Blue Star Enterprises

In the end, the implied threat was enough to make the man talk, which was a relief. Alexander had already done enough things in the past few days that he would rather forget. If he could trade these new memories for some of his lost ones, he would have done so in the blink of an eye.

The man’s reason for doing what he did was as disgusting as the man himself. He was a degenerate gambler who had fled STO space after racking up a debt he couldn’t afford to pay back. When he realized there was a chance to pay off that debt and return to STO space, he jumped at the opportunity and reached out to an old contact of his who acted as a go-between for him and the pirates. All it took to get the man to turn on everyone here was a promise of a ride home and what amounted to fewer credits than it would have cost Alexander to rent his small shop space on Petrov station for a year.

Alexander found it hard to believe that someone could be so cold and callous to do such a thing. Or how he thought it was a good idea to trust pirates to actually keep their promises. Not that Draven came across as very smart. He came across as a sad pathetic man, whose only goal in life was to get back to gambling.

Alexander didn’t stick around to watch the remaining interrogation but he knew what the end result would be. The man willingly worked with pirates, what did he think would happen? Alexander didn’t feel so much as an ounce of remorse for what awaited Draven, which surprised him. Not that he thought he should care about that useless waste of oxygen, but his feelings had been jumping back and forth pretty hard since his run-in with the pirate who threatened Yulia. It had gotten so bad he almost wished he hadn’t awakened them. …That wasn’t true. While these emotions were inconvenient, he felt more human now than he ever had before.

He still couldn’t tell if he had a full range of emotions, but some were certainly better than none.

Having these emotions brought about an intense feeling of disgust for the actions he took to break Draven. Alexander knew logically that those feelings were misplaced, but he never wished to have to do something so vile again. Acting like that, even for a short time made him feel dirty, like he had somehow stooped to the level of the pirates. He should have left the questioning to Damien and Matthews, but he had a personal stake in this matter. With Yulia’s safety on the line, he wasn’t willing to be a bystander.

Matthews stepped out of the room a few minutes later. “Are you ok?”

“I–” He was going to feed the man some empty platitude but decided against it. “I will be, eventually.”

The Captain of the Talon gave a single slight nod. “You did what needed to be done. Nobody will fault you for that.”

“I know. I just wish it hadn’t been necessary in the first place. All I ever wanted to do was find someplace safe for my daughter and get away from the corporations. And now pirates are after me.”

“I would like to tell you everything will be fine, but I don’t like to fill people with false promises. Your defeat of this group will certainly leave this area of space rather quiet for a time but the name Draven gave us is a well-known pirate. Arkonis Anazi was pirate royalty and the brother of Harlow Anazi, an infamous pirate warlord. I doubt the two were close or anything like that so it isn’t likely he will take the death of his younger brother personally but you never know with pirates. I was more surprised to hear someone from the Anazi family was even out in this sector. The Char family are the ones who are usually found in this area of space, specifically, Katalynn Char. The Anazi family controls Haven, which is on the opposite side of STO space. If I had to guess, they are probably the ones who attacked Petrov Station.”

“This Arkonis Anazi was here? Which one was he?”

Matthews pulled up his tablet and flicked to a picture. “Here’s a picture of him. The DNA scanner said this was his armor.” The man flicked to the bloody armor worn by the man who threatened Yulia.

The man got what he deserved then. “What now?” he asked. Alexander’s only real plan was to rebuild the defenses, improve them, and try to get back on track with his other projects. He could certainly use the opinion of someone with experience.

The man put away his tablet. “Now… now you get to claim the bounties. There were quite a few that the STO will be more than happy to know are gone.”

“Can you claim them?”

Matthews quirked an eyebrow. “Why would you want the Hawks to claim them?”

Alexander gestured around. “I don’t want to draw any more attention here than I already have. Arkonis may have come here for me, but I don’t think he did it on his own initiative.”

“Are you certain?”

“No. But I find it highly suspicious that all of this seems to lead back to Petrov Station. Someone there must know what I can do. For all I know, the entire Anazi family could be after me.”

“That seems like a bit of a stretch, Alexander. But then again, I have seen you do some remarkable things in nine months, so maybe it isn’t as implausible as I think. I’ll make you a deal. I will only agree to turn in these bounties if you provide your corporate account to send the money to.”

“Can’t you just use the money to pay what I still owe you for your services?” That seemed like the best option to him. It also didn’t leave a trail straight to Blue Star Enterprises.

The man chuckled. “I think you’re underestimating the bounties on these pirates. These are people who have been stalking the space lanes for decades. Arkonis alone was worth a hundred million credits. You also took down his second, third, and fourth in command. Those all total up to another hundred million. Add in the small fry that got tagged by ship cameras during their past raids and you might be looking at yet another hundred million, it's hard to say. That’s three hundred million just in bounties. If you sell that armor that Arkonis was wearing, that would probably net you another three hundred million.”

