After the Jovian frigate became a fireworks display that the whole crew of the Seeker crowded into the bridge to watch, Melbourne appropriated the drop shuttle that had been used to deposit the first ten marines within the derelict. After a little experimentation, he figured out how to pilot the thing. As he flew away from the derelict, he discovered another four squads on jetpacks that were relatively easy to shoot with the miniguns attached to the sides of the ship. He figured it wouldn't be wise to let them get a chance to board the Seeker as the crew prepared to finish their duties. Four squads would likely be more than enough to destroy the security team and appropriate the ship for a return voyage to Jupiter.
"Good job, Melbourne." said Victoria pleasantly as he returned in through the airlock, abandoning the Jovian shuttle reluctantly. "I trust you are to thank for that fireworks show that occurred outside my bridge about fifteen minutes ago?"
"Maybe." said Melbourne through the suits speaker, his voice being deepened unnaturally by it.
"Alright, flyboy, when you're done basking in your accomplishments, I want my suit back before we finalize our data collection and blow this ruined artifact into oblivion. My retired Uncle Rick would be mad if it got ruined." Victoria said the last sentence with a faint degree of artificiality, a posture Melbourne understood to be for the crowd of witnesses. It was her official excuse for having a stealth suit in her belongings.
"No worries, Captain. I'm ready to get out of this clanky thing anyway."
***
It took another twenty-four hours for the archaeological team to complete what they had started before the Jovian incursion. Victoria filed a report to send back home to Mars detailing the fact that they had been assaulted by a Jovian frigate that had intruded upon the territory of Luna. She fabricated a few lies such as the nature of the weapons system they had found. She claimed it was a happy accident that Melbourne found a control system in one of the computers that he was able to use to activate the nuclear weapon and that he needed to go in alone because only he knew how to activate it. She told the crew and mission control back on Mars that Melbourne had successfully evaded all capture and detection by the squadron and that the squad had returned to the frigate before the explosion occurred, freeing the security team of having to engage in a firefight. She had gotten a reply back after only a few hours that the Republic was openly condemning the Empire for the engagement with a civilian ship in their territory but regretfully adding that the Senate was not overly eager to go to war with the nation that had recently conquered Europa, Io and Callisto. It was a disappointingly expected response from bureaucracy. They were essentially sending the message that the Jovian Empire could encroach on Inner Sol at will and their would be no real consequences.
At last, after twenty-four hours, the crew left a remote detonation bomb in the center of the derelict and watched it blow up from the bridge of the Seeker.
"Why couldn't we have used that weapon on the Jovian frigate given the emergency situation?" asked Melbourne curiously to George.
"We had no missile with which to launch it." said George. "It's illegal for private ships to possess missiles, but they can have plantable bombs for special government permitted purposes like mining, excavation or the destruction of Cosmist artifacts."
Melbourne nodded, making sense of the situation. "Still, a simple missile could have saved me a whole lot of trouble."
George laughed aloud. "A simple bomb is enough to destroy an ancient derelict like this from the inside, not a Jovian military frigate from the outside, my boy. There's a world of difference between the two things, like the difference between a flying cab on Olympia and this ship. Just look at what nuclear weapons did to the planet below us. After three centuries, that world is still radiating poison of lethal proportions because of nuclear weapons. Legal corporate mining bombs could do no such thing no matter how many of them you threw down at a planet from orbit. You couldn't manufacture enough of them to destroy a planet."
***
The next month was quite uneventful as the Seeker returned to Mars.
If Melbourne was being treated as a hero by the crew after the pirate attack, he was now being treated as the paragon of humanity. Several crew members had literally donated crypts to him and given extra rations. He had ended up sharing some of them with Jeremy Olan and George Scott because he could not eat the number of helpings he was getting.
His workout routine stayed the same as it had been since leaving Mars. He would gain +1 XP a day for training as well as subtle increases awarded during sparring sessions with George and Jeremy.
By the time the Seeker had returned to orbit around Mars, Melbourne had added 40 XP and he had increased his ZG Martial Arts and Coding Skills
[*Level 2
*XP: 100/200
*Crypts: 2820]
According to the System, he was still at the level of a recruit going through basic training, but he had managed to successfully defeat four entire Jovian squadrons. His augmentations had mostly guided him through the process, meaning that it was his enhancements actually allowing him to fight better than even a level 3 human which the System would expect a trained soldier to be at a minimum. Melbourne wondered if soldiers were weaker now than on Earth or if the System was simply measuring his level of personal training and physical ability to gauge his level. Computer assisted combat did do a lot to help him win many encounters.
As the Seeker docked with the massive Martian Gateway Station, Melbourne began to mentally prepare himself for the return to Martian gravity, wondering if it would be hard to transition back to walking instead of floating after two months.
He also needed to prepare himself for the debriefing with Avian and whatever other representatives of Arian Horizons he would have to answer to. They'd surely be asking many questions about the death of Captain Bryce Sterano since he and Victoria were in the bridge at the time. That was a conversation Melbourne was not looking forward to at all.
***
Meanwhile, in a small office within a Martian military base set along the Isidis Sea, a young female officer answered her ringing holophone.
"Yes, Colonel Vargarade?"
"The Supreme Court has finally approved the warrant, Lieutenant Lavender." said the holographic image of her superior officer.
"Finally!" exclaimed Lieutenant Lavender. "The genome sequencing was complete a month and a half ago! The courts take forever to approve these kinds of things, Colonel! No disrespect to you, sir."
"You may have the Acliate Family detained for blood samples and further testing. The limit to their detainment is one week unless you manage to prove their guilt. The parents should be at their apartment tonight. As for our primary suspect, he has just returned from an internship with Arian Horizons and is going to be joining the Relecon Military Academy in two weeks time. You are being reassigned there at the start of the school year. You may have him tested as soon as he enters the campus, but if the tests show up as negative, I want you to keep a loose eye on him and his progress. I suspect the Cosmists have secrets that syndicates like the Red Cybers don't even know about, perhaps ones that can even evade detection by our own modern day detection methods."
"Yes sir!" said Lieutenant Lavender happily, standing up and saluting.