This story is based on the Star Fleet Battles version of Star Trek - which means they took the original series, both live-action and animated, assumed the USS Enterprise was a heavy cruiser & took it from there to make up entire fleet structures, including light cruisers, destroyers, frigates, dreadnoughts, carriers of all sizes & so on, for each race in that series. They gave meticulous detail to each ship and system so you could do battles between them.

It's a great game if you have a few days to read the rules and a few hours to play each game.

It's a balanced game too, even though it may not seem that way here sometimes.

Each battle in the story is according to the SFB rules - given the forces specified and the choices made (which are all reasonable choices), the results are as dictated by the game rules, assuming any dice rolls gave average results.

Since the game was created before the Next Generation and other follow on series', it has no Cardassians, Ferengi, Borg etc.

Star Fleet Battles is all about ships and combat between them. For my ship, I wanted a Battlestation. It's a small base. And it, like other bases, comes with fighters, pseudo-fighters (which are bigger than fighters and more capable - think PT boats of space), "modules" (plug-in modules or pods, usually about half of these are cargo & half fighter bays, but can include troops, extra weapons, extra power, or hookups for pseudo-fighters), 1-2 police frigates and a destroyer to guard them.

SFBTJ

Trader Joe of the Neutral Zone

Captains Log, Stardate...

nah, fooey on that. I ain't in the military anymore and I'm fed up with all the bureaucratic nonsense there. I'm sure as anything not going to bother with it in this Log.

And I ain't gonna enter boring day-to-day details neither. Nobody wants to read entries like "Monday, I had breakfast & went to work as usual, worked on stuff all day which would sound trivial, stupid, or incomprehensible unless you worked in the same field, then went home & spent the evening relaxing with friends". That's garbage. Information content: null. I'm just gonna enter Events - stuff that happens that's worth noting. And since it's a very unlucky person that has many of those happening to him, I don't expect to put much here.

I've been lucky.

Let me catch you up to speed.

I'm Trader Joe of the Neutral Zone, the third of that name.

See, a bunch of years ago, my Grandpaw was a successful trader in the Federation (that's the United Federation of Planets to you nitpicky types, or "the feds" to those of us of a more casual persuasion).

Grandpaw had a good business he'd built up over the years. Now most of you will think that means a small fleet & sure, he had that. Not so small neither: he had 7 small freighters and 5 large freighters (really imaginative naming 'eh? Darn bureaucrats & their soulless approach to everything... But I digress). Anyway, the real core of a good business is not your equipment. Sure that's important, but the real core is harder to nail down. It includes your contacts, the routes & the agreements you've worked out, your business practices &, very importantly, your people - their loyalty, work ethic & training and...

Nevermind. This isn't a manual on how to make a successful business. My point is that Grandpaw had one. A very successful one. And he had a bad habit. Well, sorta bad. We always told him "the lottery is a tax on people who are bad at math", but he never listened. He said it gave him a thrill & as long as he was careful to just play a little ... (which is almost like saying "I'll be careful not to fall after I've stepped off the cliff" - most folks go overboard once they start gambling, but anyway...). But didn't he have the last laugh (after he got over the shock of actually winning - he never really expected to) when he won one of the biggest jackpots ever to that date.

Well, he got tons of advice on how to spend it - mostly bad, some really bad. He thought it over lots and eventually made a decision that most folks said was the worst he ever made.

But Grandpaw was 'crazy like a fox', as they say.

He sold his shipping company lock stock and barrel - though not the people of course - can't sell them, as slavery is illegal. They can make their own choices &, funny, once they learned what the options were, most of them chose to go to work for Grandpaw in his new business, since he'd always treated them right. See, some folks think they can get ahead by squeezing all they can out of folks. You have to be plumb ignorant to believe that, but many do. Just look and see how that has always worked out - poorly at best & usually disastrously. It's about as sensible as thinking that, since your liver grows back, you can stay alive by eating your own liver.

But anyway, I was getting to the new business Grandpaw started. See, he couldn't do another shipping company in the Federation, since part of the deal with selling his old one was not to compete with the buyers. That's standard - they want to have actually bought something, not to have you effectively take it away by starting a whole new one just like it & driving them out of business.

Anyway, he didn't want to restart the same business - those darn feds are so full of bureaucracy & so inflexible about it, he about had fits over it.

See, he lost shipments &, even whole ships, to pirates & he positively Hated that. He wanted to arm his ships to stop it, but the feds wouldn't let him - rules were too strict about what he could have & what he couldn't. The rules said he could only put one piddly little Phaser 3 on each ship. For you non-military types, I'll explain that. See, the best Phaser you can put on a ship (a mobile ship anyway, not a base) is a Phaser 1. That'll put the hurt on the enemy, but only out so far (it drops off fast after range 8, as we used to say. See, we could talk about tens of thousands of kilometers in range & megajoules of energy delivered as far as damage, but it was so much easier to simplify that, that it caught on. So most folks talk about range 1 & 2 etc, being the distances at which various weapons drop significantly in effectiveness, and about 10 or 20 'damage points' etc, instead of getting bogged down in scientific details that are, for the most part, completely academic anyway. The energy it takes to blow up a Phaser is one point & everything scales from there. Usually your bridge takes 2-3 points to blow up completely, unless you have a really small ship.).

But back to the point, a Phaser 2 is weaker than a Phaser 1, and is for ships that haven't got enough bracing to handle the shock of firing a Phaser 1 (or for those who want to save money). A Phaser 3 is weaker yet & pretty much only good for shooting down drones (that's missiles for you non-military types). It can hurt other stuff, sure, but it takes a lot of nibbling away with a Phaser 3 to get anywhere, by which time your average pirate has become annoyed with you & blown your ship to smithereens.

Really, there's no point in mounting just one Phaser 3.

And that bothered Grandpaw about like having ants in your undershorts would bother you.

He'd always wanted to protect his ships well enough that your common pirate was no threat to them - though that excludes Orion Pirates - that's a special group that arms their ships well enough to give naval vessels a serious run for their money. Thank goodness that most pirates are far below that level.

