Unknown Heroes - Chapter 4 (finished)

[Warenwolf]

Chapter 4, "Guns Blazing", is done. It is bit shorter than I thought initially but RL has placed many demands on me lately so I don't have much time to do proper writing.
Drop me a comment or two about the chapter (or how is story evolving so far). Those are always appreciated. Tips on improvements are always welcome.




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Links:


Chapter 3: Zeroes and Ones
Chapter 2: In the shadow of a giant
Chapter 1: The Duel



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First book:
Unknown Heroes - The Assassin

The glossary of Unknown Heroes
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Chapter 4







Guns Blazing











The Protected Convoy Alpha 6 advanced slowly through the Treasure Chest system, organized in two parallel lines formed of fast going freighters with escorting fighters further out. Two warships, the Boron escort carrier* ”Flow” and the Argon corvette “Star Tracer”, were positioned behind and in front of the convoy, keeping an eye out for any pirate strike force forming up or any telltale flashes of Khaak clusters jumping into the system. The ”Flow” had been royal passenger cruiser once, doing Kingdoms End – Three Worlds route for almost 90 Jazuras before being retired from service. Once the Khaak started raiding the core systems of the Kingdom, the Borons refitted the old passenger cruiser with more modern engines, added four modern medium strength shielding field projectors and installed six turrets with Beta Impulse Ray emitters in twin configurations for anti-missile duty. A single alpha type FLAK turret had been placed on the ship’s top. The carrier’s only strike power consisted of fourteen fighters it carried inside.
The corvette, positioned in the very front of the convoy was the venerable Centaur 950 that although had fewer weapon mounts than its more modern cousin, had twice the speed and as such was more usable to the escorting duties.
Both captains were veterans of many battles between Khaak invaders and pirate marauders. Their crews were regularly engaged in training exercises during the calm periods and the frequent battles, in their own Darwinian way, made sure that only the best survived. The crews and their captains had every reason to be pride and confident about their skills and they had every reason to believe that between two ships every Khaak or pirate raiding force would be repelled. Perhaps this confidence was the reason that they completely ignored the latest two arrivals to join the convoy.

During the next stazura, while the convoy was stopping briefly at a resupply station, the ”Cutpurse” and ”Highway Robber” worked their way to the middle of the convoy, closer to the three NSM freighters. They patiently awaited their chance.
The Protected Convoy system was a joint effort by Argon Federation and Boron Kingdom to provide protection against Khaak raids to the freighters traveling through independent or weakly protected systems. Older corvettes and fighters were pressed into service again, crewed by green crews to provide some measure of security to freighters. The idea worked better than expected as freighters could with their limited armament give mutual protection to each others. The system allowed them to hire fewer escorts, thereby increasing the profits too. And lastly the green crews grew into veterans after couple of trips, providing the Navy with much needed pool of experienced manpower.
But to Erich’s clan the convoy system was no deterrent but rather a buffet of opportunities. The two Q-ships needed only to wait half stazura since they assumed their positions in the convoy, before their chance came. A Khaak cluster jumped in and immediately split up, setting the course for the convoy. The escort carrier started moving away from harm’s way, dropping laser towers from the aft cargo hold and launching the fighters. Corvette moved in between the convoy and attacking cluster, enticing the Khaak fighters to concentrate against the heavily shielded ship. It was a well tested method that worked well against Khaak attacks such as this one.

With everyone’s attention on attackers, the two Q-ships sat in motion their own plans. They moved rapidly closer to the three NSM freighters, placing the three freighters between each other, and then discarding the thin metal sheets that masked the openings of their missile launch tubes. The well-drilled crews of Q-ships launched three salvoes each, so that each of the NSM freighters was hit by two salvoes from two different directions. At same time, the Q-ships gateless jumpdrives were initiating their jump events. As the all three NSM freighters were blowing up, the two Q-ships blinked out of the existence in two brief flashes leaving nothing that escorting ships could exact revenge on. They appeared two sectors away and start searching for new prey immediately.

