Federation Reborn 2: Pirate Rage (52 page)

He still needed Admiral Irons' approval to get it done. Fortunately for him the admiral was in full agreement that it was necessary.

The other source was from a brother of a spacer who'd served on a freighter transporting goods to the system. That source had been in Antigua, and Lake had leaned on him hard to get more information, even resorting to alcohol and drugs to loosen his tongue. He'd been smashed before the story had poured out of him.

Apparently, his older brother had told him over beers that he'd seen and heard scuttlebutt about the planetoid. According to the rumor mill, it had been under construction and undergoing drive testing when a Xeno fleet had attacked the star system with a nova bomb.

The skeleton crew had performed a blind jump to outrun the nova blast. They had ended up adrift in an empty system somewhere on the outer edge of the galaxy. The ship's hyperdrive was down, most likely out of power. Since they had a reasonable idea of how far along she'd been built, they'd guessed that she had fortunately only minimum energy mounts, as well as no missiles in her armories, and only minimum stores on board.

According to the story the crew had been found in stasis. If that was true, then there was an additional tentative supposition they could draw. The crew couldn't evacuate, which meant that she
might
not have taken on her compliment of parasite ships either. Otherwise they would have evacuated.

And for some reason they hadn't given off a distress signal either. Perhaps because they'd fled towards what had thought to be enemy controlled space? He wasn't sure.

He ran through the specs of the
Olympus
class, staring at the holo. He'd only been peripherally involved in the design so it was coming back to him slowly. He really preferred multiple platforms for redundancy. Having that much manpower and engineering time tied up into one unit was a waste to him. It took a first-rate shipyard nearly two decades to build the thing. The material requirements … you could build a
dozen
fleets with the material it took to make one of the damn things.

Most of the battle planetoids didn't have hyperdrives. They were purely sublight defensive platforms designed to defend critical star systems. The
Asgard
, and later the
Olympus
classes, were the first to have hyperdrives. They were designed to project firepower, dominating star systems, to be mobile fortresses and bases. Death Stars indeed. He shook his head.

The antimatter needed to run the ship for a week was enough to power five entire
fleets
for nearly six standard months. Insane. The surface area that the shield nodes had to cover was another thing. But the firepower! That had been the major selling point of a battle planet for centuries. That and the fact that it could service smaller ships in bays inside it. It hadn't been until the Xeno war where gravity bombs were developed that could crack planets or planetoids easily that the admiralty had finally come to realize that the things were death traps. That hadn't stopped their production apparently, he thought blackly.

One of the things that strategic admirals loved about it was that they could drop them anywhere in subspace or even tuck them away in hyper and then use them as bases and shipyards, turning fleets around to hammer at the enemy. They had done just fine with a proper fleet support force before he thought sourly.

"This says they are focusing on salvaging her. Are they serious about attempting to get her hyperdrive going? to do what? get her to Horath like they have with the other ship's and tech they've scavenged?" Sprite asked, highlighting a section of text.

"Possible," Monty said, not committing to it without more information to go off of.

"It would explain why they have been more focused on the core ward sectors over us until recently," Fletcher mussed.

"I'm not sure how they plan on getting past all the lockouts and getting the ship's systems online. Servicing her in an empty system must be a pain. They'd have to haul everything there. There would be nothing to use to rebuild the ship. No materials," the admiral murmured, studying the holo as it slowly turned in place on its polar axis.

"And no fuel. You can't just go out to a local gas giant to pick up antimatter," Lake said, pointing her finger to the list of antimatter reactors. She whistled softly, eyes wide. “Damn, sir! That is a lot!”

“It is. And if your intel is correct she's dry. So, they are going to need fuel for her too. I'm betting they will be setting up in a nearby star system and using freighters to move what they need into her to get her going.”

“To find it though, in all of space …”

"Well, you might find something if you look hard enough. Obviously they've been doing just that. For who knows how long."

"Stumble onto it you mean. Needle in a haystack," Monty replied with a shake of his head.

"Sometimes long shots pay off. This for example," Irons said indicating the holo report. He drummed his fingers on his armrest for a moment. "We need answers. Do we have a scout available?"

"Scout?" Sprite asked. A second window opened and ship names scrolled. "Two, but neither have a cloak. Nor do they have the legs to get to Sigma. Not the long way. They'd have to scavenge to get there and then again to get back."

"Have to have one," he muttered, rubbing his chin as he looked down, deep in thought. "We can get the specs of the most up-to-date design for one from the research center. Fab time will be a pain though," he murmured thoughtfully, eyes unfocused as he thought hard.

"A roundabout path will take a year or longer, Admiral," Sprite warned him.

"No short jumps straight in," he said looking up. The A.I. and spooks blinked at him.

"Seriously? Isn't that risky, sir?"

"No, we shortstop the jumps," he explained. Lieutenant Lake sat back, tapping the tips of her fingers together. "We jump, come out a hundred or so light hours from the normal exit, then they cloak and make their way to the next node bypassing any defenses along the way through," the admiral explained.

“Mapping them as they go too,” Monty added.

The admiral eyed him. “Well, that goes without saying. We might as well maximize our take,” he said. Monty nodded.

"They will have to be substantial ship, sir. They'd run out of fuel before they made it across the empire," Sprite said. The holo changed to one of the Horath empire. A blue path went from one star to the next. It stopped three jumps in and ten away from the reported search zone. There was a lot of empty space to cover in that void.

She'd based her search zone on the other bits of intel Fletcher had dredged up as well as the young Horathian sailor's report of his brother's travels. She'd had to do a bit of guestimating to figure out the ship he'd been on and the how far she'd been out and back in the rough window they'd gotten from their source.

