Honour Bound

Chapter Seventeen

"Have the Senior Staff meet me in the conference room in half an hour." Without waiting for a response Brian left the Bridge letting the duty watch officer take his place and returned to his quarters.

He took the time to have a shower and get into a fresh uniform, he was 8 hours into his shift and this promised to be one of the longer ones. He dropped his used uniform into the laundry chute in his quarters, one of the many bonuses of the level of technology he was getting used to was how he could drop dirty clothes into any chute and they would appear several hours later cleaned and folded in his drawers.

Grabbing a bottle of water after getting back into his light armour, which was now as much part of his uniform as anything else, he took a seat at the head of the conference table. The staff began to filter in one by one and everyone was present a full ten minutes before the time he'd stated.

"Thank you all for arriving so early, we may as well get started. As you will be aware we have reached my home system of Sol, some of you may be wondering why."

"It is no business of ours Lord, you would not bring us here without cause." Brian smiled at the remark of the Senior Engineer.

"While that may be the way you are used to operating I always try to share my reasoning where possible or rather where practical."

"Yes Lord, explaining in the middle of battle may not be the best time." Chuckles from around the table showed understanding.

"Thank you for your wise council Kad'lim" Brian paused for further laughter glad of the show that his crew were bonding and becoming more relaxed.

"Now the first reason we've come here is to generate some of our own income, so far we've been working off others generosity and while some may expect this I don't see it as reasonable or sustainable. What is given can easily be withheld depending and circumstances. While I still struggle with some aspects of your financial system I don't expect our people to work for free."

"Lord, we have our needs met in your service. Our families are well cared for, which by itself is not usually provided."

"Yet some of your institutions require payment for services, we are not a House of our own that can fund such things and while House Shining Horizon is under my stewardship it would be improper of me to take advantage of that. It is important to me that you are all properly cared for and your families to, people will die in my service of that I have no doubt. As you made your oaths to me I in turn have my own responsibilities. That is why the generation of income is of such high importance for me."

"And me, should the Lord Protector fall it would fall to me to carry on and I would do no less. If we find ourselves unable to resupply from House Shining Horizon or the Great Lord we would need funds to provision ourselves." Charlotte added.

Brian smiled and nodded his thanks for the support, looking round the table there was a mix of emotive expressions.

"Secondly, I must safeguard my planets future. We are a race of many nations which have been at war off and on throughout our entire history. If I'm able I want to help them keep the peace until they are able to join the space faring races of this galaxy. With the correct guidance and support they have the potential to be a strong ally and trading partner."

Brian activated the holo display at the centre of the table showing the moon orbiting Earth. The orbiting image held in place for several seconds before zooming in at the equatorial plane on the dark side of the moon.

"There is a fissure in the surface here on the moon approximately two miles deep or 2400 meters if you prefer and it is big enough for a shuttle to reach the bottom. We will land a team to excavate a tunnel into the hardened nickel-iron like deposits here."

As Brian spoke a flashing wire diagram in red showed up on the display, there was a corridor of around 500 meters and at the end a cube shaped chamber of 100 meters on each axis.

"Once this is cleared we will clear out the main chamber where we will place the core of the AI Munen. The corridor will be secured with hardened blast doors and a mix of auto turrets recovered from the ship graveyard which will be encoded to a limited number of DNA encoded keys doubled up with passcodes and Munen will not allow access of any party appears to be under duress. From its secure location Munen will take care of those interest both on and off planet in the Sol System."

"A wise measure My Lord, though I am at a loss for what the need is to share such information." The Fist Officer responded.

"We must engage in training whilst we are in orbit, though our Lord trust us we must maintain security of such precious information. The crew will notice we are static and that there is some activity around the moon so we must keep them busy and add to the confusion. I suggest we practice assault landings, troop recover. Boarding and counter boarding operations, for all crews."

"Quite right Guard Commander, with shuttles and personnel moving around so much it is my hope the other activity will be lost in the confusion." Brian confirmed for those around him.

Over the course of the next hour the Senior Staff planned a series of exercises to take place over the coming days. Brian ensured that both he and Charlotte deployed on each type of training whilst the other maintained the various bridge watches.

Almost 5 days later the work was complete and the crews had recovered to their ships, Brian had allowed a days stand down the following day with minimal watch levels. Had they been in port he would have allowed shore leave but with no facilities available it was the best he could do.

So on the evening of the sixth day the ships once again disappeared into hyperspace.