Almost a week had passed since the fleet had entered Pollux V’s orbit. The once-frantic schedule was mellowing out into an efficient tempo, shift lengths halving and morale rising.

The mobile ore refining ship Robotnik had entered the inner asteroid belt, releasing hundreds of miners aboard specialized shuttlecraft to bring in asteroids rich in metals. The process was straightforward but arduous, requiring experienced crews, good equipment and above all else time. In the last five standard days, Valeriy Sukachyov’s Valeria Mining Corporation had processed nearly two thousand tonnes of asteroid, with the processing rate increasing as the asteroid-to-ingot process was adapted to local conditions.

Meanwhile, the Lagrange point between Pollux V and the bigger of its two moons, Alpha, had become the place to be for all sorts of industry. Kim Industries, Apogee Corporation and several other companies had set up shop alongside the two hulking figures of the navy’s Fast Fleet Auxiliaries. While the civilian ships and mobile factories were still having issues starting production, the Hephaestus and the Blacksmith’s Bane had begun operations since day one.

The former was in the process of repairing the damage incurred during the surprise exchange with the pirates, which compared to ‘proper’ wartime battle damage looked like little more than a scratch. It was only due to the fact they’d just left hyperspace that the fleet had incurred any damage at all; shields automatically shut down during FTL travel, and took time to redeploy.

As for the latter, the Blacksmith’s Bane and her forges had a fabrication que light-years long. Everything from spare parts for routine maintenance to construction material that would be used in the planned orbital.

Yet the Pollux industrial zone was not only limited to internal production. Polaris had already sent a detailed production order, to be processed precisely one standard month after the signing of the trade agreement. Ten kilograms of nearly-pure rhodium had been set aside for the transaction, with every industrial player hungering after the invaluable good that allowed fusion reactors and hyperdrives to function.

With growing resource extraction efforts and a stream of lucrative orders propelling it, akritan industry was working as fast as it could.

+++

Commodore Albin Houben had been called many things in life. Smart, by his adopted mother and teachers during his years in the Domus Pupili. Ambitious, by his instructors and comrades in the Naval War College. Sexy or mysterious, by the shore leave flings he’d bedded since earning his commission. Lecherous, by the staff working the bars he ‘hunted’ in for said flings.

All that, of course, was secondary. Like most other pupili that entered the College and earned their commission, Albin’s family was the navy itself. Unlike most other pupili, however, he was driven by just duty and loyalty to the duchy, or the comrades with which he sailed side-by-side. No, Albin was driven by the ultimate high; combat. From the endless pummeling of long-range missile fire to the breakneck maneuvers and the close-range knife fights that left crews decimated and ships turned to dust, he lived for war.

Which is why he was feeling so damn bored right now. Eying the empty coffee mugs lying around the bridge, he stirred from the command seat.

“Galley, this is bridge.” He thumbed the intercom button.

“Bridge, galley. Go ahead.”

“We need three pots of straight black coffee, a pitcher of milk, a bowl of sugars and two dozen of whatever bite-sized snack is available.”

“Coffee, milk, sugar and snacks. Copy that, bridge; they’ll be there in, oh, ten minutes.”

The intercom buzzed shut, and the recently-promoted commodore sat back down on his comfy seat.

Eyes lazed about his displays, looking at the squadron’s location, speed, heading and a dozen other metrics. Here were three ships and two thousand souls, bound to obey him upon the pain of death. The jump from ship to fleet command should’ve given any prospective flag officer a raging boner, but Albin only felt a mild buzz at the thought.

Patrol Squadron One was composed of his own Knight-class cruiser Whitefang and a pair of Aegis-class frigates, the Bastion and the Paladin. With both ship classes geared towards long-term independent duty, the squadron could continue on its mission for many months.

‘Helluva route to send a cruiser on, but you use what you’ve got.’

Had he been promoted to commodore during the height of the war, he would’ve been ecstatic. But now the war was over, and conflict seemed far away. His squadron was currently the only one likely to meet combat, patrolling the Polaris system’s outskirts and jump points for pirates, raiders and other types of enterprising scum hoping to make a quick buck.

Under normal circumstances, the best ships to send on such patrols were frigates, destroyers and specialized patrol boats. The Columbus system, the dynasty’s capital, had been patrolled by a dozen anti-piracy boats. Such ships were cheap to build and often manned by green crews, but lacked the hyperdrive necessary to travel to another system independently.

