“el Jun, why haven’t we been allowed to depart yet, I don’t uand?” Mingyu asked his STO tad former Coalition shipmate.

  After rep the pirate takeover, they had been sequestered in this damn military outpost for months. His crew's morale was at an all-time low thanks to being cooped up aboard the Destiny. It wasn’t a luxury ship, most of the time when they were on a long deployment, people were w and keeping busy. They didn’t even have that now. The only spot oatioo civilians was the lounge. And there weren’t any more amehere than aboard his ship. He didn’t even want to go into how the children and Headmaster Wong were faring.

  Mingyu retty sure if he didn’t do something soon, the man was going to go to the STO officer ahem he was kidnapped just to get off the ship and away from the kids who were even more ky than his crew.

  “Look, Mingyu, I’m doing my best. After you requested my aid with those guests of yours half a year back, I don’t have nearly the same pull around here as I used to. Someoed the training exercise to my superiors ba Earth.”

  He wi that. “I’m sorry. If I had known, I wouldn’t have called in the favor.”

  The el shrugged. “I was gd to finally pay it off, even if it e the oving up in my career. Something that was uo happen anyway sidering my previous time with the Coalition. The problem here is the STO is trying to hide just how bad this pirate infiltration was.”

  “It wasn’t just Petrov then?” Mingyu asked in surprise. Pirate attacks on border systems werely rare. It’s why Petrov station had hidden ons systems. But a trated attaultiple pces at once was new.

  “I shouldn’t eveelling you this but I feel I still owe you at least this much. Eight stations and three outer systems fell to the pirates on the same day. It was a well-thought-out, well-coorditack. From what I gathered, the STO upper brass are deg if they even want to it resources to retake these systems.”

  “That’s ridiculous! They ’t just let the pirates do as they wish, it will only make them push for more.”

  The man nodded. “I know that and you know that, but the STO brass ’t see beyond a spreadsheet. And right noreadsheet says the cost outweighs the be.”

  Mingyu cursed, something he hadn’t done in years. “What does that have to do with my ship and the people aboard?”

  Jun sighed. “They were debating what to do with you as well. They are afraid you’ll spread the word of what happeo other systems, requiring them to act for a ge. I’m afraid they just issued a no-tact alert for you as of today.”

  “… I don’t uand. Is this something new iO?”

  “It means no public station or p withiO is allowed to offer you dog or nding rights. The rule was desigo stop the spread of possible tagions. As you see, they found other creative uses for it as well. They have also ordered the engineers here to disable your unication systems, except for a tight beam ser link for emergency use. I assume they have also fgged all your bands so they no longer ect to Qs or rey statioher.”

  “How they do this? We haven’t done anything wrong!” Mingyu had been a standup individual his entire life, doing his utmost to live within the w. Even when he found some of them to be nonsensical as well as a plete waste of time. And now he and his entire ship were being punished for it. How was that fair?

  “I know, old friend. Unfortunately, I had no say in this order. When I tried tue against it, they threateo lock me up for insubordination.”

  “Thank you f. What am I supposed to do now? We ’t stay here. This ruling is essentially a death sentence, without the bother of taking us to trial.”

  “Now you’re just being overly dramatic. It’ll be tough, that’s true. But you still do emergency dog and refueling at any Navy yard. There are also legitimate pces outside the STO’s borders that you go. You asked me about a ship a few months ago?”

  As if those pces would be safe. Most were probably pirate hideouts masquerading as indepes. “Yes, the Zephyr.”

  Jun nodded. “You’re in luck. A fleet station in Varlen pihem, along with a Merary ship heading for Y6X-3H2. If those are friends of yours, I suggest you start there. It’s well outside STO jurisdi so they would have no reason to uphold this order. And it’s likely safer than anywhere else you might randomly stumble across.”

  Things had bee so hectic that he had fotten about asking Jun to give him a heads-up on the ship if he could. He had been curious about where Alexander might have goer learning he left on the ship. And now he knew. He didn’t begrudge the man for leaving after how the cil had treated him. He would have dohe same in his shoes. Mingyu wao apologize to the man and try te an actual w retionship with him if he could. That was before he was chased out of Gliese 667. Now… now, it sounded like this system Alexander had goo might be his only safe harbor.

  Jun was correct, it would be difficult. Mingyu didn’t even know where either of these systems were or what awaited him there. He gave it a fifty-fifty shot oher or not Alexander would be happy to see him if he arrived. Or if he would even be weled into the system. You didn’t move outside ized space because you wanted uninvited visitors.

  If he had any other option, he would have picked it. But this STO ruling effectively cut him off from any allies he had that weren’t stationed in military posts like Jun. And he had few of those as it was.

  The Destiny would eventually need servid repairs as well. The Navy yards would provide ables because they were bound by w to aid any ship in distress, but even those would be at a premium. He wi the thought of how expensive any repairs might be.

  With a quiet sigh, he o el Jun and headed back to the Destiny to inform the crew they were leaving. If his crew didn’t mutiny against him on this journey, he would sider himself lucky.

  ***

  Alexander lifted one of the heavy beams in pce as an engineer welded it to the one below. It had taken a few iterations, but he had finally e up with an acceptable design for a railgun empt.

  It reminded him of old satellite dishes. The half-moon portion sat below the ground and acted as the ons ination adjustment and reloading system. Along the perimeter was a rotational actuator that trolled the rotation, obviously.

  The reloading system was at the bottom ter of the dish. It meant the on would have to point straight up for reloading, which wasn’t ideal for aiming purposes but was the best method he could e up with at the moment. Pg it anywhere else i meant the gun would have to lower itself and rotate back to the loading meism, and then back to the target before it could fire again.

