Blue Star Enterprises

With only a week left before the Zephyr arrived, Alexander was finalizing a few things.

“Are you ready to see your friends?” he asked quietly.

As he had promised, he brought Yulia back to see her friends at the orphanage and say goodbye. She nodded, although she looked like she wanted to cry. He had purchased a comm band for her so she could keep in touch with them even after they left. But what he hadn’t noticed until he dug into the research facility plans was that the building didn’t have a Qcomm.

Alexander didn’t want to break her heart by telling her that she wouldn’t be able to remain in touch with her friends, so he looked into getting one of these systems installed. He wished he hadn’t.

If you thought a ship was expensive, you were completely wrong. The simplest and cheapest Qcomm available was a text-only variant that cost half a billion credits. And you still had to pay for each transmission.

It was far outside his budget at the moment, but in time he hoped to have the money to purchase one. In the meantime, a courier drone was a much more manageable option. The Class 1 ships only cost a few million and would only need to hop to the nearest system with a Qcomm array to transmit and receive any correspondence. Then it would simply hop back and repeat this process until it exhausted its internal fuel supply.

Considering how far they were from STO space, that might be sooner than he liked. Alexander considered purchasing the design specifications for the ships but decided against it. He already had one ship design, and he was quickly going through the basic engineering tutorials and study work. Eventually, he would be able to design and build one of the ships himself. He would still need to purchase the Qcomm secure buffer to go along with it, but that was a much more reasonable price.

Yulia nodded at his question and tentatively pushed open the door to the orphanage. He had already scheduled this meeting with the Headmaster, so all of the children were here to greet Yulia when she arrived.

The young girl looked startled when they all cheered and rushed to hug her. He could see the moment she forgot her sadness and started laughing and playing with the other kids.

The Headmaster walked up to stand next to him, smiling. “It’s good to see she hasn’t lost her enthusiasm.”

“She is a resilient child,” Alexander remarked.

“That she is. I heard about what Captain Zhang said to you. There was no need for him to be so crass.”

“You know? How?” Alexander was actually surprised to hear others knew of his conversation with Zhang.

“The second ring is a pretty small community. Rumors spread like wildfire down here. I would be surprised if anyone on the ring didn’t know by now. News of your talk has probably spread to the upper rings as well. Any time a Council Captain gets personally involved, it's big news. It's also rare to have someone exiled.”

“That explains the lack of work I’ve had since my little chat,” he murmured.

“Don’t hold it against the people too harshly,” Wong said as he watched the children play. “The people down here are barely accepted as is. They can’t afford to get caught up in drama that could see them in a situation much like yours.”

“Fair enough,” he stated as he watched an older boy separate from the group before heading his way.

“Markus,” the headmaster spoke quietly. “I’ll leave you two to chat while I make the evening meal. You’ll be sticking around for that.”

That didn’t sound like a question, but Alexander made his avatar nod anyway.

The older boy stopped a good ten feet from Alexander and looked his body over before finally settling his determined gaze on his avatar’s face.

“You better take good care of her.” With that statement, he turned around and went back to the group.

So much for a conversation.

Before the boy got too far, Alexander called out just loud enough for him to hear. “Thank you for saving her.” He hadn’t had a chance to speak with the boy since the accident, and Markus had never come by his shop.

The boy didn’t stop, in fact, he went from a walk to a jog, but Alexander had seen the boy's ears turn red from the praise. There was one last thing he would do before leaving the station. He didn’t do it now because he didn’t want credit for it. He had set up a sort of college fund for all the current, and hopefully future children of the orphanage. He hoped the ten-million-credit investment was sufficient to ensure none of these children remained stuck on this level for the rest of their lives.

It was too bad he wouldn’t be here to see the Headmaster’s face when he got the legal paperwork. Alexander chuckled internally imagining the scene.

The meals and goodbye went on well past the children’s bedtime, but neither Alexander nor the Headmaster were willing to break it up. It was the children who eventually brought the festivities to an end when they started falling asleep.

Alexander picked up the sleeping Yulia. The girl opened her eyes briefly before snuggling up closer in his arms. Now that his body was fully repaired, he had learned a few new tricks. One of them allowed him to regulate his external temperature. He raised it to be comfortably warm for the girl so she wouldn’t need to snuggle against a cold hard exterior.

He gave one last nod to the Headmaster. The man nodded back as he prodded the older children to help him get the younger ones into their beds.

***

The day had finally come. The Zephyr would be here soon. Over the last few days, just to sate his curiosity, Alexander had asked around to see if other captains were available to transport him off the station.

