Federation Reborn 2: Pirate Rage (60 page)

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Vestri Sindri woke from his customary six-hour sleep period and got breakfast as his mind whirled with the usual stuff. He was still sleepy; he hadn't had a restful sleep. He'd had too much on his mind. Deep talks with the admiral tended to do that.

A part of his mind still remembered the admiral's lecture against antimatter as well as the Lagroose movie he'd watched the night before. The admiral had been right to recommend it. Antimatter was scary ass shit, he thought, part of the reason why he'd had such a hard time getting any rest.

He yawned as he made himself a cup of coffee. He dropped his clothes and padded naked to the shower for a quick revival while the percolator worked and the food replicator came up with his morning breakfast. Not that they needed a lot of time, he just did. Besides, the smell of the coffee was as much of a revival tool as the consumption was he thought, feeling the heat of the shower loosen up his tense and rather dense frame.

Stockpiling antimatter here was no longer a concern. It was all in Pyrax, and the plans for a solar tap here in Antigua were now on hold. With them was the antimatter production lines he'd conceive in Antigua. He was now heartily glad it was all there in Pyrax he thought, shutting the water and sonics off to towel himself dry. Hot air blew from every direction to facilitate his efforts. He left the microwaves off. He wanted to be dry not cooked.

The revisions to his long-range plans meant that his people would be able to make up some of the lost ground on
Bismark
and the DN since the resources he had started to stockpile were no longer needed. Nor was it necessary to occasionally siphon off people to train them to handle antimatter nor to run the facilities to contain and store it. He wasn't so certain about the facilities themselves however. He'd have to ask John. Eventually the admiral would want to move some here he reasoned. Just not away. Handling and moving antimatter was also tricky business he thought. Best to let people trained to do it in Pyrax handle it he thought as he took a sip of coffee.

He grimaced as he pulled the hot oatmeal out. Not at the heat, his hands were callused enough to deaden much of the pain from it, but from the fresh inbox ping. It seemed the bump in personnel and such had a negative effect, contrary to his intentions. It was sending shock waves through the production line as the extra personnel and equipment sucked some of the submodules drier faster than logistics could keep up. A work crew that idle was as bad as a bottleneck he thought.

He shook his head, blowing steam off the hot oatmeal. He savored the aroma; it was maple syrup. He freely admitted he had a slight sweet tooth.

Obviously, the push had sent some things into disorder since they hadn't been ready or expecting it. He ground his teeth as he picked up his spoon. He flipped a thought for the supervisors to make adjustments until he could get back to the office. If necessary they should give some of their more overworked people a day off, he wrote, fingers flicking as he typed out the virtual email. He hit the virtual send button and then returned his attention to the meal.

He dug in with a ferocity, then paused to gasp and wave a hand at the heat. He'd forgotten the temperature obviously he thought, sitting back for a moment.

His errant thoughts immediately turned to the unwanted slippage. So much for getting ahead he thought sourly. He had indeed gotten ahead, ahead of the game, not just the schedule. When was he going to learn?

He frowned about what to do before he came up with an obvious solution. Since the carriers didn't need the extra help. he decided to throw some of them at the other capital ship production lines. But they didn't have the logistics to handle the extra work crews … he dropped the spoon to scrub his face with his hands. One answer led to causing two or more problems he thought. Oh well. He'd solve them too. It was a great game of whack-o-mole apparently.

In the meantime he siphoned off Gerald's team. Ger wasn't comfortable with the new construction. He wanted to build the fixed fortifications and installations, but they were now past that stage, at least for the moment. Ger wasn't thrilled about learning a new ship design, so after more thoughtful consideration he typed out an email to move Ger's shift team to the repair yard. They had all of those tin cans to rebuild after Protodon, plus the smaller ships sitting in mothballs. He wasn't sure about the admiral, but he would much rather have a ship ready to load up with a crew, munitions, and supplies and then go, rather than one that would take a couple weeks to get sorted out. He nodded to himself. They might even be able to find some crews for the smaller ships. Toss some of the recently graduating classes at them and see who develops their initiative and a taste for command? He shrugged such considerations off. It was Qr'll'ck's problem anyway. She was the bug in charge of G-5 BUPERS after all.

