Chapter 11
Warrant Green was led to the officers ward room by Corporal Ozawhich I thanked her and she stepped to the side. “ Captain, while I appreciate the invite to dinner I’m afraid the station commander may get the wrong idea.” He had a slight frown on his face clearly concerned that the commander would see them meeting and investigate his interpretation of his orders.
“I understand Warrant normally I would have just had a crew member drop off a case of beer and called it good but we came across something that we think is important. Please come and give us your opinion.” We all sat down and dinner began. The meal went quickly and I looked over at the Corporal who I had specifically invited for this event. I waited for her to finish then asked “ Ozawhich if you would please.” She nodded, pushed her chair back and walked to the front. She dimmed the lights and started her presentation.
“As you all know a few weeks ago Paladin engaged and destroyed a group of ships declaring themselves the Brotherhood. One of their vessels was captured and we copied the files before selling the vessel on. just a few days ago we cracked the codes and learned some time sensitive information.” I glanced at Warrant Green who now seemed very interested.
A star map was projected on the back wall “this is the Uvilidey system two jumps past the border into Theocracy space however it's a cul de sac whose only entrance is in the DMZ band in a rarely patrolled section of dead systems with little to no economic value.” she advanced to the next slide “ this is the slaver station in Uvilidey if the Brotherhood ever gave it a name it wasn’t in the ships systems. They have been raiding civilian vessels and transports on the League side of the border for about four years. They take anyone they capture to the station then when the pens fill up they take them to a nearby theocracy slave market.”
There was grumbling around the table from everyone, officially the theocracy had outlawed the importing of new slaves and all slaves had to have the opportunity to buy their freedom. The reality was much less reformed, the wages were rarely ever enough to buy out a slave's blood price. While a first sale at a major planet would be verified if someone was first sold at a minor planet then resold at a major port the dubiousness of the first sale was often overlooked.
Ozawhich continued “ the intelligence suggests a big transfer of prisoners is coming up in a few weeks, the station being beyond the border makes a League incursion impossible, which is just slightly more likely than the Theocracy intervening if we informed them.” Jasmin looked at me and I stood up “ for these reasons I have decided as a civilian group we can get away with things the League navy can not, we will move against the illegal slavers and liberate the captured civilians because we can.” the others around the table nodded in turn except for Green.
The slide advanced showing a destroyer “ this is a Missionary class destroyer it dates from sometime in the War, the information we have suggests it would not be nearly as well maintained as the Paladin.” Emily nodded “ Damn right with the new plasma Generator Paladin is back up to full combat strength except for the ammunition shortage, all the wire runs and piping has been checked to full load and replaced if needed she's as ready as ever.”
“We do not foresee any issues dealing with the destroyers, the issues maybe the fighters, the Longbow class's weakness was always its fighter defense. It was designed to work in conjunction with a wall of militia fighters, the intelligence suggests they will have between three and five fighters all older and of various types. I would recommend hiring at least one more pilot. The league has surplus demilitarized fighters for sale on the station.” Emily snorted “ give me six hours and and I can get them back into service the fire control won't be military standard but should be as good or better then what the pirates have.”
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Green spoke for the first time “ I know a guy, he retired about six months ago after a disagreement with the station commander. He's been working in shuttles since then but was a solid pilot and has been missing fighters.” I nodded then looked over at Emily “ buy two fighters and what you need to outfit them an extra won't hurt.” Emily nodded. Ozawhich brought up her last slide. “ This is the base schematic of the station based on the type listed in the navigation section.”
another similar one popped up next to it. “ This is the best guess of the interior based on the information in the computer. "Some of the rooms were opened up with cages spaced out through them, with a large group of cages in the middle. “We believe the station has around fifty pirates on board” Ashley frowned. “That's less than Ideal we have eight sets of combat armor and twenty troops. We can do it but we are going to take losses.” I frowned and reflected on whether it was worth our losses so we could rescue people we didn’t know and had no obligation to. In the end I returned to my original conclusion, it was the right thing to do, we could do it .
Surprising me Green spoke up again “ I know a few marines who have a lot of leave saved up they often take on surprisingly active security work when on leave. their rates can be a little high but they are solid trigger pullers.” I nodded, the expense would hurt the budget but five professional marines to take point would greatly increase the chances of more of his people coming through alive. “ Please contact them Warrant Green” the man agreed.
We decided to put off planning the ground assault until we knew the marines would join us. The planning for the space battle went quickly. I decided that with capital ship engagement unlikely to be a challenge that I would leave it to Max to handle, I would be settled into my fighter and ready to launch as soon as we passed the gate hopefully with the second pilot ready on the other catapult. Once the space around the area was secured I would return to pilot the shuttle for the final attack.
Finally the general plan was settled and I walked the warrant back to the airlock “ok I will contact those folks the pilot will quickly agree. The marines C.O. owes me a favor so if the marines agree I can get their leave approved quickly.” I thanked him one last time before returning to my office.
***
Six hours had passed Emily had brought a pair of surplus fighters onboard about an hour ago. my Comm’d pinged “ go for Captain Miles” ,”Private Moore, Sir at the airlock we have a mister Johnson here says he is the Pilot warrant Green mentioned.” I thanked him and told him I would meet them at the airlock. I got to the airlock about five minutes later “ thank you Mr. Moore I’ll take it from here, Mr. Johnson if you’ll follow me please.” I decided to go to the Mess and we sat down with cups of coffee.
I opened our conversation “ So Mr. Johnson, what did Warrant Green tell you about this job?” Johnson took a drink from his coffee. “ He said that you needed a pilot with star fighter qualifications. And that it was likely I would need those skills quickly.” I nodded then explained the situation to him in broad terms. “ still interested?”
Johnson agreed quickly. “ Yes, Sir I have been wanting to do something about the pirate problem in this area for years that was part of my… disagreement with the Station Commander.” We chatted for a little while longer before I showed him to the hanger. Emily and her engineering crew were working on one of the new fighters “ good news Ben the only thing they pulled off besides the weapons mounts were the targeting systems, I had bought a few spares for the Bouncing Betty so I’ll have this bird up and ready in three hours.”
She saw the guy next to me and paused “ oh sorry captain whose this?” I laughed. “It's ok Emily this is Lt. Johnson, you're working on what will be his bird as soon as he accepts the job.”, “Lt. johnson?” he asked. “We use ranks on board most of us are Paledes militia and we decided a rank structure was a good Idea and as your former rank was lieutenant. So reinstating it for us makes sense.” I left Lt. Johnson with Emily discussing the fighter and returned to my room.