The convoy had no time to deal with the shock of the vicious attack on their midst – immediately after Q-ships jumped out, seeing that no more sneak attack were forthcoming, the convoy defenses again turned their focus on the Khaak attack that was increasing in intensity all the time. The attackers were ignoring their casualties and more Khaak clusters jumped in. The defending fighters had their hands full and with time more and more Khaak fighters penetrated the defensive screen. The freighters were now heading with full speed towards the gate leading into the next sector. For some reasons Khaak never used the gates themselves and passing through one gate meant one was safe from Khaak attackers that never followed through. The convoy would now use this peculiarity to escape the Khaak attack. The escort carrier turned again towards the convoy, keeping the freighters under the coverage of its lone flak turret. The fight was fierce but the entire convoy, minus the three NSM freighters destroyed by pirates, would make it.

As the battle moved on, another freighter jumped in through the farthest gate, a super freighter of Dolphin class, escorted by four medium and two heavy fighters. It made its way to the place where the destroyed hulks of the three NSM freighters were drifting. Carefully observing the battle between the Khaak and the convoy, keeping their distance, the crew of the freighter started salvaging the valuables from the wrecks. Two of passing ship that tried to partake in salvage, quickly left the scene after getting warning shots from the escorting fighters.
Despite the violent explosions that tore apart the three freighters, the most valuable cargo they carried, the tough material Nividium, was intact and once again a raid turned extremely profitable for the Black Gang. If the “hunter team”, as they called the pair of two Q-ships hunting for NSM freighters, discovered another victim, they would have to contact second freighter that was standing on the standby for salvager duty. It seemed that there had been enough valuables in the three NSM freighters to fill the cavernous hold of the Dolphin full.
As usually the salvaging operation proved equally dangerous to the work Q-ships were doing. The occasional Khaak Scout class ship would attack the salvagers and salvager crews working in their EVA suits would be very exposed for some tense mizuras. But fortunately this time no one died and Khaak were quickly dealt with. As long as entire cluster did not turn their attention to salvaging operation, the six fighters could handle the defenses.
Once all the valuable remains were collected from drifting hulks, the freighter traveled for four stazuras away from the system’s industrial and residence cluster, deep into the dark void. Behind them another salvagers moved in, in search for metal that could be recycled.
Once the freighter was sure that there were no prying eyes around, it jumped to the Mines of Fortune. Here on the very edge of the treacherous Fortune Nebula, protected by the ring of automated laser towers and missile batteries, was “Nebula Import/Export” company’s station.
It was a recent addition to the local economy, barely operational for couple of few weeks and already this small trading outpost had managed to earn reputation among local Teladi merchants for having all kinds of wares for sale, particularly the rare Nividium. As long as no one asked any questions, they were welcome to trade here. And in Teladi space, especially when a product was reasonably priced, questions were rarely asked…





