. 03

I know that I've been neglecting this series, but I fully intend to write and submit a well thought out chapter rather than simply give you my loyal reader a short chapter full of junk that would cost me readers. As always this is a work of fiction, and I alone am solely responsible for any and all mistakes, any resemblance to any person living or dead is purely coincidental and unintended. This story may not be reproduced, copied or retransmitted in any way known or unknown without the authors permission. If you enjoy reading my stories, be sure to like, follow, vote and comment below. Be sure to stay safe out there and have a good time.

An explanation of some of the acronyms that I use in these stories.

F/C: This is the Flare/Chaff dispenser that military aircraft have to throw off IR warhead seekers or radar guided weapons, it can also be used to momentarily confuse an enemy pilot that might be on your 6.

ECM: This is your Electronic Counter Measures that are used to detect, confuse and scramble any tracking radars by active or silent means. It can also jam your enemy's communication between ships or from smaller craft to smaller craft.

RWR: Radar Warning receiver is kind of a like the radar detectors that were popular during the late 80s and early 90s and are still in use to this day. They can tell that you've been 'Painted' and the type and direction of the radar transmitter and can also differentiate between search, tracking and attack radars, plus if its ground based or airborne.

A bit of history, nuclear weapons are measured in tons equivalent of TNT for explosive power, the 2 weapons that were used over Japan on August 7 and 9, 1945. I.E. Little Boy and Fatman, were both under 20KT or Kilotons of explosive force. The largest device ever exploded was the Tsar Bomba tested by the Soviets and was over 50 Megatons of power and nearly 1600 times more powerful than both bombs used over Japan combined. For context, a kiloton is 1000 tons of explosive power, a megaton is 1,000,000 tons of explosive power.

Now on with the story.

I stayed at Station Brown just long enough to drop my load, for which I was well paid, to top off my tanks, pick up the supplies I'd ordered and load up the reclaimer plant and salvage drones I'd bought. Kitty dug into its circuits and removed several pieces of malware, 2 tracking bugs and a small host of other problems from not being set up properly during its first use. I hate amateur know it all's, they make life more difficult than it has to be and always think they're the smartest person in the room.

I headed for the bridge but stopped at one of the sleeping rooms and opened the door. "Bridge duty Sargent, hustle your hot ass to the pilots chair now." I grouched and left the door open as I went forward to the Nav station and set up our return trip.

"I see your just as charming and personable as ever Hammer, you always knew just how to treat a lady." I heard from behind me as she scanned the cockpit then took us out and then to hyper.

Let me describe Staff Sargent Brenda Walsh to you. 32, 5'5", 145 pounds of solid packed chocolate that could go toe to toe with nearly anyone in the unit. Put her behind a 282 and she'd shoot a flea off a gnat's ass at 2 mile in a windstorm while taking fire. In short one hell of a Spec Op Marine. "Heard you got bumped up to LC after trying to rip AJs head off, also heard you got 100%ed too." She looked over at me her right eye a lighter brown than her left.

I simply nodded and staired out the front view screen. "Someone popped him about 3 months ago, I told the Boss if he found out to let me know." I said and looked over at her. "I wanted to send them a gift basket for taking out the trash. How's the eye Bee?" I asked flipping a few screens around. "Not bad, I can feel Kitty in there fooling around with the programing. A touch more sharpness in quadrant 16 please Kitty, that's it, thank you my pussy cat." She said. "Meow, Puurrrrrrrr." Kitty replied and a halo of a large gray tiger stripped tabby appeared on the instrument panel. "Meow Bee, meow." We all laughed.

Bee turned serious and looked at the closed hatch. "So, tell me about the pretty girl in the FO's cabin, what's her claim to fame? You did say she was a HVT right?" She asked. I sighed and launched into the whole torrid affair from start to where we were right now, Brenda did ask a few questions to help clarify things in her own mind. "So, you see my dilemma here, I just have this sneaking suspicion that someone or some group wants this girl very dead." I said quietly. "And may the gods have mercy on the poor saps that try to help her."

