Blue Star Enterprises

Damien had the intake area for arrivals set up in Atrium D. It wasn’t the best place to set something like this up, it was just the easiest place to put it since A was heavily populated, B was blocked off, and C wasn’t near any of the landing zones.

He glanced around at his officers. Two of his people wore the light-augment gear the engineers had managed to fabricate. They also carried the modified flechette mini-guns. It was hard to call the rapid-fire flechette guns, mini-guns anymore since they only had a single barrel with a rotating drum that fed it.

Whatever the engineers decided on calling the thing, it was light enough now to be carried by a single person in the light-augment gear. He knew it was overkill for this operation, but he wasn’t taking any chances. Plus his people needed to get practice walking around with the new suits outside of a training area. The rest of his people were equipped with body armor that you would be hard-pressed to identify as such, and the ubiquitous pulse rifles and stun sticks.

The individually tailored armor was much lighter and much easier to move around in than the standardized plate carriers they used to have. It did mean each person had to be fitted, and the armor built to their size, which took longer and meant nobody else could wear it, but it was worth it in his eyes. They still kept some standard plate carriers around just in case though.

Damien glanced up from one of the booths he was manning and looked down the newly extended hallway. Alex’s robots had placed temporary walls to help funnel the new entrants into the intake area and prevent anyone from trying to skip the line altogether. He looked over at the next booth, inside the small box was Jorvin Morrow, the man who had made a big stink when he first arrived months ago.

Jorvin had come to apologize to him shortly after he settled in. The man had been afraid of being turned away if he didn’t make it seem like he was someone important. The man apparently learned this at his job as an immigration officer back on his homeworld of Zarinsk where the rich and powerful liked to pull that stunt. Most of the time, someone higher up in his chain of command came down and let those people bypass the normal routines. Jorvin said he hated the thought of pretending to throw his weight around but wasn’t willing to let his family suffer if it might be used in their favor.

Unfortunately, he ran into Damien, who didn’t give two shits about who he was. That interaction spurred the man to find some pride again. Once he did, he offered to help Damien with anything he needed assistance with.

Not trusting the man at first, Damien had given him the shittiest jobs he could come up with. Jorvin did them all without complaint or the normal feet dragging he might have expected to see. Over the months, Damien gave the man more work and eventually a position within the security force as a sort of secretary and manager.

The man had proven adept at keeping tasks on schedule and patrols planned out and orderly. Prior to his position, Damien had just been telling his teams to patrol wherever. The only thing he had scheduled was the guard rotations. And he hated doing those.

Now the man was heading up the intake process. He had even created identification cards, similar to the ones Alexander handed out. A special terminal had to be built to encode the DNA profiles into the cards without needing to bring them to the computer room, but Alex handled that.

The other two loudmouths had been a little bit more of a nuisance. Both had been locked up at least once. They quickly learned that Eden’s End didn’t play around. Once that got through to them, one found a job as a farmer’s assistant and the other joined the work crews repairing the facility. The other arrivals hadn’t made much of a splash, even that scientist’s bratty grandson. If that held true for the next batch, he would be happy.

As for why Damien was in a booth, he was here to check for criminal records. Normally he would relegate this sort of check to one of his officers, but with so many people arriving, he wanted to see to it in person.

Dust started to fall from the ceiling and Damian yelled loud enough to be heard by everyone in the room. "Look alive! Our first set of guests are arriving!"

Sure enough, a few minutes later, people started appearing from the hallway. The first person Damien recognized was Team Leader Travers. Behind him was a younger woman and a few kids.

Signs and arrows pointed everyone to where they needed to go, so people started lining up in front of Jorvin’s booth. The man quickly processed their entries and handed the adults their ID cards.

It had been decided not to require ID cards for children under the age of twelve.

The group headed over to his booth and Travers gave a lopsided smirk. "Funny meeting you here. You finally take that stick out of your ass?"

Damien just rolled his eyes. "You wanna get in or not?"

Travers chuckled but handed his ID over and stood there as he scanned him.

"Is this your family?" Damien asked as the scan was processing.

"My sister and her kids. No father," the mercenary responded.

"You look a little underdressed," Damien commented as he scanned the man’s sister next.

"My contract was up. Figured I would try something new. Don’t suppose you’re looking for some new blood?"

Damien was looking for some new security people. They never managed to replace the ones lost in the pirate attack. "Depends, do you like training people?"

Travers laughed. "I’ll do it if that’s what you need but I would prefer a more active role."

Damien grunted and nodded toward Jorvin. "Speak to Jorvin after we finish processing everyone. Tell him I sent you and what your qualifications are. I have him handling most of the administration work."

Travers smiled and tapped the side of his head. "Now that’s smart. I knew I liked you for a reason."

Damien just shook his head. "Get out of my face before I change my mind. One of the officers in the back will show you to your housing unit or units if you choose to live separately."

Travers gave a salute before following his glaring sister toward the group of officers behind the booths.

