Chapter 49

LOCATION: PETROV STATIONSYSTEM: GLIESE 667

DATE: 2399

Harlow luxuriated in the plush chair as he bit into the ripe apple, savoring the sweet juice as it ran down his throat. The members of the Council sure did know how to live comfortably. He let a little sigh of pleasure escape his lips. "It's been far too long since I've had an apple. Have you ever tasted one, Zhang? And I'm not speaking about the vat-grown shit you spacers call food, but a real planet-side grown apple?"

Zhang didn't answer, he only stewed. Harlow glanced over the wooden desk at the man chained to a small platform below. They were in the once prestigious Court of Affairs building on Petrov Station. It seemed fitting, but his little puppet wasn't in a very talkative mood, that was a shame.

Harlow chucked the apple at the big man, hitting him in the leg. "I asked you a question. I expect an answer."

"No," the man growled in reply. "I did what you asked of me, why am I in chains?"

"Did you, now?" Harlow asked as he sat up. "When did I ask you to kill Kovalenko and Hoffman?"

"They would have reported your involvement in their trials."

Harlow laughed and leaned back again, kicking his feet up on the expensive wooden desk. "Unlikely. Those two idiots didn't know I was the one backing them."

"I thought you said—,"

Harlow waggled a finger at Zhang. "You thought… see, that's where you went wrong, Zhang. I don't pay you to think. I pay you to carry out my orders."

The door at the end of the hall creaked open and Ingrid Liu walked in followed by a few more of Harlow's personnel who had infiltrated station security. Could it even be considered infiltration if the Council were the ones who hired them under his orders? He shrugged and looked at Ingrid. She stared back at him hungrily.

The woman was always a bit of a handful, but he knew what she wanted. Ingrid Liu wanted to be the sole family in charge of Petrov Station. When she had first approached him with her plan, he had been surprised. Surprised she had figured out what ship he was hiding on and that she was audacious enough to come straight to him to suggest it. At the time she wasn't aware that he was already undermining the station through Zhang, Kovalenko, and Hoffman.

"Ingrid, it's been far too long," Harlow stated as he got up and walked over to the woman, pulling her into a passionate kiss before pushing her back. Ingrid hissed angrily, but not about the rough treatment. He would love to continue their reunion, but he had important matters to complete.

Harlow turned back to a very surprised Zhang.

"See, the thing you don't understand, Zhang is that I don't put all my eggs in one basket. …Do you spacers even understand that saying? Probably not. Doesn't matter." Sёarch* The Novёlƒire.n(e)t website on Google to access chapters of novels early and in the highest quality.

Harlow paused in thought, not because he forgot what point he was trying to make but because he liked to build tension. It was so fun watching his victims squirm. "…Where was I? Ah right. You failed me once, but I'm a reasonable man. I understand mistakes are inevitable. So I give people an opportunity to make amends, to correct their mistakes."

He sighed dramatically. "Then you killed Kovalenko and Hoffman, forcing me to move up my plans before I was ready, which allowed Na to escape. His loss isn't much of a concern in the grand scheme, the station is mine after all. But it irks me that your careless actions caused me distress. Do you know how long I have planned this takeover? A long time. And your little stunt put all that in jeopardy because you weren't afraid for me but for yourself. It's a good thing I had people in place already, if not, things might have turned out wildly different. That's failure number two. A foolish man might think that was just a coincidence. I didn't get to be a pirate lord by being foolish though." Harlow snapped his fingers and the four guards standing around Zhang began to beat him. Not with stun sticks, but with good old-fashioned clubs.

The big man collapsed to his knees and Harlow raised his hand to forestall more punishment.

"I'm sorry, I swear I won't fail you again!" the man wailed in pain.

"I believe you," Harlow nodded. "In fact, I'll even let you go spend some time with Captain Yuchen and Captain Weiss. Neither seemed all that cooperative. Perhaps you can talk some sense into them. If you do, I'll forgive this transgression."

Another nod to the guards, and they began to drag Zhang from the room.

"Ingrid, Dear. Please go make sure Zhang doesn't screw this up."

She smiled, "I would be glad to."

After the woman turned, Harlow made a cutting motion across his throat with his thumb. The guard smiled and nodded.

Once the room was empty, Harlow dropped back into the chair behind the desk and waited for the large holo-screen to flicker to life. A scene much like this one had played out a few months ago. The lights outside the hatch started flashing and four flailing forms were launched out into space. The last of the families who controlled Petrov Station were now out of his hair.

He would have loved to keep Captain Liu around but the woman was far too ambitious for her own good. She would have become trouble at some point, better to just get rid of her now and avoid it altogether.

All of the first steps in his plan were falling into place. His comm chirped as he was watching the last of the life leave the foolish Council members. "What!" he demanded, annoyed at the interruption.

"I would think you'd be in a better mood now that your plans are in motion, Brother."

"What do you want, Arkonis? I have more pressing matters to tend to than listening to you."