Anyway, Grandpaw had him some long-time crewmates who were real close. They knew each-other real well & were right friendly to the point of doing each-other major favors. They weren't all human neither. Grandpaw employed the best, no matter what race that was. So he had Kzinti Marines (them fellers are tough, and not too hard to get along with once you know the trick to it), and so on. Well he had a Romulan, a Vulcan and a Hydran on his own crew - them's the ones I was talking about as were friends & such.

So he made a deal. Several deals actually. His Hydran, who we affectionately called "Mister Unpronounceable" turned out to be a member of a shipbuilding guild, out to learn how ships are being used before taking a high position in the company from his parent-thing.

So from Mr Unpronounceable, Grandpaw got a deal to have a base built. Not just any base, but a full-on Battlestation with Hangar pods, fighters, pseudofighters and everything (see, pseudofighters is like fighters, only bigger - they're still speedy little bundles of weapons like fighters, 'cept it takes a small crew of a dozen or so crazy adrenaline-junkies to run 'em where a fighter takes just one.)

Now Battlestations are mostly built in big shipyards and towed to where they need to be, so Grandpaw got him a tug too & towed the thing clear across to the other side of the Federation, where he smelled a business opportunity.

See, that's where the Romulan came in. When he wasn't around we called him Sparky 'cause the sparks would fly if he thought you was insulting him. When he was there, we just called him Magnifico - he seemed to like that.

Anyway, Sparky had contacts in the Romulan empire such as could make the right deals with Grandpaw. So Grandpaw ended up with a trading station in the Neutral Zone between the Romulans and the Federation. And that station was armed well enough to laugh at any common pirates & the Orion Pirates too.

So the Neutral Zone is basically a space between empires where neither navy gets to go. But that don't make it useless. No sir, there are some small un-allied worlds there trying to stay beneath the notice of both empires. And those worlds need trade. They need it bad. Now not many traders are willing to risk a place like the neutral zone. See, the one thing pirates like best is a place that is guaranteed to be safe to them & what else is a spot where no navy will go? That's right - safe for pirates who don't like being hunted by navies. Plus, there was a Lot of demand for trade between the 2 empires (don't give me no guff about calling the feds an empire - 6 of one half a dozen of the other, says I), but the profit to be made wasn't worth the risk.

That's where Grandpaw came in. His Battlestation was more than tough enough to handle any pirates. It's Scout sensors could see clear thru the whole Neutral Zone in both directions (he was pretty much in the middle of its width), and His Phaser 4's (that's the base-mounted kind & they pack a mighty whallop), could reach out real far too. Also, he could send fighters or pseudo-fighters or his Tug (which was coincidentally pretty well armed - good old Grandpaw) out to stomp any pirates who were about to mess with his shipping.

And it was, in a way, HIS shipping. Sure he didn't have any of his own freighters (yet), but he had contracts with whole loads of independent shippers and a few large companies. Some dropped off at Grandpaw's base & picked up other loads in pre-arranged deals. Some came to use his base as a big market to buy and sell there. Some stopped in for repairs and upgrades to their ships. Some just planned their routes to pass close by, so they could get help if attacked - and they paid for that protection in advance, kinda like insurance.

And Grandpaw raked in the dough.

'least until he died.

And he died a happy man - he'd achieved his dream & ran it for 20 years. And he had great success.

Well, one of his dreams anyway.

The other was to have his own planet. See, he was a sneaky one - he filed him a mining claim on a rocky planet of the right size & composition. It was the right distance from its sun too. But it was cold and had no life on it, 'cause it had no water or air. Well, he took care of that. He had the tug go find comets of the right composition, and tow 'em so they'd smack into the planet.

See, most ships can tow other ships, but for really big stuff like comets and bases, you need a dedicated tug, which almost nobody builds 'cause regular ships fill most towing needs. About the only folks that build dedicated tugs are navies & navies arm everything they build & then have bureaucracy and rules for what they can do: "Maintaining Readiness" & such like. Basically it means nobody bothers towing comets around - regular folks can't & navies won't let themselves, anymore than they'd let you skydive for fun from their shuttles.

Sure, it's crude, & there's lots better ways to terraform a planet. But, given enough time, this will do it cheaply. His only cost was a little fuel for the tug, and the price of a couple cargoes of the right lichens and algaes, which he had his own shuttles spread over the planet.

He planned for the long term, did old Grandpaw. He figured he'd probably never see the terraforming done, but he wanted his descendants, at least, to have their own planet.

Then, just in case, he did the same to a second planet.

He has a weird sense of humor and a taste for really old stories, so he called 'em Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum.

The weather on a planet gets a bit rowdy after being hit with a few huge comets. Stays that way a while too - years and years. But it's great for spreading algae, lichen etc all over the place - just one high-altitude pass from a shuttle dropping those & they'll end up all over the planet. Now you may be thinking algae and lichen don't sound like your first choice of plants to have around. But they do great at modifying the atmosphere & turning rocks into dirt, After a couple decades of that it's ready for grass & maybe trees & such.

Anyway, there weren't 'done cooking' yet, as he used to like to say. Not like cooking was what they were really doing, but I think you get the idea. He always planned that we'd set up shop there when they were ready...

But anyway, when Grandpaw died, Paw took over as Trader Joe. Mostly, he had a nice quiet time of trading, and making loads of money doing so too. See the pirates had made their try and mostly given up back when Grandpaw first started.

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that.

See, when the Battlestation (he called it Oz for some strange reason) first got into place & they got the positional stabilizers set up (you can't fire Phaser 4's without those & it takes a couple hours to engage them), they were just getting settled in when the first pirate arrived. It was an Orion pirate too, in a Heavy Cruiser no less (they call it a Battle Raider, but it's basically a Heavy Cruiser). See, they'd been top dogs in the area & wanted to keep on being in charge. The pirates did what they liked, told everyone else what to do & what not to & extorted money from them all, under various excuses. They killed whoever got in the way & intimidated the rest. So in other words, they were effectively the local government. Sure, nobody voted for them, but that isn't how it's done in most governments neither is it? They figured that 'might made right' & that left them in charge. Maybe so, but by their own way of thinkin', that left Grandpaw in charge once he got there - if only guns have votes, then he won since he had the most & biggest guns.

