Pyrr
After we had been on course headed toward Farseek for about a day, Admiral Degatu and Commander Maktu decided to pull our ship out of FTL and call a meeting of senior staff.
“There has been a change of plans,” Commander Maktu announced. “After the women from Earth collected information from the people we rescued from Breskaa they informed us that our people did not want us to take them back to Farseek now. They think we should conserve our resources and go after the thousands of our people taken to Julconi the Sargan Prison colony.” He paused. “Admiral.”
Admiral Degatu stepped forward. “There are two things we will need first before we tackle this mission. We have sent a coded message for our remaining dreadnaughts to respond with their status and to set up a rendezvous for this mission. Before we can embark on the rescue, we need to procure a ship large enough to carry a few thousand people back to Farseek. We have located a shipyard in the Tigores system three weeks out from we are right now.
“I’m not going to sugar coat it at all. What we’re planning is blatant piracy because the payoff from the Kyanna Guryon mission is not going to buy us a freighter. We are going in under the guise of a mercenary ship needing repairs. Commander Maktu’s teams will run recon to find us a ship. Then members from one of my teams along with civilian volunteers will take it---as in steal it along with anything we think we will need to pull off the rescue.
“We didn’t sign up to become pirates, but if that’s what it takes to bring our people home that’s exactly, we will do. Anyone who has any objections, signify by calling ‘nay.' Anyone?”
Not a single person made a sound. Why would anyone object? The Sargans stole our families and destroyed our world’s infrastructure. I doubt there was a single person on the any of our ships who would object to taking what we need from the Sargans to get them back. We would bring down the entire empire if we could. But all our forces alone couldn’t defeat them.
So, we would wreak havoc where we could and take whatever we needed to find and free our people. After the bitter losses, we suffered on Farseek, we all felt whatever means necessary could be justified. The Consortium would pay for some of the rebuilding on Farseek, but they would not pay for us to go after those taken. There was no need for our company to return to Farseek. We had all seen the ruin of our world first hand.
Despite the extra people housed in the cargo bay, life on the ship went back to a routine closer than normal. Of the six women rescued from the slave auction house, four of them had mated, sharing quarters with their mates. The other two females, though they looked very human, not from Earth. They were assigned their own cabins, and our rec room, gym and conference room were again available to normal operations.
About two weeks into the journey, we receive encoded messages from the other six dreadnaughts. Excitement rippled through our entire brigade because now we had accounted for all our ships. Our force was small, but the best in the Consortium. Two of those dreads headed for Julconi to recon for us while we went after the ship we would need. We felt pretty safe in our communications because they were encoded in a rare, ancient Uatu language known only to our people.
The rest of the time we had to make our own entertainment when we were not on duty or training. The women continued basic training and volunteers from the contingent we rescued from the mining planet joined them. The miners were given a couple weeks of rest and full rations beforehand. They had been treated as a disposable commodity, and some of them were barely able to stand. Our food was not the best for flavor and variety, but it was good quality. We took all that the overseers had in their stash and the food processors.
We were going to need a lot more food and supplies for the prison planet rescue. We had two of the dreads pursuing supplies because they didn’t have a hundred people bunked in their cargo holds. Finally, we arrived at the starship manufacture and repair station. Most of us had never seen anything like it. There were ships of all shapes and sizes strung out in orbit between two planets. It looked like a starship graveyard where ships were abandoned to drift into space for eternity---or until they could be salvaged. There were even a few ancient battleships in the mix with whole sections missing and interiors opened to the vacuum of space.
The ships closer to the salvage station were organized according to size and shape while those farther away were in no particular order or grouping. We had no idea of the number of ships strung out in orbit around the red giant. There must have been 100k or more wrecks. There was a section of empty space between the derelicts and the repair station that was as big as some planets. It looked like a giant creature with several “arms” stretching out into space where giant ships were tethered to repair bays. There were many more ships clustered around the station apparently waiting for a bay to open.
With the number of workers needed to run an operation of this size, it occurred to our superiors that most of their labor force were probably slaves. There could well be many of our people right there to rescue. I think they were also starting to see that finding and rescuing all our people was probably an impossible task. Maybe we couldn’t rescue them all, but before we finished, the Sargan Empire was going to know they messed with the wrong people.
Beyond the repair station, there was another structure almost as large building new ships, mostly warships. We tooled around the repair station arms for a few hours before we found a passenger freighter that would carry the number of people we planned to liberate from Julconi. The logistics alone were mind-boggling, but it wasn’t my job to figure it out. My job was to run interference with my company to get our pilot team into the ship to liberate it.
It looked like we were in luck with their low level of security. The Commander figured the Sargans would never consider the kind of heist we were planning. There were battlecruisers in various stages of repair, but none in service in the Teglia system. Once we staked out the ship, we wanted command requested and received docking clearance. Our ship got in ahead of others because it was smaller. We soon discovered Station was not just a repair station but also had many pleasures available to customers while they waited on their repairs. Many came to the station for the recreation as well as the repairs.
Partly for recon and partly for recreation, our companies took turns going out into the station. Only a few of us had left the ship at Halor, and there was little time for recreation. Scarlet got her language chip and fertility suppression implant along with the other Earth women and two Deltoin females. Soon as we finished that, we shuttled back to Dread One and headed for Breskaa.
Scarlet and I went out with the commander and his mate Harper. This was the only the second time the women had been off the ship since we rescued them. We did a bit of shopping and got a meal in one of the pubs of the food section. While we were reconnoitering, our AI was assisting our analysts to obtain information about the ship we were going to steal. Other teams were out and about looking for our people. Their skin tones and exotic hair colors would help identify them. Getting them off the station could be a different story as this station could support a hundred thousand or more.