Thanks for the comments to the last chapter, here is the next one. It was a bit hard work because I changed the story line in the last one.
Enjoy.
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‘Crikey, do I hate these jumpdrives. Work was so much easier prior to their introduction to the public.’
There were a few questions to be answered. What was she looking for in the Boron database? How did she obtain the access codes of Bola Ti? Where was Bola Ti now? Had the men of the Curada clan finally succeeded in killing him? But then, Val had arrived with three pirate ships in tow. Was that a coincident or was she again involved? What also had filled him with curiosity was the fact that after almost logging off she had gone back into the Boron mainframe and accessed data on Argon males. Had he made a mistake and she discovered his stream? Highly unlikely but always possible. Only an accomplished hacker would be able to do that and, for sure, he’d have heard of her if she were one.
Tagor cursed, again he’d have to scan the entire galaxy to find his target. It cost him the better part of a stazura, then he plotted a course for Lucky Planets. Even with a ship as fast as his, the journey would take more than a tazura, too long to be sure he’d get there before she left the sector. And correct, Tagor had only just entered Farnham’s Legend when Val jumped out of Lucky Planets.
This time he had lost her for good. There was no trace of the ship in any of the sectors he had access to military satellites for. It could only mean she had jumped to either a Split sector or Xenon territory.
Swiftly Tagor accessed the network of commercial satellites that covered the universe and scanned through all Split sectors. And right there she was, Family Rhy; entangled in a fight with Xenon ships. It was unclear how the Xenon got there but he could see for sure that the Barracuda made short work of them. How did she manage to get into trouble everywhere she went? It appeared to him she was attracting danger like no one else he knew.
What in the universe could she want from the Split? He had an answer soon. Two Scorpions left the station and headed north. She must have use for Split ships.
With a sigh of relief Tagor registered that Val headed for the North gate and not make use of the jumpdrive yet again. This should allow him to catch up, just for how long?
While waiting in Rhy’s Desire he tried to make sense of her erratic journey. As far as Tagor could tell, there was no clear destination identifiable. Either she was just travelling through the universe without any particular aim or she got sidetracked all the time.
Val did not appear to have any history with the Argon secret service, no birth certificate, no known family; an end that could not be looser. Running her photograph through image recognition software did show a few very vague matches. A closer look at those people’s lives, however, had Tagor quickly discard the thought of potential family relationships.
Her combat style was surprisingly mature, more like a veteran pilot than a young woman nobody had ever heard of. The surprisingly high rate of captures was another fact that he did not understand. As far as he knew, the only other person with a similarly high percentage was Brennan, wherever he happened to be right now. Brennan, Tagor did not doubt that the Admiral had been looking for him when he suddenly vanished. How Dana had managed to do this still left him blank. Just as mysterious was his return. It appeared that it was linked to the first appearance of Val. Nobody could confirm just yet, but there weren’t too many Jaguars without ID in Argon space.
Did Dana know her? Was she an ace up his sleeve? Hard to image he’d been able to train a pilot in secrecy. But then again, why did he not talk about his absence and return? Too many variables for Tagor’s liking. Time to untangle the web.
Val’s stay at the Laser forge had been short and now she was moving towards the East gate. If Tagor was lucky she had run out of energy to fuel the jumpdrive.
Five stazuras later she had made the jump. Well, had she? There was no trace of her ship at the other side of the gate. Where had she gone now again?
Tagor cursed. This was no longer fun. Whenever he was close enough to monitor her for a while she vanished again. Only this time she really had vanished. There was absolutely no trace of her ship whatsoever. It could only mean that she had jumped to Xenon territory. But why?
*
“Tagor, it is good to see you. Have you got any news?”
“Admiral. I am not sure if it is of any value at this point. Over the past tazuras I have followed her around half the universe. Apart from the fact that wherever she goes she gets entangled into a fight or two, usually against larger numbers of ships, there is no pattern in her moves.”
