Blue Star Enterprises-Chapter 198 4-14

When the pair exited the shuttle after Alexander landed inside the Talon's hangar, they found the place mostly deserted.

They approached one of the mercenary techs and Alexander let Archie speak with the overtired-looking man.

"Captain Matthews!" the tech saluted hastily.

"I'm no longer your captain," Matthews said in slight amusement as he reminded the man of that fact. "We're just here to see Captain Bloomright. Is she currently on duty? The officer on watch didn't seem to know."

"Uh, last I checked, Captain Bloomright was helping with repairs around the ship."

Matthews frowned at that. "Are you that short-staffed?"

The man scratched the back of his head in thought. "I don't think so. The majority of the Hawks engineers and main techs stayed on the Talon during the fighting. To my knowledge, most of our losses were from the ground crews who trained to take on new roles. You should probably ask Captain Bloomright though."

Matthews nodded and thanked the man and the pair exited the large hangar and made their way to the bridge to hopefully get some more answers.

They were halfway there when a message came over the intercom.

"Captain Matthews and Mr. Kane, please meet Captain Bloomright in the captain's office."

"What do you suppose that was all about?" Alexander asked.

Matthews sighed as they continued. "I think my protégé is overworking herself, but we'll see soon enough."

It didn't take long to reach the captain's office, which was located near the bridge. Matthews knocked and a tired voice responded. "Come in."

The pair entered to find an exhausted captain wearing dirt-covered and grease-stained coveralls instead of the usual captain's attire.

"Please excuse my appearance. My XO radioed me as soon as your arrival was reported to him. Instead of making you wait, I came straight here."

"If you were short-staffed, you should have reached out," Archie lightly admonished his former protégé.

The woman laughed lightly at that. "It's not that. I'm mostly doing this to keep my mind occupied and off… well, you know."

The pair nodded solemnly.

"That's the reason we're here," Alexander said.

Bloomright sighed. "I was wondering when this would come up. I don't know which I was dreading more, this conversation, or the one I'll have to have after we return to Ganos."

Archie looked toward Alexander and he nodded. They had discussed this option on the way up.

"I could accompany you back," Matthews offered.

The woman smiled slightly. "I appreciate the offer, but no. This is my responsibility. The Talon is almost fully operational again thanks to your help, Mr. Kane. Although it will bear the scars of this fight for a long time, those were well earned. Once the last of our internal repairs are complete, we will be shipping out."

"I'm sorry to hear that," Alexander stated sincerely. The Hawks of Ganos had gone far and above what was required of them and had paid a very heavy price for it.

"Thank you. I can guess the question you wish to ask but don't want to because you think it will come off as insensitive. I will answer it anyway," Bloomright stated, a bit of her tiredness seeming to go away. "I don't know if we'll be returning anytime soon. I've spoken with Mr. Baru about it. While we always have recruitment operations going on, with the war things have slowed down considerably. It may take years to rebuild the company and until that happens, we will likely be relegated to smaller contracts."

"What about setting up a recruitment station here?" Alexander asked.

"I appreciate the offer, but that came up in my discussion with Mr. Baru. We both felt that Eden's End doesn't have the capacity for any sort of recruitment efforts. Maybe in time, we can expand our efforts into Asgardian space, but that's for Baru to work out."

Alexander was afraid of that but not all that surprised. Even now, less than fifteen thousand people live on Eden's End. It was probably closer to ten thousand than fifteen, though. He didn't have an exact census. He would have to ask Pembrooke to get an accurate count when he had time.

"If there is anything I can do, don't hesitate to ask," Alexander responded. "Also, please let Mr. Baru know that BSE will be replacing your lost frigates at no cost."

The statement seemed to shock both Captain Bloomright and Archie.

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"That's not necessary," Bloomright tried to say, but Alexander held his hand up to stop the woman.

"It is, and it is the least I can do after so many of your people gave their lives to help protect Eden's End. I would also like to refit the Talon at some point, but that can wait. That's not all I'm offering though." Alexander dug into one of his pouches and pulled out two metal cards. He handed both to the confused captain.

"What are these?" she asked.

"Those two cards will allow you to access the Lund Academy from aboard the Talon, anywhere in space."

The woman blinked in confusion. "I'm aware of what you are doing with the Academy, but if the corporations find out we are accessing your unorthodox redistribution of their materials from the Qcomm network, I don't think they would be too happy."

"It's a good thing you won't be accessing the Qcomm network then. I brought another gift, it's still on the shuttle. It's what I refer to as an FTL communications node, comm node, or just node for brevity's sake. It will allow you to communicate to any other node in our network and even connect to the Qcomm network from a secured connection here on Eden's End. I would appreciate it if you kept that to yourself though."