Anyway, This Orion cruiser showed up & threatened Grandpaw. If you ever knew my Grandpaw you'd know better than to threaten him. He told them what he was going to do to them, but they thought he was bluffing. Seems like the pirates thought nobody could afford to both buy, and arm, a Battlestation. Seems kinda backwards, 'cause they afford exactly that, at least as far as getting and arming top of the line ships. They didn't know economics - the Battlestation actually cost less than Grandpaw's fleet of freighters had, all told, though outfitting it cost almost as much again...

Anyway, they made threats & demands until Grandpaw got tired of them, then he gave them a few seconds to shut up & leave, or get blown out of space. They were too fond of flapping their lips, and too convinced we were bluffing - that we couldn't really be armed that well, & so they died. Those Phaser 4's chewed them up & spat them out in no time. Even though the Orions are top notch as far as pirates go, and this was one of their biggest ships, they barely even scratched us - a mere 8 damage points to one of our shields (which take 45 each to beat down). Fixing that was a small matter of resetting some breakers & replacing a few capacitors.

Our tug went out & collected the wreckage which was what's left of them. We sold it for salvage.

For some reason he never explained, just before he opened fire on them, Grandpaw said to the pirates, in a funny voice "Now witness the firepower of this fully armed and operational Battlestation!" He laughed and laughed about that later. We never did understand his sense of humor.

You'd think they learned their lesson. But no, they'd had a good thing going for a long time & they didn't want anybody messing it up. So they tried again.

By this time business was picking up - freighter captains were getting the idea that it really was safe to trade here now & so a few were coming in & more daily.

Anyway, one of these freighters that came in turned out not to be a freighter, it was a Q-ship run by Orions. See, a Q-ship is a freighter that has had a lot of its cargo space removed & replaced with weapons & such like, but still looks like a freighter. They have about enough weapons to defend against most non-Orion pirates and even some naval frigates, if they get lucky. Their whole point is to look like a normal innocent freighter until they attack. Lots of pirates use 'em because nobody runs from a freighter.

Anyway, this Q-ship came on in to dock just like any freighter, but claimed their crew was so desperate for shore leave they couldn't wait for the ship itself to dock & so they hurried ahead in the shuttles. We're careful about that kind of thing now. But these 3 shuttles get close to the station with the Q-ship not far behind & suddenly they all launch drones (they call that kind of shuttle a scatter pack & it can only fire once but is pretty good at getting some hurt in on the enemy). Now this is bad, since, back in those days, we figured we could always see a fight coming in plenty of time due to those amazing scout sensors on the base, so we didn't keep our weapons warmed up. Phasers don't just fire with no warning like Disruptors or Fusion Beams do. Phasers take just a moment to warm up. It ain't much, but it was enough so we couldn't just shoot down those drones. Normally we have enough Phaser firepower to shoot down more drones than a small fleet could launch (except a Kzinti fleet - those boys are devoted to drones & actually pack enough to do some good. Most ships only have enough drone launchers to give the enemy's drone defenses something to do - waste of time if you ask me).

Anyway, here we are with 22 drones coming our way from point blank range. That's enough to beat down our shield to do serious damage to us - probably even cripple us.

But Grandpaw didn't employ any slackers. His crew didn't have to stop and wonder what to do - they knew what they had at their disposal without having to stare into space slack-jawed thinking about it. Those Scout sensors on the base can do a bunch of things, including jamming drones so they lose lock-on. They did that & took out 6.

Now every little bit helps, but were were still looking at major damage if we didn't have any other tricks to play.

But Grandpaw was ... well, Grandpaw. He always had another card up his sleeve, so to speak.

See, the Battlestations the Hydrans build comes with a Hellbore, which is a nice weapon, and a Fusion Beam, which is only nice sometimes. If you can get your enemy to range 2 or less, the Fusion beam can tear him up good. But most folks know that & so have plenty of motivation to stay further away, and usually no trouble doing so. Grandpaw had been in the military too, at one point & had a great interest in weapons. Anyway, instead of the Fusion Beam, he wanted something that'd give us a capability we didn't have. Now normally he was against using drones, since each one you fire costs money, and since you can rarely fire enough to get in a hit. Sure, 100% of them hit if the enemy does nothing about it, but there are so many things they can do to stop drones that, for the most part, only the Kzinti get any hits. Still, even though our big Phaser 4's can reach out two and a half times further than most weapons can, there is one thing that can reach further yet - a drone. And drones are always ready too. And they do pretty good damage. So Grandpaw had gotten one drone launcher & loaded it with a bunch of big double-sized drones. Some were set up for antiship work, since those double-sized ones pack a whallop - 24 points at once if it hits. And while getting hits is hard, it can be done if you sneak in a shot when the enemy is distracted. Anyway, the rest were multi-warhead jobs for taking down fighters, Pseudo-fighters, or, in this case, other drones.

So they fired a multi-warhead job & it took out 5 more incoming drones.

Then, since there wasn't time for any other countermeasures, they reinforced the shield as much as they could (basically you dump into it all the energy you can spare, at the right moment, to temporarily strengthen it) and braced for impact.

Well it's a good job their drones weren't double-size, or we'd have a bad time of it. Of course if they had been, there'd have been half as many, so maybe not.

But as it was, even with regular-size drones, we took enough damage to almost take down our shield - it only had 3 points left.

But just as we looked up from that & our Phasers came on-line, 4 of the incoming 'freighters' called us up and demanded surrender, while at the same time firing Disruptors and Phasers at us to prove they meant it. Luckily they faced a different shield than the one that was almost down - the station rotates & they hadn't taken that into account. From that far out, they didn't do enough to cause us immediate porblems.

Obviously, these were Orion Q-ships too. They'd figured they'd lose the ship close in (and they certainly did) but do enough damage from the surprise attack that we'd have to surrender.

Well we, that is, Grandpaw & his team, blasted them all to flinders. He let his Phaser-G's take out the Q-ship close in (I didn't mention those, did I? Well, it's a Phaser that fires 4 times as a Phaser 3 real quick-like. They're useless at any range, but absolutely shred things up close. They're real good at stopping drones too.) Anyway he about vaporized the one close in with Phaser-G (G for Gatling), and busted up the other 4 with Phaser 4's. Sure, they turned & tried to run when they saw we weren't crippled, but Q-ships don't move much faster than freighters & the Phasers had no trouble with them.