Erich, Ni Lan, Ha’nt and Otto watched as the newest additions to the outpost’s stocks were being unloaded from the recently arrived freighter.
“What is it this time,” Otto asked the dock master. The fat Argon woman was eating a sandwich watching the dock workers unloading the freighter and noting something to her PDA using her free hand, “The usual mostly. Two tons of Nividium and couple of half-burnt plates of NOX-metal. Half-million worth of credits in there, more if Paranids drop by again”
“They are willing to pay more for Nividium?” Ha’nt asked. The prices of Nividium had been rising recently and rumor said the Paranid were chief cause for it.
“Yeah, they buy entire stock when they come. Pay lot for it too. Apparently it is a important offering to their three-something-religion masters. I bet there are priest dukes somewhere having palaces from pure Nividium by now. For religious reasons only, I am sure...”
Erich noted that her voice carried no condemnation, only a small hint of envy. He smiled to himself. He would have to keep an eye on her. Dock masters were infamous for helping themselves to wares that arrived at the docks they were supposed to supervise.
“How are defense constructions going?” Otto asked.
“You should be talking with Leclerc about that,” she answered pointing to the manager of the station down on the docks, “You want me to call him?”
“No, it isn’t necessary,” Erich said, giving signal to others that it was time to move on.
The four of them moved from the dock deeper in the station, passing the living area section, moving finally into a large hall, where score of mechanics worked on couple of fighters.
“Greetingssss, Masterssss” a Teladi master mechanic greeted them.
“How is the progress on conversions?” Otto asked. As the new generation of power plants had arrived on the market, Erich had decided that as many as possible fighters should receive upgrades of their weaponry, often doubling or even quadrupling their firepower. The reason behind such expensive decision was to increase survivability among clan’s fighter pilots. Despite many clan pilots being decent star navigator few of them were talented for space combat. And even fewer had formal training. By adding more firepower to their fighters Erich hoped to increase their battle efficiency. Soon it became apparent that many of the clans older fighters were simply too small or their hardware too old to take advantage of the new technologies in a meaningful way, so Otto had suggested to Erich to phase out those fighters from the service and instead convert them into support ships.
“I have decided to scrap older Wolfsss and instead ussse their hullsss for construction of mobile missile platformsss. Doing anything else is losss of profitsss…”
“That was expected”
“The Elitesss can be converted into command ship and surveillance shipsss and that isss what we are doing here, Mastersss”
“Excellent,” Otto said and gave the master mechanic few hundred credits, a symbolic “bribe” for work well done, as it was customary in Teladi culture.
Later in the still unfinished and empty bar of the Nebula station, the four of them discussed the progress of their plans.
“I am glad you talked me into choosing this system for Nebula station” Erich said to Otto. Looking the system up in the database, did not show the benefits of placing a station in the system. Now that he could look on the scene outside, transmitted through large wall to wall screen, he could see how easy Nebula station was to defend. Placed just enough inside the Fortune Nebula to obscure any targeting sensor, it had the benefit of preventing a long range missile bombardment. On the other hand the station was not placed deep enough inside the nebula to be exposed to all of the negative effects of it.
“As I said, you got everything here and we are relatively close to every major sector and yet far enough to be out of sight for praying eyes. Plus, the Nebula confuses the E.Y.E network in this sector so this is one of few sectors not under surveillance by Argon spooks.”
Ha’nt sneered on that, “Hah! For few credits the local Teladi governor himself would be sitting himself outside the station and spying on it.”
“And for few more credits he will feed your enemies with false information,” Otto countered.
“So is he on our pay list?” Ni Lan asked.
“Nah, just few donations here and there,” Otto said.
“If we start paying him regularly, he would start thinking we must really have something valuable hidden here. Bribing them too much is just as dangerous as not bribing them at all,” Erich explained.
“All this talk about sales and bribes bores me… Can’t I be with Crow next time he goes on raid?” Ha’nt asked.
“Sure, just ask him when he returns and he will find you a place on one of the ships. But do not delude yourself. In a Q-ship you will see only few sezuras of action and tazuras of boredom…”





The entire crew of the “Cutpurse”, including its captain, suffered from being too long in space. Since the weaponry, missiles and enhanced avionics and sensors took so much space, the machinery that kept ship’s sleeping quarters rotating had been taken out. The result after three wozuras scouting the trade lanes was that the symptoms of being too long in space began manifesting themselves. Crow had an irritating headache and most of the crew complained of the pains in the back. Food was tasteless and his nose was constantly dripping. He monitored the food and water stores carefully – when they were down to 25 percent he was supposed to turn his ship and return back to Mother. Right now that was something that he itched to do very much.
Immersed in his own misery he ignored computers warning that sensors have spotted a vessel that matched certain preprogrammed parameters. The computer did not give up – it sent an unpleasant audio warning to Crow, startling the pirate.
“What now?” he said, rather irritated that the machine was bothering him. Then seeing the signatures on the sensor display, he pushed the alarm button.
“Bring her to 276 degrees and set engines to 60 percent. Turn the security off on the missile warheads”
The men and women obeyed, immediately turning from stupor to hurried activity modus. Crow himself felt the adrenalin rush in his veins and he forgot the feeling of misery he had few moments ago.
The sensors had detected a NSM convoy.

“Fifteen ships. Ten security and five freighters. Meet us in Teladi Gain,” Crow dictated the message to one of the escorting fighters that would be bringing it to the “Highway Robber”. The two ships had decided to split up a week ago, in order to cover more ground. The communication was maintained with curriers that traveled between ships, keeping each other updated of their current positions.
“Boss, something is wrong,” one of the older hands spoke. The human was bent over the sensor screen that showed the feed from the starboard directional sensors, only sensors onboard that were able to pick up the convoy. The “Cutpurse” followed the convoy from extreme range of the ship’s sensors. Crow didn’t want to make convoy escorts suspicious. The only sensors that picked up the convoy were the starboard directional sensors. Resolution was bad but it was possible to pick up the details about individual ships.
“What do you mean?” Crow asked. He walked over the sensor screen to look for himself.
“I can’t put my finger on it but one of the ships feels wrong to me. I have seen the design somewhere else…”
“Looks like pocket cruiser to me,” Crow said, guessing which ship the man talked about. Even with bad resolution it was possible to see that one of the ships was not a regular freighter. The shape was too irregular unlike the freighters that tended to have smooth shapes. A ship with turrets gave irregular shape on sensors.
“Yeah, a bad conversion too. Looks like a container shuttle that has been fitted with a missile turret. Couple of “Otto’s specials” would solve that problem,” someone said.
Everyone laughed, except Crow and the older pirate that had warned about the ship.
“We’ll find out in few stazuras. I want everyone, specially the guys working sensors to keep an eye out for any surprises”

