I would like to thank Sable Cold for taking on the impressive job of being the Beta Reader for this book. As always reviews are welcome. If you find this is easier to read and follow. Thank Sable Cold and all of his hard work
I do not own Battlestar Galactica or have any connection with them, other than I have seen the shows. And it was a long time ago. I also do not own or have input into the game of Rifts. I don't even play the game. But I do own copies of some of the books, and I have used them for this story.
Chapter 43: that was a good idea
Six months after Chinese attack
AT 64 months and after Leaving the Nebula.
Earth April 2020
A big party was planned for the second anniversary of the Colonials' coming to this star system but that had to be pushed back a few months. The delay was due to the whole island being put back on high alert until things were safer. Things were still a little shaky in that part of the world, and little things like that can ruin a party. After things seemed to have settled down, the party was put back on the calendar and marked as the second anniversary of their landing on this island back in March of 2018. Very few people knew that they had been watching this planet for a few months before that date.
Charles was working in his office. It had been moved to the second floor of the airport building a few months ago, and he was still hip deep in paperwork. He had just approved a twice a day civilian flight from the main airport of Tahiti to and from the island's own spaceport and airfield. It had been his staff that put together the plan, working closely with the authorities on Tahiti. Charles had put a strict size limit on the aircraft, keeping it down to medium sized business jets in the 20 meters long and 10-15 passengers or so for now. He also set very tight schedules for when those flights could fly in and out. There were a few plans to increase the aircraft size, but that was only in the 'would be nice' phase of planning.
The way it was planned out for now, if the aircraft was late, it would not be allowed to land on the island or enter Colonial controlled airspace. It would have to make the one hundred and seventy mile trip back to its originating airfield. The Colonials did not have a habit of charging landing fees, so it was a high profit line for anyone who wanted to risk taking this route. At least for someone who owned their own planes and were willing to take a boatload of risk. These flights also helped with the increasing amount of mail and personnel stopping by the Colonial islands. The few occasional passenger flights that had already happened had also made the lives of the cargo ships' crews a lot better already. Not having to deal with people who were not used to hitchhiking on cargo ships was a godsend to them. There were reasons that most of the people who did those jobs had not ever worked on a passenger liner of any size. Let's just say that they lacked people skills as a general rule.
Charles took a break from paperwork and looked at his appointment calendar that was getting more complicated every day, it seemed. He was waiting for two groups coming in for a meeting from off his islands. One was a group he was really wanting to see. The other? He had no idea what they wanted and that historically had been a bad thing in his experience. Right on time, his acting assistant opened his door and let in a thin, tall man, who had on a bow tie followed by a second man that just screamed 'lawyer'. The odd-looking man entered his domain on the second floor like he owned the place. This type of action automatically put Charles on high alert.
Charles was watching the man, but he could not take his eye off the crazy colored bow tie around the thin man's neck. To get his mind off the odd-looking tie, Charles pointed to two of the emptied chairs in the room as an invitation for the strangers to sit.
"Please have a seat. I think I should let you know that I almost did not agree to this meeting. That is until our computer staff handed me this." Charles tapped a two inch thick stack of paper on the side of his desk. "They told me that they were getting a frak ton of email letters. Most were asking us to see you. So, what can I do for you?" He already had a good idea what was wanted after a quick computer check but it always was nice to ask.
The man with the crazy tie smiled a lazy smile. He had been working on his Greek and Latin for some time, so he did not have a problem following along what the Colonial had said. After all, he was a very smart man, as well as a teacher and a TV host. He had found out that these Colonials could speak English when they wanted to. But if they wanted to be less than helpful, they would fall back on that odd mix of English, Greek, and Latin.
"Thank you for seeing me, Colonel. I represent a a mix of small to good sized nonprofit and other non-government groups. All are, simply put, in love with space. We raise money and build our own probes when we can. And then work out ways to launch them into space for as little cost as we can get. You might not know it, but that last part is the hardest part for us to do. I was hoping that I might have a plan that would work out for both of our groups."
Charles rocked back in his cheap office chair. It was looking like his data miners had been right, so far. "Okay sir, you have me interested. Now what is it that you think we can do, and still meet my mission which is to support my people?"
