by Mark Wandrey
“What about you, Rick?” Sato asked.
“I said my goodbyes already.”
They entered the stargate.
* * * * *
Chapter Four
It was good to get back into space. It had been good eight weeks ago, anyway. Vestoon was a never-ending project, and Rick wasn’t what anyone would call mechanically inclined. He was a serviceable wrench turner, if it wasn’t much more complicated than a wrench. The kind of stuff he’d done right after lifting off Earth was easy enough. Helping Sato measure the quantity of Astatine-222 in the hyperspace wave generator with a nuclear magnetic resonator was a lot more than turning a wrench.
“How long does this stuff last?” Rick asked as he tried adjusting the angle again.
“Oh, hundreds of thousands of hours in hyperspace,” Sato replied. “Raise it another millimeter, and to the left slightly.”
Rick moved the sensor head. “That’s 600 or more trips through hyperspace.”
“I said hundreds of thousands,” Sato said, emphasizing the plural in hundreds. “The element is a freak, and degenerates in a somewhat unpredictable manner. I’ve noticed from monitoring Winged Hussars ships that the smaller the ship, the more power it takes to maintain the hyperspace field, and the faster the astatine degenerates.”
Rick grunted and moved the sensor a tiny amount. “How’s that?”
“Yeah, you got it.” Sato examined the instrument while it gathered data. “Astatine-222 is a freak, just like F11. Only created in some unknown phenomenon.”
“Where does it come from?” Rick asked as he waited.
“Nobody knows. If they did, it wouldn’t be worth thousands of credits a gram.”
“Wow, I thought F11 was expensive.”
“Luckily it doesn’t take a large amount. The one-mil-thick coating on hyperspace wave carriers is sufficient and will last forever. However, key parts, like this wave generator, bear the brunt of the generator’s full output, so this is a rod of pure A-triple-2. It degenerates from the high heat.”
Rick could understand the last part. His hands, a few millimeters from the rod, said it was nearly a thousand degrees. “You said you can only test it under load?”
“Correct. The nature of the metal makes it impossible to scan cold. You also don’t want to heat it with a torch; its melting point is razor thin.” Sato gestured at the rod. “On most ships, they have engineering bots do the monitoring. Since they take readings every time they’re in hyperspace, it’s easy to tell if it’s wearing down.”
“How’s ours?”
“I’ll know in another minute.”
Time passed slowly. “Dakkar is getting big,” Rick noted.
“It’s the tilapia tank we put in,” Sato explained. A 1,000-liter tank split into multiple compartments, it was intended to supplement the ship’s fresh food supply in the form of hydroponics-grown vegetables and extra oxygen. A byproduct was genetically engineered tilapia that fed on the plant wastes. Dakkar had discovered the fish a week into the trip. He didn’t eat them all. In fact, he was careful to only consume them as they matured. The fish grew up fast, and the Wrogul had been eating them as fast as they grew. “The Wrogul are effective omnivores; however, they grow best on a meat diet.”
The sensor beeped, and Sato examined the output before cursing something in Japanese Rick’s translator didn’t pick up. “Just like everything else on this ship, it’s worn out.”
“How bad?” Sato had begun checking hyperspace components after their last jump, when the powerplant had been consuming 5% more energy than it should have. From what Rick had learned, such an increase in power consumption wasn’t a big deal on a larger ship. They had more power to spare. Vestoon’s main powerplant produced 125% of the power needed to keep them in hyperspace, a pretty narrow margin. Its backup was incapable of making enough by itself. If the main failed, they had a big problem.
But if the main couldn’t keep up, that was a problem, too. The backup was in idle mode, having two buffers removed. Sato was uncertain if it would stand up to more than a tiny nominal load. So uncertain, he’d never tested it.
“Well,” Sato said, powering down the tester and beginning to climb out of the tight access shaft above the hyperspace generator. “It shows spots with 78% degeneration. Should have been replaced years ago.”