“Larger numbers of ships? Hmm, so far she appears to be lucky enough to get out of the fights alive. Where is she now?”
“I am not so sure if that is luck, Admiral. If she wasn’t obviously Argon, I’d categorise her combat style as Split Paranid Veteran. As to her current position, I have absolutely no idea. She just dropped off the radar.”
“You mean she used the jumpdrive? If so she has to appear somewhere.”
“Well, yes, she does make good use of her jumpdrive. But while I usually could find her again through either military or commercial satellites, this time she has simply vanished.”
“Hmm, keep your eyes peeled and me informed.”
“Before I go, Admiral. May I request a jump-capable ship? Despite the speed of the Pegasus, I am always too slow. To have an edge, I’d like to have a Mamba.”
“I will get Commander Corrand to get you your ride.”
“Thank you, Admiral.”
Tagor closed the channel and continued his journey towards Lucky Planets. The two Scorpions had docked at the Trading Station. It was not much but the best lead he had at this point in time.
*
“Entering Unknown Sector. No ships in immediate scanner range. It appears to be safe.”
“Now that is a first. Not that I complain, I’ve had enough of fighting for today. It is a dark sector but that nebula is beautiful. Let us get a bit closer and at least check out the asteroids while we are here.”
The Barracuda accelerated towards the first of the large asteroids. It was huge. As far as Val could see there were not many asteroids in the system but all of them appeared to be a lot larger than usual. As they speeded towards the next roid Arox announced something rather discomforting.
“I would recommend we retreat from this nebula and find a way around it. Its toxic nature starts eating the hull of the ship.”
“Ouch. At which rate?”
“If it does not get any worse then we will be bare bones by the time we have reached the third asteroid. Should it get worse …”
“Alright, no need to get dramatic.” Val responded as she turned the ship around. As fast as possible they headed out of the nebula. Hull at 92%, it could have been worse. In a wide berth she navigated around the nebula towards the next asteroid.
When they got close to the last roid another signature appeared on the scanner.
“Is that what I think it is?”
“If you are referring to the broken gate, yes, it is indeed an old gate, or used to be one, more precisely.”
“We need to get closer to it. I’d like to see if there is anything that would tell us where it used to lead.”
“You do remember that this nebula is particularly fond of the alloys of our ship?”
“I know but we can’t really miss this chance!” Val headed towards the gate, monitoring the hull status closely.
“The nebula no longer appears to be interested in our hull, much more in our shields, energy levels are dropping rapidly.”
“You are right. Though, shields levels are all you see. But in fact the nebula drains the energy of the ship as such. I’d say we have another 10 mizuras before we are stranded.”
“Oh you are so encouraging! Well, lets get in there, take a quick scan and get out as fast as we can.”
The Barracuda closed in and drifted around the gate.
“Better get going, can we charge the jumpdrive?”
“No, insufficient energy. We need to clear the nebula first.”
“Yay, that doesn’t make it a particularly good hiding place. Alright, let’s get out of here. We also should return to Lucky Planets and get those power plants operational.”
*
When Val arrived in Lucky Planets construction of the two power plants had been completed. She docked briefly at the Trading Station and picked up Bola Ti. Then they proceeded to one of the plants. There was some work to be done.
It took another two tazuras to make the desired adjustments to the stations, a time that the Scorpions used to fill the holds with Crystals. Soon the first local transports docked to pick up their quota of energy cells.
“Should we get somebody in to talk to the station managers in the neighboring sectors and get them to sign some contracts?”
“To get a good start you should get a freighter for each station that sells the excess cells. There is more profit in that. At a later point in time, once you have established yourself on the market you may think of long-term contracts.”
Val decided to go with Arox’ advice and ordered two Caimans from the Family Rhy Wharf.
Bola Ti had moved into a number of rooms and converted them into his own little research centre. With the limited funds that Val had made available for him he could not setup a facility that would match his previous laboratories. However, it was sufficient and, with Val’s expertise, the available computing power easily exceeded what he had previously at his disposal.