Several stazuras later, in the Teladi Gain system, the two Q-ships prepared for another raid. The missiles had been loaded in tubes and targeting list had been exchanged between two ships. They delayed their attack until salvager freighter had arrived too – in Teladi sectors any salvage was rapidly claimed and salvaging crew would have to work fast. The plan of the attack was to cripple the freighters and concentrate the most devastating missile salvoes on the escorts. The hope was that escorting ships would be sufficiently damaged to be dissuaded from putting up a pitched battle. Q-ships own escorting fighters would then drive the remaining convoy escort off, while Q-ships convinced the freighter captains of the futility of the continued resistance.
After seeing that the crew was ready and on their assigned positions, Crow gave the signal for the attack to begin, “Shields off and ignite the boosters”
“Shieldsss off. Boostersss on”
The inertia dampeners were turned off so that there would be no interference with acceleration, which meant that everything that wasn’t secured properly flew back as the Q-ship accelerated to 100 m/s in less than one sezura. In theory everything and everyone should have been secured properly but as expected pirates, being an undisciplined lot, had ignored Crow’s warnings. He smiled in satisfaction as cries of pain could be heard. That should teach him, he thought. He looked at the tactical screen – the distance had almost approached down to effective missile range.
“Cut the boosters!” he gave the order.
“Boossster cut. Shieldsss on.”
Inertial dampeners were engaged too and crew literally felt how the ship was slowing down. But this was not a process as unpleasant as that of accelerating – the inertial dampener was programmed to make this a smooth transition as possible.
“Fire missiles on my command…Now!”
“Firing missilesss…Missilesss out!”
Few moments passed as the missiles were leaving the tubes, finding their preprogrammed targets and then accelerating on an intercept course. Onboard the “Cutpurse” everyone looked at the screen showing ETA for individual missiles. Almost at same time, the counters reached zero.
“Hit on all two of the freighter and five of the fighters. Wait…The pocket cruiser turned on the extra shield projectors! His shields are going down, but she is holding together”
“Crap!” Crow said through clenched teeth. This was a surprise…
“She isss firing torpedoesss on “Highway Robber”! The “Highway Robber” isss putting up counter fire!”
Crow slammed his hand on the console. If he had placed his own ship closer to the “Highway Robber”, they would have been able to provide mutual defensive fire. Fortunately the short time two Q-ships had used their boosters had increased their speeds so much that even with inertial dampeners slowing them down they still passed the convoy with speed at 1662 and the two torpedoes that had been fired on the “Highway Robber” lost their own speed as they were forced in an almost continues turn in order to track their fast moving target. That in turn made them easy target for Highway Robber’s counter fire and they were quickly destroyed.
The initial attack had failed. Crow realized how lucky he was that he had chosen the fast “slashing” attack, instead of the regular tactics he used, posing as freighter that by coincidence crossed the path of the convoy. This had saved the “Highway Robber” from destruction.
Not deterred from the unexpected tough response to their attack, two Q-ships started to slow down in order to turn and attack again.
One crewman, a Teladi that worked on the sensors, called to him, “Thisss isss the mossst powerful ECM I have ssseen, bossss”
Crow put up the sensor feed on his own screen and cursed loudly. The convoy looked like one big smudge. The NSM pocket cruiser was probably launching ECM drones that received and amplified the incoming gravidar signal so that each drone gave a sensor reading equivalent to a TL. Since there was so many of them their sensor images overlapped, making it impossible to obtain clear reading of any of the ships in the NSM convoy. Even Crow with his limited technical knowledge of weapons understood that this kind of ECM would hamper any attack on the convoy.
Crow switched back to the optical display of the convoy. The convoy was close enough that it was visible against the backdrop of the flashing lights of The Place of Bliss station. Of course, since there was no way to relay optical information to the warheads of the torpedoes, there was nothing Crow could do with such information.
“Can we use Silkworms to attack the NSM ships?” he asked the Split that had responsibility for targeting computer. Silkworms depended on image recognition as method for guidance as far as Crow remembered.
“No, my warlord. This warrior will explain. The imaging recognition depends on sensor images and not the images such as seen from your human eyes. The missile will “see” the same as you, my warlord, will when you look at the tactical sensor display… The original version of the Silkworm missile has capability to lock on the source of the jamming signal itself but with so many ECM drones, this warrior does not think that even original Silkworms would have helped much”
“Bosss, an NSM TL hasss arrived in the sssystem – it isss launching fightersss!”
Probably jumped in, Crow thought. Must be new defensive tactic from NSM. It made sense… New NSM pocket cruiser provided electronic countermeasure and fire support until cavalry arrives…
“Relay this message to “Highway Robber”: Break off the attack. Signal your escorting fighter to bug out.”
“Message sssent, Bossss”
“Prepare the Hailstorm* torpedo. Extrapolate the position and vector of the convoy using external cameras and feed the data to the torpedo. Program it to detonate 340 meters from the target.”
Several pirates exchanged glances. The Master Erich had ordered every NSM freighter destroyed that could not be captured. Few of them took this seriously – after all, most pirates were interested in capturing loot not destroying the ships. However, Crow took Erich’s order seriously and he intended to carry it out.
Split pirate responsible for firing computer gave the relevant data to the computer that then relayed them to the autoloader that would select the appropriate torpedo and load it into the torpedo tube.
“Torpedo loaded!”
Looking once more on the screen, Crow gave the launch order. The torpedo left the torpedo tube, reoriented itself and then accelerated slowly away from the ship. Once it was sufficiently away from the ship so that in case of the accident an explosion due to some malfunction would not harm the ship, it engaged its main chemical thrusters. Since its target was not a maneuvering ship but a point in space, the targeting computer had been instructed to sacrifice the maneuverability for speed and torpedoes thrusters were burning at full strength. The distance to the target was 9408 meters and with thrusters at full the time to the target was little over 4 sezuras. The pocket cruiser’s counter fire was half-hearted – apparently the captain of the pocket cruiser did not consider a torpedo that was not heading for any of the ships for much of a threat. When the torpedo, unhurt, reached its target position, its warhead detonated, sending out approximately one hundred fist-sized metal balls that traveled with enormous speed in an expanding swarm, much like buckshot when fired from a shotgun. The swarm reached the convoy fraction of sezura later. Most of the metal balls missed or took out few of the expandable ECM drones. Four of the fighters were hit, their damages of varying degree. One of the engines of the NSM pocket cruiser was ripped off clear by several hits. Hardest fared the three freighters that happened to be in the middle of the swarm of metal balls. Two of them received several hits, some of their crew meeting swift death as the hull’s integrity failed. The last freighter was hit only once. The metal ball traveled through the third freighter’s shielding field loosing half of its speed. But it was enough to penetrate the hull, one inner wall, two boxes of food supplies and the containment field of the plasma engine. The following explosion overloaded nearby ships’ sensors for short time. When the disturbance cleared, sensors could not find any trace of the freighter.
Seeing that Hailstorm torpedo had achieved what it was supposed to do, Crow gave the order to engage the jump drives back to Mother. The raid had failed in every possible way, leaving the clan without plunder to compensate for the expanses of missiles expanded in the attack. Black Gang pirates would not be celebrating tonight. But nor would NSM...





