To Bell the Belle - Chapter 8

Time: Day 6
Location: Bellamy Hideout

Patrick stood perfectly still making sure that his hands were well away from his weapon as he stared at the Gauss pistol that Harper was pointing at his face.

"You son of a bitch," said Harper. "You sent us on a wild goose chase."

"I can assure you, Harper," answered Patrick, "that I'm not sending you on a wild goose chase. I want to find my father as much as you do. "

"Yeah right." Harper said sarcastically. "Like I'm supposed to believe that. Not only are you a Bellamy, you're Richard's son. So why in the hell would you help us find him?" He began to squeeze the trigger of his pistol. "Now, where is your father?"

Nearly 20 hours ago the Andromeda accompanied by the flotilla of Salvagers' Guild ships had arrived in the system that Patrick had said was the Bellamy family bolt hole. The bolt hole was on a moon that orbited a gas giant in the outer reaches of the system.

Billions of years ago the system might have been a system similar to Earth's with planets, some possibly supporting life, orbiting a ordinary yellow star. But the star had eventually aged becoming a red giant engulfing the inner planets as it expanded leaving only the outer most planets intact. Then the star had collapsed into a white dwarf, a burned out cinder of what it had once been, with the remaining planets orbiting in the feeble light of the star.

There had been no sign of ships in the system when the Andromeda and her chicks had arrived, and the exhaust trails that Andromeda had detected were several days old, but Dylan had decided to move cautiously. The Andromeda could have traveled the distance from the slippoint to the moon in a few hours but the other ships in the ad hoc anti pirate flotilla would have not been able to keep up with her, and Dylan was concerned that if he abandoned the rest of the ships that would be when Richard and his allies would come out of the slipstream close to the Salvagers' Guild vessels, where they would be like hawks among sparrows. So they approached the moon in a group at the pace of the slowest ship.

After a brief inter ship conference a landing party was formed made up of members from each family. The party would investigate the Bellamy hide out to see if they could find any clues as to the whereabouts of Patrick's father. Beka and Harper, along with Erick, Carla, and Eric's cousin Benjamin made up the Abernathy/Valentine contingent. Patrick, Yeager and three other crew members of the Enchantress made up the Bellamy contingent, the Takahashi family contributed four more members, while Tyr and Rommie came along to represent the Andromeda.

The party entered the hideout cautiously, weapons drawn prepared to deal with any pirates that Richard might have left behind to guard the hideout, but their caution was wasted. The hideout was deserted. Not just deserted but stripped bare of any supplies, spare parts, or anything else that might be useful to a starship and crew on the lam. It was then that Harper snapped, drawing his weapon and turning it on Patrick.

"Harper!" Beka said sharply to get his attention. "I believe him, so put your weapon down and let him talk."

"He wants to find Richard and put an end to this even more than you do Harper, said Carla. "Unlike you he doesn't have a warship to hide behind if we don't find him. "

When Harper didn't lower his weapon Rommie added "I can add two more reasons to lower your weapon, Harper. One, so far all indications show that he is telling the truth. If you want I can use my biometric scanners to verify the truthfulness of his answers to any questions you might want to ask him. And two, I count ten gauss weapons aimed at you. If you shoot Patrick I'll have to clean you off the deck with a sponge. Now put your weapon down and let's get back aboard me and figure out what we do from here."

An hour later the landing party was gathered around the table in Andromeda's conference room. They had been joined by Dylan, Trance and Andromeda's core and holographic selves. The captains of the other ships in the flotilla were attending virtually. Their images appearing on viewscreens that Harper had planted around the room. The conversation was centered on where to look for Richard Bellamy and his cohorts. Various suggestions had been offered and shot down until Trance finally offered an suggestion

"Maybe we're going about the hunt all wrong," she said.

"What do you mean, Trance?" asked Beka.

"Instead of trying to figure out where Bellamy is hiding," explained Trance, "maybe we should try to decide where he would never hide. Since that would be the last place anyone would look for him it would be the best place for him to hide."

The group exchanged surprised looks and then began to toss out and reject names once more.

"Why not the Herrick's World system?" Trance finally asked.

"Why there?" asked Carla.

"He has to be somewhere," explained Trance. "And isn't there a saying about lightning never striking twice in the same spot? If the best place to hide from lightning is to be where it just struck maybe the best place for a pirate to hide from an anti pirate operation is where he has already raided."

With the exception of the crew of the Maru and Dylan the rest of the conference members looked skeptical.

"That's a mighty weak reason," complained the captain of the Willow from his view screen.

Harper came to his spouse's defense. "Nobody else has any better ideas, and when it comes to Trance's intuition I trust it more then I would a computer calculation."

"Well, I like that," said Andromeda's core self indignantly.

Patrick shrugged in resignation. "It's as good a suggestion as any. I don't have any better ideas." He looked around the room and was met by various nods of agreement and grunts of acceptance.

"In that case," said Dylan as he stood up from the conference table, "I suggest that we conclude this meeting and start running simulator drills again."

After the Salvagers had left the room Dylan turned to the room's main viewscreen. "What's your opinion of the drills we conducted en route, Andromeda?"

Andromeda's image appeared in the viewscreen. "Individually they are competent captains and crews, but when flying in close formation and attempting to provide covering fire for each other they are more dangerous to themselves than any enemy would be. Harper and I have been working on some modifications to their anti collision and fire control systems that should help somewhat, but they would need to be completely replaced to provide anything near to the capabilities that a High Guard vessel would have, and we have neither the time nor the parts to do so."

"Maybe a more important question is will they continue to fight when they start taking casualties,"said Dylan.

"They'll fight," said Andromeda's holographic self. "They may not be warriors by trade but the members of the Guild have never been afraid to fight when it was necessary."

"They had better fight," said Andromeda's core self.

"What do you mean?" asked Dylan.

"I mean that our younger sister has informed us that when the Guild ships meet with the Belle she will be aboard one of them, as squadron commander."

Chapter 7

Chapter 9