Some wouldn’t even speak with him. The few that did either turned him down outright or said they weren’t taking on passengers. One Captain even said they weren’t traveling in that direction, even though Alexander hadn’t mentioned where he was going.

It was pretty much a confirmation that Captain Sergei Zhang or someone else on the Council had spoken to the docked captains.

Alexander was once again thankful for making friends with Jasper. Had he not, he would likely have ended up in some STO penal colony until they realized the body inside the medical pod was an animal and not human. Then who knew what they would do to him? Nothing good, that was for sure.

He had reached out to Captain Na to alert him of this situation. Na had responded and said he would look into it, but was off-station so there wasn’t much he could do at the moment. He just told Alexander to check every dock to find someone to take him.

That wasn’t a very comforting response. He was glad he hadn’t bothered telling anyone of his plans to leave with the Zephyr. Considering what he was running into now, it was likely the Council would have blocked his friend from even docking. They might have figured it out if they got into his comm traffic, but those messages were secure and encrypted. Or at least that was their big selling point. He could only assume it was true since he couldn’t afford to have it be otherwise.

***

Jasper was understandably concerned for his friend Alexander. The man hadn’t gone into detail on why he was being exiled from Petrov Station. He hoped it wasn’t because of some backlash from his patents.

He supposed he would find out soon enough.

The Zephyr slid into the large hangar and soon touched down on the deck.

“Excellent flying as always, Wilkes.”

“Thanks, Captain,” the man stated.

Everyone was a lot more subdued on this trip. He had explained to them that they were back out here to help their friend Alexander. Most of the crew had met the man and liked him. So they were all business during this run. The few new crew members he brought on were quickly brought up to speed and understood the issue. Most spacers were very protective of their friends and family. They had to be because nobody else would do it for them.

Once the dock atmosphere normalized, the ramp lowered. “Alright everyone,” Jasper called at the top of the ramp. His entire crew had assembled. “We have a few weeks before we need to leave again, but I want the entire ship gone over. We have guests coming with us, and I want to leave a good impression.”

“Aye aye, Captain!” came a unanimous response.

He nodded. “Dismissed.”

As the rest of the crew left for their assigned tasks, Naomi approached him.

“You have a guest waiting outside the hangar, Captain.”

“Already? Who is it?” She turned a tablet to show him the security camera feed. It was a large man with Captain’s insignia but Jasper didn’t recognize him. Naomi must have seen his confusion.

“It is Council Captain Sergei Zhang.”

“A Council Captain? Alexander, what have you gotten yourself mixed up in?”

“What would you like me to tell him?” Naomi asked.

If he asked her to tell the man to piss off, she would. She would be more diplomatic about it though. But he knew that would only lead to further issues. “Let him know I will greet him in a few minutes once our systems are topped off.” That should give him time to come up with a response for whatever the man was likely to ask of him. Which undoubtedly involved his friend.

A few minutes later the interior hangar door opened to show a large man looking bored and annoyed in the corridor.

“Bout damn time,” the man grumbled. “You need to learn to delegate tasks, Captain. One of your people could have topped off your ship so you could meet me instead of forcing me to waste my precious time.”

Jasper did his best to smile. “I like to ensure necessities are done properly.”

The man snorted and pushed himself off the wall. “Then get a more competent crew.”

Jasper's smile slipped. “What do you want Council Captain?” He was not going to play nice with someone who disrespected his crew.

“We have a reprobate on the station who is trying to charter a ship off. We simply wish to warn you should an Alexander Kane attempt to book passage aboard your vessel.”

“Do you have evidence of this man’s crimes?” Jasper asked although he knew this man didn’t.

“We are currently building a case, but we do not want the man to escape before we can bring him to justice for his crimes.”

A few choice responses came to Jasper’s mind. His first inclination was to tell the man to shove off, and if someone wanted off this cesspool of a station, he would gladly allow them aboard his ship. But that would likely get the Zephyr stuck in a quarantine hold. He had seen it happen to captains before who pissed off a station manager.

His next response was to tell the man he knew Alexander and the man was nothing but upstanding. But it was obvious this man had some sort of personal grudge against his friend.

What he actually said was, “I will keep that in mind if this man comes to speak with me.”

The Captain nodded and walked off without so much as a thank you.

“Right prick, that one,” Wilkes spoke quietly as he stopped next to Jasper.

“Took the words right out of my mouth. I think it’s time I contacted our friend. I want to be off this station before they realize we’re taking him with us.”