"That is quite the fleet," said Eyes as we entered the Castor system, watching out the window as my group of Shield Beetles fell into line. I said nothing, just smiling as we grouped up, no one stopping us as we made our way towards the former, and future, home of the Republic Shipyards. Once there, a group broke off, copies of Eyes briefcase, a sophisticated suite of sensors, growing on their hulls as they slowly made their way into the atmosphere. Looking at the incoming data, Eyes almost seemed giddy.
"Oh, this is just fantastic. Those are so much sharper than I was expecting, and with these readings I can tell you the instant we find the place where these bombs were made," he explained, showing me some of the readouts. It was gibberish to me, but he explained how fissionable materials all had unique isotopic signatures, depending on world mined on, and reactor used. It wouldn't be definitive evidence, but it would be a big clue, and better than that bombs like this tended to be made in groups, if they could find a test site where others of the same make were detonated for trial, they could point some very large fingers at the actual bombers.
"Alright, everything is logged and filed. We should proceed to Rand now. That's in the," I cut him off, bringing up the galactic map.
"Zeta Aquilae system. I helped them with some Terraforming recently. Slamming asteroids into planets is a bit violent, but I've been keeping tabs, and it seems they're doing well," I say, locking in the course, and we flash away. A few days later we arrive in the system, the fleet taking up positions around the planet as we land, with Eyes going over his data, and taking further readings. Apparently while it's unlikely, Rand is a possible test site for the nukes. While he goes over it, Katya arrives, and I allow her on board, one of the droids guiding her to the bridge.
"Certainly a large ship you have here, Mr. Sage," she tells me as I offer her a seat, one literally growing out of the floor for her. She thanks me, and then we both turn to Eyes, who is very much consumed by his research.
"You've been briefed on the plan, I take it?" she asks, and I nod.
"Indeed I have, Councilor," I answered, emphasising the last word, which made her wince a little.
"I see you've learned a bit more about me. Can't be helped I suppose," she said, passing me a credit chit with some nice zeroes on it, that I pocket, while we wait for Eyes to finish his data mining. It takes him almost an hour, with me distracted myself using the game, almost guiding my hapless protagonist into a duel to the death with a demon lord of the underworld, when he suddenly bounced up, swearing in some unknown tongue for a moment.
"Bad news?" I ask, saving my game with a touch, and then turning to him.
"Um, you could say that. My scanners are good, but they're designed for high impact studies, not sifting through background radiation like you find on a world like Rand. I can pick up the stuff with ease, but I can't get a fine enough reading with my equipment to actually tell you if they match the readings at Geminus," he says, showing me the data on the floating screen. As it's just a bunch of formulas and numbers, I decide to take his word for it.
"So, we need better scanners?" I ask, and he shakes his head.
"We do, but you can't just buy the type we need. No, we need military grade stuff, the kind you find on Navy sensor drones," he says. Katya, who had been reading something, paused as her expression became very thoughtful.
"Mr. Sage, are you familiar with the Derelict and Salvage Act of 2976?" she chimed in, and I had to think for a moment myself, but then shook my head.
"I'm afraid not," I tell her, and she gets a rather wicked smile on her face.
"You probably wouldn't, unless you traveled in the higher circles of power. Simply put, the Syndicate wanted the Navy to protect their automated mines and such, you know, the kind they leave in asteroid fields to break down rocks, that you can collect from a year later. They're a favorite target of pirates, given they tend to have good parts, and some nice ore, with very few defenses," she began, quickly bringing up another holographic display, and then sliding it over to me when she found the relevant document online.
"Suffice it to say, it can be stretched a bit to include any sort of automated unit, like say, a surveillance drone. One the mothership slaps one down, it becomes salvageable by anyone who can claim it. We find one of those, we find our equipment," she explains, and I get a thoughtful expression thinking about that, before I shake my head.
"I've got another idea," I say, and have them leave the bridge for a few minutes. A few minutes later I get on the comm to Tagon's Toughs, the mercenary group that had helped me previously with capturing the Korath Raider. It took less than a minute to explain what I wanted, and even less time for them to admit to having done such salvage in the past. A few thousand credits and they sent the schematics over, with STAR growing one of the sensors on our hull, before I called the two back in.
