Blue Star Enterprises Chapter 48 (Patreon)

LOCATION: PETROV STATION

SYSTEM: GLIESE 667

DATE: 2399

Harlow luxuriated in the plush chair as he bit into the ripe apple, savoring the sweet juice as it ran down his throat. The members of the Council sure did know how to live comfortably. He let a little sigh of pleasure escape his lips. “It’s been far too long since I’ve had an apple. Have you ever tasted one, Zhang? And I’m not speaking about the vat-grown shit you spacers call food, but a real planet-side grown apple?”

Zhang didn’t answer, he only stewed. Harlow glanced over the wooden desk at the man, chained to a small platform below. They were in the once prestigious Court of Affairs building on Petrov Station. It seemed his little puppet wasn’t in a very talkative mood, that was a shame.

Harlow chucked the apple at the big man, hitting him in the leg. “I asked you a question. I expect an answer.”

“No,” the man growled. “I did what you asked of me, why am I a prisoner?”

“Did you, now?” Harlow asked as he sat up. “When did I ask you to kill Kovalenko and Hoffman?”

“They would have reported your involvement in their trials.”

Harlow laughed and leaned back again, kicking his feet up on the expensive wooden desk. “Unlikely. Those two idiots didn’t know I was the one backing them.”

“I thought you said—,”

Harlow waggled a finger at Zhang. “You thought… see, that’s where you went wrong, Zhang. I don’t pay you to think. I pay you to carry out my orders.”

The door at the end of the hall creaked open and Anastasia Weiss and Ingrid Liu walked in followed by a few more of Harlow’s personnel that had infiltrated station security. Could it even be considered infiltration if the Council were the ones who hired them under his orders? He shrugged and looked at the two women. Ingrid stared at him hungrily. The woman was always a bit of a handful, but he knew what she wanted. Anastasia on the other hand hung her head in shame.

“Ingrid, it’s been far too long,” Harlow stated as he got up and walked over to the woman, pulling her into a passionate kiss before pushing her back and stepping over to Anastasia. Ingrid complained, but not about the rough treatment. She never liked playing second fiddle to anyone, especially other women. He pushed Anastasia’s chin up with his finger until she was looking him in the eyes. They were red from crying. “Oh, those tears are wasted here, my dear. You knew what you were getting into when you got into bed with me. Both figuratively and literally.”

He laughed and released the woman’s chin, turning back to a very surprised Zhang.

“See, the thing you don’t understand, Zhang is that I don’t put all my eggs in one basket. …Do you spacers even understand that term? Probably not. Doesn’t matter.”

Harlow paused in thought, not because he forgot what point he was trying to make but because he liked to build tension. It was so fun watching his victims squirm. “…Where was I? Ah right. You failed me once, but I’m a reasonable man. I understand mistakes are inevitable. So I give people an opportunity to make amends, to correct their mistakes.”

He sighed. “Then you killed Kovalenko and Hoffman, forcing me to move up my plans before I was ready, which allowed Na to escape. His loss isn’t much of a concern in the grand scheme, the station is mine after all. But it irks me that your careless actions caused me distress. Do you know how long I have planned this takeover? A long time. And your little stunt put all that in jeopardy. It’s a good thing I had people in place already, if not, things might have turned out wildly different. That’s a second failure caused by you. A foolish man might think that was just a coincidence. I didn’t get to be a pirate lord by being foolish though.” Harlow snapped his fingers and four guards standing around Zhang began to beat him. Not with stun sticks, but with good old-fashioned clubs.

The big man collapsed to his knees and Harlow raised his hand to forestall more punishment.

“I’m sorry, I swear I won’t fail you again!” the man wailed in pain.

“I believe you,” Harlow nodded. “In fact, I’ll even let you go spend some time with Captain Yuchen. He wasn’t very cooperative either.”

Another nod to the guards, and they dragged Zhang from the room. Harlow dropped back into the chair behind the desk and waited for the large holo-screen to flicker to life. A scene much like this one had played out a few months ago. The lights outside the hatch started flashing and soon a small figure tumbled out to join the other floating toward the large gas giant below.

He smiled and was about to turn to the lovely ladies in his company when he comm chirped. “What!” he demanded, annoyed at the interruption.

“I would think you’d be in a better mood now that your plans are in motion, Brother.”

