The Shattering War Page 7
“All right. As you know, all but two of the freighters need a recharge. Freighter Four is not going to run at all, as the bridge has been stripped out. Freighters One and Five are at 22 percent, so good for one try at a restart. Two and Three need to be charged.” The engineer ticked off with his fingers. “There are two points. If the covert ship can dock with the freighters, now that the OP is down, it can do a recharge from the docking port just like the maintenance bots do. It can recharge the batteries in six hours per ship to at least 25 percent. The problem is maneuvering the covert ship into position. We can modify a battery charge attachment for the recharge. The other point is hooking a tractor beam coupling point on Freighter Four. These ships are not meant for tractoring. Usually a small tug or tugs that attach by magnets move them into position for offloading. Three ships are bulk carriers and can be modified into fuellers. The other two are bulk cargo and can be modified into multi-cargo haulers. As a side note, sir, one of my crew spotted two tugs just a little way in past the last freighter, Five. If we get it running quick, we can haul those tugs into the hold and take them. They could be of good use later at Conrad Base.”
“Conrad Base? Is that what you’re calling Zn2091? Interesting,” Ray said. “Lyn, what about you? Do you have a problem with going in to do the charging?”
“No. Once we launch that modified asteroid into the flyby of the station, then we are pretty well free. We could be back here in a day and can start charging. That will give us plenty of time to charge up those ships. We could even go and get those tugs,” Lyn said. “Just pray that a maintenance bot or a corvette doesn’t do a patrol while we are there.”
“Well that goes for all of us. Hmmm, okay, it’s a go. If we have time and manpower, we will take the tugs,” Ray said. “Lyn, you are going to be busy. I need that rock pushed and for you to go to the gate and get a couple of batteries and pick up the crew. Then come back, charge up two ships, and pull the tugs on board. Easy week—don’t you think?”
The table erupted with laughter as the tension released. Ray was sure that the next two weeks were going to be a bitch, but the last six months had been nothing but setbacks and victories with the organization of a company and staffing it. So what was a little theft and larceny? Hadn’t a lot of legitimate businesses started out as criminal enterprises? The next week sped past.
Lt. Commander John Ruger sat at his desk. The pile of paperwork on his desk indicated the lack of interest in his job and posting. His two-man crew was sitting at their consoles staring with boredom at their screens.
“Anything to report?” John asked as he read his magazine.
“Nah, Commander,” the one tech said. “Just the same old shit. Number four OP is still down. The mech bot hasn’t made it out that far yet. Mech bot seven is still broken down, we have had three ships drift into each other with minimal damage, and Dave’s corvette is still in need of a repair to his weapons after he popped the laser cowling in that fake fight.”
“Are the proximity sensors set up around the newer ships in from the area where OP4 is offline?” Commander Ruger asked.
“Roger that, Commander,” the second tech reported. “They are set up around the newest arrivals due to their short range.”
“Okay.” John sighed. “Anything else?”
“Just that the supply ship with the turnover crew is due in ten days. No other traffic to report or anticipated,” she replied.
“Can’t come soon enough,” the first tech said. “If I have to watch the same shit movies or play the same games much more, I am going to go nuts.”
“You just have to develop a hobby or find something else to entertain you,” she countered.
“Yeah, easy for you, Stokes. You just go down to pilot country wink, blink, and wiggle that ass, and you get all the entertainment you want. They don’t call you Stroking Stokes for nothing, do they?”
“Screw you,” she snarled back. “They call you Eric the Hand because it’s always in your hand.”
“Ladies and gentlemen, you are on duty. Please maintain some order of decorum. Save the baiting and insults for off hours,” the commander said while winking at Stokes.
About that time, a blip appeared on the console screen, and an alarm sounded. Both the tech and the commander spun to their respective screens and started studying them.
“Anomaly indicated at sector 6–4 on a collision course for the command center.” Stoke’s voice was a little shriller than usual and cut through the alarm.
