Blue Star Enterprises

While Alexander once again had a direction of study to go in for his defensive field, he was forced to put that on hold as another issue cropped up.

"The other STO ships are leaving?" he asked Theo in confusion.

"They received orders from STO Naval Command this morning to return to Varlen without the Vice Admiral or the Blueridge," Pembrooke confirmed.

That wasn't fishy at all.

"And the possible saboteur?" That was kind of the whole point of disabling the Blueridge in the first place.

"I was not able to determine who they were. The Blueridge personnel came down with crews from other ships in the last few days. They mingled while on the surface, and I lost track of a few individuals. I can provide those names, but that doesn't really help us unless you want to bring Willard in on the possible assassination attempt."

"Dammit," Alexander cursed in frustration.

It wasn't Pembrooke's fault that happened. Alexander had been the one who decided to allow the STO to visit the surface. Everything had been going fine during the first few weeks. Crews were coming down one ship at a time, and Theo had been hard at work mixing in with them to both try and figure out who the saboteur might be as well as looking for competent people who may be interested in a new job once their STO services ran out.

As the delays to the Blueridge's repairs dragged on, Willard must have changed his orders, or he simply stopped caring what the captains and crew did anymore.

"No. The last thing we need is Willard panicking. That seems like something he would do. The man is liable to fire on his own ships, which would probably get blamed on us somehow. Is there any concern that the attack will be remotely activated before the other ships leave the system?"

"That's what I wanted to discuss. I believe that's exactly what they intend to do now that the rest are planning on leaving."

Alexander really had the urge to run his hands through his hair in frustration. The Willard situation was quickly devolving into a mess, and whoever was behind it seemed hell-bent on thrusting Alexander and BSE into a war with the STO. He paused to go over his options.

He could tell Willard, but as he stated earlier, that was the last thing he wanted to do. Holding the ships until they determined who the saboteur might be was a possibility, but that might draw a similar military response from the STO. Those were both awful options, yet he still considered them.

While it galled him, he did have a much more palatable option in mind. "When do they leave?"

"They are ordered to ship out in twelve hours."

"Likely to prevent me from reacting. They underestimate our capabilities, though." Alexander picked up his tablet and looked at the print queue.

Four printers would become available within the next hour. He slotted in the thruster design he had sold to Fletcher. Now he would have four new thrusters complete within eleven hours. He could have had them done sooner on his newer, faster printers, but he wanted it to come down to the wire to prevent any further STO or corporate shenanigans.

"Right before the STO ships are set to leave, I want you to alert Willard that we had a purchase cancellation, and I now have a full set of thrusters that he is welcome to if he doesn't wish to wait the additional month for his original order. Once he agrees, have him dock at the repair ring and disembark the ship. The entire thing will need to be powered down to make the repairs, so that shouldn't arouse any suspicion."

"And if they decide to act prematurely?" Theo asked the obvious question.

"That depends on whether their attempt is successful or not. If not, we don't have to do anything. If it is, I have orders ready to go for Krieger." Alexander really hoped he didn't have to issue those orders.

If he was forced to attack the STO ships, the STO would be slow to respond, but they would respond.

Theo nodded and left the room.

The next twelve hours were probably the most nerve-wracking Alexander had experienced since the time leading up to the battle with Harlow.

Despite his concerns, the good news was shared with Willard, and the Blueridge docked with the repair ring without issue. The shutdown went through seamlessly, and the crew was disembarked to the surface so he could begin repairs. There weren't even any last-minute broadcasts from any of the other STO vessels; they simply transitioned to a jump point and left the Blueridge behind, making Alexander think there may not have ever been a saboteur, to begin with.

Willard demanded to have a few suited Marines on hand aboard the ship to protect STO Navy secrets, which was fine with Alexander. He did not need access to any of the data storage areas aboard the vessel, and even if he did, he had ways to get past the Marines.

Once the ship was mostly clear, he got to work. More specifically, he sent in his robots to do the work. Alexander wasn't foolish enough to step aboard or get near a ship that might be set to explode.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

The real bots got to work removing the ship's engines at the slowest speed Alexander could get them to operate. While that was happening, he had more bots roaming around the ship, looking for anything out of place.

With the vessel's air being evacuated for the work, he didn't have to worry about noise traveling. The Marines on board would only be able to feel the occasional shaking through the deck as work was being performed.

One of his bots paused, and Alexander tied into its sensors. It seemed the robot picked up a lifeform around the corner. He cursed his luck. That robot was meant to check the weapon storage for any sabotage. He sent orders for the robot to skip that area and return to the exterior of the ship. He would have to approach that room another way.

Alexander flipped through all the robots until he found one near the front of the ship. He ordered it to exit through the nearest airlock and climb to the front of the vessel.

The robot jetted through the ship's corridors at a nearly reckless pace, landing against walls with its shock-absorbing legs and bounding down the next hallway until it arrived at the airlock.

