Post Dieron 1.4
Imperator Pax
Talon Master
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Post Dieron 1.4
There was nothing for him to do while the navy men worked this was their trade. The stand down from the stations of making the jump and making sure they hadn't taken damage to internal systems or that the transition had caused them to potentially be in the way of anything.The Hegemony had never done much in terms of half measures, and especially when it came to infrastructure projects... and they had over centuries become extraordinary good about coopting natural features for their ridiculous mindboggling mega engineering and that applied in space as it did on planetary surfaces. In this case the small planetoid at the system oort cloud had been belted by pebble sized asteroids as it continued its slow rotation around Lockdale's primary star, and it kept rotating spinning fast enough to provide a near earth gravity.
That could have still been all natural.
... except for the computer pattern recognition demonstrating that the planetoid didn't have atmosphere so even after those couple of centuries you could still make out a hundred meter wide Cameron star showing where one wanted to be. It established they were in the right place, and that the nearest accessible building was not a port facility but an access section, that looked like a good place to start.
It was no surprise that the fusion reactor continued to provide power, but so they had kept their space gear on as a precaution, but the truly impressive shift was the way the Hegemony's DOME had opened up one of the planetoid's lava tubes, and rebuilding the structuring with ferrocrete emplacements to allow literal mile wide openings, and then also to construct a network of tunnels that were miles deep into the crust.
This was fairly typical of MegaStructure engineering of planetoids as used by the SLDF and Terran Hegemony's navy. The alternative of course had been the construction of wholly artificial satellites culminating in super massive shipyards like Titan, Mars, or at Luna.
Those shipyards... much like Stellar Trek's yards no longer existed. Or in the case of the shipyards in Sol, probably were so reduced in capacity they produced at most a handful of ships every eighteen months.
"Star Lord-class, and spheroid DropShip docked." Bahar observed from one side.
Gene nodded as the small crafts touched down. The JumpShip was berthed, which might have potentially indicated that it had been maneuvered in here for drive work... and then just left. The fact that there was a Confederate-class DropShip, it was too small to be a union, still docked on one collar was interesting, but they would send a party to investigate after they got into the control center.
Mega engineering or not the facility tapered as it moved further in with the emphasis on smaller craft DropShips and such. Lockdale wasn't intended to be a frontline facility. It wasn't intended to be a major center for system defense. If the material here had been left beyond it was probably because the whole facility had been forgotten about by the regular navy. "Lets fan out and find the main control." There should have been an access into the habitable decks and that would lead to central command and the nerve center for the facility.
The tram way worked, and as expected carried them over the internal dockyards capable of servicing millions of tons worth of hulls, and deeper still. He checked the displays, and looked at the two more large spheroid dropships tucked further back, and then nearer to the DropShip berthing main elevator the long aerodyne form of a Titan Aerospace carrier.
"Well they clearly didn't abandon the facility," He muttered mostly to himself, even though what he really meant was they hadn't stripped it for parts.
His radio crackled, "Commander, these are very large pressurized yard spaces." Pasha observed, no doubt receiving a feed to the JumpShip, "In any event I have a beacon response from the automated control, and the Cargo carriers are in flight. Auto pilot estimates put them at seven minutes for wherever they are supposed to be going."
There were no holographic guide paths lit. If that was still a working feature it must not have triggered because they weren't in registered shipping. It didn't matter. They couldn't take this place with them, and while he'd have them go through everything as long as this place was safe it was very likely they could just lock everything back up and come back later.
Pasha's signal couldn't make it any further into the facility as they took the lift deeper in. They would have to find some way to pipe communications into the internal relays in order to maintain contact and that would take time.
"We should get on that." He remarked, stopped to check the outside air temperature. There was atmosphere, as Pasha had observed from the small craft telemetry the yards were pressurized, which made some degree of sense, but would have been a nightmare to engineer given the size of the airlock.
Bahar agreed, but through a look backwards down the hall as they continued walking, "Do you believe that the JumpShip here is from Dr Abner's lost tribe?"
"That was a Confederate on the Hull." Not a union though it did resemble the larger dropship, "So its possible from what we know of the Tribe, alternatively given its in Terran Naval Colors its been here for two and a half centuries." Which was possible as well. "Given that Titan we passed, "I'd say yeah we probably are looking at left behind systems." The confederate could have had engine problems... or given its size just been left behind if they were having Jump Drive problems with the star lord.
Leaving the Titan though... well that was different.