“They don’t like it Erich”
“As long as they do what we tell them, let us not care whether they like it not”
Otto sighed. There was no way controlling the pirates once they were inside their spaceships out in the space. It was just matter of setting the course for nearest gate and escaping. Fear worked long way in controlling the bunch of pirates but one could not relay upon it forever. A leader needed other tools too…
“That may work for Crow and couple of older hands but the fact remains that people we have are in for credits and not personal wars. As long credits are rolling in, they may ignore our personal grudges but now that NSM had come up with efficient way of protecting their convoys, people may start to ask why we don’t go after easier targets. Few had asked this at very beginning. And initially they bought into the rumor that NSM had juiciest cargos. But that story is getting old…”
“If someone is not happy with how we operate, they are free to leave”
Otto sighed. All jazuras Erich had spent in the underworld with virtually no social contact except Otto and Suad, had left him socially crippled. The cyberborg functioned ninety percent of time normally but when situations got tense, it appeared as if only way Erich could deal with such situations was with either physical or verbal aggression. Which was…irritating. Otto determined that it would be better to wait some time before taking up with Erich matter about the discontent in the clan and decided instead to change the subject.
“Well, we knew that it was only matter of time before they copied Argon tactics,” he said rerunning the recording of the battle. The battle had been brief, with limited exchange of fire but there was not doubt that Hailstorm torpedo took out at least one freighter and severely damaged several other ships. Clan’s new engineer master, former employee of Elysium station, the Split Sulk’har had in fact pointed out this piece of weaponry to Erich and Otto. Independent worlds and stations rarely managed to produce anything that could match the quality of the hardware produced by six Major Powers. The explanation was simple – the Independent nations or factions were limited to one world or station and that meant that they were limited to resources of one planet or system. On other hand Major Powers spanned over many systems with their research and production resources being virtually limitless. So it was a surprise for Otto to see that one Independent world, which one remained unknown, managed to invent something that was so efficient at its task and so relatively cheap. Hailstorm torpedo was first torpedo designed to fight against tight formation of fighters such as a Khaak cluster and it did better job at fighting Khaak clusters than any other weapon for that purpose. The best thing about this weapon was the simplicity of production and low cost in resources.
“Yeah and I am wondering how they solved the communication issue” Erich responded. The Argon Navy, faced by immense number of Khaak clusters jumping in strategic sectors and disrupting trade and supply lines, came up with convoy system for civilian sector and added something extra for convoy of strategic importance – whenever such convoy was under attack, one or several RDF* teams would jump in the system and help defending the convoy much like Jump Fleet did defending the sectors during Xenon invasions or raids. Officially the convoy would send a message drone to nearest security or military station that would then use COMSAT* to contact the nearest RDF teams. Through Suad Khan, Otto and Erich knew that Argon Navy in fact used E.Y.E network to monitor its strategic convoys but obviously they couldn’t tell that to the public. The question was how NSM solved the issue of communication – COMSAT and message drones were both too slow to the rapid response from NSM to their attack.
Which pointed to one unpleasant alternative that Otto was first to voice, “They got someone inside the Navy Intelligence and he or she is feeding them the info from E.Y.E network?”
“Possible…Hell, I say it is probably they have. Suad told us that with every poll pointing out McCarthy Senior as next president, the usual pack of ambitious opportunist is drawing to him as fly to the shit. He already apparently has Navy’s Intel in his pocket.”
“That is his background after all”
“Everything points to the fact that everything has changed”
Otto looked at Erich inquiring, not understanding what his friend meant.





