by Mark Wandrey
“Now I’m filled with confidence.”
“It’s better than nothing. Just remember, it won’t do shit against punches or grapples. The attack must have enough energy to interact with the shield. You can walk right through them. But big, heavy, fast-moving bullets or coherent energy, and they’re great. Your controls will have some feedback, so you’ll know the shield status.”
“What if I keep it up past the battery’s endurance?”
“Then your main power cell will fry, and you’re on backup.” Sato shrugged. “Maybe an hour or two of power, depending on what you’re doing. The shield’s own energy capacitor will control itself and shutdown when it’s absorbed as much damage as it can.”
Rick was quiet for a minute as Sato closed the armor up. When it was resealed, he spoke again. “You must be thinking something bad is coming, or you wouldn’t have given me a half-assed system like this.”
“I don’t know anything is going to happen,” Sato admitted. “But I had this much ready and decided it was better to install it now and not need it than wish you had it later. It only costs you a day’s food reserves.”
“Okay,” Rick said. “Hopefully I won’t need it.”
“Hopefully,” Sato agreed. Only Rick had been right. He had the feeling he was going down a one-way road at high speed, and the signs were all pointing in the opposite direction. Their destination was just a couple days away.
* * *
Vestoon emerged into normal space, and the navigation system automatically began verifying their position. It was one of the automation programs he and Dakkar had written to reduce manual labor, where a crewman might have handled the job before.
Location—Phi-Theta-Nine, the program reported after a few seconds.
“Right on target,” Sato said from the captain’s chair.
Rick was strapped into copilot again, where the navigator’s job was located. He’d studied up a bit on the job, just in case. He still didn’t trust his ability to get a correct result and was glad the computer was doing the work.
As before, Dakkar was stuck to the comms/computer position. The Wrogul’s eyes were staring at a slate held by two of its arms; pulsing lines of text flew past too quick for Rick’s translator to read.
“So, let’s see what’s here,” Rick said. He activated the ship’s sensors as Sato checked their residual momentum from entering the previous stargate. Sensors were something he understood better than most of the ship’s other systems. CASPers had quite a few sensors, and he’d been a good CASPer driver. Their ship’s sensors were vastly more powerful, and because of its duties, more diverse as well.
He started with a tight-band radar sweep and opened the covers on the various radiation arrays situated around the hull. Keeping them closed when arriving in a system was standard procedure in case you encountered debris upon emergence, which could blind you.
“No ships within a hundred thousand klicks,” he reported quickly. “Emergence point is fairly clear of debris.”
“Unusual for a backwater stargate,” Sato pointed out.
A star system’s emergence point would settle at a LaGrange point other than where the stargate was, usually on the opposite side of the planet. Every system had LaGrange points, as long as there was a star present. Phi-Theta-Nine had a star, a brown dwarf, and a single planet, a small gas giant. The stargate and emergence point were situated around the gas giant. Because stargates and emergence points were at LaGrange points—gravitic eddies as it were—they often collected trash.
“I have some larger structures,” Rick said, reading the displays. “Maybe a couple space stations around the gas giant or large ships. Waiting on energy emissions data.” He let the radar build up data on the objects visible in orbit while the radiation sensors tasted the readings. “Wow, that gas giant is hot.”
“Gamma radiation?” Sato asked.
“No, thermal radiation. It’s showing 173 at the surface.”
“That’s hot,” Sato agreed. “Jupiter is 128, and it’s on the warm side. Uranus is only 49; even the Izlians think it’s chilly.”
“I don’t understand how anything can live in those temperatures.”
“Good old exotics,” Sato said.
“My species is classified as exotic,” Dakkar flashed. “I do not want to go swimming in that.”
It took Rick a quarter of an hour to finish scanning the near-system area. “I have four starships identified within range. Three are in orbit around the gas giant; one is transiting toward the stargate. Three of them are freighters, or bulk transports. Not warships, or really poor ones if they are. The last could be a frigate.”
“Where is that one?” Sato asked.
“In orbit, near one of the big structures around the gas giant.”
“Anything nearby?” Sato asked. “Anything manufactured, even a few meters in size.”
“Hold on,” Rick said and increased power and narrowed focus on the radar. “I have a few pieces of a ship,” he said after a minute. He uncovered and focused the ship’s only telescope. “Here’s the first.” A jagged piece of hull plate. “The second.” A visibly cracked fusion torch nozzle. “The final, and third.” About two-thirds of a small craft, probably a shuttle or an escape pod. It was obvious by the gently floating wires it had been stripped, as well.
Sato steepled his fingers and stared blankly at the display, thinking. He was waiting for something to trigger a memory, a feeling, anything. “Can I see the big objects?”
“Sure,” Rick said and refocused the telescope. “This is the first.” The camera showed a former ship, and a big one. Sato guessed it had been a battleship, or maybe a part of one. Could have been towed into orbit for salvage, because it looked like there were many holes in the superstructure, either cut or burned in combat.
