Blue Star Enterprises

“Captain!” a chorus of surprised shouts greeted Vitor as he walked into the room.

“At ease,” he said tiredly. He may not have been injured in the attack, but receiving the box of tags taken off the dead had weighed heavily on him. There was also the activation crystal to think about, but that was a whole other matter. “How is everyone?”

“We’re ready on your command, Captain!” one of the surviving Marines declared.

Vitor pinched the bridge of his nose and groaned. “While I appreciate the sentiment, there will be none of that.”

“But they are holding us prisoner, Sir,” the Marine stated.

“Are they? Did you try leaving?”

“…Well, no, not yet. We were waiting for everyone to recover first.”

“Do me a favor, Marine. See if they stop you from leaving. And don’t hurt anyone while trying.”

The man looked confused by the request but nodded anyway and left the room. Vitor checked in individually with everyone who was up and mobile, after a half hour, the Marine wandered back in.

“I apologize for my assumptions, Sir. We are not prisoners, but they still control the ship.”

Vitor shook his head and pulled out the fusion activation crystal. “I received this along with the tags from the fallen. Our hosts have also treated the injured and rescued us. I have spoken with the owner, Mr. Alexander Kane. He has assured me we are free to leave whenever we can find suitable accommodations.”

“Why doesn’t he just provide a ship for us?” someone asked angrily.

“He doesn’t have a functioning FTL-capable ship, crewman. And there is no Qcomm here.”

“Sir,” his sensor operator came forward. “I don’t want to disparage the people who rescued us, but I don’t think that’s true.”

“Are you thinking of the mining ship?”

The Ensign nodded hesitantly, “That is one option, Captain, but there was also a small freighter on the landing pad.”

Vitor didn’t know about the freighter, probably because it was unimportant during the fight. He decided to address the mining ship first though. “That mining ship belongs to a captain by the name of Mingyu Na. Assuming he returned after the battle, I doubt he would be receptive to taking us back to STO space. Nor would any of you be able to leave once you stepped aboard said ship. The STO quarantined the vessel. Nobody who goes aboard is allowed off in STO space. It could be a way to get news back to headquarters, but let's hold off on that for now. Ensign, what can you recall about that freighter?”

“It was small enough for a surface landing and there was no transponder beacon coming from it. At the time I just figured it was another derelict like the shuttles, but I’ve been thinking about the scans. The shuttles were all cold, but the freighter wasn’t. It was probably in standby mode. If that was the case, the transponder beacon should have been active.”

“It’s probably a smuggler freighter then. It will be a last resort. In the meantime I want you to work in groups of two and get a picture of this facility. Don’t do anything stupid though. We might be here for a while, and I don’t want to risk alienating the locals against us. Since they turned this room into a bunk for us, we’ll meet back here at night and discuss anything we’ve found. If an opportunity arises, we may try to take advantage of it, but not before we have a clear plan. Is that understood?”

“Yes, Captain,” came a unanimous response.

He gave a sharp nod of approval. “I’m going to check in on the people who are still recovering, you have your orders.” As long as they thought they were searching for a way off this barren world, it would keep their minds off of the tragedy. Most of them were probably still in shock, but that wouldn’t last indefinitely.

The room emptied as everyone did as they were told. When he was alone, he allowed his exhaustion to show. Pretending that everything was fine when he looked at the handful of survivors from the few hundred that served aboard Epsilon’s Dawn had been one of the hardest things he could recall doing. Based on the tags, he knew the true count, but knowing it and seeing it in person were two very different things.

After collecting himself, he made his way to the infirmary. There were only five people in medical beds and one in an actual medical pod. While the room didn’t look much like a hospital, it was decked out in a considerable amount of equipment. He had seen newer stuff back on Earth but even Varlen’s military hospital didn’t have access to half of these diagnostic machines.

A nurse glanced up and watched him for a bit before she went back to a holo she was watching silently.

Most of the injured had broken bones. Without access to quick heal meds, they would be in for a long road to recovery, but they would recover. Vitor made his way to the one person in the medipod. He was surprised to find it was his Chief Engineer. Parson was in a coma and it looked like half his body was burned.

“Nurse, do you know what happened to him?” he asked, gesturing to the pod.

The woman paused her holo and looked up at him. “First off, I’m not a nurse. My name is Gabriella, and I am the Head of Medical Services on Eden’s End, not that the title means much. It’s not like I got a medical license or anything. I’m simply doing my best.”