The tie guy smiled, but it was not his Hollywood smile. He put a briefcase on his lap, taking a few seconds to balance it. He then opened it with a flick of both wrists. The top of the briefcase now covered him almost from his hips to his tie, but not quite. His hands went into the leather briefcase all the way up to the elbows. For a brief second, Charles had to remember if he had his armored undershirt on or not. He resisted the urge to move his hand and check his pistol. Suddenly his train of thought was interrupted by the bow tie wearing stranger.
"Colonel, have you noticed the price of steels in the higher quality formulations over the last year?"
Charles still had no idea where this was going but that was a good question for someone to ask him. And it was one he did not expect to be asked by this bow tie wearing man.
"Yes, I have. It's been going up. I would say that it's up almost fifty percent over the last twelve months. Why?" Charles put his left hand under his chin, and for once he was not going to be distracted by the odd colored and cut tie.
The tie guy still had that same smile on his face, but he was not showing any teeth in it. "I got the base of the idea from the BBC report on the post-strike rebuilding going on in these islands. Your people were cutting up some damaged building's I-beams. I think they were from one of the floating boat docks, and I think a few of the small boats that were left behind. In the report, I saw that it said that you were sending the recovered metal off planet to be recycled on one of your support ships. Is this true? If it's not, then I might have wasted your time and mine. And I will have to explain to a lot of people about the plane tickets that I've just used."
That one part of the statement had come out a bit on the desperate side to Charles's ears. It still did not explain what was going on in this meeting. "Yes, we are collecting all of the scrap metals and alloys from the damaged buildings in other areas. After we collect them up, they go off planet. That is, when we have open spots on the cargo ships. Refined metal is refined metal. We have uses for both the lower grade and the higher grade steels your people make and trade to us." He was not going to say that even the best steels made on this planet were not that high grade compared to what the the Colonials could make.
Now the tie guy gave a big smile that showed a lot of teeth. "That is what we, and the others in my group, had thought. Now, here is my pitch. You see, my group has a space probe that we built a few years ago and is now just taking up space in a warehouse. It's one of two that we built at the same time. The first one was successfully launched some years ago but this one was used as a test bed to help fix problems that arose on the outbound probe. It cost us a lot of money to build the second craft, but then we had problems raising the funds to get it on its way to the target planet. What I need to know, before we get too far into my sales pitch, I need to know how big or wide is the door on one of your Raptor class craft? Information on your craft can be best be described as contradictory."
Charles had to think quickly at the change of subject as he answered the question. He was thinking that next time, he might want to have a second person sitting in on these unknown meetings. Or maybe he just needed to make sure that he knew beforehand what the meeting was going to about or there would not be any meeting in the first place.
"A little over sixty of your inches wide and a handful more, tall." Charles was pretty sure that those were the measurements. NASA had asked a similar question when they asked for help bringing up cargo to the manned space station over this planet.
The tie guy now had an uncertain smile on his face. "That might be a tight fit. If you could, and if you wanted to, how much would it cost us to get our New Horizon 2A probe off the ground? The probe itself is about half a ton fully fueled, and it has Star 48 solid fuel booster as a strap on booster for an additional ton of mass. We would like you to get it about one AU but on a closing track to Pluto. We will need it on a heading my people can give you at about fourteen kilometers per second." The tie guy passed over a pair of sheets of paper with images, charts, and technical information printed on them.
Charles was an engineer by trade, and he could do math in his head that would make others just shut down. He could even use different measurements systems like he had been born to them by now. Everything the tie guy had asked for so far, they could do, but it would be a day maybe two to complete the request. The kicker was, if it was going to be worth it for his people to take the time. Charles put on his poker face, but he could tell that the other man had picked up on the change.
Charles opened his laptop and checked what the old New Horizon probe had done and where it was going. It did not take him long to find the information he was looking for. While he worked the visitor waited for him to reply. Charles did not even look up while he digested what he was reading on the web page.
"It's too big to fit inside, particularly with the rocket booster. But this should still be doable. I believe it's public knowledge by now what NASA paid us to make those supply runs to the low orbiting station? We have been in talks for other missions that are still in the planning stages. How much would this type of mission have cost before we came to this planet?"
The tie guy let his smile lose some of its power. "Yes. I read about the cost of those missions to the ISS. And NASA still got a steal of a deal out of you all. When we launched the last mission that deep into space, it cost us about a hundred million to launch. And it took us a decade to get to the first target point. We simply cannot afford something like that again, but this might be helpful to you and your people." The bow tie guy passed over a folder from the briefcase to the Colonel, who opened it without even a side long glance.