The next up was Captain Matthews. He had only met the man briefly after the pirate attack and during the questioning of the traitor.

The man gave a single nod and handed over his ID. "I imagine Alexander is quite busy with everything going on. Would it be possible for me to speak with him anytime soon?"

Damien let out a sigh. Alex had asked him to send a few specific people his way when they arrived. Matthews was one of those people. "You know the way to his workshop. You can either head there when I’m done, or you can wait to be assigned a housing unit. I assume that’s why you’re out of uniform as well and not here with the rest of the company."

"My retirement was finalized upon my arrival in Eden’s End. I am a normal citizen now."

"I bet," Damien grunted. "You’re clear to pass through."

There were a few more mercenaries that he recognized but didn’t know by name. They all passed through without issue and then he got to Alex’s new employees. It was hard to keep the sneer off of his face as he kept seeing the STO record pop up on his tablet as he scanned these new people. He knew Alex needed to hire crews for his ships, and there was only one real option as far as skilled military people went, but it still chafed at him.

As expected, none of the people from the initial group had any warrants. Damien hadn’t expected to find any, the Hawks would have thoroughly vetted anyone before bringing them here for Alex. Once the last of the new arrivals was through, the mercenaries started to arrive.

The process for them was a bit more nebulous. They were handed ID tags as those would allow them to access facility resources but Damien didn’t bother with the scans. Instead, he walked out of the booth and greeted team leader Jallen. "I figured you’d have jumped ship like your friend Travers."

Jallen shrugged at that. "I still have another year on my contract. I might decide to hang up my hat at that point, who knows?"

"We’ll I’m glad to have you and your people back. The next group is going to be a cluster," Damien spat in annoyance.

"So Alex decided to take them in after all, eh? I guess I’m not too surprised. Anyway, we came prepared and brought four full DNA scanners instead of the simple warrant scanner you were using. The devices will tell you if their DNA was ever at a crime scene. They won’t update until the–" he paused and looked around before lowering his voice. "–Qcomm is installed though."

"Yeah, Alex told me about that only a few hours ago. So keep it quiet."

"Shouldn’t be an issue. Only the TLs and above know about it. Everyone else thinks the Arklight ships are here to install the base for an orbital elevator."

"I guess that’s fine. As for your people, I think they would be better off stationed outside for the most part to keep people in line as ships and shuttles land. The rest can be deployed inside to keep the peace while my people find the new arrivals accommodations."

Jallen saluted. "We are at your disposal."

***

Alexander greeted Matthews when he entered his workshop. "I was planning on meeting with you and the rest of the new hires in a separate room, but I’m glad you arrived early, I wanted to discuss something with you."

"Why, is something the matter?" Matthews asked after releasing Alexander’s hand.

"Oh, nothing’s wrong. At least not yet. I suspect we’ll have plenty of problems when those refugees arrive, but I have people handling that so don’t worry. How would you like to head an academy?"

Matthews paused for a moment. "An academy? What sort of academy?"

Alexander hadn’t wanted to spring this question on the man so soon, but the situation had changed and he decided to push up his plans to build the academy. "One that teaches science, engineering, tactics, and all things related to spaceship operations and combat."

The recently retired captain quirked an eyebrow slightly. "That’s a big ask, Alexander. What if I wanted to buy a ship off of you and go be a captain on my own again?"

Alexander smiled. "If you wanted that, you wouldn’t have retired from the Hawks in the first place."

Archibald Matthews’s stony façade cracked at that. "Fair enough," he said with a grin. "I’m going to assume you had this whole thing planned long in advance?"

"Not as long as you might think," Alexander responded as he motioned for the man to join him. He pulled up a holo display showing an aerial view of Eden’s End. A sixth dome joined the other five, being slightly smaller than the other four atriums.

The top peeled away in the display, showing multiple levels of classrooms and other amenities. What caught Matthew’s eye was the open space in the center. "What’s that for?"

"I’m glad you asked. It’s a holographic simulation center that is half a mile in diameter and the largest in existence, as far as I can tell. You could do pretty much any simulation you imagined in such a space."

The man rubbed his bearded chin. "Simulations are all well and good, Alexander, but nothing beats practical experience."

"I understand that, but people have to start somewhere. This is the safest place to train people for emergencies, vacuum leaks, combat, etc. I want you to work with Nancy, the Head of Learning for the Council. She has a basic class itinerary, but this would be your academy. As long as people are getting a quality education and training, that’s all I care about. As a member of the faculty, you also get full access to my learning modules for yourself and a paid scholarship for any immediate family. So what do you say?"

The man sighed. "I can hardly say no to that. Fine. I’ll agree to head this academy of yours but only until it’s off the ground. I do want to retire at some point and enjoy my twilight years with my children and grandchildren when they decide to finally join me out here. With this scholarship opportunity, I don’t think it’ll be nearly as hard to convince them to take the plunge and move out here."

With that issue resolved, Alexander clapped the man on the back lightly and led them to the room where he would be meeting with the new captains and crew for BSE.