Starship Engineer

Chapter 123 Saftey in Numbers

Admiral LaRoche’s fleet had grown beyond expectations. He now commanded 500 ships, with 200 cruisers and 44 battleships. He had been slowly chasing the Sylvan city ship across human space and was bleeding them. He was also developing better tactics for dealing with the War Chariots, the core of the Sylvan offensive power.

His fleet had swelled because of the outbreak of war in the Rim worlds. System governments without strong military presences were willing to host them and give his fleet provisions and fuel if he left a few cruisers behind to safeguard their interests. This opened up a supply line for his fleet. The cruisers left behind were aged and useless for his hit-and-run tactics but could serve as a shield wall for planets against raider groups. He had even steamrolled the Destiny Repulic and Gallic Confederacy and now safeguarded those two systems.

Those two kingdoms had been raiding free traders across the entire region of space. He might have been commissioned to encourage the Sylvan city ship to depart human space, but now he held real power and was a police force for this sector of the Rim. He had earned the respect of his fellow captains, and the standards of crews in his fleet had risen drastically in the last few months.

In fact, much of his command had cut ties with their prior political entities and joined him permanently. Maybe LaRoche was an idealist, but he would keep going as long as people continued to feed and fuel his growing fleet. He even had a home port now. Galana Prime. It was a tiny, settled moon in a large star system with four gas giants. Since the system had housed them, the fuel processing capacity of the system had increased tenfold. The system population had exploded from less than a million to nearly ten million. This was because it became a haven for refugees of war-torn kingdoms in the Rim.

The question he kept asking himself was when would it all collapse like a house of cards? Already, a number of people were rallying in support of establishing a new government for the twenty-odd systems his fleet currently patrolled. He knew once a government was established, then the people’s voice and well-being would be muted and eventually extinguished. There was no single incident in human history that a government for the people lasted more than two hundred years. The wealth and power always funneled to a select few over time, and then they put up a facade of the people still having a voice.

His ship captain handed him a new report. He had to look at it twice. Finally, the Sylvan city ship had left human space. It was headed toward Tirani space. Good, let the bear-like men deal with them. His next report was even better news. An industrial world with shipyards wanted to defect. Well, defect was a strong word. They wanted to disassociate themselves from the Free People’s Conclave. It made sense as it wouldn’t take much to go into the system and destroy the orbital infrastructure. And currently, the Free People’s Conclave was at war with three different space-faring kingdoms.

The admiral started to assemble a fleet on his pad to station in the system. Those shipyards could produce new destroyers and corvettes for his fleet. One thing he lacked was modern ships. After two hours, he had selected a fleet of two battleships, six cruisers, and twenty support ships and sent off the orders for a rally point and deployment. Now, he needed to focus on building defensive structures in the systems he protected and finding a way to pay his navy. He had two systems with abundant natural resources. All he needed to do was begin large-scale operations….

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Lazarus’ biosynth was itching. He was doing something that the implanted organic worm from the Sylvan wasn’t sure was in the best interests of the Sylvan race. How it knew that he had no idea. Freeing the confined captain of the Brotherhood cruiser was a risk. Her name was Desdemona, and Rae’Ver had locked her away and left her under the guard of bots. No one was allowed to talk with her. Lazarus wanted to know why.

He had built enough trust with Rae’Ver to gain access, and now he opened her cell. He found Desdemona in a meditation pose with her eyes closed. He stared for minutes, and she finally opened her eyes and looked at him. Her eyes seemed to look through him into his very soul. He suddenly screamed in immense pain and collapsed. He knew immediately it was the biosynth. The biosynth was killing him…no, the biosynth was being killed! He screamed as his voice became hoarse, and still he continued. The woman was in some type of supernatural mind battle to end the life of the biosynth he hosted.

As the pain receded, he couldn’t believe it. He no longer felt the presence in his mind, always watching and judging his actions. He was free. He stood to find dried blood in his ears and nose. Desdemona looked tired, but she stood with effort. Lazarus asked if she was ready to get the fuck out of here, and she agreed.

He told Desdemona they were on board a Brotherhood Battleship in the Bradbury system. She knew the ship layout, and there was a captain’s yacht—well, a small luxury combat corvette would be a better description. They walked unmolested through the ship as Rae’Ver had not given orders for Desdemona to be considered hostile. When they boarded the ship, Lazarus fell in love. This ship was the best humanity could produce, and you could even pilot it with just five people, but you did need an engineer.