Vitor blinked at the woman’s statement.

“As for what happened to your crewman?” she shrugged. “Burned through his suit. Probably some electrical discharge if I had to guess. The medipod is keeping him sedated until we can bio-print replacement skin. It will be a long process, but he should survive. If it looks like he’ll take a turn for the worse, we have a stasis pod on standby.”

The offer of a stasis pod surprised him. Those were expensive. Then again, Kane seemed like he had no issues with money if he managed to put this all together.

“Thank you for healing my people.”

The woman snorted. “Don’t thank me, I’m only doing what Alex asked. If he wasn’t here, nobody would have bothered rescuing your lot. We came out here to be rid of the STO, not to invite them into our home.”

Vitor forced a smile on his face. He had to remember this place housed a large colony of drifters. The STO and drifter populations didn’t have a good working relationship at the best of times. “Where can I find Mr. Kane to thank him personally?”

“Oh, I’m sure you’ll figure it out eventually,” she said, going back to her holo.

Vitor knew a dismissal when he saw one, he nodded politely to the woman and strode out of the room.

***

Gabriella watched the man leave from the corner of her eye. She didn’t know why Alex didn’t want the man to know where his workshop was and she didn’t particularly care.

Kane was a bit of an enigma. Like everyone else on Eden’s End, she had heard the rumors from the Hawks that he was remotely controlling the robot from a stasis pod. The only problem with that rumor was that the only stasis pod that existed on Eden’s End sat in the medical storage. And it was empty. She knew this because, like most drifters, she kept track of anything that might be of use. It was a habit of survival when moving to new places. So she knew without a doubt that Kane only had a single stasis pod.

Considering what Alex had done for the residents, she hadn’t brought up the strange inconsistency. Not that it mattered. People were starting to notice other inconsistencies in his story.

She recalled a dinner she had with Damien and Lucas a while back. Lucas kept wondering about how Alex got past the time lag to operate his body at the Lagrange point. The inquisitive young man wanted to understand why the signal couldn’t be detected by their transceivers. Other than a Qcomm link, that shouldn’t be possible, he claimed. It never even occurred to the younger man that there might not be any signal. Since it was clear both her boyfriend and his younger brother suspected something was off, she mentioned the pod.

That only produced more questions from the young man, which annoyed Damien until he finally put a stop to it. “I don’t give a shit if he’s a popsicle, a brain in a jar, or whatever the fuck a memory endgram is. I don’t want you digging any further into the man’s secrets.”

That was that.

Damien might come off as a cynical asshole most of the time, but he cared in his own way. And while he and Alex didn’t always see eye to eye, Damien respected him for what he did back during the attack. He just had a hard time showing it. Keeping his brother from pestering the man about these questions was a monumental show of respect.

***

Damien cursed Alex in his mind. Couldn’t the man understand that letting the surviving STO Navy personnel wander the facility was a recipe for disaster or did he simply not care? It was bad enough he had to keep his uncle in check.

He had already caught the man snooping around places he shouldn’t. He warned him away, but he knew the man wouldn’t listen. If Shall thought family ties would keep Damien from arresting him when the man finally did something to cross a line, he had another thing coming.

Soon the person he was waiting for exited the medical facility. Damien could have gone in and spoken to him, but he knew better than to get on Gabriella’s bad side. And bothering her patients would be a surefire way to do just that.

He straightened the suit that marked him as facility security, glad that security had a uniform now. Damien cut the man off before he could head down one of the side hallways. “Captain Krieger, I assume. A moment of your time.”

The man stopped short before running into Damien. Annoyance flitted across the man’s face for a moment before the STO captain suppressed it. “I am. I assume you are in charge of security around here?”

Damien didn’t answer the man’s question. “You are guests of Alexander’s. This does not give you any special privileges other than food, water, and lodging. If your people cause trouble, don’t expect them to escape punishment. Keep them in line, or I will.”

The man narrowed his eyes at Damien. “Is that a threat?”

“No, Captain, that is a promise. I know you sent your people out to collect information for you. Feel free to spy all you want but if they are found someplace restricted, they will be locked up until someone comes to pick your sorry asses up. I suggest you convey this warning to them as soon as possible. That’s all I have to say, have a good day, Captain.” Damien walked past the stunned man without waiting for a response.

He would have preferred to set a watch on every one of the survivors, but he didn’t have the manpower to do that while also guarding the restricted areas of the facility, and patrolling. The warning would have to suffice.