“Acknowledged course,” the first tech reported. “Size is approximately 22,000 kilos, and speed is 300,000 kph. Time to our CC is forty-eight hours.”
“Hmm. I agree about 14 million klicks out now,” stated the commander. “Well, this is exciting, isn’t it? Eric, run down and stir up the corvette crew that’s on call and have them fly out to the rock and have a look. Just make sure that they’re back in time to help get the crews off the station. Stokes, keep a watch on that rock while I peruse the abandon station protocols.”
As Eric left the room, Stoke turned to the commander. “Sir, it looks like it will pass by us by about eighty kilometers.”
“Far too close for comfort. Do another long sweep of the yard and then watch that rock. We will leave when it gets within 100,000 klicks of us. Ensure that we have all this on camera and uploaded to the corvettes. Oh, just a thought, but are there any of those derelict ships in the way of this rock after it passes us?”
“Uh, just the Redwood. It could hit it,” she reported. “That’s that hundred-year-old ship that they use for target practice.”
“Well as long as we have some time, have one of the corvettes move it to a safe spot. I don’t want to have to report to the admiralty that I lost one of their pieces of junk,” Commander Ruger said. “Logging my orders now. Send a report to Fleet ASAP please.”
“Well that’s done something,” Lyn said as she watched on the screen as the corvette sped toward the asteroid. “Plot a circular course to the rendezvous point and wait for Commander Hunter’s contact.”
“Yes, Madam Dawson,” the ship’s captain replied.
“Oh hell, Captain, call me Lyn. The other sounds like the head of a brothel. I have been one of those, you know,” she said with a raised eyebrow. “All for a good cause though. Anyway, keep us hidden and inform me when we are at the rendezvous point.”
Ray sat in the steel chair of Freighter Five, and the engines were up and hot. With the power, the gravity plates activated and life support started cycling the stale air as environment set up atmospheric pressure and scrubbed the air. Also with power was the ability to open and close the cargo bay and the ability to pull the tugs inside and secure them. His crew was slowly making their way toward one of the tugs. All the crew needed to do was play out a grapple line and attach it. Problem was the tugs were two hundred klicks deeper in, and no one carried that much grapple line. The plan was for the five crews to each use a sled and push the tug. Three pushing and two pulling should start the tug on its way. When they were close, they would hook the grapple and pull it into the cargo bay.
Chief Engineer Dawson (no relation to Lyn) was working with his crews to place the three pushing sleds at a balanced point on the side of the tugs. His concern was that the tug would start to roll. He was also another thousand klicks deeper in the bone yard.
“Don, move three meters to your left and anchor yourself. Lenny, to the right of my sled by about four meters. If she starts to roll, we will have to hope that the two pullers will keep her straight.”
“Doug, do you see that bot way over there to your left? I think that it’s moving. It could be the maintenance bot,” Don said.
“Ah crap. Nobody move until we see what it’s going to do. It could be a maintenance bot or some alarm bot. Everybody, shut down, no talking. We will see what it’s going to do,” Doug whispered.
They sat and watched as the bot move
d laterally across behind them and disappeared behind another old ship. With a sigh, Doug ordered them to their tasks and radioed the puller section to start. Even with three pushing and two pulling, it didn’t seem like they were making any progress. Slowly over a period of twenty minutes, they saw that they were now moving toward the freighter as the outline of the freight was slowly becoming clearer, growing larger and crisper. They saw that the other tug was being safely pulled into the freighter’s cargo hold. Doug was happy that they were coming close to the freighter as they had all but used the maneuvering gas to get the tug to move, and now it was moving on its own. The pulling sleds had spun around and had hooked onto the same side as Doug so that they all could be used for breaking when they got within the one klick point for the grapple. Forty minutes later, the radio crackled.
“Doug, we are just about to send out the grapple. Can you grab it and hook it to the nose of the tug? We’ll bring this in nose first so that we get it in the hold easier.”