Charles had no idea what he was looking at. It looked like a metal box with thick metal walls on the two longer sides, but it was opened to the sea at the other two sides while sitting in the water. He was about to pass the folder back, but at the last second he started to leaf through the pages in his hands. He stopped at the third page of the six page document. This image was of a different floating metal box. He could tell by the color, added crane, and a massive cross I-beam at the front and back of the box. A cargo ship was between the two high side walls. The ship looked like bites had been taken out off of it by a metal eating monster. Charles's head shot up and made eye contact with the older man. He tilted his head and was about to ask a question.
The bow tie guy smiled at the Colonial as the other man read over the papers. He could see that the other man was waiting for a few more of the dots to be connected. When the head shot up, he was ready to do some of that connecting for the off planet visitor. "There is a whole massive industry made out of scrapping old ships for recycling on our planet. Most just ram the ships onto a beach, cut them up, and then load the pieces onto trucks to take elsewhere to be re-melted. I don't think you would want to do that here, not as a full-time process. I understand that it's a messy and dirty business." He pointed to the pages in Charles's hands.
"That is a 72,000 ton lift rated floating dry dock that can be towed to any place in the world where the water is between five to fifteen meters deep. We have contacts that are willing to sell a used one to us. We can trade it to you for help getting our small deep space mission off the ground. All you would have to do is find the ships that are being scrapped in other places around the world and have them brought here. With that, whenever you need to top off one of your cargo ships leaving our little star system, you would only need to remove enough metal at a time and load it up."
The bow tie guy gave the Colonial commander a knowing smile. "I think you have some ships you could use this for already. Say, some that might be in another harbor that the owners are getting tired of holding onto for you. That is, unless you want the previous owners to have them back after everything that has been said and done."
Charles went back to the information packet that had been handed to him and did some more detailed reading. He took his time and even had to walk around the room before he was done with the briefing and contract he had been given. Charles could tell that a lot of thought had been put into this idea. Either that, or it was a stroke of mad genius on a Starbuck-sized scale.
"Sir, I think this plan has merit. I'm going send you to my staff to work out what needs to be done on both our ends. If they don't find any major roadblocks, then we have a deal."
Charles walked the tie guy to the door and talked to the soldier at the desk at the other side of cheap metal door. The escort had not followed bow tie guy to the meeting. He had other things to do. Charles had just changed his whole day. He now would be following the tie guy around until he was relieved or the gentlemen left the island.
Once the door was closed and Charles could get to his desk again, he took a few short but controlled breaths. Now that he had himself back in control, he needed to take care of the other elephant on the table. He picked up the sat phone that he now had to have with him everywhere he went from the time he awoke to the time he got into bed for the night. That includes whenever he had dinner with Mell. He started punching numbers that he had memorized.
The device made a buzzing noise three times before it stopped with a click and a voice came through the speaker. "CINCPAC office. May I ask who is calling?" This came from a way too young of a voice to be a many star admiral.
"Please let the CINCPAC know that Colonel Bellamy from the Colonies of Kobol is on the line. I need to talk to her, please."
Charles could almost picture the person on the other line as the phone was dropped and crashed onto the desk top. He would swear to the gods that he heard running feet in the dead air coming through the speaker in his hand. He had only a few seconds to wait before an older voice came on the line. The new voice even was a little out of breath.
"Charles, it's Jill. What can I do for you?"
The acting commander of the US Navy on the planet's largest ocean was hiding a bit of concern in her voice. It was not every day that the Colonial called her office right out of the blue. In fact, the last time had been when the Colonials had been about to blow a submarine out of the water. They had called to find out if it was an American sub or not. It had not been, but the delay had allowed for a message to be sent to what turned out to be a Japanese boat. She had been having a navigation issue that was found to be very real when she made an emergency and very public port call in Tahiti.
"Jill, I am sorry to hear about Admiral Patch. He was a good man, and we will miss working with him. I called because I have to tell you about a change in my government's stance. It pertains to the Chinese that you have been keeping an eye on lately. You might want to record this and pass it up your chain of command."
