Hope this chapter keeps you happy Eria.
Back at the battle site, a World Devastator moved in. Governor Velholm had decided to adopt a 'no witnesses, no evidence' policy, to avoid drawing attention to themselves. As a result, after any battle that the Imperial forces engaged in, a World Devastator would go in, collect the debris, and leave. The material collected was a fraction compared to what it could normally consume, but the evidence of their technology could not be revealed, at least not yet.
And so the World Devastator made its lonely rounds, scanning space and collecting debris, erasing any evidence of a battle there. Some of the debris was kept intact for intelligence purposes, but the rest was fed into the storage cells for later use.
***
At Babylon 5 though, some of the recent Imperial handiwork was being noticed. N'Gath listened to the reports from his people, and was curious. The raiding group had been provided with a jump-capable vessel to allow them far more flexibility in choosing their targets, but there had been no word from them yet. The last message received from them had told how they were going to attack a pair of freighters in the target zone. He had done the research and found that one freighter would be passing through the target zone, with lots of high-tech equipment on board, and some farming equipment. All of it could be sold fairly easily, and so he had sent the data along.
But the raiders had reported 2 freighters in the target zone, and they hadn't been heard from since. He began sending instructions, demanding shipping routes of freighters passing through or near the region. Whatever had happened to his raiders had cost him several months worth of profit, and that meant he wanted to find out everything.
***
The Barenica and its unusual crew arrived at the jump point for Babylon 5 and gently came through. Sarah looked out the window, enjoying the traffic there, and seeing so many ships. The Imperial on duty saw the ships out there, and stared, more to keep up appearances than actually be impressed. Deciding to see what her reaction was, he asked, "Why are you looking out there?"
"Have you ever seen so many ships before in your life?"
"Plenty of times. Outposts, small worlds, fleet exercises. I've seen small groups of ships like this plenty of times. Most of the time though, I see more. Now at Coruscant, Kuat Drive Yards, Sienar Fleet Production centers, the Sluis Van shipyards, or others, a bunch of ships like these would not even be noticed."
Sarah stared at him some more. 'Over a dozen freighters and shuttles is nothing compared to those places according to him! Sheesh!' "Whoah. But still, according to the background story, you are a low-tech worker who is in space for maybe the third time in his life, and have seen at most one or two ships. Seeing this many ships would be a spectacle."
Grinning, he resumed looking out the window, while a small recorder continued to take images, for later review. Both Imperials had them, and the data within them continued to pile up. For further data gathering, both of them also had data crystal converters. The items could read from a standard data crystal, and could store information at higher compressions than was available. What they would do, once they were on board, was to get access to information centers, and start downloading information. Although it would have been easier to simply build an attachment that would fit in a crystal slot, the sight of a computer linking directly into a crystal slot would have drawn far too much attention. Instead, they had a pair of data crystals, and while one was recording information, the other would be downloading the information to their recorders.
***
A tech on duty noticed the first hacking attempt. The automatic safeguards were able to kick the person out quickly, while recording where the attack had been from. The attack pattern was recorded, showing the rough memory center that had been attempted. It was listed on the senior technician's notification board, and he just looked at it and deleted it.
The second hacking attempt was a little subtler. It began with a small probe into the shipping records, but with a modification. Normally, people could search based on company or destination. But N'Grath's contract had specified all ships in a certain region during a certain time, and that wasn't available to people normally. So the program began to download information on all the freighters, and the hacker could work on that data later. The extended time and the extensive information requested began triggering low-level alerts, and another technician on duty noticed it as a program running for a longer time. Setting up a program to monitor the download, she called her boss over, and they began to backtrack the person.
A third hacking attempt was also made. With one group focusing on any other freighters that might be in the area, and the raiders destroyed, this hacker figured that a military vessel might have been nearby. So she began hacking into the military database, trying to see if any ships had been near the area in question.
But military databases are a little more sensitive to hacking attempts, and this one triggered an alarm. The senior technician began an immediate trace on the source, as well as running a slow-down program, designed to simulate a large program at work to the hacker. With the hacker getting slowed down by the program, it would buy additional time for security to close in on the hacker's position.
***
She noticed that her program was slowing down, and did a quick scan of the system. It showed only a few programs running, but nothing of the size needed for that kind of slowdown to occur. It took her a few seconds to think, and she told the system to stop, and hurriedly disconnected. Dashing away from the socket, she managed to dart through a door barely a minute before the security team arrived.
***
Garibaldi heard about the incident the next morning in his usual report. It seemed there had been three hacking attempts into the system database, all of which were obsessed with a certain area. Figuring that whatever they were interested in would be interesting to him too, he began calling up information on that region.
After several hours of going over the information, he concluded that the region was boring, with nothing out there to interest anyone. Still, why would the hackers have attempted the attacks unless there was something going on? He sighed.
"Time to pay a visit to N'Grath."
***
The Barenica arrived at the zero-G loading dock, and the cargo pods full of food were transferred off and sold, and several pallets of electronic equipment and farming tools were loaded. Seeking permission for a couple days R&R, Sarah was able to put the Barenica in an extended orbit, and waited for a small shuttle to circle around the various ships for transferring people to and from the station. Since there was the need for the Imperial personnel to get their identicards, Sarah and Scott would be on different shifts, as usual.
It took several minutes for the two to get their new cards, as the standard questions simply could not be answered effectively. Where they were born, their parents' names, where they went to school, all had to be skipped or lied to on the list. Their cover story was eventually accepted, that they had grown up on a small colony, and had transferred from one place to another, working a lot and learning a little at all of them. With their previous stop being a non-technic location, it was easy to falsify the trail there.