"Yeah, that's a problem. They need fuel. But the larger the ship the higher a chance of detection …"

"Staging points," the intel chief said.

Sprite looked at him in amused respect. He smiled slightly. "I was going to say that," the A.I. chief of staff said.

"He's right," Irons said with a nod. "If we can dump fuel bladders in a couple of the systems, every other one we can daisy chain our way in and out."

"Antimatter would be better, sir," Fletcher replied.

"We're still a year away from building the facilities here in this star system," the admiral sighed. He knew Vestri had been working on it, but his little chat with the dwarf had changed his priorities from production to simple storage in Antigua. He had thrown together enough unmanned facilities to store a half ton of antimatter, but the placement in the star system would be critical. Keeping it near and dear was obviously out, but in the inner system was the most protected. But you don't want antimatter anywhere near your inner system. It was another classic catch-22 dilemma. So was transporting it to Antigua from Pyrax in the first place, the admiral thought. Antimatter was far more dangerous to transport than an ansible linkage.

He looked towards the holographic window. "The antimatter might work, setting up these staging platforms would take about the same amount of time as building new production facilities … and we could get the antimatter in the pipeline while we retool the power plants …," he knew the others were patiently waiting for him but at the moment he was too distracted by his thought train to care. He grimaced as a sudden thought caught him. He locked eyes with Sprite's holographic avatar. “Remind me to beef up security, and put a clamp on intel about our own production facilities. No information if possible.”

Sprite nodded, making a show of typing the note on a virtual tablet. “Now that's a nasty thought. I'd hate to have a
Bismark
breach of that magnitude.”

Monty winced.

“Tell me about it,” he grimaced again. “You were saying? Antimatter is out.”

"It …" Sprite cocked her head. "Fuel bladders and an automated beacon?"

He shook his head. "No beacon. Nothing to give away a location. Stealthed platform."

"Right."

"You’re thinking we might use it again," the intel chief mused looking thoughtful.

"Possibly," Irons said with a nod to the intel chief. Monty nodded slowly back. They had an understanding. "I can see if I can get something set up on my end. If we can get started on the cloak …"

“I don't recommend reusing it, Admiral. One shots are best. A leaving something behind and using it again approach invites a trap on the next go around,” Monty warned. “You never want to set up a pattern of observable behavior.”

“True,” he said.

“Once they get into the search area, they've got a lot of ground to cover. Also limited fuel, so they'd need to scrounge I suppose,” Lieutenant Lake said. “I don't know if we can narrow that field or not,” she said, eying the red highlighted zone. “Whatever we get we'd have to treat as suspect.”

“True.”

“They can tag a convoy. Find one going to or from
El Dorado
. If it is going to, they could trail it. If they coming from, they might get a heading to narrow the search,” Fletcher stated.

“True. Log that,” the admiral said. He looked at Sprite. “The cloak?”

"I've flagged it and sent a memo to BuShips for a meeting. Classified of course," Sprite said.

"Right," the intel chief got up. "I'll see if I can light a fire under some of my analysts. Sift through some of our other sources and go back over any in custody. Maybe we can pick up a few more breadcrumbs," Monty said.

"Good idea," Irons said with a nod. "Carry on, Captain, Commander, Lieutenant," he said, nodding to each of the spooks.

"Thank you, sir," Lieutenant Lake said as she nodded and followed her boss out. Lieutenant Fletcher came to attention on the admiral's desk and then winked out.

Sprite watched them go and then turned to the admiral. He was studying the star map. "A battle planetoid, that sure complicates things."

"Yeah," he grunted. No matter how he played it out he couldn't find a quick way in. Even the space bridge network wouldn't work … if it even existed. The Xenos had been rather good at blowing them up or mining them in hyperspace once they'd figured out how important they were.

"I wonder if she's got her internal shipyard functional? Just without power?" Sprite mused out loud. “That would explain why the surviving crew didn't their ship repaired or build an escape ship, correct?” He winced at that. "Or her … yes, this is a serious problem. If we do confirm it, what do we do about it?"

"Not sure," he muttered. "I've been trying to remember the stages of her construction and it's not coming to me. I wasn't close enough to it. We need to figure a way to kill it. The easiest thing is to strangle it of support. Cut her off or make Horath shift resources away from rebuilding it."

Sprite looked thoughtful and then winced. "So much for some quiet time for both sides to build up and train their forces."

"Yeah," he exhaled noisily. Like he had wanted to give the other side time. He'd needed it, but that old axiom about time replayed itself through his head like a mocking song that wouldn't quit.

"I wonder what happened to the crew," Sprite said softly after a moment. She turned wondering eyes to him. He grimaced.

"The A.I … I'm not sure. I'm not even sure it had an A.I. yet. You would think so, since an A.I. would speed up construction, but we both know A.I. don't like to occupy a partially built platform.,” he observed. She nodded. “We're working from suppositions built on suppositions."

"I meant the organic crew, skeleton crew actually. From the sound of it, civilian shipyard workers?"

"Ah yes," he sighed, rocking side to side. "You're wondering if they survived?"

"Any number of scenarios have jumped to mind, Admiral.
Did
they survive; if they did were they evacuated or did they go into stasis? Obviously, if they'd been evacuated, someone would have heard about it since it had happened seven centuries ago! So, if not, that means stasis. If that is so, how and if they can be revived comes into play, and how likely are they to cooperate with the Horathians?"

"That's …," Irons paused tapping his chin. He sighed after a moment. "That's a problem. Military personnel …"