Charles kept his tone set and level. The current relationship between the Colonials and the American government was not Jill's fault. He was having a hard time keeping his tone that way, though. The idea was just that amazing. It was just another way of showing how much more innovation a larger population base could come up with. Charles knew that he might be jumping the gun a bit, but he had a feeling that it was going to take some time to get things moving on the far end. If this plan about getting a floating dock fell through, he was sure that his people would eventually come up with something that could meet his objective. That objective being to get as much refined metal for his people to use as possible.
On the other end of the phone, Admiral Jill Axton let out a sigh that was picked up and carried over to the other person's ear. "Charles, why do I have the feeling that you're going to drop a shoe on me? Okay, let me have it." Asked the senior admiral for the most powerful waterborne fleet on the largest ocean on the planet.
She was not going to mention anything about her old boss getting canned on this recorded line. Nor was she going to tell the Colonial that any call that came into this line was recorded no matter who they were. They were working together, but things were changing a lot slower than the Admiral had hoped they would after all of the orders they had been given got leaked to the news.
Charles was smiling. This was going to be good and he already knew this line was recorded without Jill telling him. "Jill, all of the Chinese personnel on the ships you're watching? They can go home now but we have some conditions on their release. The first one is, they may only take the clothes on their backs and any personal items that are not military in nature. Anything that is military, or can be or was used to support the military action that was taken against us, we want it! That means every helmet, rifle, bullet, or missile. And we are not limiting our scope to just those four items. We mean anything military related aside from the one set of clothes on their backs will not be sent home with them."
Charles stopped talking and he could feel the smile come to his face, thankful that they were not doing this via video teleconference. He knew that he would have had a harder time keeping his face from giving away too much. He was having a hard time just keeping his voice under control. There were about to be a lot of shocked people worldwide.
"The shoe you were looking at dropping on you Admiral Axton, is that if the Chinese do something like a Scapa Flow in your harbor..."
Charles stopped talking for two breaths before continuing. "I cannot convey how upset my government will be with your government if something like that happens. After the Chinese personnel have left their ships, we will have them all towed to our territory at our expense. That might be something we can work out with some support ships from your navy after the personnel have been removed. Once they are here, we will do with them as we wish. I will tell you that what we have planned for them will make some people cry in their beers."
Jill looked at the phone like it was a snake or something else that might bite her ear off. Her intelligence people had been warning her that something like this was going to happen sometime in the near future. She had not really believed them but she had passed those reports along to the jerks over at the State Department. They had not laughed in her face but she could tell that they also did not believe that the Colonials would want the Chinese ships. She put the phone to her ear again and said one word.
"Crap."
Like Charles, she did not use harsh words that often. Then the American admiral took a breath and looked at the white tiles in the drop ceiling over her head.
"Okay Charles I will pass it along. Do you have a timeline for when you would like your prizes back?" The courts had already said that the ships belonged to the Colonials. The problem had been what to do with the military personnel on them.
"Not yet, Jill, but I would bet that it will be only a few more months. That is, before someone above me starts getting bent out of shape. Then they will want me to pass along the pain. I think they are tired of being given what they feel is the run around. And all of the hints about us needing to 'calm down' have not gone over that well with my people."
Charles was smiling while he talked on the odd-looking phone. He liked Will Patch and Jill Axton, and it was not their fault. As a military person, it was her job to fix as much as she could when her political masters let her. Now, was everything Charles was saying true? Not really. Ninety-nine percent of the day to day or even week to week correspondence did not leave this planet to go to Laura or Bill. Charles did send reports that kept both of his bosses in the loop about what was going on but in the end, this was his command. As long as he reached the goals put down for him, it was all his game to run as long as he won the game in the end.
Two months later, at the rapidly growing New Mexico Space Port, Lieutenant Junior Grade Daniel Brenton was getting bored again. The Raptor pilot and his ECO were sitting in a hot bird perched atop a make shift platform on an open piece of white concrete. That was not because the engines were running, nor was he carrying a frak ton of weapons. It was all so that a group of white coats could work while seemingly doing nothing. It could get hot and humid on the islands, but this Truth or Consequences place was just crazy hot.
The main door to his craft was open to let a little fresh air into the green house like cockpit. It was still in the "oh gods, is it frakking hot!" level. And there was nothing that they could do about it. The entire work area was actually inside a large warehouse with a retractable roof specifically designed to allow a Raptor easy entry and egress. The roof had already been closed off to keep the sun out. It was not enough to completely ward away the summer heat.
