Starship Engineer

Chapter 119

Union Prime Command? So the Union conquered this independent colony. I surmised they realized they could not maintain the carriers and cruiser with the low resources in this system. From Elvis’ imagining, it was clear those three ships had undergone a lot of repairs in deep space. I had a lot of questions. My first was if this was all that remained of the Union exodus fleets. The Union fleet was tight to the planet, and we didn’t detect any patrol fleets in the outer system. I asked for feedback from the bridge crew.

Kara Briggs, my first officer, noted there was only one refinery orbiting a gas giant in the system. Most likely, they couldn’t refine enough fuel to patrol the system. Nero said a few of the destroyers looked to be in standby mode but wasn’t certain. Julie, the ship AI, in her hologram form, asked if I wanted her to try and hack the systems for more information. I gave her the go-ahead as we continued to talk about our options.

As our scans got more detailed, Zoe, the pilot, interrupted that the defensive formation indicated two formations were parked in orbit, reinforcing Kara’s guess the Union Prime fleet was short on either personnel or fuel. Abby offered that maybe they needed their marines and personnel to keep order on the planet and the space stations.

We spent another hour discussing before I ordered a comm message sent requesting trade with the planet. I was cautious and skeptical. We could probably get reactor fuel for the subspace drives, but I doubted they would sell us any propulsion fuel if their ships were clearly lacking. Food should be available as the entire Prime Union fleet should have had around 10,000 personnel so they wouldn’t have stressed the existing food production systems. I ordered one of the Brotherhood stealth shuttles ready with a full complement of marines. We would drop them off at the only gas giant fuel refinery in the system. They could wait there and be ready to leverage the facility if we ran into trouble during our trading with the new government.

The local government seemed open to trading but refused to answer questions about the prior regime. Julie indicated success in infiltrating the local net about halfway to the planet. She had cursory access and was working deeper into their systems. The battleship was a wreck they salvaged from the Sapphireans. It was a prototype in the shipyards that they stole. The battleship blended some novel alien shielding. The fleet was, as we surmised, extremely low on fuel. But Julie warned they had 79 heavy fighters and 11 bomber fighters on their carriers that could be used to intercept us if we tried to flee.

I asked Julie about the timeline of events. Julie said the Union fleet entered the system with their fleet and tried to seize all three gas mining platforms in the system rather than pay for the fuel. A struggle ensued, and the two larger platforms were destroyed by the locals. This forced the Union fleet, which was low on fuel at the time, to remain here and not head to the rendezvous point. Julie didn’t have coordinates of where the Union remnants were going to meet yet from her hack. The admiral of the fleet ordered the colony seized. The two thousand marines in all their ships landed on the planet and stations took control of the system by force. The colony was now under a military government.

Julie indicated not much resistance was made against the overwhelming force. I asked about the decision to form the massive station from the four ships. It took Julie a few minutes to get the relevant information. The battleship was supplying the shielding while the carriers were servicing the ships in the system and a platform for their fighter wings. The cruiser was tied to the battleship to provide extra power for the advanced shielding. The station was the seat of the new governor, Admiral Jonathan Dyson.

Julie began delving into how traders were treated under the new government. Haily had received a request for us to dock with one of the small defensive stations that had been part of the colony. Julie only found two traders entering the system in the last eight months. Both were alien traders, and no records of them leaving the system. Well, shit. I asked for options as our shuttle was about to launch. There was no local resistance to the occupation force that Julie could find on the Union server she was inside. I let the shuttle launch and ordered the Void Phoenix to a stop at a safe distance. I wanted to keep out of the fighters intercepter range

When we came to a stop, I commed the Prime Union flight control. We would conduct or trade here. We would not dock with the station. At first, they refused to trade if we didn’t dock, but after an hour of back and forth with Suruchi, they conceded they would trade. They needed precious metals for their fabricators. I let Suruchi negotiate and just went to inventory our assets. We had seven Black Widow bots, but none had power systems, all our specialized power systems were incorporated into our Gorilla suits. I told Gabby and Luna to be prepared to strip the Gorilla suits to power the spider bots.

The fighters were set to standby, and I had Abby get the other Brotherhood shuttle crewed and marines ready to deploy. If this transaction went to shit, I wanted to be ready. I even had Eve get into her Badger suit. Her suit was designed to handle her increased speed and strength. Eve was our version of a souped-up Armageddon bot. Hopefully, she wouldn’t be called on.

