Chapter 57

The small two-man ship floated silently in the system, its passive sensors watching for any change. The boredom wasn't even the worst part, it was the smell. Their little vessel stank after having to sit out here and scout for two weeks. It probably didn't help that the individuals inside weren't the most hygienic at the best of times. Their circumstances probably wouldn't improve anytime soon either as they had another week of monitoring before another ship came to relieve them.They couldn't even get drunk anymore because their booze had run out after two days in this pointless system. The two pirates slept most of the time, played cards, or fought until one was knocked unconscious, which would have been the better outcome if the loser hadn't been forced to take the winner's shift watching the sensors.

Merkel gently touched his eye where Zarrick, that bastard crewmate of his, had given him a shiner the night before by sucker-punching him. While Zarrick got to sleep, he was stuck on double duty. The only thing worse than sleeping in this tin can was being awake in it. Merkel hated watch duty and even though he was supposed to stay alert, he nodded off a few times. Those naps didn't last long despite the fact he could barely keep his eyes open. The pain in his face kept jerking him awake. When he got back, he would find out who he pissed off to get this shitty assignment and stick a knife in them. Nobody deserved this bullshit.

As he was nodding off again, the console began flashing, jerking him back awake. It took him a moment to focus on the display. That didn't help. He was forced to use his shirt to rub the grime off the screen to even see what the alert was for. If it was one of those damn patrol ships again, he was going to scream.

What he saw was three distinct jump signatures. Hard not to see them, they were blasting the entire system with their scanners as they flew through. No pirate would do that.

Their ship was drifting dark with only emergency power on, and they were placed near an asteroid in the inner belt. The chances of the three ships spotting them were virtually nonexistent unless those ships got way closer. And he knew they wouldn't. They had picked this spot specifically because it was outside the travel lane of the scout ships. Well, technically their boss, Arkonis had chosen this spot.

Merkel doubted he would have thought about positioning himself so far away. When he ran down ships, he wanted to be as close as possible to a shipping lane so he could get the jump on his quarry.

He didn't bother waking Zarrick. Once these ships transitioned through the system, he would get them moving. If Zarrick questioned it, he would just say they got relieved early so he could claim the bonus their boss was handing out for being the crew to spot the mercs leaving. Assuming he could hide the ships from his crewmate, which probably wouldn't be hard. Zarrick was a moron. The last time Merkel had relieved him to take watch, the man had turned the console off because he said the buzzing sound was annoying him. How the idiot expected to detect anything with the console and passive sensors offline was beyond him. But his crewmate didn't seem concerned.

Merkel watched as all three ships were burning hard toward STO space. That was good. He figured roughly a day and a half, they would be out of the system, and he could report to the boss. Then maybe he could finally get in on some real action.

***

"Boss!" the communications man yelled. "Scout ships back."

Arkonis shoved the woman off his lap and sat up in the bridge chair. "They best be reporting good news. If they left their post early, shoot them."

Nobody batted an eye at that.

"They say the mercenaries pulled out three days ago."

"Bout damn time!" Arkonis clapped his hands and laughed. "Call in everyone, it's time for a big score!"

He got up from his seat and grabbed the affronted woman he had shoved aside.

The woman took a swipe at him, and he chuckled as he dodged the fist. She was certainly no delicate flower like his brother preferred. No, she was a real woman, a pirate, just like him. "Call me when we are underway!" he yelled back into the bridge as he led the angry woman back to his cabin.

***

"If our informant screwed up these orbital paths, I'll string the bastard up myself when we land. Make sure you double-check the math." The contact had sold them information on how many people were down there, the types of defenses in place, and even a general location of where they were. It was a bounty of information he would kill for on any raid. Not that Arkonis was about to trust someone who was willing to sell out their own people for a measly hundred thousand credits.

"I will boss! Although our friend here knows what'll happen to him if he tries to fudge the numbers, don't ya?" The pirate enforcer smiled a gap-toothed smile at the man chained to the pilot's station. The man nodded frantically and the rest of the crew laughed.

