Chapter 19

Hyperspace.

Approaching the Calver System.

"Hyperspace emergence in 3...2...1...Emergence!"

Sarah leaned forward slightly as the ship emerged from hyperspace. As usual, the sensors blanked out, before slowly starting to update the central display as they begun scanning their surroundings.

"Status?" She asked.

"We have arrived in our jump zone, only 3 kilometers off of the center." Answered Elteria, her hologram pacing the bridge slightly. "Scanning, but no active drive signature within immediate engagement range. I'm running some deeper scans, especially for thermal signatures, but....it looks like we're alone." The AI shrugged. "Well, alone except for the beacon."

Sarah nodded. The hyperspace beacon was the massive satellite, covered in sensors and communication devices, whose sole job was to give the precise hyperspace coordinates of it's surrounding space needed to execute a long range hyperspace jump, for a modest fee of course. Virtually every system maintained a hyperspace jump beacon, sometimes several, as without one most civilian ships simply wouldn't risk jumping to your system. At least they had good enough sensors to not really need them, but their charge very much did.

"Alright. Get us moving, standard patrol pattern. And try to get me traffic control, I'd like to announce our presence before they send someone to investigate." After all nothing quite screamed 'pirate' like scouring the space around a hyperspace beacon.

"Aye aye ma'am."

The display started to fill out as the Eternal Seeker's scanners drank in the information coming from the system, and Sarah whistled softly.

"Well, that's a nice number of ships. I thought the Calver system had the same population as Sepia, a hundred million colonists?"

Elteria nodded.

"Yes, but according to my files Calver Prime is barely habitable, and is still under intense terraforming." The AI gestured at the display, making it zoom towards the planet in question, and the cloud of ships and space stations symbols orbiting it. "As such most of the population is habitats and other space stations. It's deceptively heavily industrialized really. I'm reading at least a dozen heavy industrial platforms, and 3 full on shipyards."

"Damn. That's..."

"Not a forgotten backwater. Not a hub system either, but...it's getting there. Fast. Calver is going to be a major player in the region in a few decades."

"Indeed." Sarah blinked, and gestured at the symbols on the display. "And I see that they have a bit more firepower than the Sepians. Estimates on those monitors?"

Monitors was a generic term for non hyperspace capable warships that served as pure in-system defence. They weren't usually as lethal, ton for ton, as true warships -if nothing else their design philosophies tended towards long deployments and sustained service rather than being optimized towards annihilating other ships-, but disregarding them could prove....lethal.

"300 meters and 600 meters long mostly. Corvette and frigate equivalents. Lance and Vigilance-class respectively, from Dominion schematics apparently."

Sarah nodded. The Dominion, among other things, offered it's colonies and protectorates a wide range of schematics for consumer goods, vehicles, and in system ships. The military kind, beyond a basic patrol cutter like the ones the Sepians used, usually had to be bought at a hefty price, but they had the advantage of being fairly well designed, decently optimized, and it sidestepped the issue of having to go through the nightmare of designing your first warship for most systems. Of course, the Dominion didn't sell the schematics for hyperspace capable warships -they were generous, not crazy-, but it hadn't taken long for most systems to trade some weapons and crew capacity for a civilian grade hyperdrive straight off of a freighter. The Dominion frowned upon that, which was...fair, given the atrocious civil war it had fought, but the Protectorate's charter tied it's hands, and it could only issue some token protestations.

"Any of them hyperspace capable?"

Elteria chuckled.

"Only for the Vigilance frigates, but I'd say a good half of them yes." The AI blinked. "I wonder why they didn't upgrade them all..."

"Hyperdrives are expensive, and given the frenetic activity I'm seeing in here, their version of a parliament is probably making a very good case for using them to power freighters to carry their goods rather than waste it on the military."

"Fair enough. Well, in any case-" Elteria froze briefly." Status change! One of the frigate monitors on patrol is changing course, they're coming straight at us! Missile range in 1 hour, 12 minutes."

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Sarah opened her mouth, then closed it as the communication officer straightened in her chair.

"Captain, I have the Calver System Defence Fleet Monitor Ceaseless Vigilance on the line." Said the coms officer.

"Well, at least they have the politeness to call quickly. Put them through."

The main display flickered, then a holographic screen replaced it, showing a man with the blondest beard Sarah had ever seen.

"Eternal Seeker, this is the Calver System Defence Fleet Monitor Ceaseless Vigilance. Please state your purpose and intentions."

"This is captain Sarah Ciel-étoilé of the Eternal Seeker. We are currently conducting a standard clearing sweep on the hyperspace beacon, in preparation for the arrival of our contracted client, captain Gries Nalvan aboard the freighter Flowers."

The officer -presumably the monitor's captain, although he hadn't offered his name, but he was wearing the golden rocket insigna common to ship captains the Known Universe over-, slowly nodded.

"I see...very well Eternal Seeker. I'm sure you will have no objection to us...assisting in your patrol then?"

"None at all. In fact, we'd appreciate a second pair of eyes." Sarah smiled. "As long as we don't have to split our fee of course."

The captain looked at her, then laughed.

"Fair enough captain Ciel, fair enough. Hopefully this will just be a formality. We're just not used to mercenaries in this system, we're usually pretty quiet."

Sarah didn't even blink at the use of her shortened family name. It was...usual. Few people knew how to pronounce the syllables from the long dead French language after all. Just her luck that one of her ancestors had a fancy for old Terran culture and languages.

"If I'm being honest, we're not being this paranoid for your system captain. But our client is passing through Arion, and there have been...troubling reports as of late." Not to mention the source of one of these reports was their very client, but the monitor captain didn't need to know that.

The other captain nodded.