From there, it didn't take long for it to move along the outer hull of the vessel to reach one of the missile hatches.

Prying open the hatch took a bit of effort, but the robot did eventually manage it. It was just in time for the arrival of the smaller bot.

The small robot scurried into the open hatch and down the tube to the weapon storage.

There was a missile loaded into the launch rails, but that was typical of warships. There was just enough room for the robot to squeeze past the warhead and the rails.

From there, it made its way to the loading rack. The room was sealed from the rest of the ship, but the loading rack had a set of blast airlocks that were meant to stop any premature detonation from reaching the rest of the ship.

In Alexander's experience, those rarely worked as well as they were designed to.

The smaller robot wasn't strong enough to pry open the blast door, so it scurried back over to the missile in the room and inspected it first. Finding it unmodified, it moved over to an armored maintenance hatch. The hatch was sealed from the outside, but there was an emergency override lever within the compartment.

The robot wedged itself between the lever and the wall and was able to push it down until the door popped open. From there, it had access to the entire missile storage of the ship.

Alexander left it to its own devices as he focused on another pair of smaller robots that were going over the reactor. They had alerted him to something out of the ordinary, but he had wanted to ensure the first bot got to where it needed before splitting his attention.

When he joined the connection to the new robots, he found them both staring at devices affixed to the flow control valves for the reactor. As far as he could tell, the devices in question weren't explosive in nature. That didn't mean they weren't the sabotage he was looking for though. He knew for certain they shouldn't be there.

He wasn't sure whether to be happy or upset that Pembrooke was proven right.

The devices affixed to the flow control were small, easy to conceal, and easy to overlook since they were attached to the underside of the valves.

He couldn't tell from the video feed what they were meant to do, but he could guess based on their locations. The flow control regulated fuel to the reactor. Damage that could cause excess fuel to overload the reactor rather quickly.

Alexander sighed in relief that he had finally located the sabotage. It should be easy enough to remove it. He was mid-celebration when he got a ping from the robot in the missile storage. Then another from a different part of the ship. Before he could look into those, he got a third ping of another suspicious device being located.

***

"How many?" Pembrooke asked in surprise.

"Ten devices in total," Alexander confirmed. "At least so far. I'm having the bots go over the entire ship a second time, and I managed to sneak some into the data storage areas to ensure there wasn't any malicious code implanted in the ship's computers as well. That will take a bit more time to determine."

"That's- That's excessive, even for the corporations. They really wanted this to happen."

"It does seem that way," Alexander admitted. "Any idea why they didn't just send a fleet instead of going through all this trouble?"

"I imagine this plan was significantly cheaper than activating their fleets. You'll find that the corporations only care about the bottom line. Doing things this way also ensures their hands are kept clean if anything goes wrong. Are you planning on notifying Willard now that you have proof?"

"Heck, no. The man would probably blame the sabotage on us. Let that man live in his blissfully ignorant world, it'll be better for everyone."

Pembrooke nodded. "I agree. So what now?"

"Now we ensure there is nothing left aboard that ship to cause it to randomly explode. Then we finish the installation of the new engines and I complete the design for the new frigate. I feel like whoever put all this effort into starting a war between BSE and the STO doesn't want us to meet with those in power. It's time we stop dancing to their tune and start making our own."

"You know I won't be able to go with you. If I do, Omni will kill me."

"If you stayed aboard the ship, you'd be safe." He hadn't bothered telling Pembrooke about his other preparations. Most were still unrealized.

"I would prefer not to be stuck aboard a ship for over a year, thank you very much."

Alexander could respect that. "Very well. I'll leave you here to manage things in my stead. Which reminds me, I have some information to share with you. Please shut the door."

The man quirked his head at the request but did as he was asked. Once the door was closed, Alexander filled him in on the comm nodes.

"Huh," was the man's only response.

"That's all you have to say?" Alexander asked in surprise.

"I mean, what did you want me to say? Sure, I'm surprised, but not all that surprised after seeing what you've built out here so far. It's comparable to what Omni does, and there are very few things that Omni hasn't reverse-engineered over the years. I suspected they had figured out how the Qcomm worked a long time ago and assumed you would as well at some point. I was just never high enough on the Omni totem pole to learn that fact directly. That does make my life easier if I can communicate with you when I need to. What about Char?"

"She isn't aware of the technology yet."

"Oh, I wasn't referring to that. You mentioned that a trip to Sol might involve her."

"Ah, yes. I haven't brought it up with her yet, but I plan to soon. It will still be a few months before the new frigate is completed and tested anyway, so we have time."

"I'm sure that conversation will go over swimmingly. This is why I'm glad not to be in charge."

The sarcasm was thick in that statement, but Theo wasn't wrong. Convincing Char to fly into 'enemy territory' was going to be a difficult sell. Thankfully, she owed Alexander a favor, and he intended to collect on it. He would also like an update on the war against Xin. His comm node satellites weren't even halfway to the border yet, so information from that part of space was sparse.