Also, we'd scrambled our fighters. They made it halfway to the Q-ships before there was nothing left to shoot.

Since then, Grandpaw got more serious about pilot training and readiness. While that costs money, it costs more to not have them when you need them, or to lose them to mistakes that could have been avoided. A fighter that is piloted poorly, is just a target.

So we have good pilots now.

But back to the story.

We salvaged those wrecks too, including one that wasn't wrecked up too bad. Then used the bits of the others, plus some new parts, to repair it and get it running again, good as new. See, the base has plenty of repair capacity and even some ability to build new ships, as long as they aren't too big. So Grandpaw repaired it and put it into service as a sort of self-escorting Large Freighter. It was Kzinti-built, so you'd have thought he'd name it something having to do with cats, right? Nah, he named it Sopwith Camel for some reason (he thought it was funny - we don't know why). It didn't have as much cargo space as a large freighter anymore, but it had enough weapons to give any pirate but an Orion plenty of reasons to go away and leave it alone.

What's more, it had 4 fighter bays on it (those are like shuttle bays but include stuff for rearming weapons & such). They had left their fighters behind to bring shuttles instead, so they could get more boarding parties (that's troops) aboard faster. One of those shuttles we could even repair, and did. It always helps to have spares.

See, there are three ways to board a ship - transporters, shuttles, or airlock-to-airlock docking. With transporters or shuttles, you get just a few boarding parties over at a time - few enough to be easily defeated before reinforcements can arrive. Also transporters require the shields to be down &, unless you shoot them down, they are always up when there is any threat at all, or even uncertainty. And shuttles cost money & can be shot down, even by a piddly little Phaser 3 & even by a captain that has no real hope but wants to stick a finger in your eye before he goes down. So for any serious boarding actions, you pull one ship up to the other, connect your airlock to theirs, lock it in, open both airlocks and rush across as many troops as you can. Though for that you have to get right up to them, and at least with transporters or shuttles you can board from a distance.

Warships don't generally get captured, since they can fight you off, or run away, or at least maneuver to avoid being docked with. But, as a rule, nobody fears a freighter & so they don't mind docking with it to take it over. It's the surest way. We benefit from that a lot.

Anyway, we have the best fighters there are, in my opinion. They're Hydran Stinger 2's mostly & carry Gatling Phasers and Fusion Beams. They can't do much beyond range 2, but they're fast and nimble enough they have no problem getting to range 2. And at range 1 or less, they will absolutely shred things. One volley from a Stinger 2 inside of range 1 averages 35 points of damage - enough to drop the front shield (the thickest one) of a heavy cruiser. And that's just from one Stinger-2. The captain that lets a few of them in close is a dead captain. Anyway, we loaded 4 of those into the Sopwith Camel & any hostile that gets in close (like, say, a pirate wanting to board her) is in for a world of hurt.

But the evidence that they wanted to board us concerned Grandpaw, since that was one of the few ways they had much chance of significantly bothering us. Now Grandpaw had always had big crews, since he liked people & had a penchant for offering jobs to folks who were down on their luck. Anyway, even though we had more trained boarding parties on our ships than standard, Grandpaw figured that more was better, just in case. So on each of our ships he built a couple barracks into some of their cargo spaces & recruited folks to fill them (mostly Kzinti and Gorns, who are good at fighting, but anybody skilled enough was welcome).

But he had only started that before the next event happened.

You'd think that most folks would give up after losing that much, right?

Nah. Not these guys. Not yet anyway. The Orions were apparently really bent out of shape about not being able to push us around.

Next thing we knew, one of the Large Freighters that docked to tranship cargo didn't really want to transship cargo. Nope, they wanted to take all our cargo and our base too. The moment they docked, they rushed in tons of troops to try to capture the base. They had way more troops than normal too. Once things settled, we learned that they were sorta a Q-Ship too. See, a small freighter is basically a cargo pod with engines, a bridge (that's ship controls if you didn't know), & some crew quarters. A large freighter is the same, but 2 cargo pods instead of one. These cargo pods are pretty standard & most tugs can attach one or two. But, navies being what they are, it wasn't long before admirals decided that fleet tugs needed to be able to help fight on occasion (or, better than they already could, at least). So they designed up some other kinds of pods, including battle pods which add a bunch of weapons power systems & some shields, carrier pods that have fighter bays and support for them, and troop transport pods. This freighter had been built to look like a regular freighter, kinda like a Q-ship. But it never had had cargo pods. Instead it had a troop transport pod and a battle pod. This makes it tougher than a Q-ship & just as sneaky. Well, their troops rushed in & if we hadn't had more trained troops than normal, we'd have lost the station. As it was, it was a near thing. Grandpaw got those barracks done in a hurry after that. That gave us a Lot more troops.

With a boarding action like this, one side or the other ends up with both ships. Grandpaw named the new ship Spad. We'll never understand his sense of humor.

Now Spad couldn't haul much cargo, but she could fly along with real freighters and keep them safe without looking like they were safe, so she made wonderful pirate bait. A few times pirates gave her the usual "surrender and prepare to be boarded" bit & she'd meekly comply, then board them back. We sold those formerly-pirate vessels.

For some reason, after that attack, folks kinda gave up on actually hurting our Battlestation, with ships anyway - more on that in a sec.

Now crewing the new vessels, Spad and Sopwith Camel, turned out not to be a problem at all.

One of those pirate vessels was hauling slaves to market when it decided it wanted to capture Spad (which was operating at the time with a skeleton crew, plus plenty of troops).

Once the dust from that had settled, Grandpaw offered jobs to any of the freed slaves that wanted jobs. Many accepted. Of those that didn't, some stayed in touch & ended up being useful contacts.

For new crews, Grandpaw always chose a core crew from existing crews, so he knew he could rely on them. Then he filled out the rest with new folks - in this case, with freed slaves in training. It worked out well. No surprise there - Grandpaw treated folks right. Even those without the talent to be ship crew got to keep a job of some sort - something they could do, even if it was just cargo-handler.