"Um, that...these designs aren't on the net, at all, they're kept in secure servers in the Republic Shipyards. How did you…?" asked Katya as she looks over the specs, but Eyes is already diving into his work again, using the sensors to scan the planet easily, finding all sorts of things out, but it would take him a while to go over all of it.
"So, where are you from?" she asked, as we waited, and I gave her an abridged version of my life story. I left out most of my adventures amongst the stars, figuring they'd make for a good story later, but for now, she just wanted background. As it was, turned out she was Dust Belt baby herself. Born and raised on Hope, before the Supervolcano there exploded. That seemed to jar a memory loose, so I decided to follow up on it.
"How'd you survive that?" I asked, and she seemed to hug herself a moment, wrapping her arms around her chest protectively, before taking in a deep breath, and sighing it back out.
"Well, we were on the other continent when it blew. It was bad, sure, lots of infrastructure destroyed by the quake, but the worst effects weren't going to hit us for a while. Evacuation should have been easy, and the Navy did send boats to start taking people off world, but it was slow going. Even with their fleets, only a few hundred per ship were able to go, and by the time Parliament actually got moving, we were in danger of losing people to the encroaching clouds of dust and debris," as she spoke, STAR began to display an image of a port on his screen, one I didn't recognize, but when she saw it, Katya gasped.
"That's…" she trailed off, holding out a hand towards it.
"New Vertiform City, Capital of Hope. It was where I was docked when the eruptions happened. My owner, she wanted to save people, and when the Navy started drafting ships, paying any captain to save as many as possible, my chassis, a shuttle, was used. We loaded a family aboard, some of the last to leave as they were family of the colony leadership. One was a young woman, about eighteen who'd caught a virus. She was very sick, and my owner comforted her," he said this while showing a view from a two dimensional image of a person looking down at a sick girl.
"That was me. I got sick, we had to pay a lot of money to make me better. That was...where's your owner now?" she asked, and the STAR android on the bridge looked sadly to her.
"My owner at the time was not in the best of health, and mixed with all the problems, she fell ill shortly after dropping off the first load of passengers. She was attempting to return to Hope, to get more survivors, when I was forced to set down on New Boston due to her growing too weak to fly. She died there, and I was confiscated," he told her in a dour tone.
"That woman, she was so kind...was there nothing anyone could do for her?" she asked, and STAR again shook his head.
"It's possible had she not been so unfortunate as to land on New Boston, something could have been done. There, however, she was trapped on a world without many offworld niceties like modern medicine, and most travel was restricted," he explained, and that seemed to cause Katya to collapse in on herself.
"What about your family? They got away?" I asked, trying to turn to happier subjects, and Katya did seem to brighten up.
"Yes, my father stayed with me, til I got better, then I started my career in politics. If the Parliament had just gotten off their duffs a bit earlier, none of that would have happened. The Navy wanted to help, they sent almost half the fleets to do so, and even drafted civilian ships, but the Admiral in charge of the operation, despite getting everyone off Hope, was forced to resign. I vowed to change that, to get them to understand how it felt. But they always argued against making non-Paradise worlds better off, or to help those less fortunate," she said, Ijs, at his station, turned to face us.
"It's true, they sound bad, but it's just...I grew up on Vinci, and I remember the reports of Hope. How every adult got angry for the Navy going off to save those people. They kept talking about Pirates, Aliens, even the Alphas returning while they were away. From their perspective, they pay taxes, about ten times more than the Dust Belt planets do, and that means they should be protected, first and foremost. Everyone else comes after," he explained, and we all sat in silence for a time, before his station pinged at him. Turning back to it, he pressed a few buttons, before calling out over his shoulder.
"This place isn't the one, the new sensors confirm it. I think we have a slight lead though. Looks like there's something on Oblivion worth checking out. If you're up for it, Admiral Sage," he says, and in answer, I bring of the map, and set us on course, launching once more into space.