Eventually, new identicards were issued in their names, and the two Imperials began their slow and steady exploration of the station. Their first stop was a small bar, where the credits they had earned from the few days travel on the ship were spent on a few small drinks, and a data crystal of current events. Going to a computer, they would plug the first data crystal in, and ask for a certain topic. When that crystal was full, they would exchange, and go after more of the same topic, if not finished, or another topic. Since they were asking for commonly available topics, their activities went unnoticed by the security programs. They had arranged to borrow some money from Sarah, and spent it on the usual tourist souvenirs, but they also bought a recent copy of Jan'th's Fighting Starships, and a map showing the different empires and their main colonies and production centers. They also bought a news compilation of the past year, and when the person looking at them asked, they said they wanted some reading material for the long trips.
After several hours, they finally filled up the memories of their portable recorders, and it was time for the Barenica to leave again. Per previous agreements, Sarah and Scott had the same watch, while the Imperials had their watch so they could compare information. Going over the information, they observed how President Clark wasn't as popular as would seem at first, and that the riots on Mars had 'enjoyed' a long history. Looking further, they saw how the key problems on Mars were the lack of useful farmland on the planet (not surprising, considering that everyone had to live in domes), and the high costs for shipping items from Earth to Mars.
Sarah and Scott though, while cuddling in a hammock, were asking other questions. Were they betraying Earth by letting these Imperials get the information they wanted was the key question. They knew that they owed their lives to the Imperials, but the power wielded by the Imperials scared both of them. Although they knew President Clark was trying to isolate Earth, they had made some good friends and trading partners among the other alien races. But which was worse, the potential of Clark as President, isolating Earth, or these unknown humans, with their super technology? That question would haunt them on their trips.
***
"Am not spy. I do legitimate business."
"Look N'Grath, this isn't getting us anywhere. We both know that if it makes a profit you're in it, and ten times out of ten its illegal. Also if you didn't do this, then you would know who did. Now I am asking you again, why were there hacking attempts into the Bab5 mainframe? Hacking into the civilian freight lines wasn't that bad, but hacking into military databases we tend to frown on around here."
"Have no knowledge of any of those. If you have no honest business with me, leave."
Sighing, Garibaldi walked away. He knew N'Grath was behind what was going on, but he couldn't prove it. Walking over to a nearby bar, Garibaldi sat down and ordered a drink. He still had no idea what was going on behind those hacks, and N'Grath wouldn't give out any information. That usually meant whatever had happened was really illegal, even for N'Grath, or N'Grath didn't know about it at all. From past experience, he bet it was the former, and that N'Grath was hiding something that was really dangerous to him.
Noticing someone looking at him across the bar, Garibaldi did a two-finger signal. To anyone else there, it merely looked like he was signaling for his tab and he was ready to leave, but to his informants, it meant that he would be in the number 2 location for talking. His body language as he left would tell the time to meet as well.
Getting up and leaving, Garibaldi arrived at the location. After waiting fifteen minutes as he had requested, the informant came out.
"What do you have?"
"I know why the hacks took place."
"Tell me what you know."
"Well, I heard it from a friend who overheard it in a bar-"
"As usual, now what happened?"
"Apparently N'Grath financed a jump-capable vessel to be used for Raider attacks. This was the third time it had been used. The commander reported that they were going in to attack 2 freighters at a certain location. They haven't been heard from since."
"You mean they haven't reported back to here or were captured elsewhere, right?"
"No, I mean they have not been heard from anywhere. No reports from other sources, no arrest broadcasts, nothing. It's as though they vanished into a black hole."
"Do you have the location?"
"Here."
"Thanks. Here are some credits. If this is important, I might have some more credits."
"Can you tell me what you find?"
"I'll try to pass a message back, next time we meet."
"I understand."
Garibaldi turned and left, his parting words telling the informant to meet him in the number four location in one day.
***
N'Grath listened with pleasure. The person who had wanted to talk to Garibaldi was also one of his agents, and had passed along the information properly. His own investigations had been halted, and he had resorted to sneakier methods of doing an investigation. This method was particularly elegant, if a bit unreliable. By having Garibaldi carry out the investigation, he would not be at risk, and far more data would be available. Everything had been set up properly, as even the message crystal carried nothing but the coordinates and the time frame.
Some had suggested putting a worm or Trojan horse program in it, but N'Grath had stopped them. If Garibaldi began to suspect that his informant also worked for N'Grath, then that channel would be closed off. He had worked hard to get that channel set up, and he intended to use it for as long as possible.
Letting himself do a light chuckle, N'Grath relaxed in the pleasure of a plan working properly.
***
Garibaldi returned to his office, and began to go over the data on the crystal. It was simply a file containing hyperspace coordinates, the matching realspace coordinates, and a time frame. Calling up his own investigation that he had down before, he compared the two sets of information. Looking over the data, it showed that there was a single freighter passing through the area during the time the vanishing occurred.
But that was unusual, as his contact had said the raiders had targeted two freighters before they had disappeared. Could they have been caught by another security patrol? He sent out requests to other stations nearby, asking if any of them had managed to arrest any jump-capable vessels that were supporting raiders. He also sent a message to Captain Sheridan, asking for any information on EarthForce ship movements through the selected region during the time frame indicated. The space was too far from the other governments, and the Vorlons wouldn't care about anything like a raider attack. So the obvious options were either Earthforce, or someone else.