Of course, any that turned out not to be trustworthy got fired quick.

Grandpaw lucked out there - his pal and crewmate Salik (that's the Vulcan I mentioned) had trained himself to be able to detect lies & deception - he could feel it from a distance like one of his famous relatives could feel emotional pain. Turns out none of the major problems - theft, graft, murder etc, are possible without being able to lie about it (to yourself to work up to doing it, & to others to hide it). Such folks got sent away just for the intent to commit crimes. Those who actually committed any were punished for it.

We had a pretty peaceful community on our base, we did.

But those Orions are nothing if not determined. And Evil. And ... nevermind. They didn't give up. They just changed tactics.

Next they sent in agents to try to sabotage us internally. Some would arrive as traders, some looking for jobs and so on. The first one tried to blow up one of our reactors in hopes it'd take out the whole station. Luckily he wasn't very competent. Seems your suicidal types aren't motivated to learn proper engineering. Not this one at least. Anyway, he took out himself and damaged the plant. After that, we got careful about checking over everybody on station. Salik was good at that. No more folks with bad intentions got aboard.

But we weren't quite done with agents yet. The Orions really wanted to tear us apart internally. So they found a guy who was upset at not being promoted (even though his skills didn't justify promotion) and they bribed him. He started spreading divisive rumors. We stopped that soon enough. Just walk everybody past Salik - he points to some to talk to more extensively & Salik and the guys who operate our electronic lie detectors have a chat with them (See, Salik won't be around forever, so we have our guys hone their skills on the lie detectors by having them do their best & then having Salik confirm or contest the accuracy. Our guys are getting pretty good).

Those Orions gave up after a while & stopped trying. Or seemed to. We stay on our guard just in case.

Well, anyway, that catches us up to where Paw took over, as I mentioned.

Things went pretty smoothly then too, though Paw had some quirks. See, once, early on, he'd had a bad experience - the ship he was serving on (with somebody else's shipping company so he could broaden his experience), had engine failure & didn't have the parts to fix it. They should have, but they didn't. So, they coasted along for weeks, tinkering with it, before somebody found them & towed them to port.

After that Paw was kinda fixated on always having plenty of spare parts around, of all types, for everything. And we had the money to buy 'em.

Some of the parts he bought were not spare at all. Our Hydran-built tug, (Grandpaw had named it Stumpy) had not had a pod, though it had room for one. So Paw bought one & had it delivered. It was a CV pod (they call 'em pallets, but I say they're pods of a slightly different shape, but still pods), which means it can operate as a medium carrier (an entire squadron of 12 fighters in the pod). Now, being Hydran built, it could already carry a couple fighters - the Hydrans are like that. They wouldn't build a grocery store unless it could launch a couple fighters. Well, ok, not exactly that bad, but you get the idea. Anyway, Paw liked how that worked & so bought a selection of other pods from the Hydrans too. It's easy to swap them around & not hard to store the ones you aren't currently using.

Paw was a tinkerer too. He liked to see what would work with what.

While he was swapping pods on the tug, the pods (modules technically, but again, basically pods of a slightly different shape) on the Battlestation caught his eye.

He saw that the Hangar modules and cargo modules on the base looked like they could, with a little adaptation, be swapped out for the Hydran-built pallets, which had more useful systems inside. Now, our base could build whole ships (if small ones), and repair just about anything, given parts, so doing those modifications turned out to be pretty simple.

So when Paw got done, the base could operate three times as many fighters as before, in 3 CV pods (one squadron of 12 in each pod), and had more of certain other systems too, including another flotilla and a half of Pseudo-Fighters (A PF flotilla is 6), once Paw added docking clamps for those (called Mech links) to all available spots. Another benefit was that Hydrans, liking fighters as they do, had come up with a better system to launch a bunch of them at once. Most folks have to open the shuttle bay doors & send out fighters or shuttles one at a time. Hydrans include launch tubes in their fighter bays, so you can launch lots of fighters all at once. That can come in real handy.

Paw didn't exactly buy more fighters. See, Grandpaw had negotiated a contract where we could 'license build' all the Hydran fighters and pseudo-fighters we use. We only had to buy the weapons systems from the Hydrans (they hold that technology pretty close - nobody gets to know how to build them, though they sell finished copies to some they think they can trust, like the Feds, Lyran Democratic Republic, and us). So we built us the extra fighters we needed. Fighters aren't cheap, but business was booming, and it's better to be prepared than to be dead. While the Orion pirates had decided that taking us out wasn't worth the cost, there are always other threats. Many small ship captains in the Neutral Zone (and other places when they could get away with it) would add a couple weapons to their freighters and do a little piracy when opportunity presented itself.

One of the most interesting things that happened while Paw ran Oz (that's our base, remember) was that he stumbled across a slaving ring. See, criminals are often pretty stupid. They often think that they're better or sneakier than anyone else & so nobody can see thru them & I guess you get kinda blinded by that kind of thinking. Whatever. Anyway, some of these fools tried to use our base as a slave transshipment point. They knew that we didn't allow that kind of thing, but, of course, they figured they were sneaky enough to get away with it. They were wrong. So Paw found out, from them, all about their operation. They didn't want to tell, but some of our Kzinti and Gorn troops found ways to motivate them. We didn't ask how.

So it was like this - pirates do what they do - raid & pillage & capture ships where they can. And being the sorts they are, they mostly don't like to let any source of profit slip away. So any crews from ships they took, any folks they could capture in raids, and so on, they usually sold as slaves. This outfit that we'd stumbled on to, bought them cheap from pirates & then re-sold them to buyers - often in the Romulan and Klingon empires where it isn't even illegal. That simplified things for them.

To save themselves some money, they were looking for a new place to transship from.

See, Pirates ain't very trusting types in any case, and especially not when they're of 2 different races that have hated each-other for a long time. So the ones raiding in Romulan space and taking slaves there had set up one depot on an out-of the way asteroid in the neutral zone & the ones raiding in Human space had set up a separate one just like it, towards the other edge of the Neutral Zone. That way they didn't have to deal with each other & risk fighting among themselves. Then those who only dealt in trading slaves (they turned out to be Klingons) would stop by each base in turn to collect slaves & go sell them. But maintaining 2 bases cut into their profit margins more than they'd like, so they figured maybe it'd be cheaper to bribe us & use our base while we looked the other way. That way they wouldn't have to maintain any bases.

