Blue Star Enterprises

“This the room?” Travers asked over the radio.

“Yes,” the field operator aboard the ship replied.

Travers grunted and gave a hand motion to his team. They split up and flanked the door. “Any idea how many we are dealing with?”

“Three to five individuals. The cameras in that area aren’t very clear so that’s the best guess we’re getting from Sam.”

He grunted in annoyance as he poked a hole in a rusting beam nearby with his finger. The Strategic Analysis Module or S.A.M. for short was a wonderful piece of tech. But it could only generate tactical analysis if it had data to do so. Travers removed his gloved finger from the rusty hole. “No pulse rifles. This area’s too unstable. One missed shot could bring the entire thing down on top of us.”

That meant no CQB rifle either. Travers slapped the weapon to the mag restraint on the back of his armor and pulled out his stunner.

Once everyone was ready, he nodded and his man turned the crank on the door as fast as possible and threw it open. There was a chorus of surprised shouts as Travers rushed into the room. The first thing he noticed was that there were more people than Sam had predicted. Over half a dozen men were waiting in the dilapidated room. The next thing he noticed was the weapons they were quickly trying to pull from crates.

He kicked the barrel of the antique firearm the closest individual was trying to aim toward him. The gun flew out of the man’s surprised hand but not before he shot off a series of bullets. The only thing the idiot managed to hit was his friends though.

Travers shoved the stunner into the man’s diaphragm harder than was strictly necessary. The man went down and the others quickly followed.

He stood over the unconscious forms of the seven men and thanked his luck that they seemed unaccustomed to the old weapons.

“Weapon secured!” one of his team alerted him. The man turned the weapon and read off the designation stamped into the side. “AK-74? Where do you think they even got these antiques?”

“Who knows,” Travers shook his head. He grabbed the weapon from his team member and sat it back in the rotten wooden crate. “We’ll need to get the engineers out here to disarm them. Who volunteers for babysitting duty?”

Two of his team weren’t quick enough to call ‘not it’. Travers laughed and pointed to them. “Looks like you two get the honors.”

The two grumbled under their breath before stepping out of the room to guard the door. “Let's get these seven men cuffed and dragged back to the atrium.”

“Six, FL. Looks like this one bled out.”

Travers looked to where his man was pointing and sighed. It was one of the people who took hits from the idiot with the gun. “Bag him up.”

They quickly and efficiently bagged up the dead man and secured the others. Every single one had a warrant on the same planet. Likely a small-time gang that had been forced out. Travers tagged them for pickup and led his team back to the atrium. There were more places to search.

***

It had taken two full weeks for the Hawks to clear and secure the station. They had arrested over eighty people who had current warrants out for their arrest. No pirates, though, which was a pleasant surprise.

That did leave a significant number of worried people down below.

Alexander focused on the man sitting across the drop ship from him. “You’re sure it’s safe?” he asked for the tenth time. Yulia was in a seat beside him, headphones on and her face shoved into a holo movie.

“Yes, Mr. Kane,” Jallen, one of the Field Team leaders responded in a slightly annoyed tone.

Alexander had his avatar nod. He was just worried. Not for himself. He was pretty sure his body could withstand anything the people in the station could throw at him, considering the damage he had previously, but Yulia was just a little kid.

“And you said you found the leader?”

The man waggled his hand back and forth. “Drifters don’t tend to have much in the way of leadership, so to speak. But the man who presented himself to us is nominally in charge. We confirmed that by speaking to a bunch of other drifters.”

Alexander didn’t like the way the man used the word drifter. It sounded rather derogatory. He had asked Jallen what a drifter was when the word first came up. Apparently, they were just people who drifted from place to place. Most places didn’t welcome them because they refused to follow rules put in place by the STO. Jallen didn’t actually say that last bit, he just said they were troublemakers who refused to fit into polite society.

Considering Alexander was trying to upset the establishment, he might get along with these drifters quite well. Time will tell.

The drop shuttle shook and the pilot spoke up. “We are entering the atmosphere. It’ll get a bit bumpy from here.”

The seats aboard the shuttle were far too small and weak to hold Alexander’s bulk. That wasn’t much of an issue for him though. He figured out he could magnetize his feet and hands to hold himself in place. He wasn’t sure how this was possible considering his entire body was non-metallic, but he wasn’t going to question it.

He was also glad the Hawks had shuttles. Alexander had overlooked a very significant issue when he packed everything aboard the Zephyr. Mainly that the ship was too large to land on the surface of a planet. Jasper had pointed this issue out early in their trip. After some conversations with the Talon’s Captain, they figured out a method to get his cargo down to the surface.