He convinced Desdemona to let him call his engineer from when he was a pirate. She would have to kill his biosynth as well, but they needed at least one engineer; two would have been better. When Braddock arrived, he seemed confused. Desdemona, even exhausted, repeated her little trick, and Lazarus watched as his engineer screamed and bled from his eyes, nose, and ears for the next twenty minutes. He looked pathetic …he guessed he hadn’t looked so pitiful when his biosynth was purged. Finally, Desdemona collapsed in a seat in the corvette’s common area and said it was done.

It took Braddock an hour to regain consciousness. When he did, he was put to work. He professed that most of this ship’s systems were more advanced than anything he had worked on. He wasn’t sure if he could do the maintenance. Lazarus just pointed at the VR device and told him to start. Two hours later, Desdemona launched the corvette, not wanting to wait to be discovered missing. Lazarus was working sensors, comms, and navigation. It had been a long while since he plotted a course in subspace.

They cleared the battleship’s rack and flew away. Desdemona still had codes that let her bypass security. As long as Rae’Ver was not told about the ship, they wouldn’t be stopped. Two hours to a transition point. Rae’Ver commed the craft personally when they had just about reached the line for a safe entry to subspace. Desdemona didn’t want to answer it, but the comm channel was forced open. Rae’Ver ordered Lazarus to kill Desdemona, to which Lazarus just started laughing, which caused Desdemona to laugh too. They both told him to fuck off before entering subspace.

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Samantha had spent the last year and a half as a privateer. Hunting pirates throughout the Rim and taking odd escort jobs. It had been financially rewarding when she could capture and sell the pirate ship. She was now in command of an old fighter carrier cruiser called the Redemption. She also had two heavy corvettes and a medium transport in her fleet, all refurbished pirate ships.

The Rim had recently exploded in a massive conflict. Samantha had a crew of two hundred and forty souls, and becoming involved was out of the question. Too much risk. She was a privateer, not a mercenary. She only took commissions she could complete safely.

Her crew was a mix of redeemed pirates, old Union, and individuals seeking excitement. They had slowly become a family under her direction, doing their version of good for a healthy profit. Now, the conflict in the Rim had essentially grounded them. Samantha couldn’t head back toward the core worlds. The Sapphire Empire had too much influence and still had bounties for her capture. Skirting the Rim to a new region had too many unpredictable alien civilizations. That was why she was considering joining the one stabilizing force out here that was independent. Admiral LaRoche had gathered an independent fleet, chased off a Sylvan city ship, and now protected the innocent from the war raging in the sector.

She had decided to bring in her four trusted advisors and the two captains of the heavy corvettes. The meeting was lively, but in the end, they voted to join LaRoche. At least until the war simmered down and they could return to privateering. Safety in numbers.

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Rae’Ver had been so angry at Desdemona, and Lazarus’ escape that he had briefly lost his control over Katsu Oshiro. Fortunately, the man only collapsed and didn’t voice anything on the bridge.

He watched the video of Desdemona using the power to kill the biosynth. This was beyond disturbing. Not only had she grown this powerful in the last year, but she could cleanse an agent of their biosynth. That meant she could also identify those carrying a biosynth. The entire Sylvan spy network in human space was now at risk. He couldn’t leave the Bradbury system until he found Void Phoenix. Four invisible gravity wells in this system hid something powerful. How a race like the Squirrel had mastered the technology, no, it only made sense if it was the Void Phoenix who had gifted the technology. He had even approached one of the gravity wells with his battleship; with his power, he could feel something there, but it was too slippery to get ahold of.

He did the one thing he could do, though. He had Katsu Oshiro send a Persona Non-Grata order to the Brotherhood for Desdemona Rouse. All her access codes would be expunged, and she wouldn’t find sanctuary in any Brotherhood facilities or vessels.

He looked at his monitors, and the Squirrel had attacked another patrol craft. The frigate was destroyed, but so were the fifteen Squirrel marines and their shuttles. Hopefully, the debris would turn up useful in the tech they were carrying this time. It would be the fifth ship he had lost since entering this system and the second shuttle he had destroyed in hopes of obtaining the technology. He knew the Squirrel didn’t have vast numbers, and baiting them with these human ships was fine with him. The humans were expendable, and killing these Squirrel had greatly raised the fleet’s morale. They were no longer fighting ghosts.

Six hours later and the S&R team didn’t recover anything useful. Rae’Ver smashed the console on the bridge with his hand. The humans looked at him but quickly looked away. Too many had been ordered away by Katsu after questioning the Sylvan’s presence. He took a deep breath and ordered another frigate to go and sit on the largest gravity well. He had cruisers stationed on the other two wells, with the bulk of his fleet on the fourth, but it appeared only the largest gravity well had marines to attack his ship. If it was a battle of attrition, so be it.