Chapter 18 - The Advisor[]
FSS Kentares NR-001
Kentares- Class Corvette / Ram Ship
Sol Star System
Republic of the Sphere
3155
[On the Outer hull 14 days later...]
Anh reclined on the hull, just her suit between herself and the dark, silence of vacuum. The magnetic clamps of her boots holding her to the surface.
Looky, looky... using vision magnification, She could just make out the VAB's of a shipyard where everything official insisted one couldn't be. The positioning was pretty clever-the Io/Jupiter La Grange point.
She opened her travel pouch and snapped the ranging sight on her helmet's visor, and used it to increase magnification. Hello, the Republic's real fleet.
With a connector she linked it to her PADD, and brought up the visual file from the destruction of the Pol Nguyen station at Arluna.
"Got you, you sumbitch." muttered Anh.
Using comparator software, she pieced together the profiles of the ships idling in Io's shadow.
Three of the dozen or so vessels, matched the stealth ship that destroyed the Pol Nguyen station in the Arluna system. As well as killing a prospecting team in Arluna's outer belts, sinking a patrol cutter from Winter, and destroying two others.
We were a live-fire test because nobody would notice in the rest of the Inner Sphere if a bunch of plagies died mysteriously.
She indexed the images and stored them. Making note of the shipyard itself-a modern modular design with a capacity for twenty simultaneous ships. Spread into the shadow of a moon, only visible from certain angles and unlikely to be looked at.
The bigger warships orbiting also got their image profiled against Jupiter's storm-wracked face.
Those ain't Lolas. The profile was clearly based on the Lola III Class Destroyers but, the additional sensor clusters and added bulges for power-systems and coolant fins might as well have announced they were a more modern, advanced model.
Clever boys. Clever. as she watched, one of them maneuvered on cold thrusters and vanished with a pulse.
She got up after Io's position changed, blocking the view of the secret shipyard.
Anh put the image intensifiers back in her suit's ditty bag. She then stood up and walked to the airlock.
Now, do I share this with my hosts, or keep it to myself? she thought
The cycle on the airlock shifted red-to-green, and the outer hatch opened.
I'll decide later. She crawled in, the airlock closing behind her.
Space is big. Space is mind-bogglingly big. Space doesn't have an atmosphere to attenuate vision at thousands or even millions of kilometers distance. If it can reflect light. You're looking in the right direction, you can spot a beer-can in deep space with a pair of binoculars.
The optics for a range-glass are a bit better than that-the lenses are ground on the same sort of equipment that lets industrial companies produce naval grade lasers. The 4 cm adjustable optics can, if you're really determined, be mounted as the focus array for a communication laser.
Teally cheap technology, on the scale of any industrialized state in the Inner Sphere. Most surface-bound authorities won't think twice at the idea that you can't see that far-after all, even lasers have a limited effective range, and visible light can be swamped by reflection.
Stealth is possible if your marks don't know they should even be looking, it's even more possible if they don't know what vector to look in, thus why planetary early warning systems consistently miss dinosaur killer asteroids until they've passed.
Half of knowing where to look, is to know what to look for. Repeated recon missions against the Jade Falcons, along with antipiracy missions to prevent quarantine breaches. Plus, being there when new yards are built, listening to the workers talk, and having them speaking freely because they think you're too dense to understand them?
Anh guessed-and the guess panned out.
The Jovian system had everything needed. It had Ganymede, Io, a limited belt, and was easily observed and controlled by Terran bound authorities. Everything needed, including a gas giant putting out so much RF noise that any comms traffic would be drowned out by the rumbling of the gas-giant Jupiter.
Ganymede for water and life habs, Io for raw materials... Nobody looked twice at Jupiter when they came through-not with the famous Titan yards over Saturn and the Luna yards.
But Jupiter? That's where a Rockjack would put a secret naval base for developing new ships and training naval crew.
Do I tell my hosts? thought Anh
Anh waited for the inner lock to cycle, and came inside.
Once air press was normalized and she was in the envelope of the FSS Kentares she took her helmet off.
"Enjoyed your walk?" Francois asked. (first names now? why not?)
"Oui." she said, "Very relaxing."