Part Three (Cont'd)
“Not to labour the point, but this feels considerably more suicidal than our usual plans.”
Sunek offered his opinion as Maya continued her impromptu briefing to the assembled Bounty crew in the dining area. Jirel, now mercifully dressed and feeling a little more comfortable, sat with Natasha, Sunek, Denella and Klath as their often unreliable guest outlined what they had.
“I mean,” the Vulcan continued, “Flying into the Badlands is one thing, but this?”
“This,” Maya replied calmly, “Is what the latinum I paid you was for. And what the rest of the latinum will be for. Once we get the final piece of the jigsaw.”
Maya was patiently outlining the details of the information she and Denella had been able to extract from the data link to the Synergy Mining Enterprises mainframe, just before the bandits had arrived back at the asteroid. And while she was still in the early stages of detailing what they had to work with, the general feeling around the table could be summed up by Sunek’s initial comment.
“So we didn’t get the exact location of the new operation,” Jirel sighed, “But what exactly do we know?”
“Enough to give me some confidence that we can pull this off,” Maya responded, “The information we got indicates that the new mining site is somewhere in Sector 374, which is not too far from here. And we’ve also got details of their security arrangements.”
She slid a large old-school padd into the centre of the table and tapped the screen, using it as an impromptu display screen to add some detail to her words.
The screen itself showed a nondescript planetoid, surrounded by various arrows and indicators.
“It’s a particularly mineral-rich planet, mainly duridium ore. Mining rights for which were…dubiously acquired by Synergy Mining Enterprises in the last quarter.”
“How dubious?” Denella asked.
“Dubious enough that the previous owner of the mining rights hasn’t been seen since the last quarter.”
Jirel didn’t look around, but he definitely felt at least a couple of stern glares being fired off in his direction from around the table.
“It’s a…cutthroat business,” Maya continued with a slight smile, “And it’s very much in keeping with the boss’s mantra at Synergy. High value, high risk. Given how much duridium is supposed to be down there, the whole thing will be as secretive as possible.”
“And very well-guarded,” Klath grunted, pointing to the annotations and indicators on the screen of the padd.
“Yep,” Sunek added, “Looks like this place is done up like a Romulan penal colony on red alert.”
“Yes,” Maya nodded, “Well, Synergy likes to protect their assets. And it looks like a similar setup to their usual operations. Automated sentries in orbit armed with phaser strips and micro-torpedoes, and three security protocols on the surface. An interference grid to mask sensors and tricorder scans, a dampening field around the entire mining site and a transport inhibition network around the main buildings. To stop anyone from getting in. Or getting out.”
“Ok, cool,” Sunek chimed in sarcastically, “So I guess we just break out those sentry-destroying, shield-collapsing, dampening field-penetrating missiles we’ve got packed away in storage. Knew they’d come in handy one day.”
Jirel kept his focus on Maya, but he nodded his head in the Vulcan’s direction.
“He’s got a point.”
“First time for everything,” Maya retorted laconically, “And besides, he doesn’t. We’re several steps ahead of them with their defences, thanks to your engineer’s fast fingers. We’ve got the exact frequency of the dampening field and enough information about the interference pattern to cut through it. Should be able to beam down close to the inhibited area.”
“And the sentries?” Natasha asked.
Maya smiled in satisfaction and tapped a few more commands into the padd. The screen changed to show a list of transit times.
“We’ve got a list of protocols and handshakes for all the regular transports they’re using to move the duridium away for processing. We can use those to disguise the Bounty from the sentries. They’ll just register us as one of their transports.”
“Still a hell of a risky plan,” Jirel muttered, stroking his chin, “You can get us through most of those defences, but we’ll still be cut off from the ship for as long as we’re inside the transport inhibitors. No way of beaming through that.”
“That is an inconvenience,” Maya conceded, “But it can’t be helped. And, if it makes you feel any better, I’m willing to go down and find Toren myself.”
“By yourself?”
“If I have to,” she shrugged, “The one good thing about this little scheme is that Synergy’s mines tend not to be overstaffed when it comes to guards down on the ground. The boss prefers to rely on all of those supposedly flawless automated systems instead.”
“Why?” Denella asked.
“Because he doesn’t have to pay them.”
Jirel sighed and looked around the table at the others, all of whom still weren’t entirely won over by their strategy.
“Seems like a plan?” he managed.
“There is still one issue,” Maya continued, “We…still don’t know exactly where the planet is inside Sector 374. We weren’t able to get that far before the bandits found us. And it would take months to comb the entire sector for the right planet with the Bounty’s sensors.”
“I suppose,” Klath grunted, “You have a plan to secure this information?”
Her mouth curled into yet another smug smile, as she nodded back across the table at the unhappy Klingon.
“As a matter of fact, I do,” she replied with her usual knowing tone, “But to get it, we’re going to have to…go rogue.”
****************************
Adjacent to the area of space designated Sector 374, the area of space designated Sector 373 was something of a disappointment.
While Sector 374 was a relatively bustling sector of the galaxy, boasting dozens of star systems, indigenous species, colony worlds and interstellar phenomenon, its neighbour was a poor relation in comparison.
