The Ouray control center, possibly for one of the first times since its inception so many years ago, was dead. A trio of grizzled maintenance chiefs played a muted game of hold 'em amidst a chaotic backdrop of cryptic scrawls tracing across a have dozen spacecraft maintenance boards, presumably illustrating which of Ouray's strike craft could be expected to make it out of the airlock without catching afire in the process.
Or at least not catching afire in such a way as to blow the ship up before her patrol was complete.
What many were attributing to a recent string of combat victories, but more likely being related to the embargo placed between Rheinland and Liberty, Naval combat patrols had dropped signifigantly in the Colorado system and the Liberty police themselves had vanished almost entirely. Seizing the possible chance this presented, the powers that be had risked sending the majority of the Colorado and Hudson combined fleets into California to set the system ablaze. Three short of hours of lightning strikes with hours of radio silence precluding left the officer of the day with very little to occupy his time with. Two caps patrolling Ouray local and a small strike team performing interdiction duty and making enough noise for any ten squads to cover up the silence.
It was a grand day to be a Xeno pilot, assuming that you weren't one of the few Xeno pilots with a medical down chit and a busted leg.
David Chambers settled in his worn seat and fiddled again with one of the dials on the adjacent communication booth, reducing the smoking and joking of the few local flights to a distant murmur. He reached down absent mindedly to scratch at an itch on his leg, only to encounter the bio pack that was administering to its speedy recovery. The thing held the shattered limb in a vicelike grip while it worked to administer the various proteins and minerals needed to spurn on the restoration of the burned and mangled limb. One of the side benefits of being a fighter jock was that you got first dibs on the loot you pilfered, he thanked his lucky stars that he'd chanced upon that Cryer freighter just four days back, before he'd up and broken himself.
He looked over towards the officer of the day, some guy he didn't know from some squadron or another based out of Nome who was busying himself with a stack of paperwork. The atmosphere was one of false boredom, the attack would be commencing in a few hours, but for now there was nothing for them to do but wait. David looked down to find his good leg bouncing uncontrollably, and at a time like this that was somehow noteworthy.
With a sigh he leaned over the comm booth and put his head in his hands, looking up he idly flipped the dial back on. At least listening to inane babble was better than the hollow murmur of the base's ventilation systems.
"roll this is Pickaxe, repeat. Heavy pickup requested. Smashed up a convoy under power ten k off horizon. Need heavy. Please respond."
With an excited grab David snatched up an ear piece and held it against his head, ignoring the curious glances of the other persons on deck he flipped on the base's transmitters.
"Pickaxe this is Ouray control, please transmit location and sitrep, we'll have a heavy rolling shortly" David eyeballed the comm unit as it clicked through the encoding procedures, damn waste of time if the LSF were listening in, before a voice returned his call. [i]"Good to go Ouray, data away! We smashed up a weird 'ol convoy today I'll tell you what. Was definitely moving with a purpose to be avoided!"
With that David routed the comm data to Ops and stood up in a hurry, hobbling away from the booth he waved his hands at the first protests being issued by the officer of the deck. Like being a flyboy, rank had its privileges.
"Nope, don't care. It's dead quiet out there!" He shouted as he limped towards the elevator "Call down to three and tell 'em to gas up my freighter. We've got another two hours yet before they start the shooting in Cali!" Moving felt good, it had only been two days, but two days of sitting cooped up on the control deck felt like a lifetime of slow torture. Getting out for a few minutes would be a welcome reprieve.
His Kushan freighter, joy of his heart and pride of his eyes sat aside the tug that would pull it into position by the outer airlock. She was a perfect mover for the small trade they did between their bases, Zoners really knew how to make a ship work for you. Making his way into the vessel he akwardly hobbled to the command couch, from where he fired up the engines, savoring in the clean rumbling of the ship's core throbbing to life. Was damn nice to fly something that -worked- now and then.
"Flight 279 heavy you're clear for departure, CAP reports zero sightings in area, solar ion activity minimal. Last known location of Pickaxe squadron loaded into your navmap. Happy hunting"
With that the vessel was pushed out into space and he was again amongst the stars. A few swift keystrokes had his vessel hurtling towards its destination, deftly moving amongst the tumbling remnants of the Silverton field.
"Ahh, Pickaxe this is 279 heavy, inbound seven minutes out. What's the story morning glory?"
David set down the mic and took a swig of water, the dilapidated computers aboard Pickaxe's comm fellow would take a second with decoding the comms.
"279, Pickaxe here. Situation unchanged, spying zero inbound and the lanes are quiet. Reckon we'll have a few more minutes of reprieve 'afor you arrive. We've got the package sitting right here for a snatch and grab, reckon we've pushed our luck some"
With that the flightgroup popped into the long range scanners, whatever they had was easy to spot from even this far out. Whatever it read, it read weird and it read loud. A new red light flickered to light on the Kushan's cockpit, seemingly leading to nowhere important. David had time enough to flick it a few times before the computer's voice announced that he had reached his destination. Peering through the vessel's viewscreen he spotted a capsule that looked the same as any other cargo pod, thankfully not one of those blasted Ageira boxes that they'd learned long ago not to tamper with. A moment passed before David tractored the thing aboard and turned the group around to head back to the roost.
Was turning out to be a note worthy day.
An hour later David was leaning over some crutches while the deck crew busied itself with their prize. Whatever it was, it was entombed in some manner of ceramic cacoon that even the deck walker was having a hard time cracking. The shell stretched across the considerable size of the freighter's hold and was currently being administered to by several irate looking men with power hammers and a deck walker. David was about to suggest letting the dock door smash the thing when the walker's mechanical arm finally gave, resulting in a startling crack from the cocoon.
David quickly hobbled over towards the object, moving past workers who were now stepping back. The cocoon was emanating an energetic blue light and he was suddenly struck by the feeling that he'd slipped into a bad sci-fi holo. That feeling wasn't relieved when he peered through a fissure in the shell to the object itself.
"Boys, I don't have a damn clue what this thing is" He slowly said "But I don't like it and it's time we got it off our base. Fill her back up, I'm ditching this thing." He cast a second worried glance backwards towards the, well, whatever it was. This was Ageira nonsense, whatever it was it was above his paygrade, probably above the labnerds at Pueblo too for that matter. Within a quarter hour he was passing again into space, now without any clearly defined idea of where he was going. He opted that the thing needed to be shoved out of sight for the moment, moreso than could be provided at Ouray. With that he plugged in a course to the Kepler hole, with plans to duck into Nome and the safety of the cloud.
He glanced again at the mysterious pulsing red light on his control panel. Unmarked and without any discernible function, it had begun to pulse when the object first came into range. This was a Zoner ship, mayhap they had a clue what he was hauling. He plotted for a slight deviation when he emerged into the Kepler system, first stop would be Ames to consult with the Zoners there, hopefully they could shed some light onto the mystery that had fallen into his hands.