The Colonel had been right. The New Horizons 2A probe was too big to fit inside the Raptor. Instead, the Earther scientists had come up with a raised platform that had a rectangular hole cut into the middle. Landing on it had taken a bit of work, but the hole allowed scientists access to the hardpoints under the roots of the Raptor's stubby wings where the payload would be secured without having to duck down.
It was with some relief that he saw the group of white coats start to move. He and his ECO watched as a forklift carrying a boxy enclosure that contained the aforementioned probe approached and disappeared under their craft. For his part, he powered on the small craft's onboard computer. After what seemed like a whole day of waiting, things were finally starting to visibly get done. In the real world they had only been there for three hours.
He watched the instrumentation as the Raptor's onboard computer recognized the hardware being attached underneath it. The crews at the island had already done their work, patching the software to accept the new kit. All the readings came out green and he said so to the Earthborn engineer standing by his open hatch.
It would be a very tight fit getting the strange device through the hole in the middle of the platform when it came time to launch. Not the least of it was that the package was bound to do funny things to the Raptor's flight and handling characteristics. It was not lost on the two Colonials that this one Raptor was the closest to what an old Colonial bird had looked like during the run from the Cylons. The airtight door was able to shut and seal, but it took some doing every once and a while when the craft got temperamental.
Danial still could not take off and get started on what he was betting was going to be another dull mission. That was because they were still waiting for the two locals to step out of the dressing rooms. They were supposed to be the ones to check out the probe at the endpoint or drop off point a long way away from this planet. Charles had told Daniel that if they were not happy at the end of the mission, it would have an effect on how many flying hours he was going to get over the next decade, and not in a good way.
When the two Earthborn came out of the dressing room in green Colonial made flight gear, Daniel was more than ready to go and have cool air pumped into his own modified combat space suit. It now did not even bother him that the extras he was carrying today were wearing borrowed gear. And that they were probably trying to steal the technology somehow. Then again, those suits were of the oldest type the Colonials had left in storage. They lacked any of the armoring that had been added to the later generations of Colonial military gear.
It was only after he started his checklist that he noticed that they were over an hour ahead of the schedule he had been briefed on. The Raptor was not overloaded for her rated mass but the large and odd shaped device under its belly would have to be kept in mind as she maneuvered. So much so that only the pilot and ECO would be in any way comfortable on this flight. Even with the basic safety harnesses the jump seats the two guests would be sitting on would be very uncomfortable if the craft's handling got rough.
Daniel was under orders to keep it under control or he would be having an extra job or six. Charles did not have to say what those extra jobs might be. Daniel knew there were more than a few jobs on the islands that would suck if he had to do them. More so if he had to do them after spending a full day on duty already. He was a young man. He liked having his off time and he hated doing paperwork. A lot of these jobs had been given to him as his way of helping after doing something that caused the Trading Outpost's commander to become displeased with one Raptor pilot.
Finally, the roof above them slid open, exposing the entire place once more to the blue sky. The heavily loaded Colonial craft lifted straight up off the platform, the same way it had landed. It went from a dead stop to moving at an acceleration rate of 1.2 local Gs. This movement had started with only a few shared 'okay' signs passed between the four crew. This rate of climb was steady and thankfully encountered no turbulence. The only thing that changed was the view out the massive forward window, and it was impressive.
The Raptor pilot had to check in with Central Command on the island when he was about to cross the line that said he was three hundred kilometers up and about ready to jump. Charles was in the still growing CIC and keeping tabs on this mission. He had high hopes for this mission that had turned out to be such a windfall for his people as to be a game changer. When he had done his weekly report to the Admiral after that meeting with Mr. Bowtie, the news had caused the Old Man to fly out to Earth himself and get a more detailed update. He had been impressed with the idea, and had given Charles his whole-hearted support for the plan. If this worked out, Bill Adama thought that it would jump the plans for New Kobol forward by as much as six months.
Charles was only keeping half an ear on what was going on with the Raptor. He was looking at a set of three live feeds coming in from fix mounted cameras near the large ship pier to the east of him. The center image had a huge floating dry dock that only had arrived a few days ago into the blue lagoon. It might just turn out to be one of the best investments his people had made since they had bought these two islands in secret over 2 years ago. Now it was up to his people to come through with their end of the bargain to pay for it. After it was paid for, then they could start using it.