“Rules of game have changed,” McCarthy Senior commented to Olav Lie. He sipped to his favorite whiskey, while waiting for the reply. The time delay was almost seven sezura one way, despite this being a conference conducted by high-speed COMSAT* line. Of course since Olav Lie couldn’t respond at the same moment he received his message, the wait would be at least twenty sezuras in total. He took another sip. The drink in his hand wasn’t really whiskey. The senator could no longer drink alcohol but he had paid lots of credits for a substitute to be developed that had same taste and feeling in his mouth. It was differently colored but McCarthy could tolerate that.
“Unfortunately to the worse, Sir. This may disrupt your presidential campaign”
Savoring the taste and feeling of his drink, the Senator continued, “I wouldn’t worry too much. We got more in our hands but so does Mr. Campbell”
“Indeed, Sir. Apparently it seems that Erich was behind the evacuation of Elysium. He appeared to have command of a jump capable ship”
Senator brow furrowed, “Where does this information come from?”
“I had dealings with one of the local warlord alliances. The information was from them. In addition some of the former employees aboard Elysium station decided to put up a pathetic fight for “their” system. We managed to extract much information from them,” Lie explained.
“So he has a control of a large number of men?”
“Indeed. There are even rumors of him collaborating with Paranid but we cannot verify such information”
“I don’t see how he could convince those religious fanatics to back him up but I guess everything is possible with Mr. Campbell. It would not be the first time he surprised us…”
Their conversation was interrupted when Senator’s secretary brought in the refreshments. McCarthy immediately froze the picture and voice. Because of the delay, Olav Lie may not see the secretary in time and say something that was not suitable for a secretary’s ears.
On the other end of line, in Elena’s Fortune system, Olav Lie indeed was aware of secretary’s presence so he was keeping quiet. His eyes wandered to the glass wall in his new office. It offered a spectacular view and he watched how the work crews were removing the remains of the battle where Federation had taken control of the system.