"You've figured out how the Qcomms work?" Bloomright breathed in astonishment.

"I have. Eventually, I'll sell the nodes to others, but for now, I'm only giving it to people I trust."

"I admit, I've always been curious as to how they managed it. If you don't mind, I would like to see this miracle technology for myself."

Alexander nodded his avatar and the three made their way to the shuttle and the secured crate inside.

"That's it?" Bloomright asked. "I always assumed it would be something much more complicated or larger.

"The actual Qcomm is about half the size of a shuttle, but most of that space is just wasted to protect the actual communication device within." Alexander tapped the metallic sphere pretty hard, making both Bloomright and Archie wince. "This is fully armored with the same composite that the corporation gunship used. The fiberoptic connections coming out are the only weak point and those can be spliced into for repairs as needed. So, Captain Bloomright, if you would be so kind as to show me your communication array, I will get to work installing this token of appreciation."

Alexander would love to do more for the Hawks, and he would in time, but for now, this is all he had to offer.

***

A few weeks later, the Talon and the remaining Hawks departed from Unokane to finally head home after a long tour of duty.

Alexander wished it had ended more favorably for the mercenary company. Hell he wished nobody would have had to die to Harlow, but he could not control other people's actions, he could only ensure that in the future lives were preserved as much as possible.

The first steps to ensure that happened were already in motion. The systems directly adjacent to Unokane already had the new stealth node satellites in place. With only those satellites, he quickly learned that the space around them wasn't nearly as deserted as Katalynn made it sound.

Asgardian ships didn't use the STO's transponder method to determine if a ship wasn't a pirate or not, but they did have a way to distinguish friend from foe. It was called a ping beacon, and all Asgardian systems had them, he even found the one in Unokane. It was essentially just a small satellite that floated in a large orbit around the system. When Asgardian ships jumped into a system, they would ping the satellite, if it sent no response, they would know there were no other Asgardians in the system. If there were friendly forces, it would send a coded ping back to the ship.

It was a pretty outdated method, and Alexander could see it being prone to issues, but it worked for the Asgardians. He would have to see if Katalynn was interested in changing over to a transponder method, but that was an issue for later as he realized he was getting off track.

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The point he was trying to make was that people were living in the systems around Unokane. Not many, mind you, but a few. While he couldn't tell what data was being sent across these pings yet, he could tell that these were Asgardians or at least people familiar with the Asgardian methods of identification.

In the week that the satellites were operational, he discovered over two dozen ships and hidden asteroid homes in the surrounding systems. These were very skittish, very secretive people and they went dark anytime they so much as thought a ship entered their system. It seemed like all they did was mine a bit and jump toward the nearest Asgardian outpost to sell their hauls. It seemed word hadn't quite gotten to them yet that Unokane was now Asgardian as well. He assumed when it did finally reach them, they would start selling what minerals they collected to Eden's End.

Alexander would love to learn more about these people but he had more than enough on his plate at the moment.

While he had one of the automated fishbone ships deploying satellites in the systems around Unokane, he had Captain Farthing doing the same on the route toward Varlen. Which is why he now knew that a small STO task force was on the way. Luckily, Captain Farthing had left the system the day prior, so they missed each other. Not that he thought the STO ships would attack the woman, but they certainly would have wondered what she was doing.

He recognized the lead ship from his last visit to the STO shipyard. It was the STO Blueridge, the ship commanded by Senior Captain Willard.

The fact that the man seemed to be heading to Unokane for some reason couldn't be anything good. Not that Alexander was concerned about a fight. Even without further upgrades, Vanguard was more than a match for the outdated STO vessels that Willard had brought with him. So even if Alexander's diminished fleet hadn't also included four other surviving ships from the battle with Harlow, as well as five newly completed stingrays, he would have been fine.

It would take some shuffling of personnel to crew all four ships with the loss of the Hawks, but there were plenty of Asgardians left behind from the fighting. Some simply because Katalynn and Jarl Bergson didn't have space aboard their remaining ships to bring all the survivors back home, and others had finally been released from the medical center after recovering from their injuries.

That was Krieger's responsibility to manage though, so Alexander would leave it to his new Admiral to take care of any issues there.

As for the STO ships, Alexander suspected they could be some sort of diplomatic envoy, but with Willard at the helm, he couldn't be entirely sure.

Truth be told, he had been expecting some communication from the STO ever since transmitting Harlow's execution. The fact that they had remained silent on the matter was far more concerning to him than if they had reached out to chastise him for working with the Asgardians.

It wouldn't do to speculate; he would soon learn why they were coming to Unokane. According to his estimates, the small STO task force would arrive in about three weeks, giving Alexander plenty of time to prepare. His early warning system was already paying dividends.