The Raptor was only about eighty kilometers from the ISS in a higher orbit plane when it jumped at faster than the speed of light. The crew of the station knew of the mission, and they had turned every bit of science equipment to that location of space. There were very few people in NASA and the global wide nonprofit space research and exploration community that did not know about this mission.
None of the data was going to be publicly released. At least, not until the probe checked out as being fully operational. It was just in case things went wrong. Then, it would be party time if everything went right. The good news would be used to drive more donations for the nonprofit space sector. Nothing got more money than good news about a project. That new money would then be used to do more projects. It was a cycle that was well known and used by nonprofit groups around the planet.
When the Raptor winked out in a flash of invisible energy, the two people in charge of checking out the probe became the first people born on this blue ball to travel faster than light. A billion people on this Earth would have given their arms and legs to have been in their shoes. The Raptor could and had carried both heavier and bulkier loads into orbit before, but had never had to jump with a cargo this massive. They did not have any one in the fleet who knew that much about the theoretical underpinnings of FTL jumping. The Colonials had no way to know if this was going to work as planned or not. They only had the more conventional information that could be found in the craft's operational manuals.
It was well known that a ship's jump field extended quite a ways past the hull. It was still less than certain that such a large object on the outer hull could be dragged through without being mangled by the FTL transition.
One second the Raptor was in orbit around the blue world, and in the next second it was at the very edge of the solar system in a single burst of energy. Daniel only needed a little burn from the big twin mounted engines to get his craft up to the right speed and going into the right orientation for the launch. After some quick system checks, Danial and his ECO found out that they were off course by only a few thousand kilometers. In space travel terms, that was still well within the margin of error that the plan thought was acceptable.
Daniel did a quick check on his systems after making a second course adjustment. He did not want the records to show he was that far off. The display counted down, until they were at the right speed for this mission. "Okay, we are here. Everyone hold on to your lunch. AG coming off in 5, 4, 3, 2, and... off."
This was the part that everyone was going to hate, or love. It would depend on how their bodies handled being in freefall. Everyone loved it for about ten to sixty seconds. After that initial euphoria, some stomachs would start working on emptying their contents. There was a reason that the old NASA Training aircraft was called the Vomit Comet. It had been used for training in short bursts of zero g. Even then, that craft could not catch every one who had strong negative issues in zero gravity.
As predicted every one, including the pair of Colonials, felt their stomachs flip flop as it lost the knowledge of where down was. The Raptor's ECO had already checked the white coats' suits before they were allowed on the craft. He did not recheck them before hitting the manual control for the ventral hatch, and the whole crew knew they were in space. He had not even pumped out the air, the opening hatch would take care of that little issue.
At the same time, Daniel hit the button that would release the package from the Raptor's pylons. It drifted away, pushed on by the last of the air escaping from the Raptor's open hatch. At a set time after release, the protective shell broke apart, its pieces pushed away from each other by explosive bolts in the seams. Now the probe was ready to do its work.
The probe came with a solid fueled STAR 48 PAM (Mod) or payload assist module, programmable, re-startable. It had over a ton of fuel to use to increase speed or make any course changes as it flew out deeper into space. That was going to be on top of the 14 kilometers per second that the Raptor was giving it at launch. The modified STAR-48 stage would give the probe's owners the ability to do between ten and twenty major course adjustments before it was discarded. That was before the liquid fueled main engine built onto the probe was even used. This increased the number of targets that it would be able to fly by to a number that very few probes in the history of this planet could even think about. The unofficial name for this mission was, "Grand Tour, Eat Your Heart Out."
With the time saving ride provided by the Colonials, the probe's fresh radioisotope thermoelectric generator would now provide the electricity to run the computers for ten years longer than its near sister. With the shortcut, the battery life would allow more instruments to run longer and collect a lot more data during that time. The speed that the team the bow tie guy had asked for was chosen for a very good reason. Any faster, and when the probe made its flyby past the small planet, the cameras would not work that well and the downlink would only get blurry images back for all the trouble and expense they had put into this mission. That would not have been a good thing for anyone but worse, it would affect the nonprofit organization massively in the negative way.
The two white coats could not help but stare out into the cold deep dark of space while their little project floated away until it was almost out of sight. The ECO had to tap each one on the helmet to get them to focus on the job at hand. The two Earthers had to float back to their seats to send the commands to activate the probe and see if she was alive or not. This took about an hour of button pushing by the two green suited support staff. The probe only had to make one small adjustment of a few small jets before it was lined up for a close flyby of the on again off again planet at the edge of the solar system.