Once breakfast was cool enough, he devoured it, then got rid of his dirty dish and spoon, even licking the spoon clean like he had as a kid. It was nice to be single he thought, tossing it into the dishwasher for the maid robot to take care of later. He finished getting dressed and then headed off to the office.

One thing he did do, after careful consideration, was to shoot an email off to security to beef up things around their antimatter production and storage lines. Also to NCIS to get someone to look into overhauling the classification of people allowed to view the information on that, let alone gain access to the facilities.

When he was finished, he sent a copy to each party as well as Admiral Irons and then reluctantly, as a last minute addition, to Admiral Subert since it was technically in his command. He might be overreaching, but it paid to be safe than sorry and he knew they knew that.

A part of his email was a recommendation that safety measures be instituted to destroy antimatter to keep it out of the wrong hands. How, he left up to them. “I know I'm stating the obvious here, but if they can get into
Bismark
we need to do a bottom-up as well as a top-down thorough revision of security. Everything,” he typed grimacing at what he imagined Admiral Subert would say to that. “That includes the armory too.
Bismark
was definitely a wakeup call of the first order.”

He got a one-sentence reply from Admiral Subert a few hours later. When he opened it, he snorted. “Focus on your own job, Commander; we've got this.” He shook his head as he hit delete. “Yeah, right,
sure
you do,” he muttered.

Chapter
32

“Say that the story is true. The
Olympus
class planetoid fled the Sol star system while doing a drive test. According to our sources it was a builder's trial essentially. She was on the outer edge of the star system when the attack on Sol went down. Since she reportedly didn't have weapons or a proper crew on board she didn't participate in the battle and followed the order to withdraw once the star system went nova.”

“Well, that's a relief!” Lake frowned. Their usual skull session seemed to devolve into speculation on the damn planetoid more and more every day—a week nonstop of the planetoid. Every time they got more pieces, they had to go back and revise their original assumptions. In some cases, the worst case scenario became more likely.

But this little tidbit was different. It meant they may not be in as much deep pucky as the worst case scenario assumed. She frowned. “Wait, um, I …”

Captain Montgomery snorted. “Don't worry about it. I get your meaning.”

“It gets a little bit better. She limped to where she rests now and ran dry on power,” Fletcher stated, highlighting a portion of extracted testimony.

“So?” Monty asked. “To get this far …”

“She didn't take a hyper bridge. At least I don't think so, but I could be wrong. She should have stopped running at some point, headed to one of the other core worlds or something. Instead her crew ran here. That bothers me.”

“Desertion? Which would play into the hands of the Horathians? A psychological lever they could use against them?” Fletcher asked.

“Possibly,” Lake said with a nod.

“So, if she had been out and about in a drive test at the time of the attack on Sol, then she's not fully functional nor fully stocked. It was a builder's trial, remember? I wonder how many stores she had on board?” Monty asked. “And the yard module? Was it functional? Her industrial plant? There is too much we just don't know, damn it!” He frowned. “Come to think of it, how the hell did they make it all the way out here? We're thousands of light years away!” he waved an aggrieved hand.

The lieutenant nodded thoughtfully. “I see where this is going. The admiral did ask if it had its on-board shipyard and parasite craft. Obviously, she didn't have her craft; otherwise, they would have used them to evacuate.”

“Gods of space I hope not, ma’am!” Lieutenant Siegel said, eyes wide. “Can you imagine what the pirates could do with that?” She shuddered. She'd been read into the problem since she was one of their junior deputies and had sat in on some of the more recent data pulls with Fletcher. The young man was good, and fresh eyes were welcome. She'd already teased a few bits of confirmation out of the POWs.

“Most likely if she had any parasites on board they were sent into Sol to help with the defense of the star. So they are lost, or they fled elsewhere,” Lake said. “That's speculation of course.”

“Oh.”

“Besides, had the crew had access to them, they would have used them as lifeboats, right?”

“Oh, true,” the lieutenant nodded.

“The thing had its own shipyard?” newly promoted Lieutenant JG Yao Ting asked in disbelief as he checked the specs out. The other officers turned to him in amusement.