“One of those transports is here, too,” Rick added. The view focused on a transport in almost as bad a shape as the dead battleship. They were over 200,000 kilometers distant, so the camera couldn’t focus in enough to see details. However, tiny shapes were moving on both vessels, and miniature sparkles appeared. “Cutting or welding,” Rick suggested.
“Reasonable. Next?” Sato asked.
Rick moved the focus to the next large object. This one was unrecognizable as anything. It almost looked like a random collection of parts and materials, which it might well have been. This one, too, had an old junk freighter docked to it, but in this case, there was no sign of any work going on, and the docked ship demonstrated only minimal power. “Could be a ship powered down, awaiting friends or hiding here?”
“Anything’s possible.” Nothing here piqued his interest. “The last ship?”
“Also docked to an object in orbit,” Rick said, and the view moved again. This time it wasn’t a ship or even debris; it was a large asteroid. “Its orbit is stable, no rotation. I can’t get any readings from the asteroid, but the ship is live.”
Again, it was too far away to see detail on the ship beyond shape. It was a sleek, winged ship, not dissimilar to their own, except it had more of a lifting body. It was also painted in a dark color, making it difficult to focus on.
***
He was walking down the hangar toward a waiting shuttle. To his left, a pair of Insertion Cutters waited for a mission, their swept lifting bodies and black paint suggesting speed and stealth.
***
“That’s it,” Sato said. “What’s the ship doing?”
“It looks like it’s landed on the asteroid,” Rick said. “I can’t confirm if it’s tied down or not. That asteroid can’t be very big or have much of gravity.”
“Let me have the sensors,” Sato said.
“They’re yours,” Rick said and flipped a switch, which toggled main control between workstations.
Sato quickly analyzed the gas giant’s orbit, as well as the altitude and velocity of the asteroid. “It’s not natural,” he concluded. “The asteroid’s orbit is almost perfect, and far lower than you would expect.” He turned to Ric
k. “I’m setting a course for the gas giant.”
“If there’s someone in that ship, won’t they see us coming?” Rick asked.
“Yes, so I’m heading for the junk pile.”
“There’s a ship there, too,” Dakkar reminded him.
“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.” The fusion torch lit, and Vestoon accelerated away from the emergence point and toward the gas giant.
* * * * *
Chapter Five
Vestoon fell toward the gas giant. Sato thought it was rather majestic, in its own way. It didn’t have the startlingly beautiful bands of Jupiter, the extensive rings of Saturn, or even the deep blue vastness of Uranus. It did have a single band of green around the equator, which broke up the rest of the dark red swirls. It had a ring, too, but only a small one. It was majestic to him for what it represented. The possibility of answers.
He brought the ship into orbit while the asteroid was on the opposite side of the planet. Vestoon passed within 1,000 kilometers of the derelict battleship. It appeared, just as Rick had shown from the long-range scans, a gutted hulk. A single equally wretched ship clung to it, a dozen beings in spacesuits forlornly cutting at the wreck with plasma torches in search of he knew not what. If the salvaging operation took any note of them, it was impossible to tell. Soon it was left behind.
The hulk was in a higher orbit than their destination, so as the asteroid was closing on the wreckage. The two would pass each other in only an hour or so. Good timing for them to make their move.
Their approach to the asteroid was made slowly, looking as if they were just in a slightly lower orbit and would pass within a hundred or so kilometers. Don’t mind us, just passing through! As they approached, everyone made ready.
“You sure about this?” Rick asked as he double checked his various weapons.
“Positive,” Sato assured him. “The ship docked to the asteroid; I’ve seen them before.”
“As a Proctor?”
“I guess.”
“I’m worried, both that you’re going into this without much thought, and that you may have unrealistic expectations. Someone tried to kill you back on Earth.”
“They weren’t trying to kill me,” Sato said. “If someone wanted me dead, the opSha could have just burned a hole through my head with a laser from 5 kilometers away.”
“Then what did they want?”
“My guess is to bring me here.”
Rick stared at him without comment for a long moment.
“I know, it’s not the best of plans. However, they don’t know I have you.”
“I’m hardly a game changer,” Rick noted. “Besides, you don’t know for certain if they’re aware of me or not. There was footage of me at the museum.”
“That’s the only place there’s footage of you, and it wasn’t very good.”
“They do not know about me, either,” Dakkar said.
Sato had forgotten the Wrogul was there. “Not to reduce your importance,” Sato said, “but you aren’t exactly a fighter.”
“No, but I can go places you cannot.”
“Including under doors,” Rick said with head shake.
“Indeed!” Dakkar agreed. “I can also pass through tiny spaces, like ventilation shafts.”
“Are you suggesting I turn you loose on this asteroid?” Sato asked.
“Why not?” Rick said, surprising Sato.
“I thought you weren’t exactly on Dakkar’s side.”
“I’m on our side,” Rick said. “Having him slithering his way around the inside of that station might well give us a real ace in the hole. If he’s willing, why not?”
“Nemo, Dakkar’s nominal parent, wasn’t known for his understanding of risky situations,” Sato pointed out. “Along with not understanding basic morals, they often display a complete disregard for their own mortality.”
“Wouldn’t you if you could just make another copy?” Rick asked.
