Alexander was notified of the arrival of the new ship. Due to their uplink to the satellites being offline, it wasn’t clear who they were until they started firing on the pirates in orbit. If it wasn’t for the facility's sensors, which were designed to monitor the local star, they may not have even known another ship arrived. Even then, the consensus was split on it being someone here to help, or another faction of pirates.
He was glad to see it was a friendly face. “While I’m glad to have the Hawks’ assistance once again, why are you back?”
“You’ll need to speak with Captain Matthews about that. All I know is I was ordered to clear the facility of hostiles and the ships sitting on the landing pads. If you’re saying the facility is clear, I think it's time to clear some ships.”
It took less than two hours for the Hawks’ ground teams to clear the vessels. There were not many surviving pirates, and the ones who had survived were certainly not equal to the Hawks.
Alexander stood next to Travers as they watched a single drop ship touch down. Out stepped a man he had only seen and spoken to over video comms.
“Mr. Kane,” Captain Matthews offered his hand and Alexander shook it. “I make it a rule not to step off of the Talon during operations but with your communications being out and the sensitive nature of this discussion, I decided to come speak with you myself.”
“…That wasn’t really necessary Captain.”
“I felt that it was. Is there a place we can speak quietly, Mr. Kane?”
“Yes, follow me.”
Normally he would have simply headed to his shop or his apartment. The shop was a mess thanks to the firefight. It wasn’t exactly private at the moment either. He had hired a group of locals to clean the place up and watch over the one working printer as replacement components were built. His apartment was currently occupied by a little girl who was grounded for not following the evacuation plan.
At the time of the attack, Alexander was just relieved to see Yulia and Markus were safe. That didn’t excuse his daughter's reckless actions. He knew that being a parent meant punishing a child in certain circumstances but that didn’t make him feel any better about having to do it. Yulia needed to learn that certain actions have consequences though.
To be honest, the girl looked relieved to be home. And it wasn’t like Alexander had simply abandoned her at home alone while he worked to fix all the damage from the attack. One of the tutors who helped with her language lessons agreed to watch her. It was the woman’s way of thanking him for driving off the pirates and saving her husband. Alexander didn’t know the woman’s husband, but he thanked her for her assistance anyway.
The tutor wasn’t the only person who tried to thank him. He didn’t think he did all that much, but it was clear the battle had shifted sentiment towards him quite drastically. When he put out the request for people to help clean up his shop, he got more people than he bargained for. Not wanting to send anyone away, he assigned twenty to his shop and split the eighty others into four separate groups to help remove the bodies and clean up elsewhere. The dead citizens of Eden’s End would get proper burials, whereas the pirates were going to be tossed into a waste furnace. It was a fitting end for the vile bastards.
“We can talk in here,” Alexander typed in the code to his storage room.
Matthews stepped inside but Travers simply took up a position outside the door. Alexander would have shaken his head if his holo-projector was working. Instead, he simply stepped into the room filled with crates and closed the door.
“I’m afraid we don’t have any conference rooms. At least none that are in any condition to be used for such.”
“This is fine. I’m not the type of man to beat around the bush, so I’m going to be blunt. The Hawks fucked up.”
“…Um….”
Matthews lifted his hand. “Please, let me finish.” When Alexander didn’t say anything else, the man continued. “It was our job to ensure the safety of this facility. As we were returning to STO space, our Sam discovered someone was sending coded messages through our scouting ships to pirates. When I learned of this, we turned around immediately to warn you. Unfortunately, we were too late.” Alexander had suspected there was a spy, but he had no evidence to even start to figure out who had sold them out. That all changed now.
“You have a name?” was all Alexander could ask while his anger simmered restlessly.
The name the man gave was not one Alexander knew. It was a minor relief that it wasn’t anyone with any real security here, but that fact barely kept him from storming out of the room to personally punish this individual.
As his rational mind reasserted itself, he spoke up. “Please have your people work with Damien Laront. We need this man alive to answer questions.”
Matthews nodded. “I was hoping you would say that.” The Captain pressed a little comm badge on his flight suit’s arm. “Travers, work with Eden’s End’s security to apprehend a man by the name of Draven Holstein. And keep it quiet.”
“Copy that, Captain.”
“So, that’s it then?” Alexander asked. He knew the Hawks couldn’t stay, they had commitments back in their home system.
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“Normally, yes. You know we can’t stick around for more than a few days, right?”
“I figured as much. You coming back at all probably saved a lot of lives. Thank you for that.”
“Like I said, we screwed up, so we needed to correct that issue. And from what I saw, you did a pretty good job of taking on the pirates all by yourself.”
“Not good enough,” Alexander stated bitterly. He would have frowned if he could. “The defenses I set up were completely overwhelmed by one attack. If I hadn’t managed to get that one gun back online, we would have been at the pirates' mercy.”
“There is no such thing as a perfect defense,” Matthews sighed. “I would have recommended spreading your defenses out into orbit, but you simply didn’t have the capability to build anything in the timeframe you had available. Your railguns should have been more than sufficient to deal with a normal attack. …That’s another thing. Fifteen pirate ships don’t just attack one location without reason. Do you have any idea why they were here?”
“For me. They tried to take my daughter hostage.”
“Is she ok?”
“She is uninjured, but I’m not sure if she will sleep well after what happened.”
