“Oh, blow it out your rear.”
“Fortunately, I don’t have a rear,” said Jennifer. “I’m a battle computer. I don’t let my emotions get in the way of my mission.”
“You don’t have emotions,” Trinity said. She waited for a smart-alecky reply from her battle computer, but Jennifer was strangely quiet. Trinity wondered why.
* * *
The Defiant was a hub of activity when Jerad and Trinity arrive at the ship’s docking pad. Half a dozen hover vehicles of various sorts were circled around the recon ship along with a slew of technicians wearing orange jumpsuits. Two men in hover belts were halfway up the side of the starship stripping away decades of space smudge using ion hoses. Other technicians dressed in hazmat suits were capturing the debris with large vacuum hoses.
“The outside of the Defiant still had some radioactive dust on it from your brush with that nuke,” explained Jennifer. “I’m surprised they haven’t quarantined the ship while they get rid of it. I’m betting Sergeant Ron had to pull some strings to stay on his ship.”
Trinity spotted Sergeant Ron near the ship’s cargo ramp arguing with two technicians who were trying to pull a hover-cart up the ramp. Both the major and she headed in their direction.
“I told you no,” said Sergeant Ron in a voice loud enough to be heard over the whine of the ion hoses. “You can tell your supervisor he isn’t palming off those knockoffs on me. The repair order called for Empire Level Three communications gear or their equivalent. That junk you’ve got there is nowhere near good enough.”
One of the technicians raised his hands. “Fine. We’ll take it back, but our boss won’t be happy. You might not get anything if you don’t take these.”
“Well, I don’t give a flip if your boss is happy or not,” said Sergeant Ron. “And we’ll get the right equipment if I have to go over there and pull it out of your boss’s ass.”
Apparently sensing their approach, Sergeant Ron looked up. When he caught Trinity’s eye, he smiled. “Well it’s about time you two showed up. I heard about your little excursion in town. If I’d known you were going to have some fun, I’d have stayed with you guys instead of coming back here. It’s been nothing but one headache after another since I got back.”
Jerad pointed at a load of boxes being hauled up the ramp by a technician. The boxes had labels that read: “FRAGILE. SCIENTIFIC EQUIPMENT.”
“What’s all this stuff, Sergeant Ron?” asked Jerad. “I saw a copy of the overhaul orders. They were for a low-level hyper-drive refit and a few spare parts.”
Jerad’s eyes fell on a stack of long metal crates on the docking pad waiting to be loaded onto the Defiant. “Are those torpedoes? What in the Creator’s name does torpedoes have to do with a hyper-drive?”
“Now, Major,” said Sergeant Ron sporting a wide grin. “Don’t get all bent out of shape. Whoever filled out those overhaul orders left some lines blank. Because I’m such a nice guy, I didn’t want the person in question to get into any trouble, so I filled in the blanks for him. You can thank me later.”
“That’s illegal,” said Jerad.
“Naw,” said Sergeant Ron appearing not to be in the least intimidated. “It’s just correcting some sloppy paperwork.”
Trinity laughed in spite of herself.
Jerad shook his head and looked at her. “It’s no laughing matter, Trinity. Sergeant Ron could go to prison.”
“Ha!” said the Defiant’s captain. “That’s been tried before, and I’m still here free as a bird. Let ‘em do their worst. I was getting bored anyway.”
From the bulging veins on Jerad’s neck, Trinity had a feeling she needed to intervene before the officer had a heart attack. She swept her arm around the docking pad. “How’d you get all these people? We passed a light destroyer on the way here that didn’t have half as many people working on it.
Sergeant Ron smiled. “Sometimes it’s not what’s on the paperwork; it’s who you know. And I know people. I’ve got a friend who owed me a favor who knew the maintenance chief at this here spaceport. The maintenance chief was only too happy to send me a few extra techs. Of course, I had to sweet talk him a little, but my charm won out in the end. Not to mention I sent him a load of hard to find hydraulic pumps courtesy of the Imperial High Command.”
By this time, the veins on Jerad’s forehead were back to a semi-normal state. Trinity thought she saw a twinkle of amusement in the major’s eyes.