***
It took several hours for the reports to come in, but he finally put it all together, and the result was nothing. There were no reports on other arrests, and no reports on any EarthForce ships in the area. Sending his reports to Ivanova, he asked for a fighter patrol of the region. Surprisingly, he found out a fighter patrol had just returned from the area, and had found nothing. No anomalies, no wreckage, nothing. The whole region was a perfectly normal system, except for the fact that it had apparently managed to swallow up a raider force with a jump ship transport.
He met with his contact the next day, and gave him some more credits, and shared with him the information he had learned. Several of the conversations in the bar had died down a little, as quite a few people had friends who had been in the raiding group. Hearing the Babylon 5 security chief tell the contact that nothing had been found at all of either arrests or debris made them a little nervous. Their own connections would spread the word, letting other raiders know that something was out there.
Garibaldi returned to his office, and kept thinking on the subject some more. If N'Grath hadn't heard about it from his sources, that meant it had to be a strike with extremely tight security on it. But his sources within Earthgov hadn't heard anything either, so that meant a top secret project had attacked a group of pirates, or someone else had. If it was another race, then why were they trying to get into Earth space? More importantly, if this attack had occurred, why wasn't there any wreckage? Unless they had a cosmic vacuum cleaner, there would have been wreckage floating around.
***
N'Grath heard the report hours later, and was even more puzzled. If none of his contacts had found out anything, and none of the official contacts had found anything, then obviously something else was out there. He had heard of associates and someone called Morden helping some races, but an attack on Raiders seemed below their status, unless the associates were simply trying to take over part of Earth Alliance space.
But the total lack of wreckage was different. According to his information on the associates, they would attack, but the debris would be left behind afterwards. This time it was like the vessel and the raiders had disappeared into a black hole. Briefly he considered the Vorlons, but they simply didn't care about minor things like privateering for an independent group (his name for piracy). So there was someone else out there.
***
Not knowing the mild hornet's nest they managed to stir up, the Imperial fleet begins to head towards Mandelin 4, planning to offer them a first exchange of technology. They had seen what the ground-to-space shuttles looked like, and had built a couple using full Imperial technology, instead of the primitive hydrogen fusion systems. Jumping in, a shuttle was released, and began heading towards the colony. Initial alarms and concerns over an unannounced arrival were dampened slightly when one of the Imperial officers had come on line and requested permission to land. The concern had been a bunch of pirates sending in vessels to plunder the colony, but the familiar sight of a human in uniform aboard a human shuttle had calmed them down. The did notice that the uniform seemed a little different, but as they had only seen the officer from the neck up, a brief image of a collar is not enough to raise suspicions.
Arriving at the planet, Commander Valeyin requested a meeting with Governor Brogin. She was happy to meet with someone, as one of the farmers had been trying to pressure her for more of some miracle plow that he had bought. As near as she could figure from his ranting and bragging, he had bought the plow assembly for slightly higher than normal, but it was performing better than anything else he used. It was lighter, making it easier to move, and the universal joints on it allowed him to attach it to anything he wanted. Glad of a reason to not listen to his drunk ranting and raving, she scheduled the meeting for a half hour.
Commander Valeyin met with Governor Brogin, and outlined what they would like to exchange. The meeting was a bit of a surprise for the Governor, who suddenly found herself in the position of negotiating a trade agreement with a human empire of vastly higher technology. She tried gentle inquiries of where they had come from, but those questions were politely rebuffed. The Imperials were intending to make a polite start with the local humans, but if things got rough, they could always use the tried and true methods of brute force. Also, they needed to get a feel for the local rumors and stories before they began designing their cover stories. After all, if they said they were humans who had been kidnapped by aliens in the past, and there had been no rumors about that, then their cover story would be blown.
However, the opportunity presented to the Governor was very nice. The Imperials would upgrade their farm equipment, allowing them to get higher and higher yields of crops, with their genetic technology allowing faster crop growth rates to compensate. Eventually the amount of food produced would exceed the local capability of freighters to carry it away, and her colony would start to export the food to farther locations. With the faster freighters available, they could deliver food to the Sol system for the same cost or even less than Mars colonists would pay for shipping directly from Earth.
But still she was negotiating with an alien race. Commander Valeyin convinced her though, that since they were as human as she was, she wasn't required to contact Earthgov for First Contact specialists. Of course with the technological edge they possessed, any negotiations would be irrelevant. After all, if her assistants leaked out information that she had declined an offer to triple their income, she wouldn't stand a chance at the next election. Hesitatingly, she agreed to the initial exchange of technology. The Imperial forces would provide advanced farming equipment, in exchange for a 50% cut of any crops harvested above normal amounts. Of course, she didn't know that if she had declined, the Imperial ground forces would wipe out her whole colony, but some things were better left unsaid.
For assistance elsewhere, a small repair shop would be installed at the spaceport, with the capability to repair any small craft that came by. The initial result of this was that the aging ground to space shuttles could get the overhaul they needed. It also doubled as a bug implanter, adding microscopic listening devices to the vessels so the Imperials could record various conversations that took place, and run them through a droid filter to get the important items.
Also, in order for the local engineers to use the equipment properly, a set of schools were set up, to train the engineers, and get more information out to the students. Within a couple more days, a small communications relay was set up, allowing the planet to communicate with the Imperial base at Fetoro 3, near the wormhole exit. The communications relay was the first step to setting up the Holonet in this galaxy, and soon it would be possible to communicate anywhere in the galaxy, with no time lag.
As the first constructions began, several people observed them. The shuttles landing were normal enough, but as the facilities were examined, several people gasped at he power requirements and capabilities of the new items. When the first hypermatter reactor was brought on-line, the power plant technicians were shocked when they saw what it was capable of. Even more startling was that the reactor was a little smaller than one of the turbines at the hydroelectric plant, but was producing over ten times the plant's full capacity, and the hypermatter reactor was at idling levels of power. One person tried to imagine the production at full power, but he merely sat there for a few minutes, and gave up.
