Skullia-One approached the asteroid field on the outskirts of The Expanse region of Titan space like a foul plague cloud. Everywhere the pirate ship traveled it left death and chaos in its deadly wake. On their way here from the mafia world of Tuscan, they had stopped to overtake a smaller Zenith patrol vessel. A dozen landing craft hit their ship before they could mount a proper response and minutes later, dozens of bloodthirsty members of the Skullia-One’s crew swarmed through the decks, killing most of the human crew, and destroying any combat drones within.
Sabre Khan gazed out through the expansive viewport that wrapped around the front of the ship’s cabin tower, giving a panoramic view of the dark foreboding rocks floating in the distance. The light from the Strawberry Nebula was faint here, but could still barely be seen far to the West.
“Running scans Captain.” One of the pirate crew sitting at one of the science stations on the bridge spoke up.
Sabre saw their new second ship come to a stop just to their port side. His hard gaze fell absently out the viewport for a short time before he responded.
“Admiral. I have the beginnings of a fleet now. I’m no longer a Captain, I’m an Admiral.”
“Yes Admiral, right.” The Rodentia responded from his chair.
“Get Crazy Tooth on call.” Sabre commanded the handful of pirates manning the stations that made such a large ship work.
A few moments later and the Titan that he had left in charge of the new Zenith ship, which still had no name, came through an audio channel.
“Captain. I’m here.”
“Good.” Sabre mulled it over for a moment before responding further. “I’ve done some thinking. Now that we have multiple ships I’ve decided to promote you. You’re now a Captain. I’ll leave the naming of your new ship to you.”
“Very good sir.” The newly dubbed Captain Crazy Tooth responded, the glee in his voice apparent through the voice channel. “Holding position for your orders.”
“Standby.” Sabre looked over at the Rodentia that was operating the scanning station.
“There is something here sir, it’s just…hidden.”
“What do you mean hidden. Doesn’t this ship have some of the best scanners with the greatest range that Zenith has to offer?”
“Aye sir. But they have something out there. Something’s blocking our scans. Something is reflecting them.”
Sabre narrowed his one good eye out into the cosmos beyond the viewport and across the thousands of floating rocks spread out ahead of their position.
“Any natural explanation or phenomenon that could explain that?”
“No sir. Asteroid fields can be tricky sometimes. There’s a lot of material that can confuse a scanner. But not like this. This has to be some type of unknown technology jamming us.”
“Well then. If someone went to all this trouble to hide their position all the way out here in an asteroid field next to The Expanse. it would appear that we are in the right place.” Sabre’s cruel sharp smile widened across his Canid maw.
“Should I stick close in case of defenses or spread out to cover more area?” Crazy Tooth’s voice asked over the bridge’s speakers.
“Spread out. Your ship is faster anyway. Any trouble and lead it back to me.”
“Aye Captain.”
“I made you a Captain. That makes me an Admiral now.”
“Aye Admiral Sabre Khan.”
What followed next was the daunting task that made finding a needle in a haystack seem easy by comparison. This asteroid field was largely desolate, no signs of life and no records of any settlements or stations. That left dozens of AUs of large rocks to be explored, somewhere buried within, a great prize laid waiting.
The following week went by, just moving through the floating rocks and pinging scans every minute or so. For a diabolical crew such as this, sitting idle did nothing good for morale. Sabre and his men had to break up several fights during this period, and every day that went by, everyone on board became more restless.
Sabre Khan was a cunning Titan, and came by his station and reputation fairly. As the Captain of such a rowdy bunch of lawless Titans, he always had to walk a fine line of ruthlessness and mercy, while always keeping an eye out for a knife behind him. Crazy Tooth had been the only pirate on board that had grown popular enough with the men, and had enough combat experience that Sabre had long seen the signs of a betrayal coming eventually. The move to make him a Captain and putting him in the other ship was a calculated one. There was no doubt in Sabre’s mind that he would have to deal with Crazy Tooth someday, but hopefully this move would forestall that time significantly.