The only native intelligent life that had ever existed inside the arbitrary confines of Sector 373 had existed several hundred years ago, and had limited themselves to the system designated 373-Beta by Federation scientists. Humanoid life had thrived on the second planet of the system, and had established themselves on the habitable third planet in great numbers as well.
But the relationship between the two worlds had turned sour and descended into war. And although both worlds had developed warp drive as part of an interplanetary arms race, they had merely used their first rudimentary warp-capable vessels to launch surprise bombing raids on each other, wiping out both civilisations in mutual armageddon.
Perhaps if there had been other intelligent warp-capable life in the area, they may have made contact before both sides had met their tragic end. But unfortunately for the residents of 373-Beta II and 373-Beta III, they had evolved in Sector 373.
Right now, the most interesting aspect of Sector 373 was the presence of rogue planet P373-Kappa, as designated by a Federation science vessel in 2358 during an otherwise deeply unremarkable mapping survey of the sector. According to sensor scans, this frozen drifting ice world, roughly twice the size of Earth, contained the most incredible paleontological phenomenon in the galaxy.
Millions of years ago, P373-Kappa had been a lush ocean planet, teeming with underwater life. Until its star had gone nova and expelled its orbiting bodies out into space. Without the warmth of the star, P373-Kappa had frozen solid, killing and trapping every life form in a permanent state of suspension under several kilometres of ice.
A second survey of P373-Kappa in 2361 had concluded that there was no viable way to penetrate the ice right now without disturbing the specimens inside. But, in a few hundred years, it was scheduled to transit a new star system and likely be captured in the gravity well. Scientists believed that the new star would thaw the entire planet, freeing the preserved creatures for examination.
Alas, for Sector 373, the cruel addendum was that the new star system P373-Kappa would end up a part of was actually inside the boundaries of Sector 374, meaning that the most interesting thing it had to offer was only going to get truly fascinating once it left Sector 373 altogether.
Still, a sector as boring as this one did have one thing going for it. It served as a perfect rendezvous point for any ship that wanted to stay off-grid.
The Bounty hung in temporary orbit of rogue planet P373-Kappa, its motley crew not paying any attention at all to the goldmine of paleontological treasures beneath them. Their focus was entirely elsewhere.
“I am detecting no other vessels,” Klath grunted from his tactical station, “Not even on long-range scans.”
“Me neither,” Natasha chimed in from the other side of the cockpit, checking her own readings.
Nominally, she was aware that her improvised sensor station was duplicating one of the tasks of Klath’s own console. But given the circumstances, everyone was eager to have as many eyes as possible on the situation.
They had travelled to P373-Kappa on Maya’s latest mysterious instructions, in order to meet a contact of hers. One that she claimed would have the missing information about the mining site in Sector 374 that they were missing.
In theory, there was nothing overtly dangerous about what they were doing. And yet, with Maya Ortega still onboard, neither Klath nor Natasha objected to the other overlapping their work with the sensors.
Jirel spun around in his chair to glare at Maya, where she leaned against Denella’s large wraparound engineering station.
“Your friend seems to be a little unreliable,” he pointed out, “So I guess you have that in common, at least.”
“Cute,” she sighed patiently, “But he’ll be on time. In fact, he’s probably already here.”
“Sure. He’s probably ducked down behind that meteoroid over there.”
“Don’t get sarcastic, Jirel. It doesn’t suit you.”
As Maya spoke, she idled over to Jirel’s command chair, and then jabbed a slender finger down onto the comms panel on his armrest, opening up the Bounty’s comms channel.
“It’s me,” she called out, seemingly to empty space, “So there’s no need to hide.”
“I’ll be the judge of that,” a deep voice boomed back, seemingly from empty space.
“What the hell—?” Jirel began to whisper.
An instant later, directly in front of the Bounty where it hung in steady orbit of P373-Kappa, a section of the starscape shimmered, and a small Romulan scout ship decloaked.
“A Romulan,” Klath growled unhappily from behind his console.
“A Romulan ship,” Maya offered by way of correction, before turning and heading for the steps at the rear of the cockpit, “Now, how about we go and say hello, hmm?”
She walked on down the steps without waiting for a reply. Jirel cast one further look out at the sleek green lines of the small Romulan vessel, roughly one third the size of the Bounty, then stood and followed her. He couldn’t help but feel the eyes of everyone else in the cockpit on him as he walked.
As he passed Klath, he noticed a particularly deep and unhappy glare on the Klingon’s face as he stood from his own console.
“I will come with you,” he grunted.
“I’m sure it’s—”
“Yes,” the Klingon continued, cutting Jirel off, “I am sure it is.”
The Trill went to counter further, but ultimately mustered a slight nod and a shrug of acquiescence in his colleague’s intentions.
Inside, his discomfort in their situation was growing by the minute.
But I do know one of the more egregious bugbears proper science nerds have with sci-fi is in the misuse of ‘asteroid belts’, which in reality are mostly boring empty space as opposed to the perilous mass of rocks we usually see on TV (I think I might have even committed this sin in a previous Bounty tale!). So this was a hopefully at least pseudo-scientific way to get all the rocks nicely bunched up together.
