EXCERPT FROM: CAPTAIN ALGERNON FISK AGAINST THE PIRATES OF THE ASTEROID BELT:

EXCERPT FROM: 

CAPTAIN ALGERNON FISK AGAINST THE PIRATES OF THE ASTEROID BELT:

Chapter 1:

 Commander Algernon Fisk sat in the command chair of the HMS HORACE. The small command crew worked feverishly on their nav plots as they headed into the cluttered space of the Asteroid Field. Even the most experienced crews feared to tread through this maze, and it was even more difficult for this newly formed crew under their rookie commander, with an equally untested, overpowered ship.

The UNION merchant fleet had been hammering the Parliament about the increasingly large number of pirate attacks against the lifeline of the Commonwealth. When the Princeps Senatus (Head of the Senate, the upper House of Parliament) demands that the Admiralty do something about the situation: well, it was one of those “Yes sir” moments that officers hear about, but hope to never be involved in.

When push came to shove, there just weren’t enough ships or squadrons around to deal with the enormous demands. The Fleet was already tasked with maintaining the border against the increasingly aggressive Rus/Com forces of Saturn, maintaining a presence around the solar system and also protecting trade within the Jovian moon system.  The UNION, the offspring of Old Europe, headed by Great Britain, had escaped to Jupiter during the great Human Diaspora. As Earth fell apart through war, disease and famine the nations of the world reached out to the final frontier for their salvation. Using the latest in gravity technology the human race was able to lift large numbers of people off the planet and provide habitats to support them. It was hoped that this desperate moment would end all the petty fights, wars and disagreements that had caused so much strife on Old Earth, but it seemed that these same problems just followed humanity into space.

That was nearly three hundred years before Fisk found himself in the Asteroid Belt between Mars and Jupiter. And in those three hundred years the different societies had clustered themselves around the solar system and made their new homes. Nearly 80 percent of all the traffic in the solar system traveled past one portion of the asteroid belt or another. And because of the maze and ever-changing nature of the belt, it made a perfect haven for pirates to operate from.

It was all civilized. Well, as civilized as pirates can be. Like the medieval families of Italy or the mobsters of the 20th century, the Asteroid Belt had been broken up into family-controlled sections. Each section was based out of one of the largest asteroid bodies within the belt. The families set up on these rocks were all legal and protected; protected if not from the multiple minefields or other military hardware, then by the maze of rocks in the way. There was no way that any Navy could move a dreadnaught or even a large cruiser into the Belt without risking getting holed by a rock.

Intelligence suggested that there were three main families that “ruled” the Belt.  The most influential of all three was the Medici Family, which operated out of Ceres. Ceres is the largest asteroid in the Belt. Its size puts it in the classification of a dwarf planet. Over the last three hundred years the Medici Family had used it to create a very successful empire of trade, corruption and treachery.

“Closing on the outer rim of the Asteroid Belt,” Lieutenant Beezer announced to no one. Lieutenant Beezer was new to the officer corps. It turned out that he had once been a sailor on a pirate vessel years before. His ship had been taken on one of the rare occasions that a UNION warship had been there to help.

The ship that had captured him had been captained by then-Captain McIntyre, now Admiral McIntyre. McIntyre recognized in the crew of pirates the simple distinction that a sailor was a sailor. At the time, McIntyre had given the pirates of the captured ship the chance to join the fleet or be sent to prison for the rest of their life. It was an easy choice. Through the years of deployment, Beezer had followed McIntyre from command to command, at McIntyre’s insistence. Just before Captain McIntyre became Admiral McIntyre he had recommended Beezer to the officer corps as a direct commission to lieutenant.

A hundred years before it would have been unheard of, but with the ever-increasing need for officers and the ever-present threat of war, the recommendation became reality. Which was when Admiral McIntyre “encouraged” Fisk to take Beezer on as his second-in-command; when the head of Operations makes a recommendation, it’s one of those “Aye Aye sir” moments. It helped that Fisk had once been a lowly midshipman under McIntyre. McIntyre had taken a shine to Fisk and had done what he could to advance the young man’s career. In fact, it was McIntyre that had recommended Fisk for this assignment, which Fisk wasn’t sure he should be thankful for.

Regardless, Fisk trusted the Admiral with his life. Therefore, any recommendation from him was good enough for Fisk. As it turned out, Beezer was the perfect choice for Fisk. The intelligence section of the Admiralty only went so far in their knowledge. Beezer’s knowledge was often first-hand and filled with detail that the reports just couldn’t compete with. Beezer had not only been a sailor on a pirate ship, but had been the jack-of-all-trades type of sailor who was well sought out by ship captains. His reputation was as good as any pirate’s, but a bit better because of his abilities, which had given him access to knowledge about the lead pirates, their family connections and the secret underworld of the pirate way. This knowledge Fisk had put to immediate use, and had seen the immediate impact on his ship and crew.

“Sir, with all due respect, we need to dirty up the ship a bit,” Beezer had explained ten minutes after the two had met for the first time.

“What do you mean?” Fisk had asked.

The Royal Navy prided itself on maintaining its ships in the highest degree of readiness. Part of that readiness was that the ships look as sharp as they were expected to be. No ship was allowed to have rust on the hull or inside the ship. Everything was expected to be painted to the highest degree. All parts of the ship were expected to be in perfect working order. If it wasn’t, then it was expected that someone was working on it to make it better. There were many reasons for this; it helped with crew morale, and made the fleet look good, but the long hours that a ship was in transit from one spot to another often left a lot of time available for the sailors. This time had to be filled, often by the busy work that kept a ship in such good shape.