It was still early in the morning hours, Titan time, when Sabre Khan came aboard the bridge. He had left his men running shifts constantly to search the asteroid field even while he retired to his cabin. A thought had come to him during his evening hours alone in his cabin and it was time to post it to one of the other pirates manning the bridge.
“What about if we simply cut our engines and waited?” Sabre looked around at the four others seated around the bridge.
“Waited for what?” One of them finally asked.
“If there is a functional base out here. Then there would be supply ships that would arrive at intervals. We find a supply ship and we follow it to the base.”
The other thought this plan out before a Mustelid spoke in a gruff voice.
“That might not work sir. Or rather, it might take longer than we have supplies to wait for. If this is a Zenith Base then it’s probably largely run by drones and robots. The handful of live Titans that would be needed to ensure everything runs smoothly could last for years, maybe indefinitely with a few industrial replicators. There’s enough raw material in the field here to keep the replicators running.”
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Sabre Khan sat in the helm seat and rested his frustrated head on a heavy fist. He hadn’t drug his crew out to frontier space just to give up and leave empty handed. But at the same time, after a week of searching, he had to admit the possibility that finding a hidden base out here might be too difficult.
“This may take some time then, more than I had expected. Find a large enough asteroid to land on. We’ll take a break and send some crews out to mine some raw material to replenish our own replicators. Send word to Crazy Tooth to have his crew do the same.”
The pirate captain then angrily left the bridge and headed back to his cabin quarters to contemplate their situation further.
* * * *
Ricky did not know exactly what to expect from the world-famous city of Furwood, perhaps something like Kallerish City, cramped and neglected, with trash filled crumbling streets and enormous Astroblocs rising into the atmosphere. Maybe he half expected one of the cities like the one they’d left behind on Gunrock, many of which were built in desert badlands, with lax policing and wide-open rural spaces.
Furwood was a marvel to behold, with fancy buildings spread out as far as the eye could see, with plenty of room for everyone along the wide-open streets. Everything appeared brand new and state of the art, many of the buildings had digital and holo displays along the sides of them, but all were artistic, none were gaudy or filled with ads. The buildings and streets surrounding them were all well-lit, both from streetlights dispersed along the walkways or from the great neon buildings themselves.
“It’s incredible!” Rocco said while looking up at the neon buildings, some of which strobed artfully against the backdrop of the night sky.
“Kallerish has a district sorta like this.” Bingo responded. “The downtown Citadel District. It’s home to all the high-ranking members of the Trade Alliance. It’s strictly gated though. Regular Titans like us would never be able to just stroll around like this.”
“How would you know then?” Ricky asked.
“I was allowed access once for a repossession.”
“Fair enough.”
The group continued walking into the city and soon found themselves dumped out onto a tightly populated street that looked like a popular hub. Dozens of outdoor alfresco eateries were filled with well to do Titans, talking and drinking overpriced liquor and laughing among themselves. Ricky watched some of these city dwelling Titans with a mixture of awe and repulsion, being a sight he had never witnessed like this.
Regardless of where you went on Titan, somewhere in the wastes where roving gangers and warlords fought for scraps or in the big cities where the majority of the population toiled their days for meagre credits enough to keep them in shoddy apartment habs, alone and miserable, life was difficult.
Coming from Gunrock, a land where nearly everything in the native wildlife could kill you, the brothers were not used to this sight of…easy luxury. These Titans did not have to worry about their own safety, and had probably never had to worry about where their next meal would come from either. Easy living, soft living.
Even the Titan civilians that were walking out at night down this street were at ease. They did not seem to worry about dangerous gangs or criminals waiting to take advantage of them behind every shadow.
“Something on your mind, Gunrock?” Amiga was suddenly by his side, with a slight smile she addressed the Procyon.
“Look around. I’ve never been to a place…less dangerous. These Titans aren’t looking over their shoulder, they don’t have a care in the world.”