But now the dynasty had no such ships.

To a layman, the solution was obvious: strip some of the Strike Group’s escorts into an impromptu squadron and send them off. That was the first of many stupid ideas the Academy instructors had purged his class of.

The war’s worst defeats —on both sides— had occurred because capital ships had been caught without a sufficient number of escorts. Without its scouts, defenders and harassers, a battleship or battlecruiser was a very powerful but unwieldy sword that could be picked apart by a more nimble force of smaller ships.

So instead, the admiral had picked the Whitefang and its escorts for the mission, keeping the Vanguard’s Hymn, the Circe and the two fleet auxiliaries under the watch of the group’s four other escorts.

Was sending an up-gunned cruiser and two frigates armed to the teeth on a glorified border patrol a bit of an overkill? Yes. But it served its purpose, and kept the curious folks in Polaris aware of the dynasty’s power.

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…

‘So bored…’

“Sir?” A voice called out. “Commodore?”

“What is it?” He turned around, seeing his former executive officer —temporarily promoted to ship command— holding a plastic plate full of pastries.

“Pastry, sir?” The man offered.

Albin inspected the various pastries, seeing how the galley staff had worked their limited ingredients into imaginary shapes, from animals to mythical creatures and even ships. The use of food coloring —one of the few luxuries afforded to sub-capital ship’s kitchens— spiced up the image with bright and unique palettes. The Whitefang’s chefs could get very creative, which spelled wonders for crew morale on long stints away from home.

“I think I’ll take the…”

“Status change!” The sensor officer announced, and as Albin turned towards him the chosen sweet fell and shattered on the floorplate.

“Report.” He ordered, sitting back down and tapping away at his display’s controls.

“I’ve got ship signatures on jump point Alpha. Gravidar and Lidar are lighting up; counting nine bogeys in formation. Designating ‘Group Uniform’.”

“Estimated size-mass profiles? What are we looking at?” Albin demanded.

Within seconds the gravidar’s returns answered his question. Five of the unknown ships were small, ranging from from forty to sixty kilotons in weight. They could’ve been anything, from mining ships to fuelers, cargo haulers and armed escorts. The last four were significantly heavier, each massing nearly two hundred kilotons.

The unknown fleet had entered the system at a moderate point-fifteen cee, or fifteen percent of the speed of light, and was accelerating at thirty standard gravities. Or, it had entered the system at that speed and acceleration; the squadron was an entire light-hour away from the system’s sole jump point, so their sensor data was delayed by one hour.

Albin thought of a response to the unknown intruders. Though the gravidar’s readings put the fleet squarely in the box of a cruiser-destroyer task force —and a strong one at that— their velocity and acceleration profiles were paltry in comparison to what a proper warship like the Whitefang was capable of. He doubted this fleet had anything violent in mind; nobody went to war crawling.

“Astrogation, plot an intercept course with Group Uniform. Communications, relay that course to all ships, and send the following message to the Admiral on a flash transmission.”

Turning to his controls, he typed up a short report.

[Detected nine unknown movers moving starwards from jump point. STOP. Speed 0.15 light. STOP. Acceleration 45 gravities. STOP. Proceeding to immediate intercept and awaiting further orders. OVER.]

Sending his report to the communication officer’s terminal, the commodore looked at the map on his display and grinned.

‘Finally, we get to do something interesting.’

+++

“Sir, you need to see this.” The sensor officer called out to George from his seat.

George Holloway, captain of the merchant ship Camilla Rayden, picked up his mug of tea from his chair’s cup holder and walked over to the officer’s console just a few meters away. The bridge, much like any other merchantman’s, was a small and cozy affair. The small number of bridge crew reflected the ship’s tiny complement, made up of barely a hundred sailors.

“What’s up, Cramer?” He asked, looking at the young man’s screens as he sipped on the delicious brew in his mug.

One didn’t serve for three decades in the merchant marine without learning to make a mean brew of coffee or chai; by now George was a bona-fide expert in fringe world chai varieties, an expensive habit made cheap by his job.

“I’ve got a ton of activity around this planet, sir.”

George leaned in, taking a look at the sensor readings, and immediately frowned. “Hot damn. There must be at least a megaton’s worth of ships around Pollux V. What are they doing here? Sanders, come take a look at this.” He called out to his executive officer.