Among all those people gathering to watch the next piece of technological magic was someone in brown robes, with a certain silver and gem decoration on the inside of his robes. The Ranger had stopped off on the planet to wait for a transfer to another ship, and had seen the proceedings. Unlike the others at the colony, he had a far better idea of what a shuttle's normal performance envelope was, and the time between landings was far shorter than it should be. He began making recordings, and listing times between arrivals. Although he did not know the full impact of these technologies, he knew Entil'za would want the information. He would also pass on the information to Delenn at Babylon 5, for her review as well. Waiting a few days after the repair center and the droids had arrived allowed him to complete the information being gathered, and get a good idea of how effective they were.
Going over to the small communication center, the one that didn't use Imperial technology, he placed a message through to his contact, requesting someone stop by in a standard shuttle to pick up his data crystal. He wanted to stay, to continue to observe what was going on. It would be about a week before a ship stopped by, and he continued his watch, doing odd jobs at the spaceport to keep up his cover, and to keep watching the newcomers. He needed to know if they were allied with the Shadows, or were something else entirely.
***
An independent miner found the first set of clues that something powerful was out there. He had found one system earlier that had possessed a mineral streak fairly near the planet's surface, and had managed to get enough equipment to start digging it out. He had also bought a small refinery, allowing him to carry back rare earth elements in about 50% purity, instead of hauling several thousand pounds of ore to get a few pounds of rare earths. He exited out the jump gate, and began making his way to the planet, preparing to land next to the vein and begin mining for the riches present.
But on the way in, he saw something totally different. Instead of the flat plain he had been expecting, there was a trench across part of it, and the size of the trench startled him. He had been gone for about a month during which he was getting the equipment, and returning, and the trench had occurred during that time. Taking over from the computer, he compared the trench to the rare earths he had detected earlier, and saw that part of the trench had consumed them. Deciding to land in the trench, he carefully fired his reentry jets, watching carefully as the heat corona from reentry formed around his ship, making sure he didn't tumble or lose control, as he would burn up. On the way in, he looked at the trench and wondered what could have caused it.
Landing in the trench, his worst nightmares seemed to pale. He hadn't been able to get a good read from orbit, but sitting in the trench, he was shocked. His ship was fifty feet tall, yet it wasn't even a third of the depth of the trench. Estimating the trench at six hundred feet wide, he brought up the view from space. Measuring roughly, the trench looked to be a little over four hundred miles long.
Fortunately, for him, part of the trench had exposed a rich vein of rare earth ores, and he began loading them up to be carried into the processor, while he would continue his explorations along both ends. He could only think of one thing that could cause a trench like this, and he wanted to find the meteor that had caused it. Setting his ship to warn him if anything came by, he got into a small rover, and began heading off to one end. He hadn't communicated his find yet, as he didn't want any pirates to know that he was all by himself, and getting several hundred thousand credits in rare earths ready for transport. On the way there, he began working out a little math. Normal dirt and rock had a density of around 62.5 pounds per cubic foot. This trench was over 150 feet deep, and over six hundred feet wide. Since it was more like a shallow bowl than a rectangle, a triangular cross-section would work, so that was around 45,000 square feet, times the length of over 400 miles. Converting that to feet, that was 2,112,000 feet. Multiplying the two together, he got around ninety-five billion cubic feet. Multiplying that by the density, he got,
"Six trillion pounds! That's about 3 billion tons of material!"
But the numbers worked out, even if it seemed impossible. Whatever meteor had caused the trench had managed to move three billion tons of material, and that meant it was either fast, large, or both. If it was large, that meant it could contain lots of unusual minerals and elements that could also be sold for money. Unfortunately for that meteor theory, neither of the ends looked like the entry or the end point. Still he would look over both ends, trying to find a meteor that could have done it. After all, the alternative was simply impossible. If someone had done this, they would have had to move three billion tons of material in less than a month.
It was a good thing, for his sanity, that he did not know the material had been moved in three days.
***
Back at Mandelin 4, the construction was going quickly. Pre-fabricated buildings, built by the World Devastator in another system were being assembled quickly. People accustomed to buildings requiring weeks or months to set up watched as the pre-fabricated structures were assembled in mere days. The children ooh'ed and ahh'ed as well, watching the floating droids as they assembled the buildings in quiet harmony. As the facilities were brought on-line, Governor Brogin was invited to tour them. Watching the communications technicians get accustomed to the new systems was enjoyable, as the older equipment used in the previous facility had a habit of breaking down often. The net result had been for the technicians to cobble together an e-mail system, allowing people to send video messages to each other, instead of actually communicating.
The droid repair and construction facility went on-line a day later, and the first farming droids began doing their work. Several farmers were concerned that they would be out of work, but the new schooling systems were available for them to learn new skills, and the droids were allowing people with large plots of land to cultivate all of the area. To prevent soil exhaustion, new fertilizers were being mixed up, and sprayed over the fields. One proposal being discussed was domes for growing the food, effectively converting them into giant greenhouses.
Overall though, the crop yield was increasing steadily, and Governor Brogin was looking at a doubling of their crop production for this harvest, with higher yields for the next harvest. There was some discussion about where to sell the food, and local merchants were being pressed to look for external markets, at distances they would have ignored previously. But Imperial technology had allowed construction of enhanced freighters, and markets that were ignored before were discussed, and the merchants began to divide up the local galaxy between themselves, attempting to corner the local markets.