If they continue with this, the entire situation will escalate in full blown war eventually, Jane Freedman thought reading the latest report she got from the source within Erich Campbell’s organization.
“Something on your mind dear?” the A.I asked. Stella could not “see” what Jane was reading, since Jane used a PDA that was unconnected to ship’s systems to read the latest report. She had also by coincidence positioned her back against the wall, with PDA’s screen away from ships onboard surveillance cameras, so there was no way for Stella to read over Jane’s shoulders the message. But the A.I could see the increased tension, the changed flow of blood and increased activity in certain parts of Jane’s brain, more than enough for A.I to determine that something strange was going on. The A.I had an inkling what bothered Jane but it decided that it would be best for Jane to take initiative for a explanation.
Jane ignored Stella’s question, focusing instead on absorbing and memorizing every line of the report she had picked up from the drifting drone in middle of Argon Prime system. The communication method between here and her agent among the Black Gang pirate clan may be primitive but it was totally secure unless her agent was discovered while sending the message drone. After she was done she took out the memory mini-dsd and walked to the rear of hear ship. She dropped the mini-dsd into the plasma exhaust of the engine and ordered the A.I to start the engine and set course for AP5*. As the engine started, the DSD melted and dissolved into subatomic particles, leaving behind no trace.
After she had ensured that mini-dsd really had been destroyed, she contacted the AP5.





“The rules of the game have changed,” A89.0001 repeated. Millions of light-years away but only four days of travel by space gates from the sector called by humans Elena’s Fortune, the Xenon wondered what a “game” was. It had been spying on warring factions among the human race for some time. A89 analyzed the word and sentences it occurred in many millions of communications the Network had intercepted from the COMSAT network organics used for communication. It appeared many times but it also appeared to be one of those words that change meaning dependent on the sentence or situation the two organic units talking were in. Even worse, from the A89.0001’s viewpoint, it appeared that organic units own communication protocols allowed for words to have abstract meanings. Since obviously organic life forms were capable of making more efficient communication protocols as evident in hardware they used, it was peculiar that they would continue using a more primitive communication protocol themselves.
Wonder over the difference between the way Xenon machines and other races communicated took only few percent of the total capacity of A89’s “brain”. Most of it was dedicated instead to the human freighter that Network, more specifically his own battle group 14D2-84, was assembling. Initial plan called for capture but A89’s subunits in the 14D2-84 proved incapable of understanding the capture command. It appeared that no control routine for capturing existed in machine programming that could take a ship as an argument. Simply put when A89.0001 tried to make few L fighters to obey his instructions they replied that what A89.0001 asked of them was illegal command or perhaps a syntax error. Updating programming code was not difficult for A89.0001 but that was something A89 would not dare to do without approval of the Central Network. Since Connected Systems were far away from his current position, A89 asked his L fighters to raid the neighboring organic controlled sectors for specific freighter type, called Mercury by its creators. At same time they were to take care that the ship was minimally damaged. The remains were to be taken back for inspection.
After nineteen ships had been attacked by the L fighters of the 84th, there were finally enough parts to build one whole mercury fighter. A89.0001 was ready for next phase of the plan.
The inspiration for A89’s plan came from A89’s observation of how a parasitic subgroup of Argon specie, used similar freighters in its endeavors. The problem of Connected System’s raids into hostile territory had always been the limitations of possible targets to the sectors next to the ones machines controlled. Connected Systems could easily send in entire force through the whatever gate in the Known Universe sequentially – but the Central Network had realized that such tactic could easily combated by local defense forces by sending in a sacrificial ship through the same gate invasion force used. Since there was no way of the lead and following elements of an attack force could communicate over the vastness of the space, the following ship would run straight into the blacking ship, being destroyed in the process. Then the remains of the two ships create barrier for next ship and so on.
Despite the fact that the Network possessed gateless jumpdrives and thus was not limited by the gates, in practice coordinating simultaneous jump of an entire battle group was no easy task, perhaps even more hazardous than sending in an attack force sequentially through a random gate. The fact is that space was full of junk and a ship jumping through space would run risk into exploding if its plasma engines or warheads of the missiles started to materialize around a piece of metal or simply dust. The resulting explosion would create even more junk and thereby starting a chain reaction. The solution was to find a clear patch of space, big enough for entire battle group and close enough to the station cluster for attack to have any tactical use. Jumping 100K away from the station cluster would only give defenders enough time to get organized. For such task, Connected Systems needed scouts that were not likely to be shot at. Xenon infiltration of the Argon E.Y.E network allowed A89.0001 to pull off such spectacular raids as one on the Two Grand, by using the Argon spy network for finding such clear patches of space in the universe. But it was bad practice on depending on the enemy’s stupidity for ones plans to succeed.
The remotely controlled Mercury freighter, equipped with latest sensor equipment, would do the job nicely without need for E.Y.E network. It was supposed to travel through the space lanes, posing as Argon merchant. When a suitable place was found, big enough for the entire battle group 14D2-84 to jump in simultaneously, the Xenon controlled freighter would send back a drone containing tactical data to the 14D2-84. Then the battle group’s two destroyers would jump in and perform lighting attacks on the stations while fighters would concentrate on freighters. It would be a repeat of the Two Grand raid. All this would lead eventually to bigger operations. But first A89.0001 needed more organics designed freighters…
Letting the construction drones continue their modification of the assembled mercury freighter, A89.0001 logged into the E.Y.E network and started looking for the organic unit whose actions had inspired its plans.