The bald and oft-grumpy man walked in slow and steady, resting his spectacles on his forehead to let his ill-focused eyes read the sensors’ output. George stifled a smirk at their sight; his XO’s fear of laser surgery was infamous among the crew.

“Lotta fuckin’ ships is what it is.” The veteran nodded in agreement. “Maybe mining; I don’t see what else they could be doing in this dump.”

“A colony expedition?” Lieutenant Cramer hazarded a guess.

“No. Well…maybe?” Commander Sanders stumbled over his words. “It does look like it, kid, but I ain’t heard of no expedition setting up shop on the bad side of Vicky’s Ring. You’d need a few hundred million aurums to get one assembled, and thats on a low-risk route while guarded by a state navy. To get one going out here in bum-fuck nowhere you would need equipment and manpower worth five or ten times that, and a few mercs like ours to scare off any void-cunts searching for easy prey.”

Dumbfounded by the image on the ship’s scopes, the command crew shrugged and passed it off to be assessed at the post-hyper status meeting with the rest of the convoy’s ships. The strange ships in Pollux V orbit were fifty-five AUs away; even the courier ships —those outfitted with pre-collapse tech worth its weight in rhodium— would need a day and a half to cross the distance.

…

“So…a colony, or a mining expedition?” Kimon Rayden summed up, drumming his holographic fingers on the conference table. “Strange indeed.”

“My sensor and intelligence staff are more partial to the former.” Commodore Jonas Glennon, the CEO and senior-most officer of One-oh-Four Security Services, added. His frigates might’ve been stripped of the Republic’s most classified systems, but their current gear was still better than what the merchies carried aboard. “We’re seeing lots of big ships in orbit of the planet known as Pollux V, kilometer-long ones.”

Rayden’s eyebrows nearly jumped at the mercenary’s last sentence. “Such an expedition should’ve raised a lot of eyebrows, everywhere. Only a few state-sponsored shipyards make kilometer-sized vessels, and those that are traded on the second hand market are closely watched.

“In either case, even better.” He concluded. “If it’s a mining fleet, we’ll do our best to get their ore at favorable rates. If it’s a colony expedition, I think we can manage to sell them some supplies and such. We will continue on our course around Pollux VII and its asteroid belt, and proceed to Polaris; the miners are so desperate for manufactured goods that they’d be happy to hand out their sensor data for a ton of spare electronics. We will continue with our transponders offline; who knows what scum might be lurking around.”

…

“Sir, this doesn’t look right.” Lieutenant Cramer said from his console.

“What is it now, kiddo?” Commander Sanders asked, letting out a tired sigh. In just half an hour his shift would be over and he could go relax in his quarters with a bottle of alk and a bowl of extra-spicy fritos; he had a crate of the stuff stored for the journey.

Getting up from the captain’s chair, the old XO walked over to the sensor console to take a look at whatever had caught the lieutenant’s fancy. The convoy had been traveling for nearly eight hours now, its course taking it around the ice giant Pollux VII and its dense asteroid ring..

“Inside the ring, sir.” Cramer pointed at one specific screen, which showed the output of the ship’s infrared sensors. “I’ve got three blips; pretty small and low-profile but they are getting bigger every second. I think they are ships, coming towards us.”

It took only a cursory glance at the sensor readings for Sanders’ eyes to open wide. “Son…I think you’re right. Stars, they are coming right at us! We need to call the—”

“Commander!” The communications officer shouted, a look of utter confusion on her face. “We’re being hailed! All frequencies, radio and laser. It’s coming from the asteroid ring.”

“Send it to my terminal.” Sanders sat back down on his seat, his legs suddenly feeling like they were made of jelly.

His terminal’s main screen lit up, showing a man in a military uniform with a curiously neutral expression. The background was stark gray, and his uniform was laconic in decorations. Three ribbons were stitched above his heart, alongside a name patch.

COMMO A. Houben

“Unknown flotilla, this is Commodore Albin Houben of the Akritan Dynasty Navy. By the authority granted to me by all polities in this system, I hereby order you to turn on your transponder and any other means of identification immediately, as well as your flight plan. Failure to do so will result in you being flagged as a trespasser. This message will be repeated several times and delivered by all accessible means for your convenience.”