They had killed over 89,000 just to get at her, that fact itself told me that it was someone fairly high up the food chain. That thought caused another line of thought, had AJ involved in this up to his fuzzy eyeballs and now they were cleaning up any loose ends. Also were both sides working together on this. Like I said, no one likes to lose out on Billions of Credits each month.

Penny and Bee finally meet during dinner, I told Penny that Bee would be training her to not only shoot but how to protect herself and how to blend into the background of nearly any situation. She would also learn how to not only pilot a ship but how to plot a jump and fix the problems that popped up every day. She was going to be drilled in emergency procedures and how to react to them in her sleep, just as we were.

In short, she was going to be one very tired and bruised princess before Brenda was done with her. And then I'd start beating on her, just to be sure that she was ready. I also let them both know that if they helped, they'd get a cut of what I made from this recovery. Potentially this could be a multibillion credit salvage job, not to mention the recovery of those that had been lost in the line of duty.

I woke the next morning to the sounds of 2 screaming women and then a thud, followed by more screaming back and forth coming from the gym area. I simply went to the port hold area and started working on one of the 2 snub fighters that I'd brought aboard. I knew better than to get in the middle of 2 screaming women, especially if one of them was a trained killer.

It was several hours later when I finally noticed the unnatural quiet, I slid out of the bay and went looking around, Brenda was in the shower cleaning up and Penny was laying in the Med Bay, she had several ice packs on her shoulders, knees, elbows, hips and right eye. Obviously, Brenda had thrown Penny around the practice arena like a rag doll, I might have to have a word or 2 with Brenda. I went up front and checked our track line and to see of anything required my immediate attention, so far, the replacement parts were holding, and I knew that Kitty had reloaded the repair racks with parts from the stores on the Bell.

Dinner that night was a quiet affair as Penny started eating regular food and Brenda and I discussed the salvage of the other ships and their weapons. With as much stuff as I had recovered so far, I could become very wealthy just from that. I wanted to get a 4th ship working and as long as the repair drones weren't to beat up and we could get power back on somehow and repair supplies to the damaged area the drones should be able to seal the holes up and make the area pressure tight.

I had Kitty maneuver the AE that had been by the front door, as I thought of it, passage that the others had come in by. The Osties had come in the side door, and I had marked them as such on our astronav charts. I'd also marked the debris field in a grid pattern the used the standard 26 letter alphabet across the top and numbered going down so that finding a particular ship would be relatively easy, so to speak.

A second set of numbers told me where in the z axis it was height wise, so fairly quickly we could get from ship to ship in order to salvage it. I hoped to get the second plant hooked up and processing the damaged ships within a day or 2.

With the Pyro now hooked up to the Belleau Woods, Vela la Cava and Ulithi I had the repair drones start patching the battle damage and hopefully get the main reactor back up and running. I might even sell the ordnance back to the military or to some of those on the outer rim, they would pay me double or even triple what the military would. It would all depend on what Troy would offer me, I knew he would offer me a fair market price.

Bee took Penny into Marine territory as I did what I needed to do in order to extract more salvaged metal. It took me the better part of a day and a half to get the plant set up, calibrated and working, 2 days after I had unloaded it was spitting out plates and beams of recycled battle steel not to mention 1 kilo bars of gold, platinum and silver. It also started spitting out 10 kilo blocks of copper, aluminum, nickel and other metals that ships seemed to have in abundance.

I fed raw metals into the heavy replicators down in the engineering section to make pallets and transport boxes for all the bars, beams and plates that were being made now. I might have to have Bee fly the 8 ball now that it had been repaired and was no longer a hanger queen. If I did something like that, I didn't want her showing up at the same time as I did loaded exactly as I was. Someone might put 1 and 1 together and come up with 27.

There were some less than reputable salvage crews out there that didn't mind doing a little claim jumping, the problem was that I didn't share or play well with thieves. I generally tended to blow them into subatomic molecules, then scatter them to the far quadrants of the universe.

I had 8 Balls AI Bella do a full system check and to report any faults, her weapons had been serviced and reinstalled as were all ECM systems and the F/C pods had been fully stocked and reset. I wanted Brenda to have a snub fighter also, so I took some time to run her through the simulator and popped a few emergencies on her to see if she'd lost her edge. I was happy to see that she was just as sharp as ever, so I had no problems turning her loose in a fully armed military craft.