Well, as it turned out, they aren't paying to maintain any bases anymore.

We went all-in on this one. Stumpy got sent to one of their asteroid bases & both Spad and Sopwith Camel went to the other, all carrying as many of those lovely Hydran Fighters as they could.

Pirates is stupid. They didn't even have any base defenses - wanted to save that expense too. They figured on "security through obscurity" - nobody went to those out-of-the-way spots in the Neutral Zone & even if they did, how would they find one asteroid among many. They'd need Scout sensors and plenty of time & had no reason to look. But we had the coordinates & waltzed right up to 'em. I think our Kzinti boarding parties enjoyed taking down the slavers we found there. Those Kzintis have a different way of thinking on lots of things, but they'd been around us long enough to hate slavers.

Anyway, we took both bases, but didn't ship any slaves away to freedom yet. We didn't have the space for it just then. Rather, Stumpy and Sopwith Camel hid, one at each base, while Spad flew from one to the other and back again. The idea was to catch any pirates arriving at either or in transit in-between.

Did I mention Pirates is stupid? The ship we caught traveling in-between didn't even wonder why there was a freighter on their same route - they just gave the usual "heave-to and prepare to be boarded" speech. Well, Spad did, but it was the pirates who were boarded. We captured the ship & freed the slaves. The ship was just a Large Freighter with a couple extra Disruptors poorly mounted on it. I mean really poorly. It probably never fired them together, or it wouldn't have survived long enough for us to capture it.

Anyway, It had extra capacity, so we used it to ship the freed slaves to where they wanted to go.

Those who had no place to go (and who wanted to live as quiet farmers anyway), we sent to either Solos or Refuge. Those are the 2 minor planets closest to us in the Neutral Zone. We trade with them a lot. Both were colonized by folks running away from it all. They're mostly farms & some villages. Solos is Romulan and Refuge is Human. There had been a third planet, Qellar, in the Neutral Zone near here, with both Human and Romulan colonists on it. They didn't start out well & never got over it. It seems that old hatreds and rivalries die hard. They fought. And that gave them more reason to fight. Did you know that Plasma Torpedoes do more damage than old-fashioned Nuclear Missiles? Yup. Qellar's villages are smoking holes now. Nobody lives there anymore.

Anyway, after dropping folks off there, The newly captured ship (Paw said such a sorry vessel didn't deserve a name yet), headed thru Federation space (dropping off the rest of the former slaves along the way) to Hydran space, where she could get fixed up and get a proper conversion to being a Q-ship. We were discovering that we liked having self-escorting ships around for more trading and special jobs as needed.

We sent it off to be rebuilt by Hydrans for 2 reasons - mainly 'cause we don't have the blueprints & they do. That's reason enough, of course. But also our secondary business is booming. We repair, upgrade, and even maintain ships for folks & that's keeping our repair bays full.

So that one got converted and we bought another they had one hand while we were at it. They actually had a couple other secondhand ones they had acquired one way or another, which they didn't want so were selling cheap. We bought a Kzinti-built one, since those compete with Hydran built ones for the best type of Q-ship (the Kzinti Q-ships have more fighters).

See, Hydran Q-ships are possibly the meanest around. That's 'cause they look normal until they choose not to, like all Q-ships, so someone intent on boarding gets to close range. Very close range. Hydran weapons do best at close range. Most folks know that & so make sure to fight Hydran Navy ships at a distance, where they're really weak. But they don't know to stay away from a Q ship until it's too late. The Large Hydran Q-ship has 4 Fusion Beams, 2 Gatling Phasers & a pair of fighters. On an average volley inside range 1, not counting the fighters, that's 71 damage points - enough to bust through a Heavy Cruiser's front shield and seriously mess it up such that a 2nd volley would probably kill it (and that's without overloading the Fusion beams, which only costs a little energy and some wear-and-tear, so who wouldn't?). That's in a whole different class than most Q-ships, which are armed about as well as Frigates & would just get laughed at by Heavy Cruisers.

But I almost forgot about Stumpy. Remember it was back at the slaver asteroid base (like Sopwith Camel at the other asteroid, though nothing happened there). Well Stumpy wasn't there long before a slaver came to pick up slaves. Now Stumpy is a good ship, But this was a full-on Orion Slaver & outgunned us, not counting our fighters. And those Orions are careful about procedures & so on - that's how they do so well compared to other pirates. So they issued a call sign & nobody knew a countersign. They didn't wait around for one hardly at all neither - they took off running real quick. But they were close enough we could still singe their tails real good before the fighters caught up to them and blew them away. Poor Stumpy took some damage, and a couple fighters got crippled (I did mention Orions are good, didn't I), but it was nothing we couldn't repair and more importantly we didn't lose any people.

We scrapped the 2 slaver bases. They were little more than buildings with life-support, and nobody wanted to use those buildings except as raw material.

Then we blew up the asteroids they had been on.

When the new Q-ships came back from the Hydrans, Paw named the Kzinti-built one Albatross and the Hydran one Fokker. Seems Grandpaw had let him in on the joke, whatever it was.

Paw had ordered Fokker with one change - normally they come with one shuttle added over what the basic Freighter has. Paw had them change that just a little into a fighter bay. Fighter bays are basically the same as shuttle bays but for ready racks for weapons & a deck crew to load those.

See, Freighters and Q-ships are slow, but having even one fighter (which are fast in case you hadn't guessed) helps with that a lot. And the more fighters the better.

While he was tinkering with things, Paw also made some other weapons changes. Remember how I was saying that drones are only good if you fire enough to swamp the enemy defenses? I'm not the only one who noticed that. Paw had been thinking about it too. So he made some changes to the Battlestation too. See, he was thinking that Battlestations can't go to where the fighting is, like ships can, so longer weapon ranges would be nice. Now nothing reaches out further than Phaser 4's. Nothing but drones that is. And we had all these Phaser 3's we didn't need, since our Gatling Phasers covered that need. So he swapped out all the Phaser 3's for Drone Launchers, and while he was at it he swapped the Hellbore out too, for 2 more Phaser 4's. Normally you couldn't do that, what with bracing requirements and so on, But he pointed out that in swapping out the Fusion Beam (which needs good bracing just like a Hellbore or a Phaser 4) for a drone (which doesn't need nearly as much), it all worked out even. We even saved power for other things.