“So we replace it at the next stop?”
“It’s a five-million-credit component, if we can locate the right size, and the gravy train hasn’t dried up.”
Rick nodded. A three-day layover at Karma Station had let them pick up more spares and reaction mass. They’d even found replacement buffers for the backup fusion plant. Four of them, leaving them still two short. The smaller plant apparently had much less margin for error.
“We left with the backup offline. A risk, but an acceptable one,” Sato explained. “I was confident we could find replacement parts on Karma, and we did. But only finding four was unexpected. That backup isn’t stable missing even one.” The parts had been paid for with the codes.
They’d tried at the next stop coreward, a Maki trading outpost. Not only had they not found more buffers, but their attempt to top off supplies and purchase a CID laser emitter caused the code to be denied.
“Much faster than I anticipated,” Sato said. “And now they know what direction we’re going. Just as well I took a sidelong route!” He grinned, quite proud of himself.
The emitter was bought with cash, 850,000 credits. Their reserves were down to under two million. Five million for a replacement Astatine-222 hyperspace wave generator was out of the question.
“So what do we do?” Rick asked.
“Every hour in hyperspace chews up a little of the Astatine. Some here, some there.” They floated back into main engineering, and Rick closed the accessway behind him. “The flux from the energy that anchors a ship in hyperspace is strange. It doesn’t follow the same rules of physics as conventional energy, or even particle physics. Sometimes it wears a wave generator evenly, a molecule at a time. Others it follows some line, a weakness, through the rod. One day—bang!” He snapped his fingers together. “Free one-way trip to 2nd Level Hyperspace, and no Pegasus to get you home.”
Rick shook his head. He had no interest in going back to the strangeness of 2nd Level Hyperspace. Regular hyperspace had taken long enough to get used to when he first left Earth. The unexplored realm of 2nd level was a study in opposites. Zero gravity existed, but you didn’t coast. It was like jumping through water, it slowed you to a stop. And that was just the beginning. Losing power in hyperspace was a nightmare story told to scare young spacers. Even so, ships disappeared all the time, never to be seen again.
The Winged Hussars’ flagship, Pegasus, was special in many ways. One of them was a powerful computer they used to get back from 2nd Level Hyperspace after losing power as the result of battle damage. He knew there were hostiles there. Unknown, powerful hostiles.
“We get to the system of those coordinates in one more jump,” Sato said. “We’ll monitor the degradation after each jump to make sure nothing is accelerating. It could last for another hundred trips.”
“Or one,” Rick said.
“Or one,” Sato agreed.
Leaving Sato to tinker around in engineering, Rick returned to the ship’s tiny central space, which served as mess, meeting room, and sickbay if needed. He programmed the tiny autochef for a turkey sandwich and water, which it delivered promptly. That machine, at least, had worked perfectly. Sato had uploaded a couple terabytes of Human food recipes.
As he ate, he tried not to think about what the meat might have begun as. The slightly gamey taste didn’t help his efforts. Even so, it didn’t taste bad. He finished the meal and traveled the short distance to the bridge. For a change, Dakkar wasn’t there.
The large forward window provided an impressive view of hyperspace. Endless pure whiteness in all directions. Many people said it was disturbing. He was among the minority who considered it calming, rather lik
e watching the surf or being indoors on a rainy night.
Rick didn’t know how long he’d quietly floated in the bridge before Sato came in. “Everything all right in engineering?”
“Fine,” Sato affirmed. “I think we’ve done about as much as is practical.” The scientist used his pinplants to bring the bridge Tri-V online, showing the local star group, their location, and the ship’s destination. “Phi-Theta-Nine, by Human catalogue. The GalNet shows it as once being a way station before the Great Galactic War.”
“What’s a way station?” Rick asked.
“A place where you transfer cargo, refuel, etcetera.”
Rick examined the chart. “There’s a lot of stars not far from Phi-Theta-Nine,” he observed.
“Back during the war, it probably had strategic importance.”