I noticed that she had found a combat suit and was now wearing it along with carrying a side arm just as I did, a day later Penny came into the hanger bay wearing a combat suit also, I noticed that she had cut her hair and was sporting a few new bruises also. That told me that Bee was banging her around the practice mat as I watched them move several containers of food, spare parts, ammo and weapons aboard 8 ball from the looks of things she was taking to her training with gusto.

'Clear bay 3, clear bay 3. Standby for depressurization in bay 3.' I watch the blast walls move into position as Bee stepped into 8 ball and I see the hatch close just as my view is blocked by the double layered blast wall that separates bay 2 from 3. I look up at the monitor by the hatch and can see the outer hatch open and watch them slide into the inky darkness. I reach up and press the comm unit in my ear. 'Bee, you headed out to do a test run on the systems or to familiarize Penny with the systems. Over.' I say as they clear the ship and turn out bound.

'A bit of both Boss, we want to look around some and see what you've missed before it all gets turned into scrap.' Bee says.

'Alright, if you get in a jam, you know what to do.' I reply and finish checking Kitty over.

'Yep, fire off a few mags of ammo and then run like hell screaming the whole way.' She replies laughing the whole time. I knew that if she let rip with the ventral 30mm rotary gun turret, something would die, she had a hell of an eye for things like that. Still, I told Kitty to keep an eye on them as I updated the astronav chart with a 3rd way in or out of this little oasis that I was calling the basement door. I'd had recon probes out nearly every day I was here updating the layout of this clear patch and looking for other way in or out.

I placed additional trip wire buoys in the passages to let me know if someone or something came calling, I'd also found several plasma mines and had moved them into position too. I kept them in standby mode but could remotely arm and deploy them if the other buoys told me someone was coming. I had no intention in letting someone I didn't invite start nibbling on my piece of cheese.

I watched the reclaimed steel build up day after day, even with the draw down needed to repair the Pyro, we salvaged parts from other destroyed ship to repair the components that had been damaged aboard the one we were trying to fix. Plus, it always pays to have spares stowed away for that just in case moment that always seems to crop up. I suited up and checked the reclaimers over, I was checking the new one when I noticed a panel had vibrated open.

Bending down and looking in I saw a small flashing light and pulled out a portable spy eye and aimed it at the light. FUCK ME IN THE EAR! it was a goddamned tracker. I almost ripped it out and stopped myself, if I ripped it out, they'd know I'd found the tracker and most likely come in guns blazing. There was just the 3 of us and 2 snub fighters and 2 assault shuttles. We had 3 ships too, but they weren't 'warships' with the array of weapons that they would have.

If I left it alone, we could suck them into out trap and before they could even get a shot off. Fuck me this was going to leave a mark somewhere. 'Bee, get your fuzzy ass back here yesterday.' I commed her on a tight beam.

'30 mikes Hammer what's up?' She answered back, I could hear the concern in her voice.

'We got a possible zip in the wire.' I told her and went back inside Kitty to check the sensor logs, I wanted to see if any of the sensor buoys had mysteriously dropped offline in the last several days. It took me several minutes to notice that the basement sensors would drop offline every few hours for several minutes and then come back on. Shit! we more than likely had rats running around inside the perimeter, fucking hell. 'Sargent, go black.' I told her and put the 3 ships A.I.'s at General Quarters and had them scan the whole area to the extent of their sensors, I also had them go warning red, weapons tight until Bee and Penny got back.

I then activated the Plasma mines guarding the channels and changed the codes on all the sensor buoys, anyone going in or out was now going to have a bad day. I dropped back to the Port Bay and readied the snub fighter for launch by pulling the covers off the engines and sensor tubes. I left the safety pins in the weapons for right now just in case. I had Kitty have the recon drones start looking around just as they always did, they found a fresh exhaust trail and followed it to an Ostie BB.

