Chapter 6

I had talked to the captain of the freighter, reminding her to have witness reports of the incident from herself and the bridge crew ready and making sure her report of the pirate incident that started in Denarrus was written.

The women were back on the freighter by the time security arrived. We had parted with hugs, kisses, and promises to keep in touch while they were in system. Even Mari gave me a hug, pulling my face into her chest and kissed the top of my head. When she let up a little, I rested my head on her breasts and noted how comfy it was. I noticed both Anna and Katherine were nodding.

A system security cutter docked on the opposite side of the freighter from me and we held interviews in a briefing room on their ship where they could record everything. I transferred my reports to them and went over them with the lead security officer. They also took custody of the former captain and placed him in the brig. They had a team of investigators combing through his quarters and gathering evidence.

Two more cutters docked on either side of the pirate vessel, poured in personnel in battle armor, and took the ship with no problems. Fifteen men were taken into custody. Two pirates had died in the engine room when I had blasted it and several others had sustained minor to moderate injuries as a result of my attack.

Once my interview was over I headed back to my ship to prep for departure. Sam had received confirmation from Privateer HQ that I would take up my previous position in the outer belt and continue my monitoring of this sector. My last report was still a couple of hours from being received, Amethyst4 being about five light hours from our current position.

With a slightly heavy heart on my part, Sam and I undocked and started back towards the outer belt.

Weeks later, I was studying a basic micro-circuitry repair text. I knew I'd never be an engineer, it really didn't interest me enough, but if I could do small repairs to my weapons and equipment, I could save a little money.

It had taken five days for the salvage tug to arrive and tow in the freighter and pirate ship to Amethyst4 station after my departure. An empty freighter arrived in system from Denarrus 2 weeks later and made its way in to transfer passengers and cargo. The freighter wanted a couple of days in Amethyst for the transfer and some downtime. Another couple of days and the new freighter left the system.

The girls and I had kept bouncing back messages back and forth on a daily basis while they waited. Things stopped as I figured they would the day the freighter left. The final message I got was from all three saying that they would keep in touch with me and see me as soon as they could. I'm a realist and figured that was the last I'd heard from them.

It was another couple of weeks out on patrol and I was coming up on finishing this deployment.

"Max, incoming message from HQ," Sam informed me.

I put the tablet down into the dock and let her transfer the message to my screen. I put in my decryption key, opened the message, and read it.

"What the hell?" was all I could say.

"What is it?"

I keyed in the sharing application so Sam could read it.

"What the hell?" was her response.

It was a set of orders that on our return to Amethyst4 station we were to report to HQ for reassignment. A replacement was already on the way. With a shake of my head I went to the bridge.

Sam was standing there with a questioning look on her face. I shrugged and told her I had no idea what was going on.

"You don't think this has something to do with what happened, do you?" she asked me.

"I don't know. I don't see how but it's possible I suppose. Of course this could be some kind of routine or emergency redeployment. We'll just have to wait and see," was all I could say.

It took us a little over two days at system speed to reach Amethyst Station. Amethyst4 was nearing the far side of the sun being about a third of the way around from our start point. Accelerating from a virtual dead stop to system speed ( .1 light) and then decelerating takes a while.

If we could have micro-jumped we could have been there in about 30 minutes but you can't jump in system since the gravity from all the celestial bodies screw things up. You need to jump into and out of areas that are almost totally devoid of gravity. But for some reason outside of solar systems there are points where a confluence of gravitational forces that make jumping between solar systems possible. That's where transit points are. Don't ask me, I'm not an astrophysicist. All I know is that it works.

We were docked at Amethyst Station and I was running the shutdown checklist while Sam was coordinating getting resupplied and some minor repairs. After my lists were done I asked Sam "You wanna stay or come with me?"

"I'll stay but grab an optical unit so I can see this, please. I need to stay and monitor the resupply. For some reason we're actually getting them in an hour."

"Huh. Will miracles never cease?"

"Nope. The repairs will take a day or two to get to. I'll also check on the salvage. Hopefully we can get that second processor installed while were here," she shot at my back as I made my way to the airlock.

"OK. Back in a bit."

I cycled through the airlock after I grabbed an optical unit, crossed the transit shaft, and stepped into Amethyst Station. The layout is a giant, multilayered disk nearly a two klicks in diameter. The top layer is devoted to maintenance, warehouses, and similar businesses and has the highest ceiling to accommodate smaller ships inside. The middle layer is for housing and offices. The bottom is for shops, bars, restaurants, entertainment, and the like. Both middle and bottom layers have about 75m of overhead space.

I made my way to the middle layer since the docks opened to the top and walked to Privateer HQ. The walkways were crowded with midshift changeover and I was glad I wasn't stationed here permanently. I can take the crowds for a day or two but any more than that I got claustrophobic and irritable. If I'd had to do this in the mornings when I wasn't fully awake there would be a trail of broken bodies in my wake. I'm really not a morning person.

The center was devoted to Empire representatives and military and was primo real estate since it was central to the layer. Privateer HQ was in a building that was towards an outer edge, what would be considered a less than desirable location. We didn't care since we kept to ourselves. At any one time there were only about 10 of us in system so we didn't need an overly accessible and publicly located office.

I wandered into the lobby and walked up to receptionist desk. A privateer on an off rotation was manning it and looking bored as hell, which for this guy was completely normal.

"Hey, Brian. What's up?" I said to the guy behind the desk who had feet up on the desk and his head back.

Brian was one of those individuals who wouldn't get excited if his ass was on fire. For him to get excited would mean that the end of the universe was upon us and his response to it would be "About fucking time something interesting happened."