of them should have put up quite the fight. Something still wasn’t adding up here.
“No, Sir. At least the computer doesn’t believe so.”
“What do you believe, Ensign?” This new generation trusted far too much in computers to do everything for them. The only upside to that was that if they didn’t, Epsilon’s Dawn wouldn’t be able to take advantage of that oversight to hide its jump signature.
“…Um… No?” Vitor gestured for the man to continue. “The picture of the complex on the surface shows three craters. They appear to have been weapon installations. Three more objects on the surface could be more of these weapon installations. The computer couldn’t give a definitive answer on these last three locations because they are below blast doors. I believe they are more weapons due to their placement.”
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Vitor nodded. “Excellent work, Ensign.” While the man was talking, Vitor was reviewing the footage he was referring to. “I agree with your assessment. I’m going to assume the facility plans we have don’t show any previous military-grade weapons on the surface.” The Ensign shook his head slightly, but it was a rhetorical question. Vitor knew this place wouldn’t have had ground-based anti-ship weaponry. That sort of technology was highly restricted in STO space. So where had the people below learned how to manufacture them? “Sounds like the pirates bit off more than they could chew. I can’t say I’m too shaken up about that. This does prove to be a bit of an issue though…”
“Captain?” his first mate asked.
Vitor waved off the man’s concern. “Just thinking out loud. The STO doesn’t have any jurisdiction out here, so it isn’t like these people are doing anything illegal. That being said, we need to keep an eye on things here. If the pirates returned and somehow managed to capture the complex, this place would already be primed to become a pirate haven. I’m going to suggest to Navy Command that we do quarterly inspections to ensure pirates haven’t moved in. If there’s nothing else, I think we’ve learned everything we could from the system. Adjust our course outside the gravity well and jump us back toward Varlen.”
***
Gabriella entered the security room with a middle-aged man who looked worse for wear. The fellow in question had sunken eyes and waxy-looking skin. He also seemed to flinch at every quick movement. It was clear he wasn’t well treated when he was a captive. “Alex, meet First Lieutenant Branston. He said he might be able to help.”
“Fome,” the man managed to say.
“Sorry,” Gabriella said to the man, giving him a reassuring squeeze on the shoulder. “Former First Lieutenant Branston,” she corrected as she led him over to a console before walking over to Alexander. “The pirates were not kind to Branston. They cut out his tongue to keep him from talking. He communicated to me via a tablet that he wanted to help. To thank you for allowing the use of the medical center to help regrow his tongue.”
“How is his treatment going?” Alexander asked. This was his first time meeting any of the prisoners rescued from the pirate ships.
There weren’t many from what he recalled. The Talon didn’t have the medical facilities to treat the wounds these people suffered from so he had agreed to treat all of them. Technically, Gabriella and a few of the other residents of Eden’s End were treating them. Alexander had simply given them full access to all of the medical machines and supplies. He quickly realized after arriving here that he would not have time to learn how to operate any of those medical devices.
“The bioprinter created a replacement tongue for him, and his body didn’t reject it. It will take time for him to get used to the replacement though. Unfortunately, I am not a doctor, I was only a fitness instructor back before we left the STO, so I can’t say how his mental state is. He seems to be recovering well enough though and he looks much better than he did when they brought him in.”
Alexander winced internally at that. If Branston looked this bad now, he couldn’t imagine how bad he looked when he first arrived. “And the others?”
He could see rage boil up in the woman before she suppressed it. “Their physical injuries have been treated although they will take time to heal. We keep them occupied with other women at all times to keep their minds occupied and to keep them from dwelling on what happened aboard those ships. I’m not sure those four women will ever truly get over what was done to them though.”
“Do what you can. And thank you for taking on that responsibility.”
“You don’t need to thank me for doing what’s right.”
He nodded and the pair walked over to where First Lieute– former First Lieutenant Branston was manipulating the system information.
“Did Gabriella or Lucas tell you what was going on?” Alexander asked the man.
The man nodded. “Sange siga.”
“If talking is too much, we can always just use a tablet,” Alexander offered.
