Blue Star Enterprises

Chapter 3-14

Alexander was surprised when he got the call from traffic control. It wasn't that a new ship had arrived that surprised him, new ships had been arriving every few days over the last month or so. It was the fact that Captain Krieger was the new arrival that had him surprised.

Since he hadn't heard from the man for three months he had kind of written him off. It wasn't that he didn't still want Krieger to work for him, it was just that he had too much going on to wait around for one man.

After he had executed Sorin, the guard who had attacked him, and Dex, the other councilor – who they eventually discovered was the one behind Damien's attack – and arrested the others involved as well as stripping the Council of its legal power, he focused almost entirely on prepping the fleet to head off and secure those five pirate ships. To say there was a lot on his plate would be an understatement.

Captain Krieger's arrival on this day was rather convenient. Either Krieger had the best timing in the world or it was just pure luck that he arrived when he did. Fury had just returned from its trip to Varlen to drop off the second set of thrusters to Vice Admiral Fletcher. With Fury's return, he was planning on doing one last mission brief in the few days or so before sending the BSE ships out on their first mission along with the Talon.

Either way, Alexander needed to get Krieger down to the planet and get him up to speed as fast as possible, assuming the man was here to accept the job offer and not for some other purpose. Alexander really hoped Krieger was here for the job. He was short on capable captains and could use someone with more experience.

The Hawks had a few people working toward the goal of becoming a captain, but it wasn't an easy test. Two had already failed it once and would have to spend another few months restudying before they could take it again. That was a stipulation that Matthews had put in place to ensure people didn't just take it over and over again to test their luck.

Considering the STO would ban you from retaking the test for two years if you failed, Alexander was more than fine with only the two-month block.

While a new crop of captains wasn't in the cards quite yet, his current captains weren't the greatest either. Ramirez and Hall were fine captains, they knew their jobs well and ran a tight ship. They had just never seen combat, which made them a bit… hesitant when it came to the training exercises in the holo-trainer.

Wanting to keep your people out of harm's way was an admirable quality, and Alexander respected that, but he needed someone more decisive to lead the attack. Currently, Captain Bloomright was in charge of the operation, and while Archie had faith in his apprentice, she also hadn't been in command during any combat situations. Alexander would also have preferred that an employee of BSE led the charge to help galvanize the other captains.

He wanted to keep the Talon out of any combat so their people could focus on taking the station.

Alexander closed the project he was working on and brought up the build log for his manufacturing resources in space. Eden's Might had been ready to go for a few weeks now, and Resolve's crew had run the new ship through its paces, ensuring everything was working correctly. Much like the other two frigates, Might differed from its sister ships.

It was slightly longer than Resolve, which gave Alexander enough space to add one laser without cutting into the limited crew space that remained after his modifications. The other four weapon mounts were the same double-stacked, triple-barrel railguns that Resolve sported.

He was hoping he could condense the laser's power systems eventually so he could add at least one to Resolve as well, giving all the ships the ability to punch out at a much longer range than their adversaries. Their railguns did give them an advantage over autocannons but it wasn't nearly enough to keep the ships out of range of accurate return fire.

Alexander's people would need to rely on the armor much more to defend against those weapons. Missiles shouldn't be an issue though. With the supercomputer onboard each ship, they should be more than capable of jamming most missile guidance systems with the ECM capabilities that Lucas and he had programmed into it, while the PDLs would do the rest.

He flicked the screen to a new window showing a video of the progress on Eden's Revenge. The fourth and final frigate was still in the process of being stripped down. There was no way Alexander could include it in the attack. The vessel would have been farther along, but with no captain or crew for it, Alexander had made an executive decision to retask his construction bots to assist with the two fishbone class ships. One of which was being piloted by Captain Farthing, and the other by one of the captains of the civilian vessels that Alexander had contracted out to. The Fafo and the civilian ships were both still in the belt helping as well, but being piloted by the pilots of the other crews and not an actual captain.

That would have been illegal in STO space but Alexander let it slide here because he needed the extra help more than he needed to enforce arbitrary rules from an outside political entity.