Alexander would have started coughing if he had a mouth, instead, he just stared at the Captain, which wasn’t very effective since he didn’t have his hologram. “Why is the armor worth so much?”

“I don’t know who made that armor but I can tell you that it is state-of-the-art electronic warfare gear. That alone is surprising to see, but that’s not why you could get three hundred million for it. At most, armor like that would cost fifty million to purchase outright, which is a ridiculous sum for something like that, but there are people who pay for that type of stuff. The reason you can get three hundred million is because the company that built it will pay you that much. They will do this just to keep it from becoming public knowledge that their armor was sold to a known pirate. The STO tends to frown on black-market arms to the point of arresting entire companies until they can sort out who sold the armor. Even if they were somehow innocent, which I doubt, that would put a black mark on their company and nobody would buy from them ever again.”

“Isn’t that blackmail?”

Matthews shrugged. “It depends on how you word the request. The world isn’t black and white, Alexander. It is many shades of grey. You just need to learn to live within them. If you don’t want to deal with the logistics of it, let the Hawks handle the problem.”

“That seems like a risky venture. Won’t that get you in trouble if the company finds out?”

The man smirked. “No. We have our own black ops team. We’ll pass it off to them to do the dirty work.”

“I somehow feel like you shouldn’t have told me that,” he muttered, earning a chuckle from the grey-haired captain.

“Everything I told you has already been cleared by our leadership. Like I said, they want a close relationship with you. Just don’t go spreading that information around.”

“I wasn’t planning on it. You said that armor is state-of-the-art. Shouldn’t I keep it and try to reverse-engineer it or something? Seems like a waste to just give it back.”

“I would recommend against that. The material might be worth studying, but you only need to take a small sample of that. As for the rest of it, don’t bother. Some systems will alert their manufacturers when they get tampered with. For a suit like that, I can almost guarantee it has other protections built in as well. Get rid of it, earn a large chunk of credits, and be free of the hassle. Besides, knowing you, you could probably build your own suit in a few years given what I’ve seen you do. And it would probably be better anyway.”

“I’m familiar with the practice of companies hiding shit inside their products,” he said in disgust. “Alright. Have your people take the suit and sell it back to the manufacturer. I already got a good look at it anyway, and I gotta say, I wasn’t impressed. Can you do something with that money for me instead of just depositing it in my account?”

“Sure. As far as I’m concerned, it’s your money, we’re just holding it for you.”

He told the Captain what he wanted. The man didn’t seem all that surprised by the request.

“Could take awhile. But that should be doable. We can set up the delivery for when we return. With the pirates acting out, I don’t know how long that will be but let's assume a year at the earliest. That will also be close to the time the Talon needs to go in for its regular maintenance anyway. Since you have a station now, we can just do that here. And if you happen to have some fancy new engines ready to go by then…”

This time Alexander chuckled. “I’ll see what I can get done by then. Thank you again for everything, Captain Matthews. I look forward to seeing you in a year.” Alexander held his hand out and the man shook it.

“You can call me Archie, it's short for Archibald. Stay safe, Alexander, and good luck with your company.”

He walked the man to the exit and watched as all the Hawks’ dropships lifted off as one and roared into orbit in formation. Alexander was immensely grateful for having employed the mercenary company. He doubted another company of mercenaries would have come back after learning of their mistake. Things would have turned out much differently in that case. The pirate ships would have realized sooner or later that only one railgun was online and simply blown it up. Or destroyed the entire facility and called it a day.

Alexander glanced over at the crumpled wreckage of a ship about two-thirds the size of the Zephyr. It was going to take months to clean up the wreckage. At least the stupid thing was off the landing pad. He turned to the other distant pads that he could see from his spot. There were four shuttles on the two pads within his view. If that stayed true for the other six landing pads around the facility, that meant he now had sixteen shuttles.

Then he looked into orbit and focused until his vision telescoped to show him the ships up there. He wasn’t sure zooming in like that would work, but he figured if he could magnify an area in his vision, he could probably do this. His view was mostly blocked by the hazy yellow atmosphere but he could see the sun glinting off the ships. Even so, they were tiny specs in his vision.

Captain Matthews’ people had moved them to a Lagrange point between the planet and the largest of the four satellites that orbited Eden’s End. He wasn’t sure what to do about the ships. They would probably come in handy at some point, but certainly not in their current configuration. And not without serious repairs. It might be best to strip most of them for useful parts and feed the rest to the smelter. He would need to go up there personally and inspect the ships to figure out what would be best.

He tried scanning the sky for the Destiny, but it was either on the far side of the planet or too far away to see. He could clearly see the Talon hanging in space even without his enhanced vision. The ship was just that massive.

Alexander watched the tiny twinkle of lights from the drop ships as they entered the troop transport. He continued to watch it as it started accelerating away.

With his new friends gone, it was time to get back to work. Alexander turned and walked back into the facility, his mind full of ideas.