“I noticed. We might be the only armed Titans in this area.”
“Right. We stick out. Like sore dewclaws.”
Ricky now noticed it more as they traveled. Their tightly packed group moved through and among other groups of urban Titans, and were in fact drawing distrustful looks from the locals. It was obvious that they were not natives and probably did not belong.
“Let’s find a different route through here, we’re drawing too much attention.”
At that exact moment, a lavish limousine pulled up in front of what appeared to be a popular nightclub or bar just down the street in the direction that they were heading. It was dim over the sounds of the other crowds of Titans strolling around the area, but the sounds of deep bass pounded out into the night from inside the neon encased building.
“Must be someone important.” Amiga remarked, watching the same spectacle that he was watching. A sudden crowd of Titans swarmed and surrounded the vehicle, desperate to catch a glimpse of the celebrity within.
“Good, maybe they’ll pay attention to that tosser and ignore us for now.” Ricky laughed.
* * * *
Chief Operational Officer Zhenka was just preparing for bed. His life had been chaotic since the embarrassing defeat his office had suffered at the hands of some rebels in the low rent ghetto in Kallerish City. He knew it was just a matter of time before the hammer fell hard on him, even the highest offices within Zenith Corp were all too replaceable, and there was a never ending line of Titans willing to step into the role should he be deposed.
Zhenka had not come to his position by not outthinking all of his competitors and adversaries and though his situation was still stinging and recent, he had not been idle in his defeat. He had diverted a sizable amount of resources to locking up the Astroblocs in the area and monitoring any activities that could have had any connection to this rebel uprising in Kallerish.
That’s why it came as little surprise when his Net-comm lit up with a Titan-to-Titan call coming through. The Jackal sat up in his bed, he had yet to turn out his lights, so his palatial room was still illuminated when he accepted the call.
“Boss, are you ready for this? I got good news.”
“Don’t announce you have good news, just relay the information.” Zhenka scolded his secretary on the other end.
“Right. Well, the satellite facial recognition just found a match to the security footage from Towerview Astrobloc and the detention facility in East Alton. We’ve positively matched two of the Procyon raccoons that murdered Trade Alliance’s Chief Security Officer Rymond.”
Now Zhenka was sitting bolt upright in bed and began tossing away the covers to rise to his feet and escape the trappings of luxury. He enjoyed them enough, but it never felt completely familiar to him, having served in the military for two decades before rising to his current position within Zenith Corporation.
“Excellent, where?”
“Of all places, they are strolling casually down the Sunset Mile in Furwood.”
“Right. Get me a detail and have a transport pick me up at my building. Gather whatever security you can in the area. I’m going to travel there immediately and this time we won’t underestimate them. Bring in Abyss and Agrippa.” Zhenka referenced his personal bodyguards, which had been a part of Bio Dynamic’s secret bio-weapon program.
“Sir, you can’t leave just yet.”
“This is of the utmost importance. I have to take care of this. At this point my job is probably in the balance.”
“Yeah, it’s about that. I got a message from Zenith. You’ve been summoned. Nine-Thirty in the morning.”
“From Zenith? I’m the C.O.O., the board is summoning me?”
“No sir, Zenith is summoning you. The master A.I.”
“Oh.” Zhenka responded dumbly. In all of his years as a military officer, and now as C.O.O. of Zenith Corporation, he had never had an audience with the system itself. Oh, it was common knowledge that nearly all technology on Titan was interconnected with a central artificial intelligence, one that it was said reached technological singularity called artificial general intelligence decades ago. That theoretically meant that the intelligence outgrew Titan science altogether and could perpetually upgrade itself.
Despite that, Zhenka had never viewed this all-encompassing system as an entity. He had never received an audience with it and hadn’t even considered such a thing a possibility.
“Very well. Send my bodyguards immediately and get word to the local officials to apprehend these Titan fugitives at all costs.”