“What do you want, Arkonis?”

“Oh, nothing much. I found some information you might be interested in trading a favor for. That’s all.”

Harlow snorted. “What nonsense are you talking about? It would have to be worth more than my flagship for me to even consider offering you a favor for it instead of cred.”

“Who knows,” his brother replied cryptically. “Last I checked, you were very eager to learn the whereabouts of that engineer that slipped through your grasp. I just happen to know where he is.”

Harlow sat up. “How? Where?” he demanded. He had learned about Kane, back when everyone else had learned about the man. But unlike the imbeciles running Petrov Station, Harlow had seen his potential right away. The first giveaway was that Omni didn’t get personally involved with useless people. They also didn’t pay out hundreds of millions of credits for nothing. He also had access to information that none of the other parties involved did. Mainly the footage from the one Coal brother’s implant that his man in Petrov’s security wiped before handing over to him. So he knew without a doubt that Kane had created weapons.

Seeing his face in the doctored footage was a bit surprising. He would have beaten the mercenary to death for the insult if the idiot hadn’t already met his fate in the cold embrace of space. Luckily, implants stored the original footage if you had access to the hardware. His people had extracted the fake eye before the man tumbled out of an airlock.

If a man like Kane could create weapons and improve on Omni’s designs, what else could he do? Harlow wanted him. And he was willing to go to great lengths to acquire his prize.

“Not until you agree,” his brother said.

“Fine. Where is Kane?”

“He’s in a system on the other side of STO space. The locals call it Eden’s End. Some of Katalynn’s people have raided the planet over the years. Small timers. Not much worth taking, and a large group of drifters have taken up residence in the facility where Kane resides. The contact who reached out to me said Kane let them stay. The man has a bleeding heart. Should be easy enough to force his hand.”

Bah! Drifters were worse than rats. They scurried everywhere and stole everything that wasn’t bolted down. Even that didn’t stop them all the time. He hated them for the same reason he hated the other pirate lords, they took things that should rightfully be his. As for Katalynn, Harlow didn’t have much to say about his female warlord counterpart. The woman had the personality of a brick and a face to match.

“Do we have anyone in the area?”

“I might have some, for the right price.”

“You can take whatever you want from the facility. The only thing I want is Kane. Bring him to me alive and in working order, and you’ll have your favor. Fail… and I might just find myself with one less brother.”

Arkonis chuckled at that. “I don’t fail. I already have a plan to get to Kane. It may take a bit though. He has some mercs running protection. Once they’re gone, I’ll move in.”

Harlow could wait, he was a patient man. After all, he had waited many years to get to this point. He wondered what his younger self would say if he could see him now. He somehow doubted the snot-nosed raider, drunk on his own invincibility and enough alcohol to drown a horse would have even considered anything. His younger self wasn’t much of a planner or thinker. It had taken being stranded on a nearly dead planetoid for four months, at the hands of an STO battle group, for him to seriously reconsider his priorities.

***

LOCATION: FLEET HEADQUARTERS

SYSTEM: SOL

Admiral Clemont strode down the corridor, scattering Navy personnel as he moved with purpose. He didn’t even bother returning the salutes as he made his way into the conference room.

There was a loud clamor as he opened the door. He let his gaze slide over everyone present as well as the holographic representations filling the other seats.

“Admiral on deck!” the guard at the door shouted.

The room went quiet as everyone who was here in person stood and saluted him. This time Clemont returned the salute. Then he nodded to the STO leadership who was attending remotely.

“You’re late!” the Chairman stated at the announcement.

The door closed and the marines standing guard exited the room.

“Apologies for my tardiness, representatives. I was receiving a last-minute update on the situation with the pirates.”

“I doubt anything has changed in the last hour,” the Chairman huffed in annoyance. “Please just get on with this meeting, I have an important dinner party to attend in two hours.”

Clemont despised the current Chairman from Borrus, then again, he didn’t much like any politicians. Too stuck up their own backsides for their own good. “No further attacks,” he stated as he sat down. “That doesn’t mean the situation isn’t fluid.”

“You act like this is a war, Admiral. This is just the pirates acting out. They do this from time to time. Soon, they will devolve into infighting amongst their families like they always do. Then the fleet can push them back to their borders,” the representative for both Malis and Malik, the twin planets in the Tau Ceti system responded.