Their pilot had been an acquisition last year along with another ship. Arkonis had trained pilots, but it was hard to beat a former STO Navy pilot. He had been on some vacation in an outer territory when the Headhunter descended upon the hapless vessel. The man took a bit to break before he fell in line, but those days of defiance were over. It was also much quieter now that the man didn't have his tongue to flap around.

"Jump in ten," his enforcer called out. "Alert the rest of the fleet to wait ten minutes and to stagger their jumps. I don't want any hot-headed bastards giving our positions away. We need to deal with their weapons before they become a problem."

"Orders sent."

Arkonis smiled as the stars twisted around them and they vanished from the system. When they reappeared two hours later, they were facing a large gas giant, far enough away that their field hadn't been destabilized too much.

"Report!" he ordered.

"We are exactly where we expected to be, boss, right behind the largest planet in the system. If the orbital chart was correct, our target planet should be on the opposite side of the system. There's no way they could pick up our inbound jump with the gas giant masking it."

"Good, set a trajectory and go dark. We will coast in nice and slow. Once we see nothing has changed, we'll launch our present."

The ship moved and was soon on an intercept course for Eden's End. Soon other ships joined them as they jumped into the same area. As they closed the distance, their passive sensors began to get a better visual of what awaited them.

"Looks mostly the same. But the station is much larger than our informant claimed. I don't see any armaments on it, but we are still too far out to tell for sure."

Arkonis frowned at this, he didn't like surprises. "Show me the station."

A grainy image appeared on the holo display. Arkonis almost laughed when he saw the thing. "It's a refueling and dumping station. I doubt it'll have weapons. But that does help us out. Anything else to note?"

"Nothing we can see. The same asteroids where they hid their cameras are floating in orbit. No ships around the planet. Our man did say an ore hauler had entered the system, but I'm not picking it up on our passives. Maybe it left with the mercenaries? Can't imagine why it would stick around."

"Once we engage turn on active scanners. I want to know everything in this system." He really needed to invest in better passive sensors, a more updated system could pick up active transponders in passive mode. But the cost irked him.

The slow passage across the system was nearly unbearable, but they needed to get closer to deliver their gift.

After a day, he finally heard what he had been waiting for. "We're in range to fire."

"Well, let's not keep them waiting," Arkonis smiled widely.

The ship shuddered multiple times as missile tubes opened up and the rails launched their payload at the slowest possible speed. A total of twelve missiles left the ship, two for each orbital railgun installation. Thirty seconds later, one last missile left the ship. The ship was on an intercept course for the planet, and the missiles would coast ahead of them, slowly gaining distance to arrive ahead of them. When it was time, they would light their engines and streak toward their targets.

The people of Eden's End would see the weapons at that point, but by then it would be too late. Assuming their inside man had done his job correctly, there wouldn't be a single orbital railgun left standing. Arkonis hedged his bets though. That was what the last missile was for. If it wasn't needed, it could be retrieved and set into safe mode again.

It was a shame he had to destroy the powerful surface weapons, he could have easily repurposed them for his flagship. Then maybe he could carve out a chunk in his brother's new empire. Or get rid of him and take it all for himself. Arkonis smiled. It was good to have goals.

***

Alexander was working on his engine design when the facility shook slightly. Then it shook again and again. He quickly realized it was the railguns firing. An even louder boom shook the facility a moment later, followed by two more before the facility alarms finally went off. Then he heard the smaller railguns burst to life, their muted booms shaking dust off the walls as they sent hypersonic darts at something.

The overhead speaker crackled to life but fell silent almost immediately as all of the power cut out.

As soon as the power died, a red warning flashed across Alexander's internal display.

[WARNING EMP DETECTED!]

All of this happened in the span of twenty seconds. His mind quickly parsed what was going on and he decided he needed to make sure his daughter was safe. He rushed out of the room to find Yulia. The entire facility was eerily quiet until emergency lights and power started to flicker back to life. He tried the small radio he carried, but it was dead. He wondered how he was still alive. An EMP should have shut him down. Especially one powerful enough to disable power in the facility. And the fact that the guns had fallen silent was not a good sign.

