“Is there anything else we can show you? Terminus is a great ship, but a bit sparsely populated, since we haven’t taken on any riders.” Nico asked as the boarding crew finished looking over the Mecha.
“She is an interesting design for sure. I think we have seen all that we needed to other than the two cutter class shuttles in the next bay. The Mothership wants to confirm that they aren’t militarized.” The leader of the team told Max with an eye roll at his superior’s request.
Even if the two cutters were weaponized, they were no match for the Kepler fleet or even most heavy trading vessels. But the documentation said that these ones didn’t have any heavy weapons, and Sector Command wanted to verify that.
As soon as they reached the bay the scanners came out, checking the hull for signs of both hard-mounted and hidden heavy weapons, predictably finding none. The ships did have weapons, just nothing dangerous enough to be classified as heavy weapons and subject to restrictions.
“How do you deal with attackers, since you don’t have heavy weapons on the Colony Ship or the Cutters?” The team leader asked, genuinely concerned for this happy-go-lucky group of Reavers.
“That’s what the Mecha are for. The thrust packs on a group of the heavy Mecha work wonderfully in space, and their Fusion Flamers do a commendable job of breaching hulls both derelict and hostile.” Nico informed him with pride.
“Fusion Flamers is it? Yeah, that would do it. I should have suspected from the thrust packs that those were modified orbital mining Mecha. It explains the size too, mining gear is always oversized for the job, I’m told it makes them more durable.” He agreed, coming to a very incorrect conclusion from the information that he was given.
They would do the job fairly well though since the flamers were in fact developed based on mining equipment. It was just the structure of the Mecha itself that had very little to do with the rugged and slow chassis of a mining Mecha.
Their Commander didn’t send them any more orders, so the investigation crew headed back to the cargo bay where they had landed and prepared to leave the Terminus behind. They all loaded into their ship, and the shielding was raised so that the atmosphere could be purged and the doors opened.
[Kepler Border Patrol you are clear to leave at your pleasure.] Admiral Drake informed them over the intercom, and the Cutter’s engines powered up, then suddenly shut down.
[Kepler Border Patrol, is there an issue?] Nico asked, watching from the observation window.
[Negative Terminus. All systems show as being fully functional. Departing now.]
Again the engines powered up and then down, but the ship remained exactly where it was.
[Give us five minutes Terminus. We seem to have a technical issue.] The Cutter’s pilot reported.
“Check the gravity plating and securement. They’re not clamped down to our deck or locked in place, are they? Even a light power-up like that should move them a little.” Max asked Nico, checking the screen by the door for himself.
The Terminus didn’t show anything unusual on its display, and after ten minutes, the crew of the Cutter reported no mechanical issues found.
[Requesting permission to bring another Cutter over to serve as a tug.] The Pilot informed the crew of the Terminus with a hint of embarrassment.
Few things in life were quite as ridiculous as when a law enforcement vessel broke down in the middle of an inspection and had to borrow a hangar bay to either get repairs or get towed out.
[Take all the time you need, Kepler. We always schedule for a few minor mechanical issues. If you need, we have a pair of our own Cutters and we can use them to maneuver you back to the mothership.] Nico suggested.
While they waited for the border patrol to decide what they were doing, Max decided to run a full scan of the star system. If there was someone messing with the border patrol, they should be somewhere within the sensor range of the Colony ship, assuming that the sensors were working correctly.
Hidden in the sensor distortion around a moon, Max found what he was looking for, signs of a Battle Barge Class vessel, more than twenty kilometers long. It seemed to be waiting for something, possibly for their vessel to move along and the Border Guard to proceed to their next point, putting the Battle Barge out of sensor range for a few minutes and allowing them to sneak past the lines.
If they had tried that at warp, they would have been detected immediately, but gliding along with minimal engine power they were harder to pick out from all the other emissions in the area.
They might be posing as Mercenaries, but they were in fact loyal soldiers of the Kepler Empire, so Max knew they had to do something, but they had to do it without blowing their cover.
“Nico, can you tell me who that ship hiding by the moon on our starboard side is? They’re putting a lot of effort into sneaking past customs.” Max asked.
He fully intended to do it himself, at least he did until he realized that the interface on the panels hadn’t been translated, so it was unintelligible other than the most commonly used few screens, and he had no idea how to use it to get more information about the ship in the distance.
“That would be the Tapani vessel Cosmos. I’m not finding much about it, but its computer did respond to a communications ping.” Nico informed him.
“I’ve got it from here,” Max answered, then opened the communications portion of the panel.
He sent a hailing ping on the general channel, used to contact any vessel in the area, instead of the secure military channel. As expected, the Tapani vessel’s computer didn’t send anything back, but now that it had been identified manually, the Terminus noticed it was there easily enough.
The request for an open channel communication code that it sent out indicated that the Terminus was sending the message to both nearby vessels, by location, as well as the nearby Civilian space station and one more border patrol ship in the distance, completely standard procedure, for a general message.
[Terminus to unknown Station, requesting permission to dock for supplies once we have finished with Customs. Our fresh produce supplies are running low.] Max sent out, making the general request that the other vessels would be expecting.
That was enough to alert both border patrol vessels to the presence of another vessel in the area, and Max knew from experience that all hell would be breaking loose aboard as they tried to determine how it had gotten so close without being detected or contacted.