"Oh, nothing much. I found some information you might be interested in trading a favor for. That's all."

Harlow snorted. "What nonsense are you talking about? It would have to be worth more than my flagship for me to even consider offering you a favor for it instead of cred."

"Who knows," his brother replied cryptically. "Last I checked, you were very eager to learn the whereabouts of that engineer that slipped through your grasp. I just happen to know where he is."

Harlow sat up. "How? Where?" he demanded. He had learned about Kane back when everyone else had learned about the man. But unlike the imbeciles running Petrov Station, Harlow had seen his potential right away. The first giveaway was that Omni didn't get personally involved with useless people. They also didn't pay out hundreds of millions of credits for nothing. He also had access to information that none of the other parties involved did. Mainly the footage from the one Coal brother's implant that his man in Petrov's security wiped before handing the original footage over to him. So he knew without a doubt that Kane had been building weapons.

Seeing his face in the doctored footage was a bit surprising. He would have beaten the mercenary to death for the insult if the idiot hadn't already met his fate in the cold embrace of space. Luckily, implants stored the original footage if you had access to the hardware. His people had extracted the fake eye before the man tumbled out of an airlock.

If a man like Kane could create weapons and improve on Omni's designs, what else could he do? Harlow wanted him. And he was willing to go to great lengths to acquire his prize.

"Not until you agree," his brother said.

"Fine. Where is Kane?"

"He's in a system on the other side of STO space. The locals call it Eden's End. Some of Katalynn's people have raided the planet over the years. Small timers. Not much worth taking, and a large group of drifters have taken up residence in the facility where Kane resides. The contact who reached out to me said Kane let them stay. The man has a bleeding heart. Should be easy enough to force his hand."

Bah! Drifters were worse than rats. They scurried everywhere and stole everything that wasn't bolted down. Even that didn't stop them all the time. He hated them for the same reason he hated the other pirate lords, they took things that should rightfully be his. As for Katalynn, Harlow didn't have much to say about his female warlord counterpart. The woman had the personality of a brick and a face to match.

"Do we have anyone in the area?"

"I might have some, for the right price."

"You can take whatever you want from the facility. The only thing I want is Kane. Bring him to me alive and in working order, and you'll have your favor. Fail… and I might just find myself with one less brother."

Arkonis chuckled at that. "I don't fail. I already have a plan to get to Kane. It may take a bit though. He has some mercs running protection. Once they're gone, I'll move in."

Harlow could wait, he was a patient man. After all, he had waited many years to get to this point. He wondered what his younger self would say if he could see him now. Harlow somehow doubted the snot-nosed raider, drunk on his own invincibility and enough alcohol to drown a horse would have even considered anything. His younger self wasn't much of a planner or thinker. It had taken being stranded on a nearly dead planetoid for four months, after a failed attack against an STO battle group, for him to seriously reconsider his priorities.

***

LOCATION: FLEET HEADQUARTERS

SYSTEM: SOL

Admiral Clemont strode down the corridor, scattering Navy personnel as he moved with purpose. He didn't even bother returning the salutes as he made his way into the conference room.

There was a loud clamor as he opened the door. He let his gaze slide over everyone present as well as the holographic representations filling the other seats.

"Admiral on deck!" the guard at the door shouted.

The room went quiet as everyone who was here in person stood and saluted him. This time Clemont returned the salute. Then he nodded to the STO leadership who was attending remotely.

"You're late!" the Chairman stated at the announcement.

The door closed and the marines standing guard exited the room.

"Apologies for my tardiness, representatives. I was receiving a last-minute update on the situation with the pirates."

"I doubt anything has changed in the last hour," the Chairman huffed in annoyance. "Please just get on with this meeting, I have an important dinner party to attend in two hours."

Clemont despised the current Chairman from Borrus, then again, he didn't much like any politicians. Too stuck up their own backsides for their own good. "No further attacks," he stated as he sat down. "That doesn't mean the situation isn't fluid."

"You act like this is a war, Admiral. This is just the pirates acting out. They do this from time to time. Soon, they will devolve into infighting amongst their families like they always do. Then the fleet can push them back to their borders," the representative for both Malis and Malik, the twin planets in the Tau Ceti system responded.

Considering Tau Ceti was the home system of Omni, he would have thought the representative of that system would be pushing for an all-out war. War meant more profits for Omni after all.

After a bit of thinking, he recalled a report stating Omni was receiving increased criticism for some of its actions. It might be something to look into. While he didn't care much for the monolithic manufacturer, his predecessors had burned the bridges for any other companies to even offer a competing product, even if that product might be slightly worse.

"The previous pirate incursions lasted days at most, this incursion is going on two months already. It is also important to note that none of their previous attacks were ever as coordinated as this one. I believe we should treat it as a declaration of war and respond accordingly."

His reply received a few polite chuckles from the group of representatives. None of the Navy people present laughed though.