Back at the battle site, a World Devastator moved in. Governor Velholm had decided to adopt a 'no witnesses, no evidence' policy, to avoid drawing attention to themselves. As a result, after any battle that the Imperial forces engaged in, a World Devastator would go in, collect the debris, and leave. The material collected was a fraction compared to what it could normally consume, but the evidence of their technology could not be revealed, at least not yet.
And so the World Devastator made its lonely rounds, scanning space and collecting debris, erasing any evidence of a battle there. Some of the debris was kept intact for intelligence purposes, but the rest was fed into the storage cells for later use.
***
At Babylon 5 though, some of the recent Imperial handiwork was being noticed. N'Gath listened to the reports from his people, and was curious. The raiding group had been provided with a jump-capable vessel to allow them far more flexibility in choosing their targets, but there had been no word from them yet. The last message received from them had told how they were going to attack a pair of freighters in the target zone. He had done the research and found that one freighter would be passing through the target zone, with lots of high-tech equipment on board, and some farming equipment. All of it could be sold fairly easily, and so he had sent the data along.
But the raiders had reported 2 freighters in the target zone, and they hadn't been heard from since. He began sending instructions, demanding shipping routes of freighters passing through or near the region. Whatever had happened to his raiders had cost him several months worth of profit, and that meant he wanted to find out everything.
***
The Barenica and its unusual crew arrived at the jump point for Babylon 5 and gently came through. Sarah looked out the window, enjoying the traffic there, and seeing so many ships. The Imperial on duty saw the ships out there, and stared, more to keep up appearances than actually be impressed. Deciding to see what her reaction was, he asked, "Why are you looking out there?"
"Have you ever seen so many ships before in your life?"
"Plenty of times. Outposts, small worlds, fleet exercises. I've seen small groups of ships like this plenty of times. Most of the time though, I see more. Now at Coruscant, Kuat Drive Yards, Sienar Fleet Production centers, the Sluis Van shipyards, or others, a bunch of ships like these would not even be noticed."
Sarah stared at him some more. 'Over a dozen freighters and shuttles is nothing compared to those places according to him! Sheesh!' "Whoah. But still, according to the background story, you are a low-tech worker who is in space for maybe the third time in his life, and have seen at most one or two ships. Seeing this many ships would be a spectacle."
Grinning, he resumed looking out the window, while a small recorder continued to take images, for later review. Both Imperials had them, and the data within them continued to pile up. For further data gathering, both of them also had data crystal converters. The items could read from a standard data crystal, and could store information at higher compressions than was available. What they would do, once they were on board, was to get access to information centers, and start downloading information. Although it would have been easier to simply build an attachment that would fit in a crystal slot, the sight of a computer linking directly into a crystal slot would have drawn far too much attention. Instead, they had a pair of data crystals, and while one was recording information, the other would be downloading the information to their recorders.
***
A tech on duty noticed the first hacking attempt. The automatic safeguards were able to kick the person out quickly, while recording where the attack had been from. The attack pattern was recorded, showing the rough memory center that had been attempted. It was listed on the senior technician's notification board, and he just looked at it and deleted it.
The second hacking attempt was a little subtler. It began with a small probe into the shipping records, but with a modification. Normally, people could search based on company or destination. But N'Grath's contract had specified all ships in a certain region during a certain time, and that wasn't available to people normally. So the program began to download information on all the freighters, and the hacker could work on that data later. The extended time and the extensive information requested began triggering low-level alerts, and another technician on duty noticed it as a program running for a longer time. Setting up a program to monitor the download, she called her boss over, and they began to backtrack the person.
A third hacking attempt was also made. With one group focusing on any other freighters that might be in the area, and the raiders destroyed, this hacker figured that a military vessel might have been nearby. So she began hacking into the military database, trying to see if any ships had been near the area in question.
But military databases are a little more sensitive to hacking attempts, and this one triggered an alarm. The senior technician began an immediate trace on the source, as well as running a slow-down program, designed to simulate a large program at work to the hacker. With the hacker getting slowed down by the program, it would buy additional time for security to close in on the hacker's position.
***
She noticed that her program was slowing down, and did a quick scan of the system. It showed only a few programs running, but nothing of the size needed for that kind of slowdown to occur. It took her a few seconds to think, and she told the system to stop, and hurriedly disconnected. Dashing away from the socket, she managed to dart through a door barely a minute before the security team arrived.
***
Garibaldi heard about the incident the next morning in his usual report. It seemed there had been three hacking attempts into the system database, all of which were obsessed with a certain area. Figuring that whatever they were interested in would be interesting to him too, he began calling up information on that region.
After several hours of going over the information, he concluded that the region was boring, with nothing out there to interest anyone. Still, why would the hackers have attempted the attacks unless there was something going on? He sighed.
"Time to pay a visit to N'Grath."
***
The Barenica arrived at the zero-G loading dock, and the cargo pods full of food were transferred off and sold, and several pallets of electronic equipment and farming tools were loaded. Seeking permission for a couple days R&R, Sarah was able to put the Barenica in an extended orbit, and waited for a small shuttle to circle around the various ships for transferring people to and from the station. Since there was the need for the Imperial personnel to get their identicards, Sarah and Scott would be on different shifts, as usual.
It took several minutes for the two to get their new cards, as the standard questions simply could not be answered effectively. Where they were born, their parents' names, where they went to school, all had to be skipped or lied to on the list. Their cover story was eventually accepted, that they had grown up on a small colony, and had transferred from one place to another, working a lot and learning a little at all of them. With their previous stop being a non-technic location, it was easy to falsify the trail there.