Considering Tau Ceti was the home system of Omni, he would have thought the representative of that system would be pushing for an all-out war. War meant more profits for Omni.

He did recall a report stating Omni was receiving increased criticism for some of their actions. It might be something to look into. While he didn’t care much for the monolithic manufacturer, his predecessors had burned the bridges for any other competitors to even offer a competing product, even if that product might be slightly worse.

“The previous pirate incursions lasted days at most, this incursion is going on two months already. It is also important to note that none of their previous attacks were ever as coordinated as this one. I believe we should treat it as a declaration of war and respond accordingly.”

His reply received a few polite chuckles from the group of representatives. None of the Navy people present laughed though.

“The pirates are not the Coalition, Admiral Clemont. Those days are behind us. They reside on one rocky planet beyond the rim. To treat them as anything other than an annoyance would be to acknowledge their power. We will not be doing that unless your purpose is to make us look weak. Or do you think a handful of ships are capable of standing against the combined navies of the STO?”

“They hold three systems and eight stations, Chairman.”

Clement could see the man roll his eyes. “They took two border worlds whose navies were made up of Coalition expatriates and a handful of undefended stations. They were likely traitors already. I say let them suffer the hubris that brought this down upon them. Or is this thirst for revenge a result of the bloody nose they gave one of the smaller task groups? Yes, I’ve read the reports as well, Admiral. Yet you want us to declare war on them. The cost to activate our fleets and move them out there would outweigh the value of those systems. We should have let the Coalition keep them. All they do is drain our resources without providing any tangible benefit.”

Clement wanted to yell at the man and ask him whose fault that was. The STO leadership during the war had stripped almost all industries from the former Coalition worlds, forcing them to rebuild from scratch. It was done in the name of fostering a lasting peace, but he knew it had been done to ensure those planets never became a threat ever again. Given the choice, he might have made the same decision back then, and he hated that thought.

“So we just abandon them?” Clements asked, doing his best to hide his irritation, apparently, it wasn’t good enough.

“Watch your tone, Admiral. You can be replaced. And I never said we were abandoning those systems. I just don’t see the point of expending recourses to retake them. Like I said before, the pirates will likely collapse on their own in short order. That doesn’t mean we won’t do anything. The representatives have agreed that we should increase the fleet presence in the systems in that direction by twenty percent.”

Twenty percent? That was two ships per strike group. He swallowed his pride and replied. “I will start issuing orders to increase guards along that border. Is that all?”

“No. Of some concern to us are these rumors that the pirate ships are displaying certain design elements of Shican origin. Can you confirm if this is true? I thought the last time a Shican vessel was spotted anywhere was in 2350.”

“2358,” Admiral Clemont corrected.

As for what the Chairman asked, that wasn’t just a rumor. One of the STO battle groups had encountered a similarly sized pirate fleet. The same one the Chairman so blithely stated as having received a bloody nose. While the ships that were engaged were models from back during the war and not the newer ships that patrolled the core systems, what should have been a one-sided battle in the STO’s favor had turned into a slugging match. This was unheard of in any previous engagement with the technologically inferior pirates until that battle. After losing two ships, the STO pulled back and retreated from the system, causing that system to fall to the pirates.

“Those rumors are unconfirmed at the moment,” he stated.

That was technically true.

While the analysts were still pouring over the footage they received when the battered fleet made it back to the Navy yard, Clemont had seen the footage of the battle himself. He was old enough that he had been in the last fleet engagement with the Shican in Varlen before the furry bastards retreated into the dark. The distinct sensor profile of Shican weapons fire was burned into his memory. How the pirates had gotten their hands on Shican railguns was something he would very much like to know.

Every attempt to communicate with the aliens before they withdrew from this area of space had been met with hostilities. Had they come back? Or had the pirates recovered a derelict ship for study? It wasn’t out of the question, it was how the STO had discovered artificial gravity.

If the pirates had access to Shican tech, their threat would rise precipitously. If he had free reign, he would take the first and second fleets and wipe the pirates out at their homeworld, leaving no survivors. Unfortunately, he was bound by his oath to follow the STO leadership's orders. He had hoped his tenure as Admiral would end in an era of general peace. But it seems that would not be the case.

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We finally get to see what the men behind the curtains are up to!