It required an additional investment of one million credits and took the Talon’s engineering crew a week of spacewalks to transfer the cargo to drop ships that floated near the Zephyr’s open cargo ramp, but they managed it. Now all of his belongings sat off to one side of the nearest landing pad to the manufacturing hub. That didn’t mean he would be saying goodbye to Jasper or his crew just yet though. The Zephyr had a small shuttle that followed them down to the surface. The only thing aboard that shuttle was ‘his’ medical pod.

Now that he was outside of STO space, Alexander probably wasn’t going to continue perpetuating that lie. It was just such a pain to be tethered to the item, even if it was only a fake tether.

The ship shook again and he focused on Yulia. The girl seemed unaffected by the turbulence, she was more interested in trying to sneak a peek outside the window. Her eyes were wide in delight as she watched the plasma stream off the underside of the ship from the superheated atmosphere.

Considering who her parents were, this very well might be her first time setting foot on the surface of a planet. He was glad artificial gravity existed. Otherwise, she would have had all sorts of problems dealing with the gravity.

Y6X-3H2-4 only averaged about eighty percent of Earth’s gravity so it was slightly less than Petrov Station which kept theirs at ninety percent of Earth's. It probably wouldn’t take the girl very long to adjust to the change. She would likely have more issues adjusting to the day-night cycle and the stink. Yulia had already complained about the smell when they first boarded the shuttle through the docking ring and that was only the lingering aroma, it would be much worse on the ground. This was one time he was thankful his body didn’t include olfactory senses.

As for the day-night cycle. It was a doozy. On average, each day was nearly forty hours long if you included dawn and dusk, and each night was over twenty. The planet wasn’t tidally locked, which was a blessing, but it did have a mean orbital angle. This angle shifted the day-night cycle almost completely at two points in the year. It was going to take some getting used to.

He would likely pick up whatever system the inhabitants used, he was sure the people below had adapted to it by now. Most of the facility was buried below the surface or sported thick concrete covering so natural light wasn’t really a concern anyway. The only part of the complex that wasn’t buried or covered, the observation dome, was a wreck of broken glass and rusted metal due to exposure.

That was on his priority list to get fixed. Not because he wanted to stare at the blue star or take measurements of the thing, but because the damage exposed other parts of the structure. He had already been told by Captain Matthews that the damage had spread quite far from that location. If it wasn’t taken care of the entire facility could become jeopardized.

That was priority number two after speaking with this representative. Priority one was finding a safe place for Yulia to stay while he worked on bringing the place up to livable conditions. He did wonder why the locals hadn’t done it themselves. When he thought about it though, he realized they likely didn’t have access to repair schematics. It’s a good thing he did.

“Touchdown in five,” the pilot yelled over the roar of the thrusters.

“Alex, it hurts!” Yulia cried.

“It’ll be over shortly,” he tried to calm the girl. There was no getting past the extra G’s they had to pull to not slam into the surface. The planet didn’t have a thick enough atmosphere to slow the drop-ship’s descent enough.

“Pretend someone’s hugging you real tight and push back against it,” Jallen spoke calmly.

The girl nodded and Alexander watched her tense up. Yulia had slowly come out of her shell aboard the Zephyr. She was still a bit shy though and almost always refused to talk to anyone she didn’t know. He printed the words ‘Thank You!’ under his avatar's face. The man nodded. “I have two small nieces.”

Soon the extra weight lifted and the ship touched down gently. He had heard some of the first drops were rather rough since they did combat drops. He was glad they hadn’t needed to do that today.

“Alright, Yulia, time to put your breather mask on.”

She pouted a bit before slipping the gray mask on. Alexander unmagnetized his body and double-checked the seal was tight on her mask. He nodded to Jallen who hit a button near the back. The door slowly lowered, allowing the harsh glare of the blue sun into the cabin.

It was nearly blinding after being stuck in the natural yellow light aboard stations and ships, he wished he had gotten Yulia some sunglasses.

“Sorry bout the light,” Jallen said in annoyance. “We landed near the peak of the day cycle. Just use your tablet to cover your eyes and follow me. The door isn’t far.”

Alexander would have picked Yulia up, but the girl insisted on walking. She held the holo tablet over her eyes like a visor with one hand and held onto Alexander’s hand with her other. However, her eyes kept roaming to the scenery around them. To be fair, Alexander was taking it all in as well. This was his first time on an alien planet after all or at least the first time he could remember.