“It’s just that, if they see us come into port this way, sir,” Beezer apologized, holding his hat in front of him with both hands. “It’s just that if we pull into CERES PRIME or the Pillars with a ship in this good order, well I doubt we’ll make it past the outer marker without some trigger happy sum a b’ich peggin’ us as a Royal Wog,” Beezer explained. “Beggin’ your pardon, sir.”

Which was why the ship had been “dirtied up.” During the journey to the Belt Algernon had sent the crew to the hull, cutting pieces of the hull, burning the paint, even putting a few plasma bolt hits into the ship. All that had been done after they had applied a new paint scheme, which had been part of the original plan. Fisk wasn’t stupid; he knew that he wouldn’t be able to go into the capital of the Medici Family with the colors and designs of a Royal Warship, which was what the HORACE really was.

While it was officially classified as a corvette, it would be considered a very heavily armed corvette. But its current shape was a bit misleading. It looked more like a raider. The dings and dents that the crew had done to the hull had been repeated inside the ship. They had even added some stains to the seats and corners of the ship that resembled dried blood. The crew had left little pools of water in certain areas of the ship to create the needed rust to help enhance the image they were looking for. All this preparation had used up the better part of the ship’s trip from AMAZON BASE.

“Scans indicate potential targets in the Defile,” the ship’s MSOC or Main Ship Operating Computer said over the loudspeaker. “Working to identify.”

The MSOC was the heart of the ship. Every ship system had one or two computers running them. Just the command seat that Fisk was sitting at had three computers working to meet his demands; these were smart computers, able to anticipate his needs, and were very high end on the software and the versatility of the machines. For many of the systems such as the air supply, there was a dumb computer in every room that helped regulate supply. These “dumb” computers were often tailored to their type of job. There was no versatility built into the software and while they could be swapped out with a software change, it was a time-consuming affair.

Each of the dumb computers in the life support system had two backups which also doubled as backups for other systems, totaling up to nearly a hundred “dumb” computers which had been created for the simple job of running the life support in the different rooms of the entire ship. The engineering spaces had three times the number of life-support “dumb” computers because of the massive heat and temperature changes in there. And that was just one system of the ship. The water and waste system were even more complex. All of these systems had human operators looking over them. The one entity that made sure all the “dumb” computers kept up on their tasks was the MSOC. Its massive core was the same size as the bridge. It was broken into three parts and spread around the ship, providing that at least part of the MSOC would still be functioning if the ship was hit.

“Roger that, CHERRY,” Fisk responded, punching the data from the sensors onto his screen. “They’re probably nothing more than the outer marker forces of the Medici Family. The Defile is the main route to CERES,”  Fisk said to himself.

There were few “highways” in the Asteroid Belt, but the well-known one was the Defile. Due to the magnetic fields of Ceres and a number of other larger asteroids, there was a passage that was large enough to put three ships the size of the HORACE in. While the passage had been long, it was originally blocked by several formations of asteroids. Nearly two hundred years ago, according to intelligence, the Medici Family had purchased several large field generators that had pushed back the rocks. Those generators were still working to this day, and their maintenance as well as the duty to the defense of the Defile was granted to the Governor of the Defile.

Throughout the years, according to Intelligence and Beezer, the Governors had been the most trusted family friends of the Ruling Medici. The Defile was lined with cannons and other weapons. The last line of defense was the generators. If they were destroyed, the passage known as the Defile would fill up in the choke points, blocking any aggressor from successfully getting to CERES PRIME.   

According to Beezer, the man in charge of the Defile was no other than Jack “Death” Ridge. Jack was a notorious bandit and pirate of the highest order. It was believed by intelligence that he was responsible for some of the more horrendous pirate incidents recently. One story told of how a pleasure vessel owned by a family was overtaken by “Death” Ridge. The pirate had taken everything on board, including the food and extra oxygen tanks. Before he left he punctured a small hole into the cabin which the owners were locked into. The ruptured hole caused all the air to exit. But that was after he had tied up the parents and put them in oxygen suits. Their four-year-old had been left to wander around the cabin without a suit. They had to watch as the cabin slowly lost pressure. The parents were forced to watch their baby die a horrible death. It was a story that couldn’t be confirmed because the parents died of asphyxiation, having knocked their masks off their faces instead of watching their baby die.

While it hadn’t been confirmed, Beezer, who had heard similar stories about Ridge, believed that not only was it probably, but very likely, true.

“Receiving message,” said CHERRY (the name for the MSOC, or more correctly, it was the nickname based on the computer’s designation, which was CHRE-374).

“Who goes there,” a gruff voice asked over the intercom.

“That voice sounds familiar,” Beezer said, in barely over a whisper. “I know that voice,  I think that’s Sten…”  he paused, as he thought some more. “Yes, Sten Marko of the old RAIDER’S ARK.”

“This is the Star of New Caledonia,” Fisk said. The Star of New Caledonia had been a private escort ship, hired by those who could afford it to protect valuable cargos in transit: a mercenary. It had been decommissioned by its owners at the insistence of the UNION government. A cover story had been put out that the Star of New Caledonia had been attacked and taken in a raid against the wealthy mining giant Nathan Star—of STAR INDUSTRIES. The ship and the crew had bought enough time for Star’s yacht to get away, at least that’s what the UNION Fleet wanted everyone to believe had happened.

“We are coming in for trade,” Fisk clarified.

“Don’t come no further ’less we blow you out of space,” the voice said.