Branston shook his head. “Eed o ear o alk aga.”
He was pretty sure the man just said he needed to learn to talk again. Fair enough. “Yes. There was a strange echo or what we thought was a jump echo. I can show you.” He reached for the console but the man waved him away.
With a few swipes and gestures, the man brought up the signal. “His siga?”
“Yes, that’s it. Lucas thinks a ship jumped in and that it isn’t an echo at all.”
“He igh,” the man said. “Have’ seen befoe.”
If he understood what the man was saying, he seemed to agree with Lucas’ assessment, but he hadn’t ever seen a signal like this before.
The man looked frustrated before he picked up a tablet and began typing. It seemed whatever he needed to communicate was too much to speak. Branston handed him the tablet and Alexander read what the man had typed.
“You think this might be a black ops ship?”
The man nodded.
“Why?”
“S O, wok on pojec when I in avy. Canceled, maybe.”
“If that’s true, why would an STO spy ship come here?”
The man gestured around.
“…Ah, right. Do you think we could track this ship somehow? I don’t like the fact that the STO is keeping tabs on us. We are not in their space and we haven’t done anything against their laws. The only thing we’ve done is defend ourselves.”
“On’ have sell me,” Branston stated angrily. “No escue me afe capue. I no go back.”
The man manipulated the display again and brought up the original time and location where the jump signature was picked up. Then he used the tablet again. “I picked up some tricks while being forced to work for the pirates. Do you have high-quality optical sensors?”
“We have a few that survived,” Lucas added to the conversation.
Most of the disguised cameras had simply died over time due to component failure. Seven were still operational according to Lucas. They had only been able to reconnect to three of the units after the uplink came back up. The younger Laront was still trying to get the uplink working for the others. He said they were probably knocked out of their orbit and the chronometer needed to be adjusted to allow them to communicate again.
As Lucas brought up the three cameras, Branston flew through screens and did some complicated mathematics that he fed the computer. The cameras reoriented on a small section of space. He pointed at the visual display. There didn’t appear to be anything there…at first.
Soon something crossed in front of a distant star, occluding it temporarily from view.
“Well,” Alexander stated in annoyance. “It looks like you were right, Lucas. I owe you an apology. It seems we do have an unwanted guest. How far away is the ship?”
Lucas looked at the coordinates in the camera feed. “Looks like it's out past the smallest satellite. Too far out for us to hit with the railguns if that’s what you had in mind.”
Alexander looked at the man like he was crazy. “Why would I want to start hostilities with an STO ship? While it’s true I’m annoyed that they are here, looking into our business, that’s no reason to start a war we would easily lose. No, let's just keep track of them for now. Branston, can you flag that jump signature so if this ship ever returns, we’ll be alerted?”
The former navy man nodded.
While the ship must have been in the system for days, it only hung around for a few more hours after they spotted it.
“Looks like they are finally leaving,” Lucas commented.
“They probably already have all the information they came for,” Branston typed on the tablet.
Alexander frowned at that. “I don’t appreciate them thinking they can come here and do as they please. We need to expand our defenses and surveillance systems to prevent this from happening in the future. The ship today might not have had orders to attack, but who’s to say if that will change in the future?”
“How do we do that?” Lucas asked. “The launcher is useless with all the debris floating around up there. It’s going to take another few months before most of that burns up in the atmosphere. That just leaves the shuttles.”
“You have shuttles?” Branston asked on the tablet.
“We do. Sort of. They are the ones the pirates left behind. I started looking them over before some issues popped up, and then Lucas called me in here to look into this.”
“Do you have pio?” the former pirate prisoner asked excitedly. It was the first time the man actually looked alive since he had entered the control room.
“…Um, I hadn’t gotten that far. Why? Are you interested?”
“Yes,” the man nodded enthusiastically. “I heal, you let pio?”
“You want to be a pilot… for me? I mean, I don’t see why not.”
The man got up from the chair and hurried over as fast as his frail form would allow. He grabbed one of Alexander’s hands and shook it vigorously. “We have dea!”