"Tony, hurry up! If we get caught in here, we're royally screwed." Doug slapped a detonator on the fusion core they were arming in the east wing of Pueblo Station. The other twiddled with a small device affixed to one side of the octagonal column-like device resting in a maintenance shaft, setting a complicated timing device that was cross-linked with the other three such devices, one in each spoke of the station.
The two men were con men-cum-saboteurs-cum-pirates now recently turned extortionists, looking to get their slice of the pie from Ageira. "It's not fair that those bastards should sit on all that lovely cash when a pair of good-looking guys like us starve, right?" That was the sort of rationale they were operating under. Once the settings were locked in, Tony pulled out a small communications unit and opened a predefined link to Ageira Headquarters.
"Hey. How ya doin? Look. We's got some bombs planted in youse pad, Pueblo. Yeah, dat one. We made dem so's dey can't be toined off, 'cept by us. And we ain't gonna. Not unless youse cough up some dough." Here Doug cut in.
"We want ten million credits, wired to account number 462722277899. Oh, you don't believe we've got the bombs? Take a look." With that, he turned the camera towards the fusion core and removed the fuzz plate they were using to obscure their faces.
Tony took a turn talking again. "Youse got an hour ta decide, then we turn dis place inta Pueblo Scrapheap."
*************
On the outskirts of Colorado, a gunboat patrolled alone, following a path that seemed to be determined entirely at random, yet with each turn, it came closer to the besieged Pueblo. A faded and worn nameplate on her bow, pitted and scarred from plasma, laser, tachyon, and particle cannon alike could still be made out. Redemption.
The ship took its sweet time closing on the station, but at last it slowed to a stop fifty meters from the central hub. Thirty-seven minutes after Tony and Doug made their demand, four Marines flung themselves out of the airlock into the abyss and landed on the hull of the station. With them fell a large cutting laser that righted itself and clamped down. One of the Marines flicked the Start switch, and the laser ignited, searing its way through the exterior hull and inside bulkheads.
Forty-three minutes after inception, the Marines dropped into the station itself. Without so much as a hand signal, they split up and began searching the four spokes. One of them located the saboteurs, which was quickly followed by snapping and crunching as bones and spinal columns shattered under the impacts of armor-clad fists. One remained alive long enough for the locations of the devices to be ripped from his mind. The other did not.
With the knowledge of the bomb's resting places, the other Marines swiftly located their own. In perfect unison, they ripped the timers off of the bombs. By this time the Redemption had docked with the station proper and stevedores had begun ferrying crates from stores to hold. When the first marine back to the docking bay arrived with fusion core in tow, nearly a dozen cargo pallets had been loaded onto the gunboat. The other three arrived soon after, but not before the one who had killed Tony and Doug had lifted the comm unit to his face, stared into the camera, and crushed the whole thing in one fist.
The whole event had taken place without a word spoken, and the boarding of the gunboat was no different. As the ship vanished into the murky depths of space again, the cutting laser activated a self-destruct charge that blew a crater in Pueblo's hull.
"Early yesterday morning we received word from an anonymous source that a pair of men were in the process of bombing Pueblo Station to extort Ageira. While nothing is known about them, what is known is that their cobbled-together fusion core bombs were all too real. We go live to our reporter at Ageira Headquarters, Dean Henderson. Dean, what do we know about these bombs?"
"Well, Tracy, it's clear that they were devised by persons who knew what they were doing. The only video we have of the devices or of the attackers was received on this terminal here when the extortionists made their threat."
An image of a complicated-looking device appeared on-screen
"This is the closest match that data miners can locate, a Kishiro-built jKzpT-44 self-calibrating fusion core. The actual devices had a complicated device affixed to the side, however, that apparently acted as both a timing device and as a calibration disruptor."
"So what does that mean, exactly. What is a 'calibration disruptor'?"
"It means, Tracy, that it tricks the calibration circuits into thinking it's out of equilibrium, when in fact it's running fine. It corrects the issue, but since it's got false data, the reaction going on inside reaches a critical point, at which the contents of the core burn their way out and detonate once they come in contact with an appropriate material."
"What sort of appropriate material?"
"It depends on the fuel used in the core, but with a jKzpT-44, it's a common alloy of Beryllium and Niobium. Pueblo happens to be armored with this alloy."
"So if they hadn't been deactivated in time..."
"Pueblo Station would have been annihilated."
"Thank you, Dean. Next we have an analyst from Ageira, who has asked that we not disclose his name. Tell us, sir, do you know who stopped this attack?"
An obviously modulated voice speaks next.
"No. As I've stated before, the hole in the hub is nothing more than a random asteroid strike that got through the shields while they were disrupted. Whoever saved the station was already on-board, and is either currently in protective custody along with the rest of the station's crew, or departed some time before recovery crews reached Pueblo. That's all I am permitted to say at this time."
"Do you know how the terrorists got aboard the station in the first place?"
"No. I really can't say more at this time."
"But sir, what about the rumors of missing stores? A-and where did the fusion cores go?"
"Ms. Chapman, I am not permitted to say any more. Good day."
"Wait! What about the unconfirmed reports of a gun..."