“Roger. We are ready for the grapple,” Doug replied, watching as the grapple shot out of the hold and floated toward them. It took very little effort to have one of the sleds whip out and grab the hook. They pulled it into position at the nose of the tug and radioed the okay. Slowly the tug moved toward the gaping hole on the side of the freighter.
In the meantime, the covert ship had slid over to dock with Freighter Three. The engineers in their EVA sleds had already hooked leads to the freighter electrical ports and were waiting for the covert ship to arrive. They would plug the lead into the docking port of the covert ship and transfer power, almost like jumping a car in the old days except with a lot more power. When the power rose to 22 percent, the engineers initiated a starting sequence, and the old freighter’s engines would rumble to life.
“Freighter Three charging, power at set point, we will try a start in twenty minutes. Cold start will take about twenty-five minutes to cycle through the safety protocols and at least another thirty after we get hot to get power to bridge, environment, and helm controls,” reported the engineer as he disappeared into the bowels of the ship. “We will have rudimentary communications with the bridge in five minutes.”
“Roger, please inform us as soon as we can cast off to move to Freighter Two,” came to reply from the covert ship.
Ray was now in the process of buttoning up the cargo hold after a couple of successful retrievals of the tugs. With power and life support back up, he had removed his helmet and was looking over the shoulder of the navigation officer who was trying to plot a course through the other old ships and as close to the OP as possible to hide their movements.
“How do we look, Maggie?” he asked.
“Good, sir. OP three is over there.” She pointed out the window. “When we pass, it we will be in almost a direct line to the jump point. I have slaved the computers with Freighter Five so that they will follow us. When Freighters Two and Three come on line, I can send them the jump coordinates and the path that we will take. Theirs will be a little different due to their locations but close enough to get some benefit of my calculations.”
“Very well. Can you manage to get the radio working and set the frequency on the command station just to see if they have twigged onto us? I would prefer a little notice so that we can at least launch and maneuver. As a matter of fact, tell Five to get underway and wait for us at the jump point. We might as well get as many of us out of the way of detection as possible,” Ray said. “Inform the covert that Five is going; we will wait for the others. Two and Three should move ASAP once they are hot and running. We will assist as best we can for the tethering of a tractor for Freighter Four.”
“Roger, sir. I have informed five to get underway and have started monitoring the command station. Sir, Lyn is calling you,” Maggie said.
“Put her on.”
“Ray, I agree with your idea to send the freighters off now instead of waiting. The captain and I were thinking that if you can get over to Three and start feeding power to her, we can go sooner. The engineer on Two said it will take easily an hour for the start, and it will be another hour for us to tractor four to us. That leaves us no time for the trip out,” Lyn radioed over.
“Roger, setting a course for three,” Ray said as he nodded to Maggie. “I have the spare engineers here that I can send out to four and get the tractor tether point attached. I hope you are watching what is happening at the station, Lyn.”
“Of course we are,” she radioed back. “They are just now evacuating the station. We should be good for at least three hours. If we are detected, I will let you know, and you head for the jump point. I can run interference and delay them if need be. No use in being caught over a broken freighter.”
Ray instructed the standby engineers to grab the EVA sleds and head over to Freighter Four to start installing the tractor tethering plate. His crew started hooking up power relays to Freighter Three and started charging her. Using the power coupling from his freighter to boost the starting sequence, they were able to get Three up and started sooner than thought. Ray instructed Maggie to contact them with the flight path to avoid the OPs and told them to get underway soon as possible. He had watched as Lyn and the covert ship had slipped up to Freighter Four, and after a little maneuvering, they managed to get a good tractor lock on it. Lyn had radioed that they were as good to go as they would ever be. Ray recovered the engineers, and they both headed over to the jump point just in time to see Freighter Three disappear. The little convoy of Freighter Four being towed by the covert ship and Freighter One headed for the same point.
