Chapter 46

"Colonel Jun, why haven't we been allowed to depart yet, I don't understand?" Mingyu asked his STO contact and former Coalition shipmate.After reporting the pirate takeover, they had been sequestered in this damn military outpost for months. His crew's morale was at an all-time low thanks to being cooped up aboard the Destiny. It wasn't a luxury ship, most of the time when they were on a long deployment, people were working and keeping busy. They didn't even have that now. The only spot on the station open to civilians was the lounge. And there weren't any more amenities there than aboard his ship. He didn't even want to go into how the children and Headmaster Wong were faring.

Mingyu was pretty sure if he didn't do something soon, the man was going to go to the nearest STO officer and tell them he was kidnapped just to get off the ship and away from the kids who were even more cranky than his crew.

"Look, Mingyu, I'm doing my best. After you requested my aid with those guests of yours half a year back, I don't have nearly the same pull around here as I used to. Someone reported the training exercise to my superiors back on Earth."

He winced at that. "I'm sorry. If I had known, I wouldn't have called in the favor."

The Colonel shrugged. "I was glad to finally pay it off, even if it cost me the chance of moving up in my career. Something that was unlikely to happen anyway considering my previous time with the Coalition. The problem here is the STO is trying to hide just how bad this pirate infiltration was."

"It wasn't just Petrov then?" Mingyu asked in surprise. Pirate attacks on border systems weren't exactly rare. It's why Petrov station had hidden weapons systems. But a concentrated attack on multiple places at once was new.

"I shouldn't even be telling you this but I feel I still owe you at least this much. Eight stations and three outer systems fell to the pirates on the same day. It was a well-thought-out, well-coordinated attack. From what I gathered, the STO upper brass are deciding if they even want to commit resources to retake these systems."

"That's ridiculous! They can't just let the pirates do as they wish, it will only make them push for more."

The man nodded. "I know that and you know that, but the STO brass can't see beyond a spreadsheet. And right now that spreadsheet says the cost outweighs the benefit."

Mingyu cursed, something he hadn't done in years. "What does that have to do with my ship and the people aboard?"

Jun sighed. "They were debating what to do with you as well. They are afraid you'll spread the word of what happened to other systems, requiring them to act for a change. I'm afraid they just issued a no-contact alert for you as of today."

"… I don't understand. Is this something new in the STO?"

"It means no public station or planet within the STO is allowed to offer you docking or landing rights. The rule was designed to stop the spread of possible contagions. As you can see, they found other creative uses for it as well. They have also ordered the engineers here to disable your communication systems, except for a tight beam laser link for emergency use. I assume they have also flagged all your comm bands so they no longer connect to Qcomms or relay stations either."

"How can they do this? We haven't done anything wrong!" Mingyu had been a standup individual his entire life, doing his utmost to live within the law. Even when he found some of them to be nonsensical as well as a complete waste of time. And now he and his entire ship were being punished for it. How was that fair?

"I know, old friend. Unfortunately, I had no say in this order. When I tried to argue against it, they threatened to lock me up for insubordination."

"Thank you for trying. What am I supposed to do now? We can't stay here. This ruling is essentially a death sentence, without the bother of taking us to trial."

"Now you're just being overly dramatic. It'll be tough, that's true. But you can still do emergency docking and refueling at any Navy yard. There are also legitimate places outside the STO's borders that you can go. You asked me about a ship a few months ago?"

As if those places would be safe. Most were probably pirate hideouts masquerading as independents. "Yes, the Zephyr."

Jun nodded. "You're in luck. A fleet station in Varlen pinged them, along with a Mercenary ship heading for Y6X-3H2. If those are friends of yours, I suggest you start there. It's well outside STO jurisdiction so they would have no reason to uphold this order. And it's likely safer than anywhere else you might randomly stumble across."

Things had become so hectic that he had forgotten about asking Jun to give him a heads-up on the ship if he could. He had been curious about where Alexander might have gone after learning he left on the ship. And now he knew. He didn't begrudge the man for leaving after how the Council had treated him. He would have done the same in his shoes. Mingyu wanted to apologize to the man and try to forge an actual working relationship with him if he could. That was before he was chased out of Gliese 667. Now… now, it sounded like this system Alexander had gone to might be his only safe harbor.

Jun was correct, it would be difficult. Mingyu didn't even know where either of these systems were or what awaited him there. He gave it a fifty-fifty shot on whether or not Alexander would be happy to see him if he arrived. Or if he would even be welcomed into the system. You didn't move outside colonized space because you wanted uninvited visitors.

If he had any other option, he would have picked it. But this STO ruling effectively cut him off from any allies he had that weren't stationed in military posts like Jun. And he had few of those as it was.

The Destiny would eventually need service and repairs as well. The Navy yards would provide consumables because they were bound by law to aid any ship in distress, but even those would be at a premium. He winced at the thought of how expensive any repairs might be.

With a quiet sigh, he nodded to Colonel Jun and headed back to the Destiny to inform the crew they were leaving. If his crew didn't mutiny against him on this journey, he would consider himself lucky.

***

Alexander lifted one of the heavy beams in place as an engineer welded it to the one below. It had taken a few iterations, but he had finally come up with an acceptable design for a railgun emplacement.

It reminded him of old satellite dishes. The half-moon portion sat below the ground and acted as the weapons inclination adjustment and reloading system. Along the perimeter was a rotational actuator that controlled the rotation, obviously.

The reloading system was at the bottom center of the dish. It meant the weapon would have to point straight up for reloading, which wasn't ideal for aiming purposes but was the best method he could come up with at the moment. Placing it anywhere else in the pit meant the gun would have to lower itself and rotate back to the loading mechanism, and then back to the target before it could fire again.