Sato blinked. “You know, I never thought of it that way.”
“Again I say, why not? As soon as we dock, let Dakkar slip into the asteroid station.”
“He doesn’t have pinplants yet,” Sato said.
“So whip up some tiny little transmitter. I would guess you can manage?”
“Sure,” Sato admitted. “I can even make it work through our privileged pinplant channel.”
“Then it is settled,” Dakkar said. His big eyes looked at Sato with their distinctive bar-shaped pupils, so like a terrestrial octopus. “I’ve been with you since the beginning of this quest, old friend.”
He was already forgetting that Dakkar was Nemo in every way you could quantify, only smaller. But was he really the same Wrogul? Dakkar already seemed different in some ways. Nemo had never enjoyed the company of Humans that much, being more than happy to spend vast amounts of time by himself, immersed in whatever research he was doing. The only one he’d never minded being interrupted by was Sato.
Dakkar had spent hours helping sick Humans in Mexico. Not only had Sato not asked him to, but he’d been gone when Dakkar had taken the initiative to help the young girl he’d seen earlier, and he’d properly conjectured that the child had a brain injury. When others had arrived, he’d begun curing them as well. One after another, more than 20 men, women, and children. He didn’t think that was something Nemo would have done.
“Okay,” Sato said and left the bridge to travel to the engineering compartment. There he made a tiny transmitter/receiver for Dakkar, returning just 11 minutes later. “Here you are,” he said and floated it over to the alien. “You’ll have to focus a small area of your skin to speak for us to understand. It’s got an adhesive that will work on you.”
“Got it,” Dakkar said, catching the device and adhering it to a tentacle close to his central body mass.
Sato drifted back to the pilot’s section and checked its displays. “We’re 53 kilometers from the asteroid and closing at 50 meters per second.” He touched the controls. “Slowing us down.”
Rick plugged into a high-power output on the bridge to top off his batteries. As they approached, Dakkar went to his quarters and returned with a hyper-oxygenation unit Sato had made for him on the trip. It was a small device that fed oxygen rich water directly into his siphon. Unlike a terrestrial octopus, Wrogul didn’t have external gills, but something closer to internal lungs. In essence, it was a water SCUBA for Dakkar, and it was no bigger than a pair of computer styluses.
Sato further adjusted their speed with puffs of the reaction thrusters. Dakkar’s tentacles suddenly moved on the controls.
“We are being scanned by the asteroid.”
“Shit,” Sato snarled. He was about to ask about any comms when Dakkar spoke again.
“I’m getting a laser comm,” he said.
Sato blinked. “Laser comm?” That was unusual, as only ships who already knew each other used laser communications. They were secure and harder to negotiate for that reason. He used the captain/pilot screens to examine the incoming comms. It was a secure handshake transmission, the kind you’d find between two friendly combatants.
“They think we’re a friendly ship?” Rick wondered aloud.
“I don’t think so,” Sato said. “It could be an automated transmission to any ship that comes close.”
“There’s a ship there,” Rick pointed out.
“Doesn’t mean anyone is actually there,” Sato said. “Our sensors can’t penetrate the rock, and the ship only shows low power, probably on standby.”
“But how do we reply? Don’t we need a code?”
“Yeah,” Sato said. A memory drifted to the surface, or a ghost of the memory. He reached into the pouch he was wearing that contained the various bits and pieces of his quest, withdrawing the tube he took off the dead opSha.
“This is called a mission tube,” he said and held it up. He closed his eyes and thought about the incoming comms. His fingers moved of their own accord, finding a tiny groove on one end of the tube and flipping it. He opened his eyes and saw he’d exposed a tiny universal data port.
It took him a moment to find a connection cable on the bridge. When he did, Sato attached the tube to the cable and linked it with the comms station. “Interface with this connection,” he instructed Dakkar.
“Certainly,” the Wrogul said. A tiny light flashed, indicating the comms console was interfacing with the tube. “We are establishing a connection with the incoming laser.” Dakkar didn’t sound surprised. Of course, the translator never seemed to assign emotions to a Wrogul’s speech. A reply came, text only.
“This is completely wrong,” Rick said. “I thought you said whoever tried to kill or abduct you must have gotten the information out ahead of us. Doesn’t that mean they knew about it here, and that’s why the codes stopped working?”
“We don’t know if it reached here, only that someone—or something—deactivated the codes. This is a pretty backwater location.”
“Maybe Sato exceeded the codes’ credit limit,” Dakkar suggested.
“Or they were only valid for a few weeks,” Sato said. “We simply don’t know.”
Rick looked away and didn’t comment. Sato knew him well enough by now to understand that the man didn’t buy it for a second. He was suspicious as well, but he had to go forward.
The asteroid didn’t seem to have any defenses, and the Insertion Cutter was lightly armed. Much lighter than Vestoon. A trio of lasers wasn’t exactly packing, but at a gigawatt each, it was a decent punch for such a small ship. Likely enough to run-and-gun their way out, anyway. Or at least he hoped.
“If it’s a trap, it’s a poor choice. They would have been better off jumping us at the emergence point, when we were temporarily blind.”