Matthews nodded. “Considering what I’ve seen you do in such a short time, it makes sense the pirates are interested in you. The Talon will be leaving once we capture and question the spy. But I’ve been authorized to leave one of the gunships for you to use for another three months. It’s the best I could do.”
“Thank you, that’s more than generous. But can I ask why?”
“I would think that is obvious, Alexander.” He was taken aback by the man using his first name. “The Hawks’ leadership sees a relationship with you and Blue Star Enterprises as an important asset. A mutually beneficial one.”
“I don’t know what to say.”
The reserved Captain chuckled. “Don’t say anything yet, neither one of us has seen any benefit from this relationship. Once that happens though, I suspect both of us will be happy to have each other.”
Alexander extended his hand. “I guess that makes The Hawks of Ganos, Blue Star Enterprises' first official customer.”
The man accepted the gesture with a grin. “I guess it does.”
Matthews comm beeped and Travers spoke. “Captain, we have him.”
“That didn’t take very long. Well, now that we are done here, let's go have a discussion with this bottom feeder and find out why he sold out everyone here to pirates.”
“But they were only after me,” Alexander reminded the man as they exited the room.
Matthews shook his head. “You don’t commit that many forces for one person. Every man woman and child here would have ended up dead or as a prisoner.”
Alexander didn’t want to think about that so he changed the subject. “Do you know if Captain Na survived?”
“The Destiny is fine. They were in the outer belt on the far side of the system when the battle kicked off. Once they realized it was pirates, they did the only thing they could and made for a jump point. They didn’t jump though, they waited to see what the pirates were doing. Once they saw us attacking the pirates, they started to head back in. His ship should arrive in another day with a load of ore. The station was unharmed in the fighting, and it must have been far enough away that the EMP didn’t knock its systems out. That reminds me.” The man reached into a pocket on his vac suit and pulled out three crystal cards. He handed them to Alexander.
“What are these?”
“Those are the fusion activation crystals for your new ships.”
“My new what?”
“There were three surviving pirate ships. They’re yours now. They are a bit banged up, but they should be serviceable. You also have the surviving shuttles on the ground and two large piles of debris that roughly resemble shuttles. You can do with them as you see fit. I suggest refitting at least one as soon as you can to run shipments to and from the surface.”
“But you disabled them, shouldn’t the Hawks be claiming them or something?”
“That’s not how it works. Since we are still technically contracted to you until we return to STO space, everything we do is for your benefit. Even if we had returned to STO space and came back, we wouldn’t claim these ships. Their transponders have been disabled or removed, meaning we could only use them for scrap. You, however, could use them as picket ships inside the system. I wouldn’t use them to patrol between here and STO space until you get a legal transponder code for them though. The STO would shoot on sight.”
As they neared the confinement cells, Alexander heard yelling. “Answer the damn question! Who did you sell us out to you useless sack of shit!” The yelling was followed by a wet thudding sound and they both picked up their pace.
The scene that greeted them was about what Alexander expected to see. Damien was purple with rage and practically vibrating with barely constrained violence. Considering the condition of the prisoner, it wasn’t as constrained as maybe he wanted it to be. The man strapped to the chair had one eye swollen shut and a pretty badly cut-up lip. Blood dripped from Damien’s fist which was clenched so tight it had turned white.
“Damien!” Alexander yelled.
The man whirled on him and looked like he was ready to throw punches at Alexander. To his credit, he didn’t. “This piece of garbage nearly got everyone here killed. Are you going to stop me?”
“How do you expect to get answers from him if you knock him senseless?” Alexander asked instead of answering the angry man’s question.
“We should just put a bullet through his head and toss him with the rest of the trash.”
“What would that accomplish?” Matthews asked as he stepped around Alexander, earning Damien’s glare as well.
“It would be one less piece of shit, wasting air.”
“And we would be clueless if more pirates were on their way, wouldn’t we?” Alexander asked pointedly.
The man ground his teeth together. “This bastard isn’t going to talk, but if you wanna waste your time, be my guest.”
Alexander had been hoping to convince Mr. Holstein that they would let him go after he answered their questions. It was a long shot, and he knew it, but Damien’s words made that tactic impossible. He sighed internally and mentally prepared for what came next.
He walked over and crouched down less than an inch from the bruised man’s face. Despite his predicament, the man still flinched back at his approach. Alexander didn’t enjoy using his appearance like this, but he would use it to his advantage if he had to.
Alexander used the little trick he learned to warm up his exterior to keep Yulia comfortable while in his arms. Only this time he sucked all the heat out of his hand, making it uncomfortably cold to the touch. Then he ran it along the man’s leg and up his side like he was inspecting a piece of beef at a market. The man yelped at the freezing cold touch and tried to move away, but Alexander didn’t let him. Touching the individual responsible for so many deaths made him feel disgusted. There was an urge to just smash the man’s face in and be done with it. He suppressed the urge, barely.
He could understand how Damien felt. If they hadn’t threatened Yulia, he probably wouldn’t do something like this, but his anger hadn’t fully subsided after the attack. He was struggling to get a grasp on the first fully realized emotion he had felt since waking up. He didn’t count the blind rage he fell into back when Yulia was injured mostly because he lost complete control back then.
In the calmest, most emotionless voice Alexander could come up with, he spoke to the man. “You have two choices, Draven. Neither of them is good. But one will end your suffering far faster than the other. Who did you sell us out to and why did you do it?”