An autoloader attached to the back of the gun would eliminate that issue, but that added unneeded complexity and weight to the part of the gun that moved. Having the autoloader as a stationary component at the bottom center of the pit eliminated those issues and allowed the loader to store way more darts than it could if it was attached to the gun.

With his design, it only had to get back to the correct elevation. Doing it this way also allowed the gun to rotate the full 180 degrees vertically in the cradle because there weren't bulky autoloader components in the way.

Technically the weapon could even point down. But he had put limiters in to prevent that sort of situation from happening. He didn't want some accidental discharge going into the very delicate internals of the emplacement if the elevation system failed for whatever reason or the cables to be ripped out if the gun got confused on orientation.

There were also some hard-coded limitations built into the program that Lucas had coded for him. It prevented the gun from firing at the facility, or while it was below the protective hatch that would protect it from the environment. Whenever they got it put into place, that is.

The limitations on the weapon did leave a blind spot in the defensive envelope around the facility though. After talking it over with the Hawks, Alexander implemented a second railgun design that would be placed above ground that would be covered with a dome. These smaller railgun emplacements were not much bigger than Alexander's first design test. The kinetic darts they delivered were about the size of a marker instead of the much smaller ones he used in his initial test.

As with the guns themselves, his ammunition went through a redesign. Instead of having fins that stuck out past the core, the rear tapered to a point and the fins maintained the original diameter all the way back. It looked like a pointed teardrop with fins. He didn't have any research to say which was better, but his tests of the new ammunition showed they didn't lose velocity as quickly, and they were still stable in flight. That was all that mattered to him.

The larger emplacement that he was working on fired kinetic darts around the size of a can of spray paint. That was a whole lot of mass and a whole lot of energy. With as much power as he was pumping through the railguns, they should be capable of hitting anything in orbit, but not much beyond that. While not ideal, their main use was for shooting at ships in low orbit or anything trying to land that wasn't authorized. And if he ever got around to it, he might even be able to find a suitable explosive to pack inside the darts. He wasn't sure if the darts would do more damage as is or with an explosive inside them. That would take more testing to figure out at a later date.

Alexander would have preferred to use a smaller projectile, but the static shielding ships used to deflect space debris were strong enough to redirect smaller projectiles. It apparently added a considerable amount of counteracting force as well, which reduced much of a projectile's punch. The round had to be large enough to overcome both if it had any hope of punching through a ship's hull. He didn't have exact numbers, so he erred on the side of caution and went as big as he could. Captain Matthews said the size should be fine, so Alexander went with it.

He wished he had time to study the static shielding system to figure out how it worked. According to Travers, static shielding was mostly useless planetside. Something to do with power draw as it almost constantly had to push atmospheric particles out of the way. He still made a mental note to look into in the future.

The man welding the beam in place finished up and Alexander released his hold. The first railgun cradle was almost complete. A few more supports, and then the gun and power systems could go in. They were already built and waiting, it would just take some assembly. Alexander made that process as simple as possible so it didn't even require engineers. Just move them into position and stick them together.

He wanted the design to be as simple and straightforward as possible because they needed to build six of the large railguns to cover all the blind spots around the massive complex. There would also be twelve of the smaller railgun turrets. Two for each landing pad. Then each entry would be fitted with an automated turret inside that would drop down from the ceiling with two of the flechette rifles inside it.

Was it overkill? Probably. Did Alexander care? No. Well, he only cared that it delayed his actual engine-building work. But safety had to come first. Sёarch* The Nôvel(F)ire.nёt website on Google to access chapters of novels early and in the highest quality.

The security room was also getting an overhaul. Alexander pushed a few projects farther down his list and used his limited supply of advanced computer chips for the new defensive center.

All of the computer coding came from a very excited Lucas. When Alexander told him what he planned to do, the man could barely contain his excitement. Even the taciturn Damien seemed less unhappy about this project than most everything else.

He was holding the final piece of the railgun mount when his radio buzzed. Alexander excused himself and put down the support as he grabbed the radio.

"This is Alexander." He hadn't figured out a way to communicate via radio with his body yet, so relying on the small handheld units provided by the Hawks was the best he could do.

"Alexander, it's Martinez in the security center. Our sensors just picked up a ship jumping into the system. Figured I would give you a heads up."

"…Um. Ok." He didn't really know how to respond to that. The Hawks were still in orbit, they would deal with any hostile vessel that came through. And if it wasn't hostile, they would tell him. "Thanks," he finally said. Maybe giving a radio to the person watching the asteroid cameras wasn't the best idea. Then again it was infinitely better than having Yulia woken up every time a ship jumped in and the facility alarms were triggered.

A few minutes later, he got another radio message. This time from the Talon. "Mr. Kane, It's Captain Matthews. We have received a tight beam comm message from the new ship. The Captain claims to know you and is asking if they can approach the planet."

Someone who knew him was here? He had no clue who that could be, Jasper wasn't due back for a few more weeks. "Who is the Captain?"

"He says his name is Captain Mingyu Na. Ring any bells?"

Alexander paused. What the hell was one of the Council Captains doing way out here?

"Yes, I know him. I'm not sure what he wants from me, though. Is his ship capable of landing?"

"No," Matthews stated flatly. "It looks like a large mining ship if I had to guess."

"Tell him it is okay to approach. I will speak with him in a few days."

Matthews acknowledged the order and closed the radio connection. While he didn't think Na was here for nefarious purposes. There was the possibility his ship got hijacked in Gliese 667, or that he was being coerced somehow. Deciding not to risk it, Alexander urged the engineers to complete the first gun emplacement before the ship arrived. At least then they had some protection if things turned south. Not that he thought the Talon couldn't handle a single mining ship, he would just feel better not relying on them completely.