Soon the two Earthborn gave the ECO a thumbs up. They were still not comfortable with the built-in communications gear on the space suits so they had to revert to hand signals, That way, less time was spent training everyone. It would still take just under four hours for the ground station on Earth to pick up the signals generated from out here. Ones that would be active all of the way through the flyby of the ice world by the probe. The ground station would be in control of the probe from now until it died out there alone in the cold of deep space in 15 to 20 years.
The Raptor would be dropping off the white coats less than ten minutes after the signal telling them the new space probe was good to go. They were on the ground and at the main office when they got word that the ground stations at Houston had heard from their baby speaking and that the first bytes of raw data had started to flow to them.
Daniel was still prepping the Raptor for the flight home when they were given the good news. The crews in New Mexico were all having a huge meal in celebration. They were all at the dinner table when word got to them that the ground station had received a signal from the probe. If everything worked, then the Colonial Raptor and its crew could go home. It there had been any issues with the probe, the Colonial crew and craft would have to fly out and help them fix those issues. Even if it was all the way to the edge of the star system. Before the meal was over, the whole world knew that the Colonials had helped an American nonprofit agency to launch a probe into deep space for an undisclosed cost. Some places this went over very well, in other places not so much.
Early the next day, with the world watching the news about the probe that the Colonials had help deploy, Charles, a large section of his staff, and about everyone else on the islands who could get off of work for a few hours were all over at the long unused large ship pier. The one at the town once known as Uturoa to the world. The Colonials did not think it was that big of a deal to drop off what they felt was a dumb probe at the edge of the solar system. They had other items and issues that had more of an effect on their daily lives.
The 330 meter long floating dry dock was now flooded so it could sink as deep as it would go in the dredged area near the large concrete pier. She was soon resting on the soft sand at the bottom of the lagoon. All of the Chinese ships that had been part of the landing force had been resting at anchor between the two islands for a few weeks now. Each of the ships were anchored in a spot that was very well protected from wave and wind. The crews and troops had been pulled off the ship, and they had not been sunk by the crews like they had been planning to do.
Thanks to Charles's warning, US Marines and Army units had swept the ships from top to bottom. They had waited until a tent city had been set up on Ford Island so that the crews and troops had more living room and the boats were mostly empty of crew. When the interned ships had all the crews and troops off, the US military had rolled in and defused the scuttling charges that had been rigged on all of them. The Ford Island Bridge was closed to keep the ship's crews and now alert Chinese army units confined.
When the Chinese were not let back on to the ships, the local Chinese government office was not happy and they voiced their anger to anyone with a mic or camera. This was quickly picked up by the higher office back home. What was surprising was that the UN office was very quiet about these 'local' events. The Chinese would have caused more problems but they had developing issues back home to deal with. It was looking like a brewing civil war within their borders was about to burst in the open for all to see. The Central leadership wanted their troops back, and now. So this issue dropped out of sight and off the news pretty quickly. If they were not causing any public or private issues, it makes things easier for everyone.
The People's Liberation Army always had extra weapons lying around even if they were not as updated as the ones they were leaving on the ships back in Pearl Harbor. So soon, and twice a day, a pair of 747-400s in Hong Kong Airlines colors were taking off from the Honolulu International Airport. One aircraft could hold 660 people, and the other was rigged to carry only 524 seats. The second plane would carry the officers and senior noncoms of the PLA. The joes were packed in cheek by jowl in the configuration with the most seats that the Boeing jet could physically have. The lower enlisted personnel did not even get an inflight meal on their almost twelve hour flight home. After the second set of flights, donations were taken up and anyone below the rank of Zhong Shi or Staff Sergeant was given a brown lunch bag before they boarded the Boeing jets.
With the ships now safe, but still not under Colonial control, Charles had to make arrangements and pay for all of the ships to be towed the two thousand mile one way trip to the North Raiatea Island lagoon. Finding enough ships to do this job had not been easy, and it took two trips using the largest ocean-going tugs in the state of Hawaii to do the job. That was okay, because the Colonials still did not have the floating dock even after the second set of ex-Chinese ships were put at anchor.
