As starships went, Arott knew everyone considered it the ugliest thing ever launched, but he didn’t care. There was beauty in purpose that superseded mere elegance of lines. Surprisingly, one of the few people who agreed with him on the topic was Yan Bedrov, but the man might have a personal attachment, considering his background.
The Salvage Cruiser RAN Bulldog. Affectionately known by her crew, and now the rest of the fleet as well, as the Junkyard Chihuahua.
She had started life as a pirate stripper, one of those support vessels the corsair fleets of Corynthe used in lieu of proper base facilities. Although, when you were a pirate, having a base was usually a bad thing, since that meant the law could find you.
No, better to have a mobile repair yard handy. Surprise a freighter just about to go into jump or coming out. Capture it, replace the crew, and jump to safety. Go somewhere else, where the law couldn’t find you, and swing a stripper alongside to go to work. Haul away the valuables and then rip out every bit of useful gear you could, to repair your own beat-to-hell vessels.
Arott had dropped most of the squadron out on top of a pirate base at M’Cizo due to some excellent intelligence work. Well, perhaps base was a stretch. A veritable flea market of brigands getting together to swaps parts and lies, as well as plot treason against their nominal monarch, Jessica Keller.
Naughty men doing bad things, suddenly facing a Star Controller Task Force that outweighed them by a factor of seven. With surprise and position above them in the high orbitals. And anger.
Afterwards, Arott had impressed the Chihuahua into service, expanding his own patrol options by not having to rely on returning regularly to Petron, where his comings and goings could be noted and possibly predicted. David Rodriguez had formalized the transfer later, keeping most of the captured ships for his own expanding fleet as Corynthe slowly turned from an idea into a nation.
But Arott had kept the Junkyard Chihuahua. And Nils Kasum had agreed, at Jessica’s request. And then sent it with them to Fribourg.
She wasn’t long and lean, like most warships, being instead almost a coffin, barely twice as long as her beam, with underpowered engines on the ass end. Just enough to move her around. JumpSails that could get her from place to place moving like a freighter, and not a raider. Usually, she was the last vessel to join the squadron after fleet jumps. Among the most welcome, with an entire, dedicated crew of engineers and specialists, superb at handling almost any task a drydock could. She was even capable of constructing, from scratch, a vessel as big as a cutter, given time and materials.
What he and Jessica had planned for this campaign went against everything Aquitaine or Fribourg had ever attempted, which made it all the more likely they could catch Buran off-guard.
Right now, Arott watched from Jessica’s flag bridge as the Chihuahua maneuvered close to the quietest member of the Support Force: the Tug CT-9492.
Unlike Chihuahua’s boxy ugliness, the tug was a creature of elegance that always reminded Arott of a dragonfly. A long, skinny body that was mostly a tiny living and engineering space contained in the belly, with struts and superstructure which were mostly open to space providing the wings as a frame. Loaded, she was barely faster than Chihuahua getting anywhere, and she was full right now.
Two massive cargo pods had been transported under the wings, and were detached now for deployment. The larger of the two was a Bastion Pod, a self-contained combat vessel designed to provide a forward operating base for squadrons such as this, with base-level firepower and a dedicated support and repair team.
Originally, Arott had expected Jessica to bring two of them. Joined together, the structure was known as a Citadel, and provided something close to Starbase protection for the squadron. Fribourg would hesitate to take on a Citadel, but Buran could probably defeat one by dropping out of a jump right on top of it and subjecting it to hell before it could react, leaping away before the Citadel could bring much firepower to bear.
They had done as much to Fribourg’s fleet headquarters at St. Legier.
Lady Moirrey, Bedrov, and apparently zu Arlo of all people, had gone completely off the reservation with the new design. One Bastion, but they had brought along the engines and JumpSail generators from a planetary defense monitor, a ship the size of a cruiser with the firepower of a heavy dreadnaught.
Even with the engines, the Bastion would be slower than a monitor, going from place to place at speeds occasionally measured in glacial scales, but that wasn’t the point. This Bastion could move around. Slowly, to be sure, but Buran couldn’t just jump blind into a system to engage, already knowing the target coordinates. And, operating well out in the darkness between stars instead of close to a gravity well, the Bastion could leap into JumpSpace to avoid sudden predators.
The galaxy’s meanest armadillo.
Arott looked forward to taking command of her, once Chihuahua’s engineers rebuilt everything and let him turn this space into a pleasant, quiet corner of Aquitaine. Jessica and her people could become a raiding force, while he was the sheriff in town. And maybe the publican, too, once they got enough R&R facilities built out.
“What do you think?” a voice intruded into Arott’s daydreams.
Jessica.
Asking a question.
How lost was I? Can’t have that, they might accuse me of being human.
Arott laughed inside his head at the prospect and returned to the droll, strategic world of a galaxy-spanning military campaign.
“We’ve got space, if we cram things in everywhere and fill all your hallways with boxes,” he replied, turning unwillingly away from the projection to study the woman and her two Flag Centurions. Three, with his own Cheng Yin seated to one side. “Let’s send both Mendocino and Duncan now, and then we can empty Mendocino’s load into the Bastion’s stores and send Ihejirika out for a second run immediately.”
“I like it,” Jessica said, nodding to her staff to make it magically happen.
No more words were needed. Fingers immediately began to tap out commands and update schedules, the paperwork of war.
Arott turned back to the image just in time to catch the Bastion pod begin to unfold from transport configuration into combat mode, a caterpillar emerging from her chrysalis as a deadly butterfly, to face an angry galaxy.
Soon.