Chapter 41

The crew of Striker One checked in with Whitney.

They dropped off the five slaves before they headed back to the other planet. They were worried about the fact that the Farestar would beat them to the system and that Dusty and James were only in the Gunna. It wouldn’t be a fair match, the Gunna against two gunships that would give a ship like theirs a run for its money.

Aaron and Bindy seemed the least worried of the crew and said the jump spell wasn’t necessary. But then they knew Dusty and James better than the rest of the crew. Still, they didn’t plan on their ship dawdling and were happy Chris had them back into space as fast as he could.

While the other crew had been busy rescuing pirates, Dusty had contacted the Farestar and asked the Captain to alter her course. With the improvements that Lee had made to the ship, she wasn’t as vulnerable as she had been.

The ship would now enter the system closer to the gas giant and closer to the planetary plane than ships normally came out of the jump. By the time the pirates detected her and took chase, she should be able to jump, and the pirates wouldn’t have a hope of finding her once she had.

Dusty told Johan that they wanted the pirates to give chase. The Farestar needed to be close enough to tempt the ships but going fast enough to jump before the pirates got into shooting range. The further they led the pirates away, the better.

Johan and his crew studied the course Dusty had sent them and agreed it was more than doable. The pirates wouldn’t realise that they could jump away at the slower speed that they would be doing. With luck, they would think that the ship was having trouble since it was off the beaten track.

Johan happily relayed back that they were happy to be bait.

James and Dusty were in orbit around the planet.

They had released their satellites, and while they stayed on the opposite side of the planet from where the settlement was, they were receiving excellent data from the probes and every communication that was sent to the pirate’s probe.

They were surprised to learn that an estimated thirty thousand people were on the planet in the occupied areas. They could see squares of tilled soil in orderly fields and farm buildings. They even had buildings arranged into two small towns. One was closer to the sea, and the other further up the river by at least twelve klicks.

A lot of the farms were clustered around the two main settlements in circular patterns and then around the main road and a smaller village in a third overlapping circle that almost joined them together.

They also noticed the three large towers. They were roughly in the middle of the two larger communities and the third between them near the road in the central circle and the village. They wondered what they were for.

The settlement ships were arranged in a circle off to one side of the inland settlement, almost like a fourth village, since they were on the opposite side of a river that was a good 25m wide at this point.

Across the river was a new-looking, wide wooden bridge that linked these two communities. The couple observed people moving between the three town centres and the pirate’s village.

“James, there is something odd about this setup. This planet is also different, as it has a lot more wildlife on it. Especially the large continent that the people are living on.”

“Yes, I noticed that too. They have well-established wild herds of cattle, lankys and camla. They also have domesticated animals that they have fenced. They look a lot like the animals that Lee had on Utopia.”

“I also agree about the towns. It looks like they were settled a long time ago. They have to have been there a lot longer than when we started coming through this system,” he replied.

“They have shields over those two towns,” Dusty told James excitedly when she realised what the patterns and towers meant and that they could see the towns despite the shields.

She then gasped, “Shit, I think that survivors from Keltria got here first.”

Turning to James, she explained her reasoning, “Lee said that a lot of the portals blew up or stopped working when their sun exploded. She also mentioned that they had slower settlement craft. They had cryo-chambers that accommodated about six hundred people. Those ships took a long time to get to a planet that had been seeded.”

“I believe that these two planets were terraformed by the Keltrians. This planet is way more advanced than Sheldon. However, I don’t get the impression that these people have been here for thousands of years. Maybe four or five hundred Earth years, but no more. The population is too small.”

“We might need to go down and find out just what is going on down there. I think the pirates have muscled onto an occupied planet. I wouldn’t be surprised if they were holding hostages to make the locals behave. No wonder they haven’t advertised their occupation or that the planet is here.”

James grimaced. “I agree. I think we need to do some reconnaissance. I don’t get any bad feeling about us going down, but then, as you know, I don’t always get pre-warning,” he reminded her.

She kissed him and hugged him from behind. “We aren’t normal people, sweetie. I think if we are careful, we will be fine. We can both blink a fair distance now.”

“With the satellites in place, the vambraces can use them to navigate for us, so blinking isn’t as daunting as it once was. How about we drop another satellite over the inland town?”

James replied as he surveyed the mountain range around the villages, “Hum, sounds like a plan. Let’s stock our packs. It will be two days or so before the Farestar is in the system. I suggest we come in low and sneak around this mountain.”

He pointed to the side of the mountain and had the computer zoom in. “There is a massive cavern in this side of the mountain. It almost looks like a ship hanger. With any luck, we can park the ship in there and then blink down to the village to snoop around.”

Dusty agreed, and they went to finish packing.