Eventually, new identicards were issued in their names, and the two Imperials began their slow and steady exploration of the station. Their first stop was a small bar, where the credits they had earned from the few days travel on the ship were spent on a few small drinks, and a data crystal of current events. Going to a computer, they would plug the first data crystal in, and ask for a certain topic. When that crystal was full, they would exchange, and go after more of the same topic, if not finished, or another topic. Since they were asking for commonly available topics, their activities went unnoticed by the security programs. They had arranged to borrow some money from Sarah, and spent it on the usual tourist souvenirs, but they also bought a recent copy of Jan'th's Fighting Starships, and a map showing the different empires and their main colonies and production centers. They also bought a news compilation of the past year, and when the person looking at them asked, they said they wanted some reading material for the long trips.
After several hours, they finally filled up the memories of their portable recorders, and it was time for the Barenica to leave again. Per previous agreements, Sarah and Scott had the same watch, while the Imperials had their watch so they could compare information. Going over the information, they observed how President Clark wasn't as popular as would seem at first, and that the riots on Mars had 'enjoyed' a long history. Looking further, they saw how the key problems on Mars were the lack of useful farmland on the planet (not surprising, considering that everyone had to live in domes), and the high costs for shipping items from Earth to Mars.
Sarah and Scott though, while cuddling in a hammock, were asking other questions. Were they betraying Earth by letting these Imperials get the information they wanted was the key question. They knew that they owed their lives to the Imperials, but the power wielded by the Imperials scared both of them. Although they knew President Clark was trying to isolate Earth, they had made some good friends and trading partners among the other alien races. But which was worse, the potential of Clark as President, isolating Earth, or these unknown humans, with their super technology? That question would haunt them on their trips.
***
"Am not spy. I do legitimate business."
"Look N'Grath, this isn't getting us anywhere. We both know that if it makes a profit you're in it, and ten times out of ten its illegal. Also if you didn't do this, then you would know who did. Now I am asking you again, why were there hacking attempts into the Bab5 mainframe? Hacking into the civilian freight lines wasn't that bad, but hacking into military databases we tend to frown on around here."
"Have no knowledge of any of those. If you have no honest business with me, leave."
Sighing, Garibaldi walked away. He knew N'Grath was behind what was going on, but he couldn't prove it. Walking over to a nearby bar, Garibaldi sat down and ordered a drink. He still had no idea what was going on behind those hacks, and N'Grath wouldn't give out any information. That usually meant whatever had happened was really illegal, even for N'Grath, or N'Grath didn't know about it at all. From past experience, he bet it was the former, and that N'Grath was hiding something that was really dangerous to him.
Noticing someone looking at him across the bar, Garibaldi did a two-finger signal. To anyone else there, it merely looked like he was signaling for his tab and he was ready to leave, but to his informants, it meant that he would be in the number 2 location for talking. His body language as he left would tell the time to meet as well.
Getting up and leaving, Garibaldi arrived at the location. After waiting fifteen minutes as he had requested, the informant came out.
"What do you have?"
"I know why the hacks took place."
"Tell me what you know."
"Well, I heard it from a friend who overheard it in a bar-"
"As usual, now what happened?"
"Apparently N'Grath financed a jump-capable vessel to be used for Raider attacks. This was the third time it had been used. The commander reported that they were going in to attack 2 freighters at a certain location. They haven't been heard from since."
"You mean they haven't reported back to here or were captured elsewhere, right?"
"No, I mean they have not been heard from anywhere. No reports from other sources, no arrest broadcasts, nothing. It's as though they vanished into a black hole."
"Do you have the location?"
"Here."
"Thanks. Here are some credits. If this is important, I might have some more credits."
"Can you tell me what you find?"
"I'll try to pass a message back, next time we meet."
"I understand."
Garibaldi turned and left, his parting words telling the informant to meet him in the number four location in one day.
***
N'Grath listened with pleasure. The person who had wanted to talk to Garibaldi was also one of his agents, and had passed along the information properly. His own investigations had been halted, and he had resorted to sneakier methods of doing an investigation. This method was particularly elegant, if a bit unreliable. By having Garibaldi carry out the investigation, he would not be at risk, and far more data would be available. Everything had been set up properly, as even the message crystal carried nothing but the coordinates and the time frame.
Some had suggested putting a worm or Trojan horse program in it, but N'Grath had stopped them. If Garibaldi began to suspect that his informant also worked for N'Grath, then that channel would be closed off. He had worked hard to get that channel set up, and he intended to use it for as long as possible.
Letting himself do a light chuckle, N'Grath relaxed in the pleasure of a plan working properly.
***
Garibaldi returned to his office, and began to go over the data on the crystal. It was simply a file containing hyperspace coordinates, the matching realspace coordinates, and a time frame. Calling up his own investigation that he had down before, he compared the two sets of information. Looking over the data, it showed that there was a single freighter passing through the area during the time the vanishing occurred.
But that was unusual, as his contact had said the raiders had targeted two freighters before they had disappeared. Could they have been caught by another security patrol? He sent out requests to other stations nearby, asking if any of them had managed to arrest any jump-capable vessels that were supporting raiders. He also sent a message to Captain Sheridan, asking for any information on EarthForce ship movements through the selected region during the time frame indicated. The space was too far from the other governments, and the Vorlons wouldn't care about anything like a raider attack. So the obvious options were either Earthforce, or someone else.