CHAPTER 5
Building Conrad into a livable system
RUGER CHECKED HIS COMPUTER SCREEN and mentally checked off all the points on it. He was within his parameters to abandon the station in the event of a close flyby of an asteroid or any other errant piece of rock that could cause damage or injury, especially one this big. He had ordered the shutdown of the station except for essential service, so he had not been alerted when proximity bot twelve reported unusual movement in sector three. The bot would log the alarm and upload it in the next cycle along with all the other mundane reports. It would be at least a week before the station was made aware that there was anything amiss, and that would be only if they were vigilant.
John Ruger and his techs were far from vigilant. All on the station knew that this was career purgatory; there was little hope of coming back from this posting to anything in Fleet that would amount to anything. A posting for misfits, screw-ups, drunks, druggies, losers, and people with no political clout. It was no surprise that when they did discover that upload from proximity bot twelve, they just deleted it, assuming that it was an errant piece of a wrecked ship floating past, and carried on with their boredom.
Conrad Base. Ray was watching the video screen as they approached the gas giant now named Liberty One. It had been an interesting exercise to put the planets up for naming contest by the entire corporation, with the promise of a couple of extra weeks of liberty for the winners. As it stood now, a year had sped past since the formation of Conrad Corp and the infrastructure that had been required to make it legitimate and start the mining of the gas. The stolen freighters had been refurbished at a planet in the Indigo system. Their identities had been removed and new ones installed, even down to the computer core. They would pass the closest scrutiny now. There had been some converted to liquid gas haulers and two to cargo freighting, mostly bringing in supplies. The small tugs were a godsend as they helped position the extractors with their powerful engines. They had managed to procure some defunct shipping containers that they had modified into a floating space station, complete with adequate living quarters and mechanical shop. As the supplies came in, they were used to build a refinery and tank farm to build up a better inventory for increased profits.
Most didn’t know that on the planetoid Panhandle, known for the markings on the surface that looked like a frying pan handle, there wa
s a team that was busy doing excavation into the interior. The planetoid was spherical with a diameter of 2,200 kilometers and was in the Goldilocks zone. Maybe it was at one time a larger planet that broke apart, judging by the ruble that occupied its orbit, but that was billions of years ago. The planetoid was reforming and was a hard planet and not one that was a conglomerate of rocks and ice held together by minimal gravity. They had made progress in mining into the center of the planet. The plan was to hollow as much as they could and set up a manufacturing, R&D, and shipbuilding inside, away from prying eyes. The minerals and ore that they were digging up were being used to mine deeper and reinforce the cavern that was developing. Living conditions were primitive, but every day there was progress toward a goal.
Ray had been able to recruit most of the people in the lists that he had developed in the beginning, along with a secondary list developed by the recruiting committee. Sergie Raspburton had been lucky to recruit some really brilliant scientists that had been frustrated with the AGW and the constant cutbacks or even cancelling of their projects. For many, these were research of a lifetime, and to have them shut down had left them at loose ends. Already the papers being produced in the research field were staggering. Ray was glad that he could fob that onto Sergie and his scientific crew. The only problem was getting the facilities built and getting the tools and equipment and the labs up and running.
They had also sent a smaller mining crew to the second planetoid, Darcy, in the Goldilocks zone. This was a smaller ball at 1,400 klicks. They were busy mining this out, as this would be for living quarters along with warehousing. No one but Ray and his select board of directors knew that all the facilities in this system were eventually going to be heavily armed and defended.
They had a crew exploring the third moon orbiting the largest gas giant, as it was more in the way of a captured planet than a moon. They had decided to name it Caspious. There was great potential there for mining minerals, storing refined products, and deflecting eyes away from what was developing further in system. It was also ideal for an orbiting shipyard. The moon itself wasn’t suitable for habitation, having no atmosphere, but appeared stable, and the gas giant pulled all the dangerous meteors and asteroids into itself and away from the moon.