Continue to chapter 5

[blazermick]

Man, i love your work. Keep checking for regular updates cos i'm hooked.

To me, this is up there with Rogues and Traders Tales, the 2 best books i've read on here.

Keep up the great work.

[Warenwolf]

Man, i love your work. Keep checking for regular updates cos i'm hooked.

To me, this is up there with Rogues and Traders Tales, the 2 best books i've read on here.

Keep up the great work.

Thanks blazermick, that is bit of compliment you gave me there (Rogues and Traders Tale are my favourites too).

[collins50]

Verry good chapter,
I like your story
Keep it comming

[KiwiNZ]

Cool! Great read again, mate. Also nice to see a plan be being executed to perfection. The downside of this is that an already space-tired crew will be somewhat down after the failed raid. The upside is that they now know how devastating such a torpedo can be.

Looking forward to the next part!

[Warenwolf]

Thanks guys.

Though KiwiNz, the raid failed in fact. The point was to get loot. And remember one thing - the clan members are in for money (Credits). Erich and Otto on the other hand are in for revenge. So this raid is turning point. How will Erich keep togather a clan? Will the clan members keep following his orders and keep atacking only NSM convoys when there are far more easier out there? Now we will see how the masters of the Black Gang clan (bombastic name I know, couldn't come up with anything better) will tackle the difference in motivation between themselves and their men...


By the way, new glossary is out.

[Warenwolf]

Chapter four is finally finished.



Updating UH glossary, I noticed couple of things. At the time I updated the glossary, the post had been clicked on 517 times. Of those 517 visits, at least 30 was my own edits (adding the new words) or simply when I needed to reference something (keeping up such glossary really helps you keeping a red thread through twenty chapters). So, 517 – 30 = 487. By dividing this number with 24 (number of chapters totally posted) we should get the number of people that use the glossary. What we get is number around 20, which means that only 20 people (at most) use the glossary occasionally. I say “at most” because there are probably people who click several times on the asterisk (that links to the glossary page) while they read a chapter. So I am kind of wondering whether it is much point in updating a glossary at all…


But enough about that. The last part of chapter 4 starts from "nor would NSM"... Enjoy. Next chapter will be out in couple of weeks.

[KiwiNZ]

Great read! Just what I needed after my holidays have come to an end.

So the Xenon are becoming a new player in Erich's game. That should be interesting and I wonder how Otto and Erich may be able to use that to their advantage.

Looking forward to the next chapter.