Suruchi negotiated three small transport deliveries for a portion of our precious metals. Not the best price for what we were getting in return. We would receive two transports of provisions and one refueling transport. It was half a day before the first shuttle reached us. We scanned the transport and found nothing illicit other than six of the containers were only half full. When they docked, I ordered all crates opened in front of the crew, who tried to leave, saying they were on a tight schedule. When we got to the half-loaded crates, they played stupid. We only paid them for what we received. At least we would have real food.

The next transport also had missing cargo issues, but we watched them with our sensors as they repacked the containers and just said they misloaded our order and forgot four crates. Once again, I paid for only what I received. The third transport took two days to depart the large makeshift station. Elias and Elvis set off warnings immediately. The shuttle had twenty-two marines in combat armor and six gunships making stealth runs at our stopped vessel. The gunships had enough fuel to reach us and return to the planet. So they were definitely planning to commandeer the Void Phoenix. We had plenty of warning, nearly five hours until the transport reached us, and the gunships would reach us fifteen minutes later.

We convened to plan. We needed the fuel on the transport. Our scans told us there was only half of what we had ordered, but the good news is if we flipped the tables on them, we wouldn’t have to pay for it. Zoe thought we should launch both fighters, but I planned to put our missiles on a coast to intercept the gunships while the transport docked with us. If we eliminated their space superiority and subdued their marines, we should be able to get the fuel and escape the system.

We had eighteen marines in our cargo bay under stealth. The Squirrel had improved the missiles but were still suspect. Getting all six gunships with coasting missiles wasn’t a good insurance policy. If we missed any of the gunships, our two fighters would be hard-pressed to handle more than one gunship. The good news was the gunships only had light rapid-fire grazers. Our improved shields could easily handle sustained fire from all of them if needed.

We also sent out a tight band communication with a zero-hour time to take the gas refinery. As with any combat action, I was tight in my captain’s chair and running the ‘what could go wrong scenarios’ in my head. With our alien sensors, I didn’t see any surprises besides two of the gunships having pairs of heavy missiles. These gunships were getting two missiles instead of one to make sure they went down. The transport was a third the size of the Void Phoenix. It did a hard dock, and Damian was there to supervise the fuel transfer. Maybe the marines were just to make sure we were not going to make off without paying.

Nope, they started rushing forward. I ordered Damian to safety and our marines to engage. The missiles went live, and I watched five of the six gunships go down. Our two fighters launched and engaged the remaining gunship. Our shields were up, so I focused on the combat in the cargo bay. We engaged with a shoot-to-disable mentality, and the fight was over quickly. The Union marines lost seven before they surrendered to our obviously overwhelming superior forces.

I looked up to see the remaining gunship fleeing in the system and was alerted by Elvis that two destroyers were breaking orbit. Haily was asking what she should do with the angry voices on the other end of her comm coming from the Admiral’s command. I told her to go dark. We began to accelerate away, the transport still attached. I ordered the fuel transferred, and I wanted Abby and Buckie to do a quick interview with our prisoners. Since they were old Union, they might know some of these marines.

We got long-range comms that the gas refinery station was secure. I immediately used this asset to leverage the situation. I told a very angry Admiral Dyson that we would destroy the refinery unless they ended all pursuit of our ship. It was an hour before the destroyers came to a stop. They didn’t turn around, just stopped. Elias found a stealth corvette on a vector for the gas refinery. It was a good stealth ship, the most advanced the Union had used. Still nothing compared to the Void Phoenix’s stealth capabilities. Once the fuel transfer was complete and the marine interrogations were complete, we kicked the marines to the transport and set the ship adrift with the crew. We accelerated to rendezvous with the station.

Abby and Buckie didn’t reveal their identity and didn’t find anyone they would want to add to our crew, but they learned the admiral had a tenuous grasp on the occupying fleet. These were all the ships that got left behind by the larger fleet because officers didn’t want to go further into deep space. They figured they had a habitable planet here and could rebuild. Except they didn’t realize how poor this system’s resources were. With only one gas platform and the main Union fleet taking all the resources, they were trapped. They were trying to set up manufacturing on the large station and build more gas mining refineries, but infighting and sabotage were preventing it.

Julie had hacked the personnel registry and had passed it on to the crew to identify anyone they might want to rescue. We had seven names a few hours later. Now I had to figure out if we could extract these five marines, one weapons engineer, and one navigator. We docked with the refinery and topped off the propulsion fuel. The stealthed corvette closed on the Void Phoenix. I didn’t want to reveal we had sensors to see through the stealth, so we ignored the ship. The transport with the marines had reached the destroyers. Hopefully, after they saw we hadn’t killed all the borders, they would be open to negotiating.

With Suruchi next to me, I opened communication with Admiral Dyson to negotiate.