Both of those trips had been covered and escorted by the Colonial submarines that no one knew about yet. After the attack on the island, Bill had asked Kelly if he could turn lose some of those assets along with a few others under his control. The hard part had been getting a crew trained on them who wanted to live on the Outpost islands. Then of course, they had to get them to the islands while keeping them hidden. Then again, the people from Rifts Earth were very good at hiding or keeping hidden whatever they felt needed to be kept hidden.
Those ships, while under tow, also were overflown every few hours by a Colonial Viper or Raptor at random intervals. It was during one of these transits that the Colonials were approached again by the US Department of State. They were more civil to the Colonials this time around, at least on the face of it during the meeting. It might have been because they were escorted by two senior members of the military this time. One of the military members was from the United States and the other from a good bit west and south of that country. It was these two who did most of the talking in the short meeting with one of Charles's staff.
Charles didn't trust himself not to punch out the State Department representative and did not attend the meeting. The two military personnel stated that they would like to see and maybe acquire some of the items the Chinese might have brought out to play with in the attack on the Colonial islands. This was not a surprise to Charles when he was back briefed on the meeting. He knew through contact with his friends that the US government had not been able to do more than look and take images while the Chinese ships were at Pearl Harbor. They had too many eyes watching what they were doing and there was little doubt that the Chinese would have caused a few issues if they saw something being offloaded from one of their ships.
Those two countries' intelligence agencies had already found out that the Colonial cyber guys had somehow obtained the blueprints for the Type 052D. The discovery had come about while the erstwhile Chinese destroyer Changsha was being repaired, when the two countries provided clandestine help. The cover story told to the two military people when they asked about these plans was that this had been done to allow the Colonials to help the Tahititions repair the large warship they now had their hands on. The group even had kept a straight face when they were told this story. Not one person in the room believed one word of it, but they were not going to rock that boat. The military leaders were not going to risk the loss of an opportunity to see the construction techniques and materials engineering that China was putting into their top of the line warships.
Soon, the Colonials would even be very quietly transferring a few missiles from the four captured Type 054A Jiangkai II frigates to the other island country. Any that were deemed useful would be used to help refill the open and empty sixty something cells in the VLS system on that ship. Charles did not have that much of an issue with the idea. That is, as long as Tahiti remembered who was helping them now. They were not so much given away as the price for the weapons were very reasonable, though not free. The other help had been freely given from a good neighbor to another neighbor in need.
What was everyone watching from the nearby shore of the Colonial island today? It was the two XS-24 Sea Bat attack submarines towing one of the four Type 072A landing ships that had been surrendered. She had been called the Wuyi San, now she was just called LST 1 by the Colonials and whoever else it was that had made a reference to her in any paperwork. She had been a new and proud ship but she looked beaten down by now. She had rust running down her side which her crew should have been keeping under control. They had not, not even before the ship's crew had been pulled off to live in tents on Ford Island.
The LST was slowly moving into the now wet open area between the tall metal walls that made up two sides of the dry dock. The 120 meter long ship was soon swallowed up by the massive sunken dry-dock. This was just a test run, to work out any issues that were sure to pop up. The Colonials had wanted to start small and hopefully easy with the 4800 ton fully loaded landing ship. They might have been able to get some help but in the end, Charles had decided that his people needed to learn how to do this in such a way that it fit the Colonial needs.
As everyone looked around, it was an impressive and increasingly rusty fleet that was riding the waves of the lagoon. There were three Type 903's and three Type 901's that had been collected after the two carrier and the one cruiser task groups had been sent to the bottom. They had two Type 075 LHA, two massive Ro/Ro cargo ships, six Type 71 LPD's, four Type 72A LST's, and the four Type 054A frigates that had been the landing forces' assigned escort. It was a fleet in anyone's book, and there was not a soul on any of them anymore.
It took only a few minutes to tie the ship down after it had entered the sunken floating dry dock. Now it would not move during the next part of this test operation. When the last thick white nylon rope line was reported to be secured, the water started being forced out of the dry dock's underwater hull by a set of four larger pumps. Soon, the oddly shaped craft and its load where ever so slowly starting to rise an inch at a time in the still blue water of the lagoon. Charles was looking forward to seeing what a few of the Colonial power suits based off of the Chipwell made Challenger exoskeletons could do to these ships. At least once they were high and dry. The factory ships in Tau Ceti and Alpha Centuri were waiting on the metal to come from this soon to be recycled ship.