For the first time Val owned more than just a ship. The feeling was so satisfactory! She sat back in her chair and looked around. Furniture was sparse and of very limited comfort. She had to do something about that but it had to wait until she had sold a few thousand energy cells.
While there was nothing pressing on her schedule, it was time to tie up some loose ends.
“Arox, can you please play the video again that we recorded in that unknown sector, the first one?”
A screen flickered and again she saw those terrible images of the Dragon being literally dissected by those angular ships. If this ship was what the old man had been looking for then she needed to get the footage to him. But who was he? She did not have a name.
“Bola, can you please give me your to the mainframe again? I need a name.”
The Boron scientist was visibly uncomfortable with her request. “Would you care telling me more?”
“Come to my office and I will show you.”
A few mizuras later Bola stood next to her and Val told him about her meeting with old man and showed him the footage.
A few nuances paler, Bola Ti finally spoke. “I do not think you will need to search the mainframe for this person. Your description matches Ban Dana, the head of the Argon Secret Service. Also the approximate time of his disappearance and return imply it is him.”
“The what? How come you know him?” Val was anything but happy to know she had the head of all Argon spies in her ship. Sure, she had saved his life, but would he not also be the one person that had the means to find out about her past? Did he send her ‘shadow’? Talking of which, had she managed to lose him? Her train of thoughts was interrupted.
“As a leading Boron scientist in the filed of advanced weaponry I was in close contact to the secret services of both our people. Only a few stazuras before we met I had a meeting with him.”
“I should have figured … “
“What did you say?”
“Oh, nothing. That is fine. Where is he usually located?”
“Ban Dana is in Argon Prime on the carrier Argon One. Are you going to see him?”
“What? No, of course not! I will send him a message drone with the footage.”
“Send him my regards, please.”
“I don’t think I will do that. The less people know you are still alive the safer you are! It is not likely that somebody makes an open attack on this station but some may try to bless us with an assassin.”
“You are correct. I better remain dead for the time being. This is also what I told my brother.”
After Bola Ti had left her office, Val ordered Arox to send the drone through a Xenon sector and then to Argon Prime. This should be sufficient to make it impossible to trace the drone back to her.
Now this new sector; it certainly had its dangers. But with its ore-bearing asteroids it would also make a good sector to setup unnoticed. Sure, buying factories and jumping them into nowhere would raise questions. But if she owned her own large transporter then nobody needed to know. At this point it was an idea but due to lacking funds nothing more than a dream.
The gate, however, made it necessary to go back. It could hold information that … well, what actually? Information that she could sell? Not really, she would have to disclose the location, which wasn’t any good. Information that would allow her to rebuild the gate? Hardly, even if she’d accomplish that. What then? What if there was a hostile sector connected? Did she have the fleet to defend her sector, the universe? Well, she could always destroy the gate again. Still, there was little more than her curiosity that urged her to go back. But before then she had to figure out a way to counter the toxic nebula and also the mysterious energy drain around the gate. There was certainly enough work to do to keep her busy for a while.
“Arox, have you any ideas how we can protect the ship against the hazards found in that sector East of Rhy’s Desire?”
“I have analysed the data and cannot think of any alloy that would resist the toxins. As for the energy drain, checking the log files indicated that we lost the energy solely through our shields. We could try turning shields off. It would leave us extremely vulnerable already to micro meteors. However, if we do not lose any energy we could navigate slowly to the gate.”
“What if micro meteorites aren’t the only threat? What if there is more?”
“I should be able to detect it early enough to raise the shields.”
“Any ideas what it could be that consumes the energy?”
“As it were the shields that leaked one has to assume that there is a some sort of electro-magnetic field surrounding the gate. There are no known gases that could cause it, so the gate appears to be the source.”
“Not sure if that is encouraging news. But I guess there is only one way to find out.”
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