“Are we expecting any trouble?”
“Possibly. Which is why the ship is also bringing you a hundred security droids with suit belts to make them look a cross section of Imperium species, but all uniformed as security guards for the shipment. After the ship leaves, they’ll stay with you, to augment the ones already doing security on Diplomat.”
I hadn't known there were any.
“And the other ship?”
“A liner, carrying a good cross section of the Imperium’s shipping bigwigs, and major independent traders. Or at least, their representatives. They’ll be spending time on the station, figuring out if trading with the Trixone and their vassals is something worth doing. I expect them to be there for a few days at least. Where that leads is anyone’s guess at the moment, but for now, your squadron are security for our people.”
I nodded without saying anything.
“Once the trading has ended and all three ships have returned to Haven space, you’ll be getting replacement squadrons. All of them will be flying Excalibur fives, but none of them will have any experience at all.”
“How does that happen?” I blurted.
It made no sense. All of our recruits were experienced fighter pilots, and just needed additional training. That didn’t mean they were inexperienced squadrons when they went live.
“You’ll see. When you get them, you’ll understand what we’re sending you. It was Eagle’s idea, by the way.”
“Where are the fives coming from?”
As far as I knew, there were still a lot of squadrons still flying fours.
“Corona has started producing them under license. They have no use for fighters, but have the excess industrial capacity we need. We’re paying with food, I understand, and especially alcohol. Their society doesn’t produce anything requiring a person to coax the process of development along by tasting it regularly, so there are a lot of gaps in what they have, which we can supply.”
It made sense. Corona wasn’t joining the Imperium, but as a trading partner, had a lot to offer. The promised upgrades to holographics were coming from there as well. And I already knew we’d received some of them, since Judge had much better console hollos than any previous ship I’d had.
“The big cats and the Lufaflufs are building them too. So production is ramping up to meet our demand. Part of the tradeoff Eagle made to get his wing transferred to the Galactica carrier fleet, was your squadrons would be receiving fives until you were fully supplied, before his wing received any more.”
Which told me Eagle expected to be fighting more conventional fighter battles now, where the fours were not at a disadvantage. I had my doubts, but the new carrier fleet was certainly capable of dealing with the sort of fighter numbers the Keerah and Ralnor were having to deal with. While having enough firepower to take the fleets as well using rift tactics. Those Galactica class ships had dreadnaught firepower, as well as being designed to carry fighters. They were of course, quite larger than our actual dreadnaughts, and the only ships the Imperium had on par with the size of everyone else’s battleships.
“Once you have a full carrier force again, we’re giving you a mission. Any guesses as to what?”
“Clean up the Rawtenuga fleets still inside the area being separated today?”
“That’s just the start of it.”
He paused, and looked me straight in the eyes.
“We want you to find where the Rawtenuga are coming from, and stop them.”
He looked steadily at me for another moment.
“Permanently.”
Nineteen
I returned to Judge feeling a bit overwhelmed.
It was one thing to be promoted to the junior commander level and actually now be a squadron leader in rank as well as position, but to then give me an independent mission which an admiral should be overseeing, seemed to indicate either the top brass had too high expectations of me, or they had no-one else to send.
Although, it was true that if I failed, it wouldn’t impact on the Imperium very much at all. Not unless peace was attained with the Trixone, and whatever was signed included us defending some of their territory. And I couldn’t see a peace coming any time soon, or anyone agreeing to defend someone not an Imperium member or significant trading partner. The irony I’d already done just that was not lost on me.
Of course, trading was the name of the game at the moment, but it remained to be seen if the locals could be trusted, if there were in fact markets going both ways, and if the actual shipping part of it was even feasible.
Serena was curious about our orders, but I told her I’d tell everyone at dinner that night. I spent some time looking at the map she’d been watching change, which was still undergoing jump point changes even now. I was actually surprised as to how much area was being quarantined. But the orders had been to cut out an area based on trading in the cluster.
Tamsin must have seen me frowning, and popped up another map, this time showing actual trade routes for the area, as the station knew about them. It provided some context to what my two mages were doing.
Before the squadron returned, the two trader ships jumped in. Both of them appeared about fifteen minutes out from the station, to give ample warning of their approach. Red Flower connected me into the docking chat with both ships, and it sounded pretty normal to me, as if we were anywhere in the Imperium, or even pre-Imperium on my home station. Docking was docking, basically. They were given adjoining docks to Diplomat.
The trader turned out to be Hurndalls Stallion, which made sense, as it was a cruiser hull, including the original guns, but internally modified to carry cargo, with only a family of three running the ship. It was also the only trader I knew of which had a jump drive. The big question for me was if the Hurndalls were going to expose their ten year old daughter Suzy to the denizens of this end of the galaxy, or not.
The liner was named Midnight Rose, and was something between the length of a destroyer and cruiser, but more of a long cylinder shape, which maximized the number of cabins with views of space. Although I had no doubt the internal ones had screens which showed the views outside.
I told Leanne to send the gig over to the liner for appearances sake, and after telling Serena she had the ship again, and getting a pout in return, I jumped myself to the bridge of the liner. There I found a Jane clone in civilian merchant captain uniform.
Now I understood why the Imperium had not gone for the four rings of a post captain for Fleet Captain rank, and used the eagle instead. Merchant senior captains used them, and it was better they were never confused. I looked up merchant uniforms, and the normal was the four rings on the end of the sleeve of a jacket, or the four cloth bars across epaulettes. Jane’s uniform included the jacket, which was black over a white shirt, with black pants. The stripes were gold. Interestingly, this Jane was not showing the cleavage the comnavsat freighter captain Jane had been.
Turned out she’d been running this ship for several years now, moving people around as necessary, and even before Imperium days, doing cruises of Australian sector system planets. The bridge itself was nothing short of antique, having been done out, as she assured me was quite accurate, like water sailing ships long before the age of steam. So instead of a console, there was a large wooden wheel to steer the ship with, and a set of levers which changed the attitude of the ship, and her speed.