“You obviously like living on the edge, Sergeant Ron,” said Jerad. “I’m just glad it’s not coming out of my budget. Now before I find out something else I don’t want to know about, is Telsa inside? Trinity and I need to talk to her.”
The smile left the face of the Defiant’s captain. “That works out well. She wants to talk to the two of you as well. I’m thinking this thing may be bigger than we thought.”
“How’s that?” asked Jerad.
Sergeant Ron shook his head. “You’d best get it from her. I ain’t no scientist. I’d just get all those highfalutin terms mixed up.”
Jerad nodded his head and started up the ramp. He stopped halfway up and looked over his shoulder. “You coming, Trinity?”
Nodding her head, Trinity caught up, and they entered the Defiant together. The recon ship’s cargo bay was stacked from deck to ceiling with crates of every shape and size.
Trinity laughed. “Some accountant’s gonna blow an airlock seal when they see the bill for the Defiant’s overhaul.”
Scanning several boxes, Jerad laughed as well. “Here’s a hydraulic pump for a hover-tank, and the box over there contains entertainment videos for a holograph projector. You know what he’s doing don’t you?”
Trinity shook her head. She was a wizard scout not a maintenance expert. Even so, she knew entertainment videos were stretching the concept of an overhaul way past the point of sanity.
Laughing again, Jerad said, “The old scoundrel’s building up a reserve of trading materials. Remind me never to buy a used hover-car from the man.”
“I’ll do that,” Trinity replied. “I think he’s a good person to have on our side, but I sure wouldn’t want to have him against us.”
Jerad nodded in agreement and gave another laugh. “You won’t get any argument out of me on that account. What say we go find Telsa?”
Climbing the central staircase, they found Telsa hard at work in the communications room. It was jammed packed with new, out-of-the-box equipment. When they walked in, Telsa smiled and waved at the stacked tables and shelves.
“Do you like what I’ve done with the place?” Telsa laughed. She pointed at a strange box with flashing colored bars across the top. “This here’s a R313 gas analyzer. It’s top of the line. We only have access to a R310 at the university.”
“Why do you need a gas analyzer?” asked Jerad.
Telsa’s smile grew even wider. “I don’t, but it’s cool as all get out, so I ordered it. Sergeant Ron told me to get anything I wanted. So I did. Somehow or other, the old man got the hardest to find items teleported here. He really does know a heck of a lot of people.”
“I’m beginning to think Sergeant Ron’s a bit of a con artist,” said Jerad. “Be that as it may, he said you had something for us. I hope it’s good.”
The smile dropped from Telsa’s face. “I don’t know about good, but I’ve completed my analysis of Professor Jaskok’s disk.” The short female waited expectantly.
“Well?” asked Jerad unable to resist taking the bait.
“Well,” said Telsa smiling again. “It wasn’t easy, but I modified the coded part of the disk using the Quanto formula. Naturally, that didn’t work, so I tried a variation of the Quanto formula with an old calculus algorithm—”
“Telsa,” said Jerad raising his hands in a stopping motion. “Spare us the details if you don’t mind. What’d you find out?”
“Oh,” said Telsa sounding disappointed. “I thought it was pretty exciting stuff. Never mind. Anyway, the whole point of Professor Jaskok�
�s information was to document a method for placing a stealth shield around an entire fleet.”
“What?” exclaimed Jerad. “That’s not possible. Smaller, individual ships, sure. But a fleet? Are you positive?”
“I didn’t say it was possible,” said Telsa. “The information on the professor’s disk just gives a hypothetical way to do it. He worked out all the details for a prototype. He was going to release the information during his keynote speech in the hopes it would spur others into a new way of thinking.”
“Oh,” said Jerad, “so it’s just a theory. It’s not something that actually works. That’s probably a good thing. If someone could put a stealth shield around an entire fleet, they could strike deep inside an enemy’s territory with complete surprise. Something like that would be dangerous in the hands of one of the Empire’s enemies.”