  An autoloader attached to the back of the gun would elimihat issue, but that added unneeded plexity a to the part of the gun that moved. Having the autoloader as a stationary po at the bottom ter of the pit elimihose issues and allowed the loader to store way more darts than it could if it was attached to the gun.

  With his design, it only had to get back to the correct elevation. Doing it this way also allowed the gun to rotate the full 180 degrees vertically in the cradle because there weren’t bulky autoloader pos in the way.

  Teically the on could even point down. But he had put limiters in to prevent that sort of situation from happening. He didn’t want some actal discharge going into the very delicate internals of the empt if the elevation system failed for whatever reason or the cables to be ripped out if the gun got fused on orientation.

  There were also some hard-coded limitations built into the program that Lucas had coded for him. It prevehe gun from firing at the facility, or while it was below the protective hatch that would protect it from the enviro. Whehey got it put into pce, that is.

  The limitations on the on did leave a blind spot in the defensive envelope around the facility though. After talking it over with the Hawks, Alexander implemented a sed railgun design that would be pced above ground that would be covered with a dome. These smaller railgun empts were not much bigger than Alexander’s first desig. The kiic darts they delivered were about the size of a marker instead of the much smaller ones he used in his initial test.

  As with the guns themselves, his ammunitiohrough a redesign. Instead of having fins that stuck out past the core, the rear tapered to a point and the fins maintaihe inal diameter all the way back. It looked like a poieardrop with fins. He didn’t have any research to say which was better, but his tests of the new ammunition showed they didn’t lose velocity as quickly, and they were still stable in flight. That was all that mattered to him.

  The rger empt that he was w on fired kiic darts around the size of a of spray paint. That was a whole lot of mass and a whole lot of energy. With as much power as he umping through the railguns, they should be capable of hitting anything in orbit, but not much beyond that. While not ideal, their main use was for shooting at ships in low orbit or anything trying to nd that wasn’t authorized. And if he ever got around to it, he might even be able to find a suitable explosive to paside the darts. He wasn’t sure if the darts would do more damage as is or with an explosive ihem. That would take more testing to figure out at a ter date.

  Alexander would have preferred to use a smaller projectile, but the static shielding ships used to deflect space debris were strong enough to redirect smaller projectiles. It apparently added a siderable amount of terag force as well, which reduced much of a projectile's punch. The round had to be rge enough to overe both if it had any hope of pung through a ship's hull. He didn’t have exaumbers, so he erred on the side of caution a as big as he could. Captain Matthews said the size should be fine, so Alexander went with it.

  He wished he had time to study the static shielding system to figure out how it worked. Acc to Travers, static shielding was mostly useless pside. Something to do with power draw as it almost stantly had to push atmospheric particles out of the way. He still made a mental o look into iure.

  The man welding the beam in pce finished up and Alexander released his hold. The first railgun cradle was almost plete. A few more supports, and then the gun and power systems could go in. They were already built and waiting, it would just take some assembly. Alexander made that process as simple as possible so it didn’t even require engineers. Just move them into position and stick them together.

  He wahe design to be as simple and straightforward as possible because they o build six of the rge railguns to cover all the blind spots around the massive plex. There would also be twelve of the smaller railgun turrets. Two for eading pad. Then eatry would be fitted with an automated turret ihat would drop down from the ceiling with two of the flechette rifles i.

  Was it overkill? Probably. Did Alexander care? No. Well, he only cared that it deyed his actual engine-building work. But safety had to e first.

  The security room was also getting an overhaul. Alexander pushed a few projects farther down his list and used his limited supply of advanced puter chips for the new defensive ter.

  All of the puter g came from a very excited Lucas. When Alexaold him what he po do, the man could barely tain his excitement. Eveaciturn Damien seemed less unhappy about this project than most everything else.

  He was holding the final piece of the railgun mount when his radio buzzed. Alexander excused himself and put down the support as he grabbed the radio.

  “This is Alexander.” He hadn’t figured out a way to unicate via radio with his body yet, so relying on the small handheld units provided by the Hawks was the best he could do.

  “Alexander, it’s Martinez in the security ter. Our sensors just picked up a ship jumping into the system. Figured I would give you a heads up.”

  “…Um. Ok.” He didn’t really know how to respond to that. The Hawks were still in orbit, they would deal with any hostile vessel that came through. And if it wasn’t hostile, they would tell him. “Thanks,” he finally said. Maybe giving a radio to the person watg the asteroid cameras wasn’t the best idea. Then again it was infinitely better than having Yulia woken up every time a ship jumped in and the facility arms were triggered.

  A few mier, he got another radio message. This time from the Talon. “Mr. Ka’s Captain Matthews. We have received a tight beam essage from the new ship. The Captain cims to know you and is asking if they approach the p.”

  Someone who knew him was here? He had no clue who that could be, Jasper wasn’t due back for a few more weeks. “Who is the Captain?”

  “He says his name is Captain Mingyu Na. Ring any bells?”

  Alexander paused. What the hell was one of the cil Captains doing way out here?

  “Yes, I know him. I’m not sure what he wants from me, though. Is his ship capable of nding?”

  “No,” Matthews stated ftly. “It looks like a rge mining ship if I had to guess.”

  “Tell him it is okay to approach. I will speak with him in a few days.”

  Matthews aowledged the order and closed the radio e. While he didn’t think Na was here for nefarious purposes. There was the possibility his ship got hijacked in Gliese 667, or that he was being coerced somehow. Deg not to risk it, Alexander urged the engio plete the first gun empt before the ship arrived. At least then they had some prote if things turned south. Not that he thought the Talon couldn’t handle a single mining ship, he would just feel better not relying on them pletely.