And another thing the whole slaver business brought to his attention was that Spad and Sopwith Camel could be better armed. See, in reviewing the fight Stumpy had, we realized it could have gone poorly for either of the other 2. So Paw swapped some weapons on them too (he was a tinkerer - he felt confident swapping weapons around, but more complicated stuff he left to professionals). So for Sopwith Camel he swapped out the Phaser 3's and Anti-drone system for Drone launchers. That made 6 launchers - enough to get through defenses, depending on whose defenses. And it gave great range too.

While he was at it, he did the same for Albatross too.

Then for Spad he swapped out 4 Phaser 3's and an anti-drone for 3 drone launchers and 2 Gatling Phasers. And he turned the shuttle bay into a fighter bay.

It took some cycles of tinker, test, fix, repeat, before it all worked as it should, but in the end both ships were much more capable.

Now Paw wasn't a fan of having ships be idle. An idle ship is a big hole you throw money into. It costs for maintenance, fuel, salaries & so on. So he made sure all of our ships were as busy as he could make 'em.

Like I said before, the whole neutral zone is a haven for pirates, since navies don't go there. Well, we treated it like a road - traveling up & down its length for a good ways either direction taking advantage of all kinds of trade opportunities (and whacking more than a few pirates while were at it). Our Q-ships (that's Sopwith Camel, Albatross, and Fokker), drove along it by themselves delivering cargoes wherever needed and putting some fear into pirates, who never could tell whether they were looking at a simple freighter or a Q-ship.

Spad could carry very little cargo, but could go places where almost anything would fear to go - all those drones could turn targets inside-out fast. So she went to dangerous spots, and also flew with convoys sometimes so they'd have an armed escort that didn't look like an escort.

See, both empires, the Feds and the Romulans, have a string of Battlestations along the whole border, just in range to see each other. There was a lot of trade opportunity there, flying from one side's base to the other, treating them as trading posts, which those governments allow (almost nobody went further into Romulan space than that - that was chancy at best), but few were willing to cross the neutral zone to do it. Too many got pirated in the attempt.

Until we came along that is. The whole area around our base was safe for traders to fly through. And Spad and Stumpy took convoys across in other areas. We even expanded the safe zone by sending out regular patrols of pseudo-fighter flotillas (that'd be 5 normal pseudo-fighters and one scout version, so they could see targets before being seen).

The fighters at base don't patrol much, not having much range. They rotate through being at the base or on the ships. On the ships, they get more experience and get the lions share of any fighting. The base often keeps a couple flying nearby to discourage anybody from trying anything.

So all the ships were busy and making good incomes, including some additional income from taking down the occasional pirate. We sold those - the wrecks if we had to fight, or the whole ships if they boarded.

In fact we made such good money at that, that Paw went and bought 4 more Hydran Q-ships.

Paw didn't like to dig into savings - said there was no protection against disasters and emergencies better than a fat bank account (though we didn't actually keep a bank account - he said money that's money only because the government said so is a bad bet - governments come & go and change their minds when they feel like it. No, our 'bank account' was a stockpile of inherently valuable trading commodities kept safe - at our base). But he had certain spending levels he'd go to and for these, he was willing to spend.

The Q-Ships made us a ton of money. They wouldn't have if we traded in safe zones - regular freighters carry more cargo. So for the same fuel, salary & maintenance expenses, you make more. But for dangerous areas, like we were in, there was nothing better.

The 4 new ships he named Nieuport, Sopwith Pup, Bleriot, and Kondor, still following along Grandpaw's naming scheme.

They went right into service along with the rest.

Now, Grandpaw never considered getting permits in the Federation to operate Q-ships. Said it was too expensive and he should not need a permit. But we're doing well enough we went ahead and got permits. That lets us take cargoes all the way to Federation endpoints, which pays more than dropping them off partway, for others to pick up and take on.

Well we tried Spad at carrying paying passengers, since she has a good bit of capacity there. Sure, it paid nicely, but it was hard on the crews. See, folks in general have a positive genius for making trouble. Passengers can come up with endless ways to delay you, make demands for special considerations of all types, treat your crew like servants (bad servants at that – constantly implying that things were not up to their standards, as if our guys were waiters that had just brought them cold soup with insects floating in it). Not that our standards were bad – we run tight ships. But that many folks have this bad habit of wanting to feel like kings & thinking they can achieve that by treating others as servants – as if the more demands they can make, the more special they are. Well, we figured the money wasn't worth it – we value our crews' well-being, including keeping their frustration levels low (or at least no higher than necessary). So we only run passengers around occasionally & mostly use Spad like a warship or heavily-armed carrier of special cargoes.

Anyway, things were booming, so Paw went back to some tinkering. See, it bothered him that our pseudo-fighters were helpless at long range.

So he looked long & hard over Grandpaw's weapons catalogs & decided on a combination: He swapped out both Phaser 2's for Gatling Phasers, which have only slightly less range than Phaser 2's but a lot more damage output potential. And then he went a little weird and swapped both Fusion beams for Plasma Torpedo Launchers Type F - the full kind that ships and other PF's carry, not the combination stasis box & launcher that fighters use (fighters with those can't reload themselves, but just fire the one Torpedo they have stored).

Neither weapon took more power to run, overall, than what he swapped out, and the ships already had enough structural bracing to stand firing them. But overall, their firepower went up significantly at all ranges.

Now, Plasma F's are actually one of the better long range weapons.

But better than being longer ranged is this: Plasma Torpedoes give folks something to shoot at other than us: If they're using their Phasers shooting at incoming Plasma Torpedoes, then they aren't using those same Phasers on us.

