Chapter 10

“Commander, Sean has a gentleman that he says needs to speak with you, when you can spare an hour or so for a complete briefing.” Alara announced during a break in JD’s taping of an interview with the journalists from the Home World conducting their tour of Thor Base and Martinson Enterprise’s expanding facilities in the asteroid belt.

The producer realized that she had taken too long already and asked, “May my crew and I return for a final interview in the next day or two. By then I will plan to screen our preliminary broadcast for you.”

“Sure, I’d like to see your take on our colony. I hope that you have spoken to our newest ally and supporter, Ambassador Zinc and even spoken with our Edran visitors.”

“We have sir. The Edran’s have subtitled their conversations so that our audience can understand their telepathic responses, but conversing with them on camera is a practice that is still in its infancy.”

With their filming for the day concluded, the cameraman loaded his equipment with the help of the producer and newswoman. When they had departed Sean brought his father and Chuck Miller into the office that JD was using while on Thor Base.

After introductions were made, Sean turned the meeting over to Chuck. The first few minutes were background of the methods, manpower, and scope of his investigation into the management practices and personnel of Titan Industries.

He explained the corporate greed that permeated the upper echelons of the firm. He even documented their rife use of slaves within the corporation. Like the convicted human relations manager that was buying the very individuals that he had laid off and enslaved, Titan Industries was doing it also. Under the leadership of Harold Jennings, its founder and corporate president, they had even taken the process a step farther.

Without mortgages or loans becoming due, Jennings fabricated gambling losses that occurred during corporate retreats at his totally owned casino. With doctored video and secretly recorded snippets of conversations, Jennings documented tremendous losses and citing the evidence his casino held, ordered the arrest of his very managers that he wished to enslave.

Once all their assets were liquidated, these managers found themselves standing on the auction block as one of their peers bid for their purchase. Their enslavement was a foregone conclusion.

Chuck found these individuals rather intent upon turning the tables on their boss. They made good corporate spies, unfortunately many lacked the ability to cover their tracks and were found murdered at some sleazy dive that flourished just outside the gates of their corporate compound far outside of town.

Harold Jennings probably thought that he and his organization were invulnerable.

For all intents and purposes, on Home World, that was true. But corporate greed was not Harold Jennings only ambition. He wanted to take over Home World and rule it for himself. To do so, he had collected blackmail files on a host of government and military leaders on Home World.

It was through these coerced participants that Jennings learned about Diamond Enterprise’s default and had concocted the failed take-over attempt of Diamond Asteroid. That spectacular failure had cost him dearly, both in resources and influence within Home World’s political structure. His opponents had taken advantage of those losses to temporarily stem his advancing ambitions.

Not for long however. Like the proverbial Phoenix, rising from the ashes of failure, Harold Jennings had recouped his organization and survived, leaner and a bit more aggressive than he had ever been before. All this was documented in Chuck Miller’s surveillance reports.

What precipitated his visit to Thor Base was Titan Industries development of an invasion fleet composed of several Home World naval vessels and scores of mercenary soldiers being assembled in secret at Titan Industries own Home World orbital shipyard.

Four retired ships of the line had been donated to Jennings at salvage cost. Plenty of ordnance was included and no effort was made to demilitarize these craft, other than on paper. With the down-sizing of their naval forces, many crewmen were released from service; allowing for their immediate hire by Titan Industries mercenary recruiters.

Thus, Harold Jennings had what he figured were sufficient forces to conduct a stealthy attack on Thor Base.

With John David Martinson killed, he could claim Thor Base and would then own Martinson Enterprise’s lucrative mining asteroid and the vast wealth that it represented. Not a bad plan, and it possibly could have succeeded, had it not been for Chuck Miller’s investigative sources within Titan Industries.

Being fore-warned, it was now time to become fore-armed. JD thanked Sean and asked Chuck what his aspirations were. “I want to know that I was responsible for Titan Industries total destruction.”

“Rest assured, that is my ideal, Chuck. What about afterward?” JD asked.

“To tell you the truth, I hadn’t planned that far yet. I have been so focused upon learning all about Harold Jennings that I lost sight of my own ambitions.” Chuck replied.

“I can’t possibly destroy it all. But without Jennings at its helm, I bet the rest of his organization will become rudderless. How about you be ready to take over whatever is left? You know whoever was left in charge and what blackmail was used to gain their cooperation.

Once you have wrestled control of the remnants, you can use their abilities or replace them with managers loyal to you. Sean will see to it that you have the funding that you need. All you have to do is gather a loyal group of managers that can step in and grow with your new responsibilities.”