“But why is there still a stargate there? I mean, there is a stargate, right?”
“Absolutely. We don’t have shunts, so we have to use a stargate. I would have loved to get a ship with them, but I doubt the codes we got would have allowed a hundred-million-credit transaction.” He smiled, then shrugged. “I almost tried. Anyway, the stargate is there because the Cartography Guild never got around to moving it, I guess.” He looked at the map and frowned.
“What’s wrong?”
“The stargate is a Class-9.” He noticed the confused look on Rick’s face. “Stargates go from class 1 to 10. The class 1s are barely big enough for a cruiser to go through, and are very rare. The Class-10 is kilometers across and can be configured about as big as you would want. A Class-9 isn’t quite that grandiose, but it’s still a big sucker.”
“What does that matter?”
“Class-9 stargates are in demand. There’s been a lot of growth in commerce hubs, even in this arm of the galaxy. Everyone wants to have a Behemoth-class transport come a-calling. They bring passengers, freight, prestige, and most important, credits. You need at least a Class-6 to fit them, and many Maki, who operate the majority of the Behemoths, don’t like anything smaller than a Class-9. Too crowded.”
“I still don’t get it.”
Sato pointed at the map. “This system has no reason for a stargate. I can understand why the Cartography Guild left one, say a Class-3 or even a Class-4, because it takes years of preparation to decommission a stargate. You don’t want someone coming through with an old map and finding themselves with no way to leave. Even so, this Class-9 should have been moved a long time ago.”
“So it was left there on purpose,” Rick said, a half question.
“It would seem.” Sato rubbed his chin as he stared at the Tri-V.
“You know what we need?” Rick asked.
“Hmm?”
“A good old mystery to keep things interesting.”
Sato looked at him in confusion, then Rick winked, and they laughed out loud. Mysteries were the only thing they had in profusion.
* * *
“Rick, can you come down to the engineering shop?”
“Sure, be right there.”
Sato looked at his project for another moment and nodded in approval. It had taken weeks of work in their long trip across the galaxy. They could have come directly and reached the core region in only a few jumps—and pointed an arrow right at themselves. Whoever had ‘loaned’ him those codes, not to mention the source of the opSha killers, would be looking for him. Likely their next encounter wouldn’t be as benign. News of the event had accelerated ahead of them. He had to assume they’d be waiting and know where he was going.
“What’s up?” Rick asked as he floated in.
“Time to finish fixing your leg,” Sato said and gestured to the mini-manufactory.
“I thought you’d forgotten all about me,” Rick said, and wrapped his arm around a protruding pipe.
“No, but I didn’t have the time or the advanced alloys until now.” He pointed. “I’ll need your leg.” Rick held it out from his body. “You can release it yourself.”
“How do I do that?”
“Access your internal mechanical controls file. Autonomous function. Extremities. There’s a subfile for each one.”
“Wow,” Rick said. “I should spend more time looking around in my own head.”
“Did you find the release?” Sato asked. With a click, Rick’s leg detached at the hip. “I didn’t need it all, but okay.”
“Sorry, I guess I shouldn’t play with myself.”
“Ha,” Sato said and quickly disassembled the lower limb. An array of newly manufactured parts already floated around the space, and he began the reassembly process. “I’ve been thinking about losing this leg. Shouldn’t have been that easy.”
“It was a 20mm round,” Rick said. “Not exactly light weapons.”
“No, but your offensive capabilities far outstrip your defenses.”
“Not sure what you can do about that. You said my armor is about as tough as you can make it.”
“For metals and composites, yes.” Sato closed up the leg and pushed it back toward Rick, who caught it. After orienting it properly, he fitted it in place. A moment later it reintegrated with a series of snaps and pops. “You should be back to 100 percent.”
“Armor status says 102, actually.”
Sato smiled. “Maybe I made it too smart.”
“I’m pretty happy with it. You wouldn’t have mentioned defensive capabilities if you didn’t have an idea.”