"Pirate attack! Get to the shelters!" someone screamed over the comm system as it crackled back to life.

Red flashing lights and alarms began to blare across the complex as people rushed to safety.

"Alexander, report to security," Damien said over the comm, obviously replacing the hysterical man from before.

Dammit! He didn't have time to rush to security, he needed to find Yulia. But he quickly realized she could be anywhere. Without knowing where to start, trying to find her could be a waste of very precious time. Quickly debating the pros and cons of trying to track down his daughter, he turned down the next path and raced for the security station. Yulia was smart, she would go to her shelter area and Damien would not have called on him if it wasn't important.

He arrived at the security room a few minutes later. "What's going on?"

"Pirates hit three of the orbital railguns. We took out the rest of the missiles but the bastards set off a nuke in orbit," the man stated grimly. "The resultant EMP forced a system reset."

"The external defenses!" Alexander said in realization. With the facility's ancient computer core in the process of being rebuilt by Lucas, Alexander hadn't seen the point of connecting the new guns to the facility's power grid. That and the cost of running that much high-voltage cable to the gun pits had made it a low priority. It had been much easier and more efficient to just hook up his batteries to an array of solar panels. The batteries for the guns stored enough power to empty the magazines, so recharging them quickly really wasn't all that important for him. He was regretting that decision now.

"All down. Your fancy new internal defenses as well."

"What do we have for weapons?" Alexander asked instead of freaking out. If he could get out there, he could reset one of the guns.

"The pulse rifles should still work. However, they won't do much against pirates with nukes."

"If they were willing to nuke the facility, they wouldn't have detonated it in orbit. They want something, and my guess is that something has to do with me."

Damien grunted in agreement. "If I thought the pirates would simply leave us be if they got to you, I might be inclined to step aside and let them."

"How very shrewd," Alexander responded coldly.

The man shrugged. "If they wanted me and it would save the rest of the people here, wouldn't you do the same?"

"…"

"I thought so," Damien smirked slightly. "At least that makes you human."

"You need more weapons."

"Preferably. But I doubt you have time to print more, even if the printers came back online."

"They didn't," he replied. Or at least he hadn't bothered to check on them before he left to search for Yulia before being called here. "But we have CQB rifles at all the entrance turrets. Get your people down to the entrances and have them pry the turrets open. The rifles should be easy enough to remove, but they aren't exactly set up for standard use. Still, it'll be better than trying to stun the pirates."

The man nodded and sent out another communication over the station comm. "We can only hope people are in those areas. It's not like they can communicate back with us unless they get to a nearby terminal."

Alexander nodded, but the man just looked at him. He realized his holo-projector was burned out in the attack. Not this again, he groaned internally. "Do the best you can. Do you know where Yulia might be or how long we have?"

"She would have headed to her designated bunker. I don't have enough people to send them on a wild goose chase looking for her if you think she didn't… I'm sorry. As for when the pirates arrive, no clue. We don't exactly have an uplink to our satellites anymore. My guess is they would have waited well back of that detonation though. So ten to fifteen minutes before ships start descending from orbit would be my guess."

The man's rebuke over his daughter stung, but he was right. It didn't make Alexander want to punch him in the face any less though. Before he could do something rash, he stomped out of the security room. This was no time to start a fight.

"Where are you going?" Damien asked.

"To try and reset one of the railguns. Unless you think the pirates will simply sit back and let us kill them while they have a ship in orbit overhead?"

The man had no response to that and Alexander picked up speed as he raced down the hallway as fast as his servos would carry him. He had never gone full out with this body, it was time to put it to the test.

As the walls blurred past him, he focused on the problem at hand. There was no tunnel leading to the railguns, which meant he needed to head outside. He had separated the gun pits from the rest of the complex to protect it in case the weapons failed catastrophically. He never figured the failure would have been caused by pirates. If they survived this attack, he would need to address that oversight as soon as possible. Having to go onto the surface to fix a weapon platform while under attack seemed like a monumentally stupid idea. One he was about to embark on very shortly. Alexander hoped he could reset the connection to the turret or this little stunt would be a complete waste of time.