See Plasma Torpedoes can be weakened by Phaser fire - the containment field fluctuates & lets out some Plasma which spreads out harmlessly & weakens the warhead. If you shoot it enough, you can dissipate the whole thing down to nothing, but that takes a lot of shooting. Still, most folks would rather shoot an incoming Torpedo they know will kill them, rather than fighters they may be able to negotiate with.

And Paw said the unusual weapon combination would keep the enemy guessing - generally if they see a Hydran PF, they know what to expect, but not with ours.

He did that to all our pseudo-fighters, except the 3 scouts. See, the scouts already swap out the 2 Fusion Beams for 2 Scout Sensors, and, for some reason, another transporter. Paw couldn't see any reason to have another transporter, but could see a lot of use in a tractor beam, so he swapped them. Sure, a teeny little pseudo-fighter wouldn't do very well towing big ships. But they could tow other pseudo-fighters or fighters damaged in combat. Or they could tow useful small bits of wreckage that otherwise might float away after a battle. At very minimum that's some refined metal for free & that saves the effort & cost of mining & refining it. Anyway, he did the same Phaser 2 for Gatling swap for the Scout PF's. But he said they had no use for 2 special Scout sensors - that anything they could do with 2, they could do with one. So he swapped the 2nd one back to a heavy weapon - A Plasma F again.

Now this weapons mix isn't perfect - while PF's are speedy, other ships can go just as fast, if you give them time to get up to speed. And Paw worried that an opponent we're chasing could get to medium or long range, hold that range & take out or PF's without us being able to respond, since Plasma Torpedoes lose strength with distance traveled. So, in a stern chase where you can't catch up, Torps aren't the best way to go. Still, they fit our needs better than anything else & we can answer their weaknesses with doctrine - just make it a policy that, unless you can catch 'em quick, don't do stern chases (if they're chasing us it's a different matter - then the Plasmas do fine).

Paw, wanted to upgrade the tug, but that was beyond him, so he sent it of to the Hydrans, where they had a standard upgrade they could do to it (2 actually), including engine upgrades & all sorts of systems. See, they normally did one upgrade for the tug & a different one for the Ranger cruiser which is built on the same hull. Paw paid for both, since that'd get the Phaser 2's swapped out for Phaser 1's. There's just no reason to use Phaser 2 if you can have a Phaser 1, which is superior across the board.

Well, things went along great for a few years, though pirate ships were getting kinda scarce near us. Then Paw saw one more business opportunity. There were mining operations coming & going here & there & they needed protected shipping too.

So Paw got with the Hydrans & got them to rebuild 2 Large Ore Haulers as Q-ships. See, a Large Ore Hauler is just like a Large Freighter, only twice the size. So they just did what they did with a Large Q-ship, only twice as much. Except Paw saw no need for 8 fusion beams. Instead he had them put 4 Fusion and 4 Plasma Torpedoes Type F (the full launchers again, only fighters use the stasis-box stored Torpedoes for those, though the full launchers also have a stasis box). He wanted to give it Disruptors, to give it some long-range ability, but these freighters just don't have the energy to run those and the Fusion beams at the same time. See, Plasma F's, as they're called, can charge up a Torpedo, then store it in a stasis box ready to launch whenever. So the ships can launch stored Torpedoes and also fire Fusion Beams at the same time. Then they need a while to charge up more Torpedoes.

Anyway, these he named Handley Page, and Zeppelin. To be honest, they didn't do as well as he'd hoped. While they keep busy, there just isn't as much money in shipping bulk raw materials, even from dangerous zones. Still, there is always work for them and Paw says it's good to 'diversify our income streams'.

Lastly, Paw finally figured out how to improve our freighters some. See, all our Q-ships are based on Large Freighters (the small ones just don't fight well enough to bother with). And Large Freighters come with a couple sub-par weapons: a Phaser 2 and a Phaser 3. Now for some reason those get replaced with Transporters when the ship gets turned into a Q-ship. But the bracing is still there for weapons. After much tinkering, Paw managed to swap out both extra transporters (leaving only the original one the ship started with) for one Shuttle bay and one Plasma Torpedo Type F to give it a little long-range capacity, and give the enemy something to shoot at besides our ship.

He also fit in a Scout Sensor in Aux Con (that's Auxiliary Control - see freighters already have a bridge and an emergency bridge from which you can control the ship. Aux Con is another copy of the same thing - he figured we could cut into that redundancy a bit: better to see threats coming and avoid them than to be able to take a little more damage before losing control).

And he swapped out the Lab for a tractor beam - who needs laboratories on a freighter – what were they thinking? (nevermind that, it was rhetorical, see navy ships need Labs to help them deal with strange phenomenon and new life forms they may encounter, which is probably why the ship designers included it in a freighter - they were used to including it. But if a freighter encounters that, he's doing something wrong & needs to just leave rather than trying to figure it out.)

But you can always use a tractor beam for small bits of salvage or asteroids you pass (small ones, or shoot off a chunk of a larger one), if nothing else. We'll do laboratory stuff at the base, plus the freighters can use Probe drones (a small lab in a missile that can get close to any target) if they absolutely need to. They carry enough drones in cargo space anyway, to load up in shuttles as scatter packs if there's need, so he just added a couple probe drones to the mix. And while he was at it he swapped all probe launchers on all ships for drone launchers, with some probe drones available. It gives us a bit of an edge in a fight, and still maintains the ability to send out probes, more or less.

Paw also used a little cargo space to put in another Fighter. Sure, cargo space was what paid the bills, but only if it got delivered. Another fighter added a lot of firepower & flexibility & helped our ships survive. The fighters got hit and needed repairs a few times, but we never lost one.

Sometimes folks asked Paw if he was going a bit overboard with all the weaponry. His answer was always the same: "Fair fights are for fools" he would say, "Stack the deck as much in your favor as you can, so you can win & not take too much hurt while doing so. Unfai fights are over quick, which tends to limit the damage you take".

Paw was a clear thinker, he was.

After several good years, Paw passed on peacefully in the hospital from congenital illness.

Then I come into the picture. Hi. I'm Trader Joe of the Neutral Zone. Sorry, I think I said that.

Whew, that's a lot of background, but that gets us caught up. I just took over & have some ideas & some things I need to do, but that's enough for now. I'll write more when I feel like it - probably in a few days.