Trinity frowned. “Are you sure it’s only a theory? I mean, you’re positive someone can’t make it work and use it to attack the Empire?”
“No danger there, Trinity,” Telsa said sounding confident. “The professor’s idea isn’t even at the theory level. It’s only a hypothesis. He couldn’t run any real experiments. The whole fleet-wide stealth shield concept depends on an energy source that doesn’t exist. Even if someone built the device, I can pretty much guarantee you they couldn’t make it work. There’s no energy source in our galaxy that could supply the type of energy that’s required.”
Trinity thought about all the times in her life where someone had guaranteed something couldn’t happen, and it had. “What about an energy source that wasn’t from our galaxy? If you remember, Sergeant Ron said he thought the monsignor’s gem might be from another dimension.”
Telsa shrugged her shoulders. “Look, I like Sergeant Ron, but he’s not exactly a scientist. I took everything he said with a grain of platinum.”
“I sensed the gem’s energy too,” Trinity said. “I can assure you it was strange.”
Telsa looked at Jerad before looking back at Trinity. “Well, I can’t do the hocus-pocus stuff you wizard scouts do. I rely on scientific instruments to gather data and then make a decision based upon cold, hard facts. There are a lot of strange things in our galaxy. That doesn’t mean they’re from another dimension. I mean, heck, Major, do you think the gem’s from another dimension?”
Jerad looked down and seemed to take great interest in the metal plates of the deck. He said nothing.
Taking Jerad’s silence as confirmation, Telsa said, “If I’d had some analysis equipment with me at the temple, maybe I could tell you a little more. What I really need is to analyze the monsignors’ gem itself to give any kind of useful opinion.”
The external speaker on Trinity’s battle helmet crackled, “What about data?” said Jennifer.
“What data?” asked Telsa.
Trinity smiled. “Jennifer was able to scan a small piece of the gem at the morgue. According to her, she’s got oodles of data, whatever oodles are.”
“It’s a non-scientific term meaning—” started Jennifer over the battle helmet’s speaker.
“Never mind Jennifer,” said Telsa. “I get the picture. I’ve done about all I can with the data from the vault. If you can feed me the info for that piece of the gem via the tele-network like you did when you sent me the information from the data disk, I’d appreciate it. Maybe we can figure something out together.”
“Compliance… uh, with my wizard scout’s permission,” said Jennifer.
“Naturally,” Trinity said. “Do what you need to do.”
“Compliance.”
“Telsa,” said Jerad who’d finally stopped his inspection of the deck, “make sure you let me know the moment you find anything useful. You can reach me through my staff at the compound.”
“You’re not staying here?” Trinity asked. For some reason, an empty spot had appeared in her stomach at the mention he was leaving.
Shaking his head, Jerad said, “Can’t. Until I’m told otherwise, I’ve got a division of peacekeepers to run. I think I’ve done all the damage I can here. What about you? Are you coming back to the compound with me?”
Trinity shook her head. A part of her wanted to go, but the wizard scout part of her knew that her best bet for finding out what was going on was to stay near the temple.
“I’ve got to stay here, Jer… err, Major.”
Trinity saw a strange look come over Jerad’s face.
Is he disappointed? she wondered.
“Of course,” said Jerad. “I understand perfectly. Since you’re assigned to me in theory, you have my permission to stay.” He grinned. “Although from what I know of you now, I don’t think my permission matters all that much.”
Trinity smiled back. “Oh it matters, Major. It’s just that lack of permission wouldn’t stop me.”
Jerad returned her smile before leaving the room. Trinity monitored his departure with her passive scan. In less than a minute, he was outside the ship and moving rapidly in the direction of the terminal.
“Ahem,” said Telsa.
When Trinity looked at the short woman, Telsa said. “So I’ve got my marching orders. What are your plans if you don’t mind my asking?”
“Good question,” Trinity said. She pointed down at her camouflage pants. “I’m thinking my first order of business is to get back into my battle suit pants. I broke both legs this morning jumping off a building. I need the rest of my battle suit back. You got any idea where Charlie is?”
