Chapter 25

Shorty looked at Baraz with concern.

“Cap, are you sure about this? UNSEC and the ESC will go nuts seeing an explosion this close to Earth.”

“Fuck ‘em. The Boss was going to send me to Terra anyway. We’ll just head that way a bit sooner. I don’t know why he would get you to go work for Burnie. You can’t sneak for shit. You may as well come with me.”

Shorty chuckled as he burnt the rear drives to push them into a higher orbit, so they fell behind the joined ships. When Baraz said they were far enough away, Shorty hit the fore drives to drop the ship lower. While they also gained speed, they were well behind the other ships.

Ten minutes later, once his ship was back in orbit with the other ships, Baraz programmed the missile. It would drop into a lower orbital, speed past the joined ships, lock on, and then burn to rise into their obit and them. Well, that was the plan.

Flying through space was a whole different kettle of fish to working in the orbit of a planet or in an atmosphere. As was calculating trajectories when gravitational and centrifugal effects had to be considered.

“Missile away,” grinned Baraz evilly as he pressed a button.

Raul looked at Zeke.

“You’re not the least bit worried, are you?”

“Nah, Freya indicates that it is a self-guided heat-seeking missile designed for atmospheric operation. It has shitty guidance and propulsion for hitting a ship in low orbit. Plus, our ships have to be burning the Rih engines for it to lock onto us.”

“If we were burning in open space or to maintain a much higher orbit, it may be different. It will run out of gas and shut down. We will track it and will pick it up later.”

“Are we cleaning out the lower Leo obits first because you thought we would be safer from pirates?” Raul asked.

“No, as long as your shields are on, I’m not so worried about pirates. The obits between Earth and the inner Van Allen Belt, where the old space stations were, just have more crap that is harder to collect and more troublesome to the shuttles and satellites.”

“That’s one reason why they built Morpheus higher in a six-hour orbit. It is in what they call the sweet spot between the Van Allen belts. The shuttles may have to boost for longer, but they only take between one to four hours longer to get the new station.”

“They used to put a lot of things in low obit and not retrieve them. They would hit other items and break into smaller pieces. Hence, A lot of what you have collected so far was smaller than ten centimetres and why the scoop was working so hard.”

“However, the scoop misses a lot of the good metals in atom form that we should collect. Your ship has the scoop directly linked to the main R&R unit, so I’d like to reprogram your shield to let in more elements.”

“You may get more of the heavier, radioactive elements, but the linings in the collector and tubes and my spells will keep you safe. That is also why I built you the radiation room and supplied you with the special containers, suits, collector wands, and detectors.”

“Oh, don’t forget to recycle the nets if you pick up a hot load. Put a De Ray crystal in the collector wand and run it over your suits if your detectors go off. It is just as well that we have plenty of people who are happy to buy those elements if we collect more.”

Horrified, Sofia asked, “Do you just sell them to anyone?”

Zeke smiled softly.

“No, Sofia. The combined governments in Sol’s System and UNSEC have an approved list of suppliers and purchasers. Z.Salvage is on the list of suppliers because of what we are doing.”

“It is one of the reasons we have exclusive salvage rights, especially if radiation is detected as it can be in holed or blown-up ships. That is also why I must do extensive criminal checks on my employees.”

“How did you do these checks on the twins?” she asked with concern.

“Oh, Queen Lee gave me access to a database. It is amazing. I got Freya to search all of my employees. I’m happy to say that the majority of them passed muster. I have the odd one to keep an eye on, but I already knew about them.”

Freya interrupted, “Excuse me, Captain. We have a development.”

“What’s up, Freya?”

“That stupid Captain has dropped his tail and is burning out into space. He is headed into the flight path of what you call a locust cloud of debris. My records have it named as the Ares Cloud. It is currently dispersed over a hundred square kilometres, and it’s ten kilometres thick.”

“By the time his proximity detectors react, he will not be able to avoid it. I have determined that his shields are inadequate to defect all of these particles at their combined speeds and orbital paths.”

“The cloud is also expanding as it has reached the furthest point of its elliptical orbit and is turning back toward Earth. He should not have changed direction until in a higher orbit to avoid the cloud. He overrode Mr Chong’s and his ship’s concerns.”

“Also, the missile changed direction. It went past us several minutes ago. I believe it was just close enough to detect their burn. It has used up the last of its fuel. Its current trajectory will take it into the cloud, but I can’t compute what will happen to it other than it isn’t on the exact same path as the pirates’ ship.”