Alexander needed every ship he had just to keep up with the mining bots. At first, the robots had started out rather awkward and got in each other's way more often than not in the mining process, but as they learned, they quickly started outpacing what the transport ships were capable of bringing back for processing.

He was pretty sure he had enough stockpiled material to get a good start on the space station already. There would not be a shortage of materials anytime soon.

Alexander sighed and closed the video feed and logs. He had been obsessing over this for weeks, trying to eke out just a bit more production, a bit more advantage for his people. The constant tweaks were probably slowing things down more than they were helping at this point.

At least he wasn't micromanaging anymore, not since Archie told him to stop and have faith in his people to do their jobs. Getting told that he was being overbearing, even though the man hadn't used that word specifically, was an eye-opener for Alexander. And Matthews was right. The minute he stepped back and gave his people the ability to do their work, things ran much more smoothly.

Now if he could only find someone to handle operations the same way. Technically he had someone in mind, but that person didn't know it yet. The man in question had arrived a few weeks ago with a few other families. On the surface, their arrival was nothing special. No warrants, no DNA modifications, no weird implants, and no contraband.

It wasn't until the man started sending messages through the Qcomm that Alexander was alerted to his presence. All of his messages were sent in a code, but the facility computers were quick to break it down and flag it as suspicious.

It turned out that Theodore Pembrooke worked for Omni. The name was so unique that Alexander quickly recalled where he had heard it before. He was pretty sure this was the same man who had visited Petrov Station on behalf of the giant manufacturer.

He sent the man's name and a picture to Mingyu, and the captain was quick to confirm that Alexander was indeed correct so he kept a much closer eye on the man and his correspondence.

The first few messages that Pembrooke sent out were rather benign in nature. It seemed he was attempting to connect to his contacts back in STO space. Considering no messages came or went from Eden's End without going through Alexander's new buffer, it was rather easy for him to capture both replies and responses.

Whoever Mr. Pembrooke's contact was, they were not happy that the man was on Eden's End and not back at OMNI headquarters. They stated they had other individuals on the planet and that Pembrooke's arrival threatened that work.

That was upsetting news for Alexander since he hadn't seen any other Qcomm messages going out to hint at Omni spies lurking around. It's possible the agents were dormant but that didn't mean they weren't dangerous. He really hoped Omni didn't have a stealth Qcomm satellite in Unokane like the Navy did in Varlen. To play it safe, he had Lucas running through the logs of his satellites to make sure that wasn't the case. So far, the man hadn't spotted any irregularities, but space was big and a satellite, unlike a ship, was a small target to look for.

To kill two birds with one stone and see how capable this Pembrooke fellow truly was, Alexander modified the messages that came in for the spy. Since the person responding to Pembrooke wanted the man not to interfere with the other agents, he figured modifying the message to say something like, 'Pembrooke, we have some rogue agents at your location. You need to identify them and disrupt their work,' would be sufficient to give him a good idea of how capable the man was at sniffing out threats.

It would probably take some time before he saw any results of this counter-espionage though. Alexander would need to keep an eye on the man and see how the situation developed.

In the meantime, he had a captain to meet. And if his timing was accurate, the man should be nearly through the intake process.

He made his way down to the temporary intake area, nodding at the guards. They nodded back tentatively.

After the sentencing, word had quickly spread that Alexander was part alien. He was sure he would have had a fresh round of issues to deal with as this news spread, but that never happened. He figured it might have something to do with people having access to the videos of Sorin and his people planning how to run the place after they got rid of Alexander as well as all the other nasty shit the group got up to like the destruction of the seed stores and all the other nasty stuff they had planned in case they didn't get their way. He omitted Gabriella's blackmail because her past really wasn't anyone else's business.

Surprisingly, the people were more outraged about what happened with the seeds than anything else Sorin and his cohorts had been up to. He supposed it made sense, food was survival after all, and when you started screwing around with people's ability to survive, you would quickly find out what people were truly capable of when they got desperate.

Alexander pushed those thoughts to the back of his mind as he stepped into the holding area and glanced around. He expected to only see Captain Krieger, but the man was accompanied by seven other individuals that he recognized from the man's crew. Even the Marine, who he had bested, was here.

