Samuel un-clipped himself and made his way down to Spencer’s remains and managed to find the man’s ID tag as the rest of the marines policed up their gear. The squad leader turned away from the remains and looked across the hull, taking in the sight of the planet below and the floating debris of the battle suspended in the mild gravitational field of the frigate. It was only then that Samuel remembered he was wearing the vid-recorder, and it finally dawned on him what story Virginia was hoping to capture.
3. TANGO PLATOON
The cantina was thick with bodies as marines from nearly every platoon politely, but forcefully pushed and shoved their way into the modest room. It was always like this after a hostile salvage.
Samuel leaned back in his chair and sipped at the strong liquor in his glass. Tales of war and glory circulated in the customary fashion, and as had often been the case over the years, it was Tango Platoon that held the spotlight of the evening.
Samuel could overhear a marine from Lamda talking to two others from Epsilon about how Boss Marsters had used a suicide chute, of all things, to evacuate human assets recovered from the frigate.
“After they inflated the chute Marsters had his boys cut slits in it so that the assets could be dragged up through it on a cable,” said the Lamda marine, “Those folks didn’t have void suits, so it was the only way to get em out. I’d have never thought of something crazy like that. From what I heard they recovered twenty or so Helion engineers and tech ratings.”
Samuel took another sip of his drink and shifted his attention to a group of marines from several other platoons discussing the Tasca slave cartel.
It had been roughly ten hours since the last of the scrap wagons had returned from the debris storm, and the situation had deepened in its complexity. The initial salvage runs had been successful and each of the wagons that had been deployed returned with their cargo bays filled to the brim with valuable materials. Now that the high value targets had been seized from the battlefield, more measured and broad spectrum salvage operations had begun.
The Reapers had driven off the slavers, and by some miracle, no other scavengers had appeared to contest the claim. Usually there were at least a few small craft that attempted to swoop in and fill their bellies on salvage even as the Grotto forces loomed over the claim. These were desperate times, however, and no scavenger ship would dare cross the Ellisian Line unless they were either confident in their skills and equipment or desperate enough to risk everything.
The general consensus was that the presence of the slave cutter combined with the scrap wagons and Grotto fleet presented enough stiff competition that whatever carrion ships might be out there lurking, had chosen to either flee the scene or continue to hide and wait it out. It was unlikely that the Grotto fleet would leave anything behind them, that much Samuel knew. Once the fleet had taken what it wanted from the site, a security picket would be set until one or more of the Hive fleets that plodded along in the wake of the battle fleets happened along. While the Hive fleets could consume and process much more tonnage than the combat craft of the battle force, they were slow about doing so and it was likely that whatever Hive responded would spend weeks or even months picking through the debris storm. By then the battle fleet would be long gone and fighting over the next claim.
Battle Fleet Baen was spinning up to make its way deeper into Ellisian space, supposedly to press the already wounded Helion forces. The enemy may have retreated, but Command was intent on keeping the enemy on a defensive footing.
In the past it would have been protocol for the Reapers to stay behind and finish the salvage, especially considering the various competitors for the claim. However, more and more the Reapers were being used to support front line activities, and Samuel wasn’t the only one to have noticed just how close to the real action the marines were coming. If left with one or two battle craft as a security escort the marines and tech crew of the Baen Reaper tug would have been able to expertly salvage the site on their own.
The hive fleet, once it finally arrived, was best suited to the heavy scrap recovery and mass cargo storage. Somewhere up the chain of Command either a high rated bureaucratic or perhaps even one of the military actuaries had determined that the Bottom Line was best served by using the Reapers more as combat troops with salvage experience than it was to use them as salvage experts with combat experience.
The shift in their scope of duty was subtle, but Samuel suspected that the longer the war ground on, the more commonplace such missions as Tetra Prime would become. The more he brooded on the topic the more he wondered how long it would be before Reapers were being used as shock troops in ship-to-ship conflicts during the void battles, instead of snatching up the choice scrap once the fighting was done. Everything was getting out of hand, he thought to himself, and there was no end in sight.
“The vid footage from the frigate would be very useful to Command,” Samuel stated under his breath to Virginia Tillman just before taking a swallow of the amber liquid that flowed from his glass. “Maybe help them get a positive ID on the slavers, just in case they really were Tasca. If we have proof that the cartel is sending ships and operatives into Ellisian space then maybe they’ll consider re-tasking some of the bond enforcers to handle the issue. Keeping this to ourselves seems a bit criminal. If you aren’t going to share it why have me wear the rig in the first place?”
“You know as well as I do that bond skipping is at an all time high, like the worst in Grotto’s recorded history,” answered Virginia quietly from her seat next to him as she sipped from her own strong beverage.
“After Helion started using merc warships to blockade Grotto, everyone who lives outside of the central systems is damn near on their own.
What’s criminal is that poorly trained and more poorly paid cor sec staff are the only armed presence in non-central Grotto systems, which is half of Grotto space, dammit, everything else has been pulled back to the core or thrown across the Ellisian Line. People feel abandoned by the Board, but are still expected to do their part for the Bottom Line that they’ve been all but discarded by.” Virginia snorted and knocked back the rest of her drink.
“More profit in converting bond skippers to penal laborers than fighting slavers and re-purposing the recovered assets,” grumbled Samuel as his mood darkened. “Even with the ransom contracts they’d cash in on from the accredited corporate citizens, the cost of fighting the slavers would be just as high for the bond enforcers as it was for us. The Board won’t commit military forces to engage the blockade until Helion starts using their own assets, right now it’s just cheap pirate cutters and independent mercs working on privateer licenses.” He glanced over at her. “You still haven’t answered my question, why keep the vids to ourselves? It’s not against the rules to record our work, but it is a Beta class felony to keep it to yourself.”
“Alpha class felony if you distribute it,” whispered Virginia as she looked at Samuel out of the corner of her eye, as if attempting to gauge his reaction without showing obvious concern about it. “People know that slavers are out there in the void, especially in necrospace, but what they don’t know is just how sophisticated their operations can be. Maybe if people saw how elite some of these outfits can be, then less might skip their bonds.”
“That’s not all of it, Tillman,” said Samuel, an edge creeping into his voice, “We haven’t encountered hardcore slavers until now, and while I’m sure they’ve been out there in the black, it was just a confluence of events that put them here with us. This isn’t about slavery, this is about your unionist movement, don’t insult me by pretending it isn’t.”