“For spirit's sake go over the damn specs again. This thing can have a
fleet
inside it, two if they're friendly. They were built to project firepower and act as mobile bases for fleets. Yeah, yard.”

Yao winced. “Ouch.”

“So, we're wondering how much it has. They mentioned a skeleton crew. How much life support? How many power plants online? Fuel? Weapons? Stores?”

“You mentioned that. Medical too.”

“Ah yes. That's something to think about. Though the Horathians have been using copied and reverse engineered implant tech.”

“In their pirates. They are the outside edge so they got the last of the stuff and logically the dregs. We don't know what their core people have beyond what we saw in Protodon with those two battle cruisers. They could be upgrading their fleet now.”

“They'd have to ship stuff to
El Dorado
then back. I don't see them doing that easily,” Monty said.

“Not if they sent the ships there,” Yao stated, reading the specs.

“If the yard exists at all. They'd still need to ship in raw material, parts, people, and fuel,” Lake pointed out as she crossed her legs.

“True,” Yao said with a nod.

“We're going in circles. Suppositions. We're even scaring ourselves,” Lake said in disgust.

“I'm not panicking! You see me panicking?” Yao growled, eyes flashing indignantly.

“No no, bull sessions like this are good. We're asking questions and trying to figure out the framework to find the answers to those questions. You have to know what to look for first, remember?” Monty reminded them.

“So?” Siegel asked. “Sir?” she added when he shot her a pointed look. “Sorry,” she muttered, ducking her head and flushing slightly.

“So we need to figure out how to track the shipments to the system this ship is in. What the shipments are, quantity, etc,” Monty said.

Lake caught on right away. So did Fletcher. “Ah, good point,” Lake said. Fletcher pulled up a star chart for the group to look at.

“We can start tracking ship movements. I wonder if we can use what we've got? Build up the profiles, the shipping routes, then eliminate the ones we know aren't to the thing?” Fletcher asked, laying lines down where they knew Horathian ships had regularly traversed.

“Why? Oh, because they would have found it earlier?” Siegel asked.

“Yes.”

“Also how many people have gone into the system and how many have come out,” Monty mused. Commander Lake nodded grimly.

“How could they access navy systems?” Siegel asked.

“Another question to ask,” Lake replied. “Short answer is coercion of the surviving crew is the leading theory.”

“Oh. Ew,” the other woman said with a grimace.

“We don't even know if they exist, if there were any survivors at all. That too is speculation. They could have picked up survivors in stasis from other wrecks or bought them off the black market. They have been salvaging all those ships, remember? We need to add looking into that to the list,” Monty stated.

There was a brief moment of silence as they all digested that idea. From their expressions none liked it. But they had to consider it carefully. It was a good theory and quite plausible. They had the admiral, Horatio Logan, and other sleepers as their own references. With the enemy picking up ships for centuries …, “It's quite a list,” Yao finally murmured.

“Big problems require a lot of intel to figure out,” Monty said. “More importantly, due to the distance and factors involved, they require time. Time we don't necessarily have. So do what you can folks,” he said.

“Pulling out all the stops, aye, sir,” Lake said as she rose to her feet with the others.

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The once-a-week Federation cabinet meeting was something of an event. It had to be carefully coordinated since each of the cabinet ministers as well as the president had their own duties and staffs to run.

Admiral Irons looked on the meetings as progress but dreaded the inevitable politics involved. Each of the ministers were still feeling their way into their positions. None were happy about the state of their department or the Federation's perilous strategic situation.

Since they couldn't all be physically in the same place from time to time, some were absent or attended virtually. Fortunately, there was only a slight time delay between Antigua Prime and the admiral's office in the naval base.

“I read that the capital space station has been put off again? What is it this time?” Emily Berkheart asked peevishly. “Not that I don't mind staying in Prime but some of you would do better under one roof. It's past time we separate the military and political processes.”

“That would make some of us burn up a lot of time transiting between them,” Admiral Irons murmured to her holographic avatar as he took a sip of coffee. “I'm running around enough as it is, thank you, Em,” he said dryly.

