Operation Orion - Kevin Dockery [92]
“Except for you,” the LT noted pointedly.
“Right, of course. But we’re not all a bunch of swashbuckling star jumpers. We Assarn have a pretty strong mercantile tradition and have long been used to transporting goods for both the Shamani and the Eluoi. Only lately, we’ve been pushed to the side—marginalized, if you will—to the extent that a few of us, myself included, have decided that we’re going to start pushing back. Our leaders were going to the conference in the sincere hope that they might be able to negotiate some kind of settlement, but I don’t believe that’s going to happen. Still, I’m surprised that they didn’t even sit down at the table.”
“Tezlac Catal seemed to be in a hurry to get out of there,” Jackson noted. “We found clues suggesting that he came here, to the Darius system, and went to a station called the Bazaar.”
Olin Parvik whistled and nodded. “So you heard that Tezlac Catal was going to the Bazaar? That’s interesting—and encouraging.”
“Why encouraging?” Carstairs asked.
“It gives us a place to look, and it’s a place that’s about as wide open as any station you’ll find anywhere in the galaxy.”
“How so?” Jackson asked, intrigued.
Parvik grinned a sly grin. “Why don’t you let me show you?” he suggested.
“So you really want us to go ashore in these dirty coveralls?” Master Chief Ruiz asked Jackson. His tone was neutral, but the look of gentle reproach in his eyes was unmistakable.
“I know what you mean, Rafe,” the LT replied. “But the idea is for you and me and Baxter and Teal to get a look around without letting the whole galaxy know that the SEALS are here.”
“Yes, sir,” the master chief replied. He lifted the suit of mechanic’s clothing that Olin Parvik had cheerfully provided. Teal and Baxter already had donned theirs, and Jackson pulled his own on over his uniform. Complete with grease stains and an imperfectly sewn patch on the knee, the garment made him look as nondescript as possible.
They rode to the Bazaar in Parvik’s shuttle, which, unlike his sleek destroyer, was unarmed and bore no markings designating its origin or the empire to which its pilot belonged. With Parvik in the pilot’s seat, the four SEALS occupied most of the remaining five seats. With its large bubble canopy, the little ship allowed them all a good view, and the humans couldn’t help gawking as they zoomed toward the station.
At first, it merely glowed in the reflected light of Darius like a small planet, but as they approached, more details became apparent. The most obvious feature, discernible when even some nearby large starships were simply spots in space, was that the Bazaar was, for a manufactured structure, almost unimaginably huge. The external surface was reflective and studded with a massive array of energy collectors like great vanes turned toward the star. It rotated slowly and maintained a high polar orbit over the large planet called Darius III. Because of the orientation of that orbit, Parvik explained, it was never eclipsed by the planet; that is, it remained constantly exposed to the sun.
“The Bazaar is one of the largest stations in all the galaxy,” the pilot informed them. As they drew closer, they could see that it was shaped like a cylinder two kilometers in diameter and something more than ten klicks long. It rotated on its long axis like a rolling pin. Jackson knew that the rotation would create, through centrifugal force, an effect like gravity to one who stood on the inside of the outer hull.
At each of the hubs, a large hangar entrance opened into space. The interior was brightly lit and busy with ships, both large and small, coming and going. The hangar itself was exposed to space and thus hard vacuum, but Parvik explained that an example of virtually every type of air lock in the known galaxy could be found inside, so that most ships could enter the hangar bay and securely attach themselves to the hull for easy on- and off-loading of passengers and cargo in a pressurized environment.
“Only the very largest starships can’t enter,” the Assarn explained. “A ship like your Pangaea would have