Chapter 3

For over a year we worked our asses off at Longreach. We carefully selected people to migrate to our new base. Besides the repair ship, Marn; we also had a mining/refinery ship! It was busy converting raw material into useful finished products for us.

The base on the planet which we named Alton, was located on the continent where Eric had spent so much time. The second base was named Caston. Both bases were recruiting people for various positions.

One thing we wanted was a trained army. Not trained to this worlds training, but to Eric's. He'd spent three months training a cadre to train a good basic response force. Specialized training would have to come later.

We had also modified my ship a bit. I now had a shield! Shields were just becoming a reality in my universe, and they weren't very good yet. They had a poor record of performance. True, they helped to some extent, but they collapsed quickly, and had not been much of a benefit, so far. Except now, I had a better shield! One that could take hit after hit, for some time, before it failed. With that, plus my newly updated gravity compensator's and my 5 torpedoes, add a newly installed 50 cm Ion cannon. These made me a very powerful non-military ship!

The Marn had also modified my torpedoes. A thin coating of a material was placed on each torpedo, which rendered them invisible to most of the sensors we had! Also, the warheads were exchanged (with the exception of my nuclear tipped torpedo) with matter/anti-matter warheads rated at 10 kg's! That represented a very big bang when it went off!

Finally, we had a new weapon in the form of a new crew member. She was 22 years old, and a member of the compound Eric had visited and helped restore. She had the rarest of abilities. She was a multiple psionist. She was telepathic and telekinetic. Her range seemed to be 'line of sight'. If she could see it, she could affect it. If she saw a person, she could connect with that person. Tests with her seeing someone via a video conference call showed her range to be limitless! Well, that was my thought, anyway.

Unfortunately, we still did not have everything needed to make jump coils for my ship. So I was still stuck with my 2 light years a day speed, which was not too bad, really. It was what I was used to.

"Alex? How long are we going to be at Halsy?" Jason asked me.

"We might be able buy some older ships from them, ferry them back to Longreach, and have the Marn redo 'em. So I am thinking, perhaps a week. Halsy is a very independent planet. With it's battle forts, mines, and 3 corvette squadrons; I don't think anything short of a fleet could take it, and there ain't a government that has a fleet to free up right now," I said musingly.

"I'm glad I didn't ask you what time it was, or you'd have given me the history of clocks!" Jason said with a chuckle.

"Well, you caught me thinking about other things. Afraid I included that in my answer. I'll try to be more direct in the future," I said with a bit of embarrassment.

When we came out of hyper, we were picked up almost at once by Halsy's approach control. Apparently something had happened that we didn't know about, because we were told to decelerate and come to a halt, well outside any normal planetary orbit.

We did as instructed, and two corvettes came out. Misty informed us that we were being scanned in the military and targeting ranges. I was a little uncertain, but our new crew member had taken a look at the man on the screen. She then informed us they were not going to do anything bad to us. They just wanted to check us for contraband and weapons. I blessed the day that Kalia joined my crew.

Well, Misty had passed several such tests in the past, with other customs agents. Marn had done a good job integrating the Ion cannon, making it non-detectable. I swear the captain of the Marn had probably done a bit of smuggling in the past!

Four very no-nonsense men came aboard and started going through the ship. This was going to take some time. I showed one customs officer my ship's papers. He also wanted to see my manifest. This was not a problem, as I was carrying no cargo. He went over my crew list as well.

"What is the purpose of your visit to Halsy?" he asked me.

"Make a couple interstellar calls. Buy supplies and equipment for expended items. Contact my broker, and see what my stocks are doing. Take it easy for a few days. It's been a long trip," I said, answering him as fully as possible, without giving away everything.

Three hours later they cleared my ship, and I was told to make my final approach to the orbital station. As the Misty approached, I could see the station docks were practically full.

The really large freighters were in orbit, as were the huge warships that were in port. Smaller ships like mine were given dock assignments. We were docked and entering the station proper, only an hour after customs released us.

I had called ahead and had gotten us rooms at the local Traveler's Rest. It was a close thing. Most of the rooms were already rented out. I was told we would have to double up in the rooms. Jason and I wound up sharing a room, as did Kalia and Trish Adams.

Trish promised to keep an eye on Kalia. She was very excited about being in a new place. Kalia had only known the people of the compound and those she had been instructed to interact with, for most of her life.

I opened an account at a local bank. They were able to access my accounts from Raintree. First thing I noticed was a few million more credits were in my account than when I had last looked into it! Many more millions!

I paid my crew, and got Kalia set up with an account of her own. I explained to her how to use it. It was not complicated, really. They issued her a card and she charged her purchases against the balance in her account. She was fascinated with the process, though.

I checked my Interstellar Message Center account, and discovered I had 137 messages. I started going through them. Since they were sent over interstellar distances, all were important and had to be read or heard.

It took me 4 hours to go through all my messages. I replied to a lot of them, too. The most important one I wanted to view, was from my stock broker in the TF. While a lot of information was forth coming, I was not surprised to see that a lot was censored.

My accounts in the TF were doing fine, but I was unable to affect any changes right now due to technical difficulties. When I asked the center manager about these 'difficulties', he said they had been going on for some two months now. All in all, I was glad I did not have 'all my eggs', in the TF.