"And the other two?"
"Those looked like Pentagon class DropShips." They had clearly been the same class of DropShips, but they had been recessed up into the 'ceiling' so to speak so it had been hard to get a truly good look given the machinery.
The radio crackled, "commander the main shaft is up ahead, but there is a communications lock out, it also looks like there is some kind of lock on medical."
"Team three do you have anything?"
"There are definitely drone fighters in the bays, commander, but they're securely shut down. As long we don't trip any security protocols they shouldn't pose a danger to the ship."
They had been worried about there just being free ranging drone fighters that might attack any approaches to the 'asteroid' or even just anything in system... but everything had been quiet coming in, even after signaling they were approaching the first landing zone, and then getting the door open.
--
MacIntyre scowled gruffly as the sassenach tried his patience. While he did not presume that the Church of St Cameron was all there they seemed at times close enough, that was not say he believed his ancestors had been saints, but there were advantages on the field to having Shepherd scything down the snakes.
... but there in lay the problem that while the real men worked there were still lowland dandies who believed they should benefit solely on account of their noble birth. The man had been stymied of late but that wasn't something he was used to.
That was too bad for him, MacIntyre knew that the elders intended a Highland rising against house Kurita with regiments bearing the arms and banners of old highland regiments. It was true that the Duke of Errai's mistrust of the Azami wasn't completely unreasonable given their long and stalwart support of House Kurita, but given all that was not going to win him over.
"I note Colonel Shepherd's absence has been taken note of." The Duchess of Victoria remarked, "I suppose that does leave you as the ranking officer of the unit, unless one wants to speak to a JumpShip captain." Which would have therefore been one of the Azami... but that in itself was an observation that the older captain had departed as well.
"I suppose it has ma'am. Can't be helped." He replied. Macintyre was aware of the highland eyes watching him as well now. "Is there anything ma'am?"
There was. Yvonne had scrutinized the research, the compilation of what the analysts of DMI2 had put together for her from the digitalized database from Dieron. They had established with relative certainty that the ace of House Kurita Shepherd had mentioned on Elidere was actually Urizen's granddaughter... which might have well been the problem. Born to Takiro Kurita and raised in the household of the cloistered coordinator after his abdication her possession of a 2R demonstrated no expense had been spared in preparing her for a military career.
She had questions, but the Colonel was absent.
Her participation in the Davion Succession Crisis had put her against the SLDF interference, which had in turn put her training to the test. That was the problem. MacAlister was conclusively the link between the combine authorities or faction that had passed information warning the SLDF that the Combine was leaking SLDF positions to Amaris's forces. That meant the sister to the then ruling coordinator had protested the policy. Apparently that had begun as soon as it had started, but it had ultimately culminated in the post Amaris-crisis commissionof ritual suicide in protest.
All of that had to have occurred after Shepherd had been put in the stasis tube within which he had slept away the centuries, and the intervening succession wars. There was no way to know what the Terran Hegemony had known but it was easy to see where some of their conclusions had been drawn from what the ISF recorded and left in the records in Dieron as historically importance. Even in the modern Combine the ISF was politically active so this institutional record likely was important to them for still yet other reasons.
What was not so far as they could tell from the Dieron archive was, whatever it was that the Azami knew that was so damning... and much as she loathed to just come out and ask they needed to weigh doing that... and physically asking was hard to do when he was off presumably doing some other favor for the Azami before they departed for the deep periphery.
Before she could ask for a time frame, "All I've been told ma'am is that its not expected to be long, that whatever it is it can't be more than a Jump away and that they're coming back in about a week, that's all that I know."
The prevailing theory was negotiations maybe attempting to sway someone ... there were any number of Arkab legion commanders, majors and colonels who might be looking to desert the combine now but were afraid recrimination if they showed up in Davion space. The Azami Liberation Front hadn't exactly shied from instances of piracy in the last century either. The Rasalhague rebels were yet another possibility as were yet other fragments of the Azami resistance.
It had by no means evaded Davion analysts that they had first come to Northwind, but the analysts were divided on that. The only combine world in range of Northwind but not Dieron was Deneb Algedi, which did fit criteria but it was also equally possible... if unlikely he could be jumping to a meeting in a Davion system. Errai would have been darkly amusing, but more likely given the jump to Northwind first he might well have been meeting Azami who had already jumped the border of the Federated Suns and jumped then to Episilon Indi, or Eridani or another world just over the border with house Liao.