Sato picked a component out of an equipment bay and held it out to Rick. “You know what this is?”
“Nope.”
“This is a shield generator. I picked this up at that last stop. The account bounced, so I paid cash. Almost a million.”
“Doesn’t leave us much.”
“I’m aware.”
“I didn’t think shields cost all that much.”
“They don’t, for normal-sized ones. This is about a tenth the size.”
“So a tenth the power?”
“No, about a quarter the power. I picked up a couple tricks from things we brought back from 2nd Level Hyperspace.” Sato turned the component over in his hand. It was expensive because he’d had it made, and as he didn’t want the technology getting into the wild, he’d insisted on renting the manufactory and doing it all himself. It didn’t take long, but the manufactory owner was not pleased.
“Open panel 9B, if you please. Same file group, torso.”
“It’s requesting a confirmation.”
“Yeah, it exposes your biological bits. You want to make sure you only do it in a real safe place.”
Rick nodded and his abdominal panel clicked loose. Sato opened it, and then moved aside the memory metal musculature to expose some of the suit’s inner workings.
Fitting the living part of Rick into the Æsir had required a good amount of compromise. There needed to be enough of him to support biological function, of course. Arms and legs weren’t required; neither was most of his digestive tract. Sato had optimized his food use ability, and that provided the room in the abdomen for power systems. The stuff below was mostly still there, including pelvis and other goodies.
Sato removed a redundant protein storage unit, capping the leads, and let it float away.
“It just told me I need to eat more.”
“Sorry, had to make room.” Next he found the secondary main power connector. It was tricky to access. Ideally he’d want to power the Æsir completely down, but Rick wasn’t just a project. The man inside had saved his life several times. So he grunted and wiggled his fingers until he felt the connector.
“This feels funky,” Rick said. “You’d think having someone dig around in your guts would hurt.”
“If you hadn’t released the panel, this would have been relayed to your brain as serious pain,” Sato explained. “Got it.” He gently pulled the plug into view. The T wasn’t very long; if he pulled too hard, it could dislodge it from the main power cell. He connected the shield generator.
Since the compartment hadn’t been designed for the ne
w component, he’d fabricated a mounting frame, which he now secured to the internals. The generator had to be electrically isolated from any other metal, or it could short to the main bus. Next he attached a new wiring harness to his grounding and sensory input wires.
“Wow,” Rick said and grabbed another handhold. “I just lost all equilibrium.”
“Sorry, just another minute.”
“How can I function like this?”
“I need to finish this before we can fix that.” Sato finished the connections, touched the power controls, and entered a code on the shield generator. The tiny indicator on it turned green. “Done.” He took out a data chip. “Load this, please.”
“It’s a good thing I trust you,” Rick said and took the chip, touching it to his pinlink. “Bios upgrade?”
“Yeah, but it’s passive. You won’t have to reboot your pinplants.”
“Well, that’s good.” There was a short pause. “Done. I’m not dizzy anymore.”
“Excellent. Are the new controls on your combat interface? They should be under Defenses.”
“Yeah, it says Shield right under IR Flash.”
“That’s it. I need to add some new components to your limbs to make it 100 percent.”
“Like what?”
“Energy guides, which will allow the shield to form.”
“Then why bother installing it?” Rick asked.
“Because it’ll work now, but only sort of.” Rick cocked his head, and Sato continued, “I tied it into your suit’s grounding plain and tactile sensors. This thing will work, with two big caveats. One, you’ll only have power for maybe five minutes. Less if you’re taking heavy fire. Your current main power cell can’t take more than that. The amount of damage it can take depends on the attack.
“The second is, activating it will destroy your tactile senses; touch to be precise.”
“I won’t feel anything after I use the shields?”
“Not until the sensors are replaced. In fact, it’ll hurt like hell, because I can’t get the bios to properly disable the pain receptors. I’ll work on it with Dakkar; there must be a fix.”