I had it peek in to see what could be found, I found a small K type freighter in the loading bay that had people moving about, I could see them loading shells and missiles into the ships belly. I simply watched and noticed that they left the ship unguarded when they went back to the magazine to haul up more pallets of ammo, I sent the drone in, and it had a quick look around and found the cargo area was loaded with all kinds of stuff from various ships.

So, these fucks had been raiding my honey hole for a while and had every intention of going out and then coming back for more. I heard the sound that I'd been waiting for over my helmet speakers. 'Hammer we're back aboard turn hell loose.' Bee says. I set the recon drone to overload and release all ships to weapons free. 'Ready your snub just in case, leave the pins in the weapons for right now though.' I told her and got a quick 'Roger that' back.

A few minutes later the 2 of them came aboard and flopped into the seats next to me, we could see the pirates loading missile warhead shipping containers into the open slots of the cargo bay from the drones' spy cam. I had it zoom in on some markings on the outside of the containers. 'W1012 Mk06c8 150MTx10 MIRV w Nose Cone, War shot,' I input the information into the wrist comp I was wearing and was not pleased with what I received back.

'Oh, FUCK no, there is no fucking way these assholes are leaving with what they've loaded up. Son of a BITCH, YOU, USELESS COCK SUCKING SONS OF WHORES.' I screamed at the screen. 'There is no way, no fucking way, they are leaving with that shit Bee, no FUCKING WAY. Look at what they're stealing, just look at the data.' I showed her my wrist comp screen and watched her eyes grow large and her jaw drop.

'Fuck Hammer, pop their ass, if they get out of here with those, they could hold a large part of the galaxy hostage. Shit if they pop one of them, they could take out a large city before it even knew what had happened.' Bee said and rushed out to make sure that 8Ball was properly secured. I recalled all drones and secured the plants also. I had all ships go to EMP protection mode.

They pulled in their sensor antennas and closed all airtight hatches; they placed all nonessential equipment into standby mode and dropped the battle shutters over the bridge view screens. I had Eric point all 4 ships bow on to the projected blast wave. 20 minutes later the last salvage drone came aboard, that left only 2 recon drones out, the 1 in the pirate ship and the other watching the opening of the Ostie ship. I really didn't want to lose 2 recon drones, but as I saw it right now, I really did not have much of a choice.

'Bee, I have engine flair they're pulling out standby, I'm going to let them get clear and then turn them into dust.' I called out and had the drone that was watching move to another position to watch the exit and to follow the pirate ship. We watched for over an hour as they headed for the basement exit and I knew that was where I would have the drone's fusion core let go. Even if the nuclear warheads didn't sympathetically detonate the damage would disable the ship at the very least.

They finally reached a point that I hopped would lessen the damage to those ship that we were still salvaging. I looked at both women and sent the command to the drone. A minute later we watched a bright star being born and knew the warheads had gone off too. 'We're going to be down for a day or 2 until the cloud disperses and the rad level drops to a safe limit.' I said and started to formulate a plan to recover all special weapons that had survived. I really did not want them to get out of military control, I would defiantly be sending Troy a flash message letting him know what I had and that he needed to send someone to take them off my hands, for a price of course.

I went into my cabin and sat for a while by myself, every now and then I had to justify the outright murdering of at least 20 people vs the possible murder of 100s of millions if those weapons had gotten loose and then used on some unsuspecting planets population. Fuck even in the 23rd century the threat of rogue nukes was still a very real problem considering the number of salvage teams out there. Not all were ex-military and/or had contacts at the Green House (Military High Command HQ) or any of the sector commands.

Kitty reported that Alpha and X-ray radiation levels had already returned to near background levels with only a mild elevation in Beta and Gamma levels and that with in 2 to 3 days it more than likely would be down to normal. I kicked off my battle suit and stretched out, I suddenly felt the need for a nap, sometimes the drain of being in command sucked and I really had no one that I could buck a hard decision up the ladder to.

Someone once said, 'That lonely is the head that wears the crown.' I was beginning to understand the weight of that statement, it sucked to be in charge most days especially when you had to be judge, jury and executioner.

And here I bring this part of my tale to an end, I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I did writing it. Please remember to like, follow, vote and comment below. Please be careful out there and to play safe.