***
It took several hours for the reports to come in, but he finally put it all together, and the result was nothing. There were no reports on other arrests, and no reports on any EarthForce ships in the area. Sending his reports to Ivanova, he asked for a fighter patrol of the region. Surprisingly, he found out a fighter patrol had just returned from the area, and had found nothing. No anomalies, no wreckage, nothing. The whole region was a perfectly normal system, except for the fact that it had apparently managed to swallow up a raider force with a jump ship transport.
He met with his contact the next day, and gave him some more credits, and shared with him the information he had learned. Several of the conversations in the bar had died down a little, as quite a few people had friends who had been in the raiding group. Hearing the Babylon 5 security chief tell the contact that nothing had been found at all of either arrests or debris made them a little nervous. Their own connections would spread the word, letting other raiders know that something was out there.
Garibaldi returned to his office, and kept thinking on the subject some more. If N'Grath hadn't heard about it from his sources, that meant it had to be a strike with extremely tight security on it. But his sources within Earthgov hadn't heard anything either, so that meant a top secret project had attacked a group of pirates, or someone else had. If it was another race, then why were they trying to get into Earth space? More importantly, if this attack had occurred, why wasn't there any wreckage? Unless they had a cosmic vacuum cleaner, there would have been wreckage floating around.
***
N'Grath heard the report hours later, and was even more puzzled. If none of his contacts had found out anything, and none of the official contacts had found anything, then obviously something else was out there. He had heard of associates and someone called Morden helping some races, but an attack on Raiders seemed below their status, unless the associates were simply trying to take over part of Earth Alliance space.
But the total lack of wreckage was different. According to his information on the associates, they would attack, but the debris would be left behind afterwards. This time it was like the vessel and the raiders had disappeared into a black hole. Briefly he considered the Vorlons, but they simply didn't care about minor things like privateering for an independent group (his name for piracy). So there was someone else out there.
***
Not knowing the mild hornet's nest they managed to stir up, the Imperial fleet begins to head towards Mandelin 4, planning to offer them a first exchange of technology. They had seen what the ground-to-space shuttles looked like, and had built a couple using full Imperial technology, instead of the primitive hydrogen fusion systems. Jumping in, a shuttle was released, and began heading towards the colony. Initial alarms and concerns over an unannounced arrival were dampened slightly when one of the Imperial officers had come on line and requested permission to land. The concern had been a bunch of pirates sending in vessels to plunder the colony, but the familiar sight of a human in uniform aboard a human shuttle had calmed them down. The did notice that the uniform seemed a little different, but as they had only seen the officer from the neck up, a brief image of a collar is not enough to raise suspicions.
Arriving at the planet, Commander Valeyin requested a meeting with Governor Brogin. She was happy to meet with someone, as one of the farmers had been trying to pressure her for more of some miracle plow that he had bought. As near as she could figure from his ranting and bragging, he had bought the plow assembly for slightly higher than normal, but it was performing better than anything else he used. It was lighter, making it easier to move, and the universal joints on it allowed him to attach it to anything he wanted. Glad of a reason to not listen to his drunk ranting and raving, she scheduled the meeting for a half hour.
Commander Valeyin met with Governor Brogin, and outlined what they would like to exchange. The meeting was a bit of a surprise for the Governor, who suddenly found herself in the position of negotiating a trade agreement with a human empire of vastly higher technology. She tried gentle inquiries of where they had come from, but those questions were politely rebuffed. The Imperials were intending to make a polite start with the local humans, but if things got rough, they could always use the tried and true methods of brute force. Also, they needed to get a feel for the local rumors and stories before they began designing their cover stories. After all, if they said they were humans who had been kidnapped by aliens in the past, and there had been no rumors about that, then their cover story would be blown.
However, the opportunity presented to the Governor was very nice. The Imperials would upgrade their farm equipment, allowing them to get higher and higher yields of crops, with their genetic technology allowing faster crop growth rates to compensate. Eventually the amount of food produced would exceed the local capability of freighters to carry it away, and her colony would start to export the food to farther locations. With the faster freighters available, they could deliver food to the Sol system for the same cost or even less than Mars colonists would pay for shipping directly from Earth.
But still she was negotiating with an alien race. Commander Valeyin convinced her though, that since they were as human as she was, she wasn't required to contact Earthgov for First Contact specialists. Of course with the technological edge they possessed, any negotiations would be irrelevant. After all, if her assistants leaked out information that she had declined an offer to triple their income, she wouldn't stand a chance at the next election. Hesitatingly, she agreed to the initial exchange of technology. The Imperial forces would provide advanced farming equipment, in exchange for a 50% cut of any crops harvested above normal amounts. Of course, she didn't know that if she had declined, the Imperial ground forces would wipe out her whole colony, but some things were better left unsaid.
For assistance elsewhere, a small repair shop would be installed at the spaceport, with the capability to repair any small craft that came by. The initial result of this was that the aging ground to space shuttles could get the overhaul they needed. It also doubled as a bug implanter, adding microscopic listening devices to the vessels so the Imperials could record various conversations that took place, and run them through a droid filter to get the important items.
Also, in order for the local engineers to use the equipment properly, a set of schools were set up, to train the engineers, and get more information out to the students. Within a couple more days, a small communications relay was set up, allowing the planet to communicate with the Imperial base at Fetoro 3, near the wormhole exit. The communications relay was the first step to setting up the Holonet in this galaxy, and soon it would be possible to communicate anywhere in the galaxy, with no time lag.
As the first constructions began, several people observed them. The shuttles landing were normal enough, but as the facilities were examined, several people gasped at he power requirements and capabilities of the new items. When the first hypermatter reactor was brought on-line, the power plant technicians were shocked when they saw what it was capable of. Even more startling was that the reactor was a little smaller than one of the turbines at the hydroelectric plant, but was producing over ten times the plant's full capacity, and the hypermatter reactor was at idling levels of power. One person tried to imagine the production at full power, but he merely sat there for a few minutes, and gave up.