The exit door came up fast and Alexander was forced to slow as he encountered his first obstacle. The door control was burned out. He ripped a panel off the wall with a screech of tearing metal and reached for the manual release. The rachet-style mechanism was slow as hell, but he was glad it was there. After thirty seconds, he finally got the doors open wide enough so he could pass through.

The sun was beginning to set and Alexander could see the remnants of the electromagnetic disturbance over the facility from the detonation. The shockwaves resembled an aurora, it would almost be pretty if he didn't know what caused it. He didn't stand around to admire them though as he raced across the landing pad and toward one of the railguns.

As he quickly covered the distance, he could see two black clouds on the far side of the facility. And one on this side. He zoomed in on the closest cloud. There were broken solar panels and the twisted wreckage of the gun sticking out of the destroyed weapon installation. They had indeed managed to target the guns. But not all of them thankfully. The thin lines of smoke rising in the distance must have been the remaining missiles.

He quickly added them up, including the three impacts he heard. There was a total of twelve. Someone had used enough weapons to ensure two per gun. If the smaller guns hadn't come online, all of the weapons would have been turned into twisted scrap. There was no way the bigger guns could fire and reload fast enough to stop two missiles simultaneously. That meant someone knew about the defenses. Had someone betrayed them?

With that chilling thought, he pushed his body even harder, getting angry orange lights popping up in his vision. He ignored them. Alexander thought about trying to get the landing pad guns back online, but he only had time to reactivate one gun. While the landing pad guns would deter any landing for a short time, the turrets wouldn't be able to do anything about the ships in orbit. Sooner or later the pirates would destroy the smaller gun and come down.

As he neared the pit, he thanked whoever was on duty in the security room for being diligent. Any delay and the guns may not have even activated and he would either be sprinting toward a burning pit or a sealed weapon hatch.

Alexander jumped down the service ladder at the side of the gun, falling forty feet and landing with a loud boom as he hit the grating at the bottom of the pit. The metal caved in below his weight but he simply yanked his legs out of the hole and ran to the main breaker.

He flicked the breaker back on, but all he heard was a loud buzzing sound coming from the power supply. There was no sign of movement from the weapon overhead. He quickly thought over the problem. The buzzing meant the power was working. The capacitors would need time to recharge from the batteries, they were designed to dump their energy into a grounded connection if the breaker tripped so they didn't damage the wiring. But there should still be enough power to move the gun. The fact it wasn't moving, meant the fuses in the gun itself had popped. Since all of the power for the gun and the rotary mechanism went through those fuses, he needed to replace them to get it working again. Alexander designed them to be sensitive to power spikes to prevent any damage to the weapons. It seemed he would need to redesign them to take into account EMPs now.

He flipped the breaker back off before he ran over to a nearby cabinet and tore it open since he didn't have time to enter the code. He grabbed two of the massive replacement fuses and hurried over to the gun. Normally the weapon would be in standby mode for changing these out. The fact it wasn't in that mode would have been a real issue for anyone who wasn't an eight-foot-tall robot. That was another design flaw he would have to correct in the next iteration.

Alexander yanked the service panel off the weapon and pulled the blown fuses out, replacing them with the two new ones. Then he ran back over and flipped the breaker back on. Searᴄh the ηovelFire.ηet website on Google to access chapters of novels early and in the highest quality.

The gun jerked into motion and he nearly sighed in relief before it settled back into storage mode. "What! No, move dammit!"

When he looked at the maintenance terminal, he saw the gun was resetting due to numerous faults being detected.

He cursed himself for having built these failsafes into the gun as he climbed the ladder back out of the pit. The gun would take time to ensure all the systems were working properly before it would activate again. But they didn't have time.

As he exited the pit, he could already see the telltale streaks of shuttles descending from orbit. Without enhancing his vision, he could even see a ship slowing as it fired its landing and takeoff thrusters to maintain a stationary orbit over the facility. The ship had to be quite low for him to see it without zooming in. There was no more time to get any other guns working. Alexander rushed back to the facility door and shut it behind him just as he heard the flare of engines.