“I too heard this, but in conjunction with the changes in the yard priorities—industrial changes. You do realize, Admiral, that we need to have a formal naval budget to go along with the other departments, correct?” T'rel'n the treasurer asked. “I know many have joked about governments that just print money when they need it, or in our case create it in a computer, but we do need to back it up or inflation will be more of a problem than it already is.”

The admiral grimaced. Right out of the gate they were hitting him up for answers. Fortunately, this time he was ready to give them some. Also fortunate, they had finally taken his pointed hints to address him as admiral, not president or president-pro-tempt or president-elect or some other title. He was still feeling them out, and of course he nor some of them were comfortable going on a first name basis though he suspected one or two would love the opportunity for the sign of … closer intimacy with him that it would entail.

“We seriously need to get everyone under one roof. What is Sandra'kall's revised ETA?” Doctor Kraft asked.

“She's en route. They should be in Briev shortly. From there, I'd say another two months before she arrives,” the admiral stated, checking his internal chronometer. Protector put the time schedule on his HUD but he ignored it.

“Has Governor Randall reconsidered the VP slot?” Lawrence Martindale asked.

“Hardly. He's perfectly comfortable where he's at right now,” T'rel'n stated. “But putting off the capital for another quarter or even another fiscal year is good for a budget view point.”

“I'm glad you agree,” the admiral said as he smiled behind his coffee cup.

“We do need to do something about this Fourth Fleet however. It has given us a rather large and public black eye. One we need to address and put behind us as quickly as possible,” the Veraxin stated.

“Definitely,” Lawrence stated, nodding as he picked up his own cup of coffee. His simian lips puckered to blow some of the fragrant steam away and cool the contents before he took a tentative sip.

“Phil is working on it on his end. We're too far away to effect it,” Admiral Irons stated.

“Yet you sent
Spirit of America
anyway,” Doctor Kraft rumbled. His eyes turned to the other lone officer in the room. “One wonders why,” he said, giving the captain a curious but pointed look.

“Triage, Doctor,” Admiral Irons said, eyes also drawn to the captain and then back to the doctor. “And preventive medicine. They are going to make certain the enemy goes the way we want and prevent them from doing more damage, say in New Andres? Or staying too long in Centennial.”

“Centennial. You would remind me of that,” T'rel'n grumbled with a signal of first level discomfort. “Just how much damage can they really do?”

“Before we get into that, I too have a question. Why is he here?” D'red's holographic avatar asked, indicating Captain Montgomery. “This is supposed to be a closed meeting, is it not?”

The admiral glanced at Monty then to D'red, then addressed himself to the room at large. “As you know I don't have a security or intelligence cabinet minister yet. Captain Montgomery is
not
going to fill in the post, but he is the best I've got for the moment to answer intelligence questions you might bring up. For instance, today he's here to brief you on something else. You asked why the shift in priorities,” the admiral said, nodding to Veraxin treasurer. “He's going to tell you why.” He nodded to Monty to begin.

“Thank you, Admiral,” the captain said, moving forward to their council table. “I'm here to read you all in on a classified intelligence file. One we have been building over the past ten days.” He nodded to the admiral. “Since my return we've done a top down reassessment of our intelligence data while integrating the raw files from the various sources into a new database here in Antigua. We've also turned fresh eyes on all of it. In doing so we found a few things, like a secret pirate base in Pi sector, and something far more ominous. The enemy calls it
El Dorado
”

It took the captain a few minutes to give them the sketchy details they had. He could see more than one person was deeply disturbed by the implications. A few didn't quite understand though. It was hard to read the Veraxins, both had become rather serene in their pose as they had listened to him.

“Questions?”

“A lot. Where to begin …,” Emily shook her virtual head.

“I know it is a lot to swallow. There are gaps and inconsistencies you can drive a ship through. That is the nature of intelligence. We don't get the entire picture; we get pieces of a puzzle from various sources then try to put it all together in time to do something about it,” Admiral Irons stated.

“I suddenly do not envy your job, Captain,” Emily said with a brief smile to Monty. He bowed to her image. “And I understand all the flack you've been getting. I'll try to behave myself in the future.”

“Thank you, ma’am. I'd appreciate everyone exercising a little patience. Intelligence gathering over vast distances takes time and patience,” he said exhaling slowly.