Among all those people gathering to watch the next piece of technological magic was someone in brown robes, with a certain silver and gem decoration on the inside of his robes. The Ranger had stopped off on the planet to wait for a transfer to another ship, and had seen the proceedings. Unlike the others at the colony, he had a far better idea of what a shuttle's normal performance envelope was, and the time between landings was far shorter than it should be. He began making recordings, and listing times between arrivals. Although he did not know the full impact of these technologies, he knew Entil'za would want the information. He would also pass on the information to Delenn at Babylon 5, for her review as well. Waiting a few days after the repair center and the droids had arrived allowed him to complete the information being gathered, and get a good idea of how effective they were.
Going over to the small communication center, the one that didn't use Imperial technology, he placed a message through to his contact, requesting someone stop by in a standard shuttle to pick up his data crystal. He wanted to stay, to continue to observe what was going on. It would be about a week before a ship stopped by, and he continued his watch, doing odd jobs at the spaceport to keep up his cover, and to keep watching the newcomers. He needed to know if they were allied with the Shadows, or were something else entirely.
***
An independent miner found the first set of clues that something powerful was out there. He had found one system earlier that had possessed a mineral streak fairly near the planet's surface, and had managed to get enough equipment to start digging it out. He had also bought a small refinery, allowing him to carry back rare earth elements in about 50% purity, instead of hauling several thousand pounds of ore to get a few pounds of rare earths. He exited out the jump gate, and began making his way to the planet, preparing to land next to the vein and begin mining for the riches present.
But on the way in, he saw something totally different. Instead of the flat plain he had been expecting, there was a trench across part of it, and the size of the trench startled him. He had been gone for about a month during which he was getting the equipment, and returning, and the trench had occurred during that time. Taking over from the computer, he compared the trench to the rare earths he had detected earlier, and saw that part of the trench had consumed them. Deciding to land in the trench, he carefully fired his reentry jets, watching carefully as the heat corona from reentry formed around his ship, making sure he didn't tumble or lose control, as he would burn up. On the way in, he looked at the trench and wondered what could have caused it.
Landing in the trench, his worst nightmares seemed to pale. He hadn't been able to get a good read from orbit, but sitting in the trench, he was shocked. His ship was fifty feet tall, yet it wasn't even a third of the depth of the trench. Estimating the trench at six hundred feet wide, he brought up the view from space. Measuring roughly, the trench looked to be a little over four hundred miles long.
Fortunately, for him, part of the trench had exposed a rich vein of rare earth ores, and he began loading them up to be carried into the processor, while he would continue his explorations along both ends. He could only think of one thing that could cause a trench like this, and he wanted to find the meteor that had caused it. Setting his ship to warn him if anything came by, he got into a small rover, and began heading off to one end. He hadn't communicated his find yet, as he didn't want any pirates to know that he was all by himself, and getting several hundred thousand credits in rare earths ready for transport. On the way there, he began working out a little math. Normal dirt and rock had a density of around 62.5 pounds per cubic foot. This trench was over 150 feet deep, and over six hundred feet wide. Since it was more like a shallow bowl than a rectangle, a triangular cross-section would work, so that was around 45,000 square feet, times the length of over 400 miles. Converting that to feet, that was 2,112,000 feet. Multiplying the two together, he got around ninety-five billion cubic feet. Multiplying that by the density, he got,
"Six trillion pounds! That's about 3 billion tons of material!"
But the numbers worked out, even if it seemed impossible. Whatever meteor had caused the trench had managed to move three billion tons of material, and that meant it was either fast, large, or both. If it was large, that meant it could contain lots of unusual minerals and elements that could also be sold for money. Unfortunately for that meteor theory, neither of the ends looked like the entry or the end point. Still he would look over both ends, trying to find a meteor that could have done it. After all, the alternative was simply impossible. If someone had done this, they would have had to move three billion tons of material in less than a month.
It was a good thing, for his sanity, that he did not know the material had been moved in three days.
***
Back at Mandelin 4, the construction was going quickly. Pre-fabricated buildings, built by the World Devastator in another system were being assembled quickly. People accustomed to buildings requiring weeks or months to set up watched as the pre-fabricated structures were assembled in mere days. The children ooh'ed and ahh'ed as well, watching the floating droids as they assembled the buildings in quiet harmony. As the facilities were brought on-line, Governor Brogin was invited to tour them. Watching the communications technicians get accustomed to the new systems was enjoyable, as the older equipment used in the previous facility had a habit of breaking down often. The net result had been for the technicians to cobble together an e-mail system, allowing people to send video messages to each other, instead of actually communicating.
The droid repair and construction facility went on-line a day later, and the first farming droids began doing their work. Several farmers were concerned that they would be out of work, but the new schooling systems were available for them to learn new skills, and the droids were allowing people with large plots of land to cultivate all of the area. To prevent soil exhaustion, new fertilizers were being mixed up, and sprayed over the fields. One proposal being discussed was domes for growing the food, effectively converting them into giant greenhouses.
Overall though, the crop yield was increasing steadily, and Governor Brogin was looking at a doubling of their crop production for this harvest, with higher yields for the next harvest. There was some discussion about where to sell the food, and local merchants were being pressed to look for external markets, at distances they would have ignored previously. But Imperial technology had allowed construction of enhanced freighters, and markets that were ignored before were discussed, and the merchants began to divide up the local galaxy between themselves, attempting to corner the local markets.