“I doubt that it will be that easy.” Chuck replied.

“Any plan is in doubt immediately after first contact is made, but my guidance to you is to ensure that anyone you want to save is absent from Titan Industries Compound at the time that it is destroyed. I’ll try to give you two hours of notice. Plan on some way to contact your people and see that they vacate the premises my TOT.”

“TOT?” Chuck asked.

“Time on target. A military term usually associated with artillery engagements when indirect fires are coordinated to impact simultaneously.” JD explained.

“Well, I doubt Harold’s compound is susceptible to any artillery attack. It is far too big and has deep bunkers where he lives and controls Titan Industries.” Chuck discounted.

“Then I really have my work cut out for me, Chuck.”

With the meeting concluded, Sean left with Chuck to catch the return flight of Memphis Belle that had already been loaded with the latest shipment of precious metal bullion as its only cargo, besides Chuck, Sean and Tina. They would make their way to Home World and assist Chuck however they could.

Tina had a group of loyal followers that Sean had allowed to accompany her as well as a personal security detail of four Home World men that had been trained in protective service before their succumbing to slavery. Now they were assigned to Sean and Tina.

JDs first response was to convene a working group to determine a defence strategy. He figured that he needs Avenger along for support, so he had its commander, Louis McGee, paged to attend along with Alara and Naomi. Together they brainstormed a plan.

The first priority was to know where and when they were being attacked. For this Alara mentioned an array of passive early warning sensors mounted on far flung asteroids at the inner edge of the asteroid belt. Approaching craft would require activating their radars to scan for rocky asteroids in their path. Radar silence would slow their approach to a crawl. Hardly likely for any attack.

Alara would have the replicators begin manufacture of the sensors and solar power arrays to support them. Next JD pursued how these sensors could relay reports of approaching enemy without triggering an intercept of electromagnetic radiation.

All agreed that some sort of burst transmission using laser light beams would suffice. Alara agreed to include such transmitters and the necessary direction guidance packages on the sensor arrays being employed.

Next came the engagement phase. How could these targets be attacked while still being too far away to be a threat to Thor Base? Various ideas were batted around. Even with their being obsolete, these military craft certainly had sensors and weapons capable of defending themselves in any engagement.

Their defeat must also happen so quickly, that signals of reply to their active engagement were minimal. There was no sense in defeat them, if a follow-on force could be assembled in several months and Thor found itself in the same predicament later on. No, this engagement must be thorough and decisive.

Various strategies were discussed and thrown out, but the attendees all recognized that kinetic, terminally guided projectiles had the best prospect of defeating their enemy. A new class of longer-range propulsion missiles would be required with passive terminal guidance like the laser seekers Thor commonly deployed.

Alara agreed that the templates in her archives had such a stand-off missile already designed and it would take two days to manufacture a few salvos of such missiles. The laser target designators necessary for successful engagements could also be remotely sighted from the acquisition early warning asteroids.

Next their discussions moved to what to do with the destroyed spacecraft after the invasion fleet was neutralized. JD wanted to send the invading craft back to home world and target them on Titan Industries Compound. With a terminal velocity approaching 0.01C, say three thousand kilometres per second, any impact would be devastating and also happen so fast that any evacuation would unlikely.

Yes, Home World would realize that an object, or objects were approaching on a collision course with their planet, and perhaps could predict an impact site, but any likely response would be too little, and too late.

“Alara, can some shield generator be bolted onto the hull of these ships, something like our gas capture shield fitted to our atmospheric scoops used when Thor skirts the cloud tops of a gas giant to collect fuel?”

“Possibly, Commander, but it would not be capable of generating a complete shield for more than a few seconds.”

“Re-entry of those ships at 0.01C would be mean only an instantaneous shielding would be required.”

“We would have to rendezvous with the damaged vessels to affect some level of repairs and attach the atmospheric shielding mounts.” Alara replied.

“If launched at a range of six hundred light seconds, that is about 180 million kilometres, it would take over ten thousand seconds to TOT. Ten thousand seconds amounts to perhaps four hours of powered flight.

A more exact figure would require some detailed calculations. Undoubtedly, the Home World military would have picked up the approach and determined it would impact upon the planet. Depending upon their responsiveness, it is doubtful any successful engagement could be attempted, much less be successful.”

“To be totally successful, we would have to target both the Titan Industries Compound as well as its orbital shipyard. Of those two targets, the latter would be more problematic because we couldn’t plan on any cratering, spreading debris, or earthquake effects to add to our projectile damages.