"I've heard some...strange reports as well from incoming ships. I understand your caution captain Ciel, although I would request that you keep a minimum distance of a hundred thousand kilometers with any other ships if at all possible."

"Of course captain."

That wouldn't save a freighter from being blasted to pieces, but it would prevent a covert boarding attempt, and it was a small concession to make for the officer's peace of mind. Besides, they were in his system, and there was no reason to upset the locals anymore than they had to.

"Excellent then. Ceaseless Vigilance, out."

Sarah sighed as the transmission cut.

"Is every system on the way going to be this paranoid?"

"Honestly ma'am?" Said Elteria. "It's when they aren't this paranoid that we should be worried."

Sarah opened her mouth...Then closed it. The AI had a point after all. Most systems that had piracy problems were either rich and stingy on defence spending...or had elements actively helping the pirates. That went double for systems with purely in-system pirates.

"Point taken. Very well, stand down from battle stations, and let's wait for our friends to emerge so we can move on. Just warn me if our monitor friend does anything funny."

"Aye aye ma'am!"

*****

In the end, rather unsurprisingly, everything went smoothly. The monitor kept a polite distance away from them, and when the Flowers arrived Gries was more than happy to confirm the reason for their presence and verify their contract. Then they'd made their way to the inner system, and carefully docked to their assigned space station. Oddly enough, it was right under the guns of one of the orbital defence platforms, one of the handful of heavy cruiser sized defensive stations made out of a hollowed out asteroid and covered in guns, whose sole goal was to protect the planet against raiders or an invasion force, but Sarah didn't mind. Mainly because she wasn't here to cause trouble....And worst comes to worst they still had 36 of their 'Freelancer' Alterian Directorate Navy missiles in the magazines. They would be more than sufficient to...reduce the fortress if necessary without giving it time to respond.

In any case, they'd arrived at the planet, and been patiently waiting for their charge to carry out their cargo handling operations, which thanks to Calver's far greater space based infrastructure, would only take a day to Sepia's four. Which brought her to the conversation at hand...

"Are you sure you want to stay here?" She asked Seria's father as she looked at the hologram of the system on the bridge, before turning around and raising an eyebrow at the old man. Well, 'old'. She was older than him by almost a damned century, but he looked old, she didn't.

"Yes." Said the man, not even blinking. "It is far enough away from our home that I doubt anyone would come seek us out, and, well....this place, it is permeated with an....energy. Folks on Sepia are content to let things lie, and gently take their course, exploiting Sylvis' biochemicals and slowly growing. The people here....They're different. They have ambitions, good, honest ones, not the twisted madness of the SLF. They want to make their system into a home for their people, and a beacon of hope and advancement throughout the sector. This calls to me, and my dear wife." He turned his head and smiled at his wife, who smiled back. "Agrees. So do my daughters for that matter." Seria and her little sister behind him nodded, and Sarah nodded back.

"Very well, in that case I will arrange transport to the planet, but I cannot guarantee that they will accept your settlement request." Most systems didn't actually care about who emigrated or immigrated from them, for the simple reason that humanity's technology had evolved so far that basic necessities and amenities were basically given for free by the government. It wasn't necessarily out of the goodness of their hearts, but food and basic entertainment was so cheap to mass produce it was simply more economic to just keep the populace happy via those programs than to clean up the potential riots. Calver however was a bit more...odd. Mostly because they really, really needed a lot of qualified personnel to run all of their orbital and surface habitats, since the planet was a barely habitable hellscape, despite being the seat of government.

"I believe we will not be turned back. My daughter traces after our steps, albeit in a more....militaristic direction. My wife and I are fully qualified engineers, and this system seems in dire need of people of our talents."

Sarah nodded. She was a bit surprised, but she shouldn't have been. To be honest, she'd been too busy running the ship and just talking to her crew to mingle with the ship's passengers.

"Very well then. In which case, I bid you farewell, and good luck mister Haven. May this system prove more hospitable than the previous one."

"Thank you captain. And please, take good care of my daughter." Said the old man as he extended his hand.

Sarah smiled as she grabbed his hand and shook it.

"I will." Her smile turned into a grid. "Although so far, it's been the opposite!"

A good hearted laugh swept the family, before they left towards the airlock, directed by Elteria, and Sarah turned back to the system plot. Technically she should be seeing them off herself, but....well, Seria was going to be separated from her family for the rest of her life most probably. The least she could do was give them some privacy to have their final goodbyes.

*****

"Does it....ever gets easier?"

Sarah looked up from her datapad as Seria walked up to her command chair, and whispered the question.

"What does?"

"Leaving home, your family behind. I already did it once, when I left for the academy. I thought...I thought it would be easier this time, but....it wasn't. It really, really wasn't."

Sarah sighed.

"The circumstances were different -you knew you would be coming back then-, but....no. It never gets easier."

Seria nodded, then put her hand on Sarah's shoulder.

"I'm sorry for bringing it up. I...at least I still have a home to go back to." Sarah looked up in surprise, and Seria smiled sadly. "I'm not a psychologist captain, but that doesn't mean I'm blind. You're exiles. Most of your crew, anyway. I can almost feel it when I talk to them. And, well....few people from the Near Verge would chose to come here by choice, not if staying in their home space was an option."

Sarah froze, then nodded wordlessly, and Seria smiled again, before leaving the bridge.

"Told you she was quick." Said Elteria as her hologram materialized by Sarah's side.

"Yes. Yes you did." Sarah shook herself. "Alright. Next destination?"

"SSX-M-156-344-115-93." Elteria shivered, and Sarah knew it wasn't just for effect. "This one is...going to be hard."

"Shattered Systems always are. Just make sure the word is passed around, if anyone wants to make any prayers or contact clerics, now is the time."

"Aye aye ma'am."