Krieger instantly spotted him and gave him a single nod. It seemed the man was letting the others through first, but the Marine was holding up the process.

"It's my personal pulse rifle," the man stated. "And it's completely legal."

"Yes, by STO law," Jorvin Morrow, Damien's head of immigration responded blandly. "This is not the STO. All weapons are restricted unless you are issued a permit by the Security Office or BSE directly."

The man growled. "And how do I get a permit?"

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"Fill out the form and wait to see if it's approved. In the interim, your weapon will be confiscated and held in storage."

The Marine glanced his way, but Alexander wasn't getting involved. If the Marine proved himself, he might consider hiring him onto the BSE fleet along with Krieger. Then he would be issued a weapon permit. If he didn't work out, the man was probably out of luck. He doubted Damien would be issuing one for a civilian.

"Fine," the Marine finally responded before handing over the weapon.

Jorvin nodded and stuck the weapon in a secure cabinet behind him. "Once you are issued a permit, please head down to security and present your ID. They will not release the weapon without it."

After that, the process went much quicker. While pulse rifles were banned, people were allowed to carry stun sticks if they wanted to. Using them against someone would open an investigation though, so people were warned not to use them unless they were in trouble.

Finally, it was Krieger's turn. The man handed over a small flechette pistol. In any civilized world, Alexander was sure the presence of a weapon like that would freak people out. Out here, it seemed to be the norm. They had an entire storage room full of confiscated weapons now.

And it wasn't like they were worried about an attack. There were always four guards in the intake area when people were arriving. These guards were armed with light augment gear and pulse rifles. Alexander wasn't quite ready to roll the security forces into BSE and upgrade them, so for now, Damien was still in charge of them.

"Captain," Alexander held out his hand. "After you ignored my message, I figured you weren't interested. I hope your arrival here means that's changed?"

The man shook the offered hand. "I am interested. I'm sorry for not responding, but corporate headhunters were after me as soon as the Navy cut me loose. I didn't want them to know where I might be heading so I cut all contact."

Alexander had heard the term headhunter before. Back in his time, it just meant people who went around looking for talent to hire for corporations. Thanks to his conversations with Jasper, Archie, and others, he knew it had an added meaning these days. These were the type of people who did not take no for an answer.

"I see. I'm glad you arrived safe then. Was the trip okay?"

"Let's dispense with the pleasantries," Krieger stated. "My agreement to work with you is contingent on you hiring the rest of my crew. Every single one."

The man's voice carried and the guards glanced over, their grips firming on their weapons in case trouble broke out.

Alexander just chuckled. "Very well, Captain Krieger. I'll cut the bullshit. I'm mostly fine with your people. My only concern is the Marine. He seems to be harboring a bit of a grudge against me still."

"What!" the Marine looked startled by that admission. "No, I'm not."

"Then why is it every time we met back when you were here, you always gave me the stink eye? Even now you look annoyed with my presence."

Everyone turned to the man, who looked incredibly uncomfortable by the attention. "I'm not harboring a grudge against you. I'm upset with myself. Marines are supposed to be the best of the best, with the best combat gear available. Yet you handled me like some petulant child."

"So you're upset that you got beat?" Alexander asked in confusion.

The man shook his head. "No. I know you can't win every encounter. I'm upset that we were led to believe a lie. If some random civilian robot is capable of overpowering military-grade equipment, what's the point?"

Alexander couldn't help bursting out into laughter. The only one to join him was Krieger, and that was only after the man stopped to think of what the Marine had said.

"I'll soothe your ego, Marine." He tapped on his body. "This is not some simple civilian robot. How about you lot follow me and I can explain a few things and see whether or not you wish to join BSE."

"All of them have to join," Krieger reminded him.

"I'll leave that up to them. If they don't want to join, I'm not going to force them. Now come along, there is a lot to go over, and very little time." Krieger paused for a second to digest Alexander's words, before nodding and gesturing for the others to follow.

While Alexander appreciated the man standing behind his crew, it really wasn't up to the former STO captain whether or not his people wanted to work for BSE.