The feed went black
"...boat. Right. I see. Well, thank you anyways. As always, I'm Tracy Chapman for Sirius News Network, bringing you the first, the best, and the latest news!"
************
The executive behind the analyst held a comm unit to his ear. "Get me Admiral Hale. I have a feeling he'll want to see the rest of this recording..."
The Redemption loomed over the stacked pallets and containers of supplies like a brooding mother hen. Technicians and Nomad forms crawled over it, fixing something here, removing a broken part there. The dim lighting was punctuated by light arcing from welders, cutters, or electrical conduits as they worked. The old armor plating was pulled off bit by bit, aged plates of steel littering the inside of the hangar, while neatly stacked Niobium-Boron alloy plating rested to one side. A few of the turrets, apparently dismissed as too old or damaged to use, were either dumped unceremoniously on the floor or were being removed by a small track-mounted crane moving overhead. A number of people were busily inventorying the newly acquired items, checking them off, and hustling them out through a large door built into the stone that formed the back wall.
Through this door was a cavernous storeroom that dwarfed the hangar in comparison, with massive columns running easily a hundred meters from floor to ceiling. These columns were honeycombed with sockets for containers to be locked to, giving a massive amount of storage. Crates and tanks from the back were passed from column to column by robotic arrays before being handed to large ground-mounted arms that set them down on a pad clearly labeled with danger zones. The arrays ran on a circular track around each column that moved vertically, giving each array perfect access to any storage unit in its column.
The new pods were set on the hazard-marked areas, routing and inventory data was fed into the terminal, and they were promptly picked up, passed back, and stored. Some of the pods, however, were placed on an automated conveyor that passed through a brightly-lit inventory scanner and sanitizer before being pulled off and stacked by an overhead crane in R&D Bay 3.
Along one wall of the R&D lab was a line of sealed test chambers, some of which were closed and active, others open, with technicians readying experiments and devices for insertion. One in particular held a single panel of battleship armor plating bolted in place before a stand on which rested a roughly spherical device festooned with protrusions and indicators. A pair of researchers were fiddling with something, both covered by clean suits that matched those worn by most of the others in the facility.The adjustments made, they stepped out of the chamber, which closed and locked. Several others nearby made space around the chamber as one of their number tapped out the start sequence on the control board.
A faint hum began to vibrate the chamber, steadily increasing in tempo and pitch until it passed out of the range of human ears. The observation ports shone with an otherworldly light for a moment, and then the chamber powered off. A few moments later fire suppression drones moved in and foamed the entire area. After it had been declared all clear, a man waded through the foam and dug around for a moment. He came back up with a strangely shaped shard of metal, which was given a quizzical glance, then placed on a table for later review. After he left, the others pulled the entire plate out, along with more shards, and cleaned them. The shards and plate gave the impression of large bite marks.
Further down was the smoldering wreckage of a weapons test target which had been fired on by one of four extremely complicated devices. Powered by fuel cells, supplemented by a jKzpT-44 reactor core, modulated by one of the artifacts recovered by L-047, and focused by the materials brought home by the Korekuta. Four massive weapons of destruction, and each the size to fit in a hangar pod. Two were complete, one was in testing, and the last was already being installed on the Reliant. Soon, very soon, would the refits be complete, and Spectrehome would be ready to fly.
The Reliant rested in a gargantuan drydock slung below Altair. With the constant streams of repair craft, drones, and workers, in addition to the sundered hangar pods, it resembled a massive corpse being eaten by flies. The hangars were cut open along the sides, and great chunks of interior were removed, leaving four large, equally sized and spaced shafts that opened to space at the front of the pods. One of these shafts was already filled with a cartridge containing the Riven cannon assembly, power sources, and control apparatus. A cluster of the bees were busily welding the cartridge in place. Others were connecting hoses, conduits, and cabling to ports on the outside. A number of Heavy Lifters sat with armor panels in their transport fields, ready to place them in the spaces that beckoned for them to rest and defend the ship.
As the last of the cables was connected, all of the excitement on the cartridge ceased and the cloud of workers drifted away from the hull. There was a moment of hushedness, of anticipation. The great weapon whined, capacitors loaded, regulating circuits analyzed and made corrections. A sensor-laden probe was jockeyed into position just over three kilometers from the craft, centered. The focusing eye of Riven stared at the probe and blinked it out of existence in a colossal flare of ending. The data transmitted from the probe up to the instant of its unmaking was quickly pored over, checked against calculated values and fluctuations. The consensus was reached: Riven was operational.
The other two assemblies were transported to the edge of the dock. As soon as one of the Heavy Lifters had completed its task of placing the armor, it broke off from the pack and acquired the first assembly. Carefully and skillfully, the second of four Riven cannons was gently slid into its shaft, and the cloud of workers set to their business of making it fast. The Heavy Lifters retrieved new plates and again waited for the assembly to be tested, approved, and certified, and again performed their ballet of placement.
The labs relinquished the fourth and last cannon to the control of the assemblers, and without pause, it was collected, placed, affixed, tested, and sealed. There was no fanfare. There was no ribbon-cutting ceremony. There was nothing to indicate this was anything more than an ordinary occurrence. One does not celebrate making a tool, for one will simply make a new one if it breaks.