“He was in the engine room supervising the overhaul last I saw. Can’t you tell? I thought you wizard scouts kept track of everyone with your superpowers or something.
Trinity laughed. “Not hardly. Oh, I keep my passive scan up most of the time. It’s relatively cheap in Power usage, but it doesn’t give me a lot of info. It’s also easily tricked. Both Sergeant Ron and Charlie’s received some training in stealth shields. I think Charlie’s keeping his stealth shield up since I can’t detect him. He’s got a large Power reserve. I’d do the same if I was in his position.”
Telsa brushed an errant strand of hair away from her face. “I was told wizard scouts have active scans as well. Why don’t you use that?”
Shrugging her shoulder, Trinity thought about it a second before trying to explain. “I could use an active scan since it’s harder for someone to hide from. However, the problem is that an active scan uses more Power. Unfortunately, active scans are susceptible to detection themselves. Passive scans are virtually non-detectable.”
“Are you saying you’re worried about someone trying to detect your active scan while you’re on the Defiant?”
Trinity grinned. “No. My active scan’s pretty good. Every wizard scout has a specialty, and mine is detection. Even other wizard scouts would have a tough time detecting one of my active scans if I wrapped it with a stealth shield. Of course, everything’s a risk.”
Telsa pursed her lips and glanced at her computer screen before looking back. “So I guess the reason you aren’t using an active scan to find Charlie is because you don’t want to waste Power. Is that it?”
Trinity laughed. “Exactly. One of the things drilled into our heads at the Academy was that a wizard scout needs to use technology first and Power second. I’ve got a large reserve, but I’ve run out of Power during fights on more than one occasion. Believe me when I say that running out of Power is no fun. Without Power, I can’t self-heal.”
“Well, join the club,” Telsa said as she looked down at Trinity’s legs. “If I’d broken my legs this morning, I’d be out of action for weeks. You seem to be getting along pretty well on yours.”
Trinity shrugged her shoulders. “As long as I’ve got Power in my reserve, the first ninety percent of an injury heals within a few seconds. The other ten percent could take hours to completely heal. I remember once on Silas Four when I was shot in the head. It took—”
“You were shot in the head?” said Telsa sounding as if she didn’t entirely believe she’d heard correctly. “And you lived?
”
Trinity had seen incredulous looks like Telsa’s before which was the reason she normally avoided the subject of self-healing. It had been her experience that people tended to get a little jealous when they learned she could heal herself. This time she had a reason for pursuing the subject, so she did her best explain.
“Yes, I was shot in the head,” Trinity said. “My Power healed me. The only way to kill a wizard scout is to cause so much damage it overwhelms their Power reserve’s ability to heal.”
“Such as?” Telsa asked.
“Hmm.” Trinity smiled. “Are you taking notes for future reference? Should I be concerned?”
Telsa smiled back. “You never know.”
“No, I don’t,” Trinity said. “I trust you though. To answer your question, a disintegration ray or being at the epic center of a nuclear explosion are two examples of damage massive enough to kill a wizard scout.”
“That’s pretty serious damage, no doubt there,” said Telsa. “So you’ve basically got nothing to fear from small arms fire?”
“Ha!” Trinity laughed. “I wish, but that’s not the case. First off, a plasma round to the head friggin’ hurts. A second point is that I was unconscious for almost a minute that time I got shot in the head. If my opponent had known about wizard scouts, she could’ve taken me prisoner. That’s something you never want to happen as a wizard scout. An enemy could stretch a torture session out for years while letting my self-heal keep me alive. Even if my opponent didn’t want to take me prisoner, if she’d kept firing a round into my head every few seconds, the Power in my reserve would’ve eventually depleted. When that happened, the next round would kill me. Continuous damage is just as bad as massive damage. I know of a wizard scout who was trapped under a collapsed building. His self-heal kept trying to repair his crushed bones, but the weight of the building kept breaking them again. He had a very large Power reserve. The general thought is that he probably lived in agonizing pain for nearly an hour before he eventually succumbed to his injuries.”
Trinity Unleashed (Wizard Scout Trinity Delgado Book 1) Page 12