"The pirates are not the Coalition, Admiral Clemont. Those days are behind us. They reside on one rocky planet beyond the rim. To treat them as anything other than an annoyance would be to acknowledge they have actual power. We will not be doing that unless your purpose is to make us look incompetent. Or do you think a handful of ships are capable of standing against the combined navies of the STO?"

"They hold three former STO systems and eight stations, Chairman."

Clemont could see the man roll his eyes. "They took three border worlds whose navies were made up of Coalition expatriates and a handful of undefended stations. Those systems were likely filled with traitors already. I say let them suffer the hubris of their actions, then they might learn from this. Or is this thirst for revenge a result of the bloody nose they gave one of the smaller task groups?"

The Admiral froze at that.

"Yes, I've read the reports as well, Admiral. Yet you want us to declare war on them. The cost to activate our fleets and move them out there would outweigh the value of those systems. We should have let the Coalition keep them. All they do is drain our resources without providing any tangible benefit."

Clemont wanted to yell at the man and ask him whose fault that was. The STO leadership during the war had stripped almost all industries from the former Coalition worlds, forcing them to rebuild from scratch. It was done in the name of fostering a lasting peace, but he knew it had been done to ensure those planets never became a threat ever again. Given the choice, he might have made the same decision back then, and he hated that thought.

"So we just abandon them?" Clemont asked, doing his best to hide his irritation, apparently, it wasn't good enough.

"Watch your tone, Admiral. You can be replaced. Do you know the last time I spoke with the representatives of Zarinsk, Pravda, and Volnaya, Admiral?"

He couldn't imagine the planetary governors of those captured systems communicated with the STO very often. "No, Chairman."

"It was at our last summit. Do you know which governors contacted me after news of this attack made its way through the Qcomm network?"

He was forced to reply in the negative again, which seemed to be what the Chairman had been aiming for with his questions.

"Every other governor reached out to me except those three. Now what is more likely, Admiral? That the multiple Qcomm arrays on each of those planets were taken offline simultaneously, or that those two governors and the people in charge on those worlds are allied with the pirates?"

Clemont tightened his jaw but answered the leading question. "That they have allied with pirates."

None of the other planetary representatives seemed all that shocked by this revelation.

"Exactly. So now they get to live with the consequences of their actions for a time. But I never said we were abandoning those systems. I just don't see the point of expending resources to retake them at the moment. Like I said before, the pirates will likely collapse on their own in short order like they always do. Once that happens, the fleets will be in place to take advantage of their disorganization to recapture those worlds and arrest the traitors who turned them over to pirates in the first place. That doesn't mean we won't do anything right now. The representatives have agreed that we should increase the fleet presence in the systems on those borders by twenty percent. This will reinforce the border without leaving the rest of the systems undefended. Don't you agree?"

Twenty percent? That was two ships per strike group. He swallowed his pride and replied. "Yes, Chairman. I will start issuing orders to increase guards along that border. Is that all?"

"No. Another concern is these rumors that the pirate ships are displaying certain design elements of Shican origin. Can you confirm if this is true? I thought the last time a Shican vessel was spotted anywhere was in 2350."

"2358," Admiral Clemont corrected, earning a warning glare from the Chairman.

As for what the Chairman asked, he didn't believe it to be a rumor. One of the STO battle groups had encountered a pirate fleet of a similar size. The same one the Chairman so blithely stated as having received a bloody nose. While the ships that were engaged were models from back during the war and not the newer ships that patrolled the core systems, what should have been a one-sided battle in the STO's favor had turned into a slugging match. This was unheard of in any previous engagement with the technologically inferior pirates. After losing two ships, the STO pulled back and retreated from the system, causing that system to fall to the pirates.

"Those rumors are unconfirmed at the moment," he stated.

That was technically true.

While the analysts were still pouring over the footage they received when the battered fleet made it back to the Navy yard, Clemont had already seen the footage of the battle. He was old enough that he had been in the last fleet engagement with the Shican in Varlen before the furry bastards retreated into the dark. The distinct sensor profile of Shican weapons fire was burned into his memory. He really hoped the analysis of the combat footage came back false, but he somehow doubted that to be the case. If his aging mind wasn't playing tricks on him, he would very much like to know how the pirates had gotten their hands on Shican railguns and missiles.

Every attempt to communicate with the aliens before they withdrew from this area of space had been met with hostilities. Had they come back? Or had the pirates recovered a derelict ship for study? It wasn't out of the question, studying a recovered Shican wreck was how the STO had discovered artificial gravity.

If the pirates had access to Shican tech, their threat would rise precipitously and they would be able to match the STO's current generation of ships. If he had free rein, he would take the first and second fleets and wipe the pirates out at their homeworld, leaving no survivors. Unfortunately, he was bound by his oath to follow the STO leadership's orders, no matter how much he disagreed.

He had hoped his tenure as Admiral would end in an era of general peace. But it seems that would not be the case.