The 28th Gate: Volume 3

Episode One It’s kinda hard to start a story with a gun when I didn’t have a single functioning weapon on me. All I had was the mangled shape of my warlock, which Aunwhal had allowed me to continue carrying. I think he must have known its constant weight gave me comfort. “Are you sure about this?” Aunwhal asked, his steadfast face wearing the lines of concern he’d carried since I had first told him about life beyond the Black Gates. I nodded. “I have to go back. I have to find Katherine.” I threw a glance at the others who had gathered to see me off, though there weren’t many. There didn’t need to be. Those who were present would share the memories of the experience. Within a few chrons, anyone who wished to know would. And as Aunwhal had told me, there were a lot of people who would want to know. Aunwhal shook his head. “I am sorry, my friend. It seems a terrible burden they have forced upon you. I do not see the justice in it.” I didn’t say anything about the burden that had been forced upon him when the Maunhouser ship came through the quarantined gate after me. He held out a small package for me. “I regret we were unable to repair your war-lock.” His thick, proper accent always made the weapon sound even more exotic. When I opened the gift, I found the blued blade I’d carried when I first came through his gate. “I had it sharpened for you,” he added. “And had a suitable sheath crafted.” I wasn’t sure how to thank him. In so many ways he had been my shepherd since I had arrived in what I’d come to call Civilization. He was the first to hear my story, the first to recognize its importance. He’d been a constant advocate and supporter. And when the Collective had refused to allow me to return through the gate, Aunwhal’s had been one of the first voices raised in protest. He smiled at me. Maybe he already knew what I was thinking. It often felt like he did. “Good luck, my friend. I do fear you will need it. But I also hope we will see each other again.” He gestured to the others gathered to see me off. “We will continue what you started.” I nodded and gave him a wane smile. “I know. And thank you.” Then, with a last nod of farewell to the others, I climbed into the cockpit of the small, angular shuttle Aunwhal had given me and prepared to leave Civilization. It was only a few moments after my little shuttle appeared on the far side of the Selma IV Gate that I realized my mistake. I was already dreading the long haul to reach Selma III, where I could ask Quatra for help. I didn’t have a Q-com and the general comms on the little shuttle were too advanced to pick up basic chatter, so I’d figured I might as well start the long run from the closest gate. But if I’d thought about it more carefully, I’d have asked Aunwhal to send me back through the Selma II Gate. Let’s just say I’ve had a few encounters with Fayatt Corp, the corp that controls Selma IV, and they have a history of aggressiveness. As such, I didn’t receive any warning messages. It only dawned upon me the situation I was in when a Fayatt interceptor-destroyer began moving to block my course. And a moment’s inspection revealed two more Fayatt ships beyond, also moving to intercept. Needless to say, I wasn’t in the mood for delays—to say nothing of corporate detainment. So, I cranked up the engines on my little shuttle and launched forward. And I will say, that little thing is fast. I mean really, it’s the single fastest ship I’ve ever seen, aside from Commander Umbstard’s research ship, which we last saw cruising away faster than light. As my shuttle rushed past the first Fayatt ship, the others behind it opened fire, angry blue tracers marking the EM rounds they had chosen. But that didn’t matter. I’ll give your people credit. They were smart enough to harden the shuttle against electromagnetic interference, and subsequently, EM rounds. Well, that just gave me one more reason to dislike Fayatt. But without any weapons, I was helpless to retaliate. Instead, I rolled my course to put a little more distance between me and the firing ships, then focused on pushing as much speed as I could. A few more flashes came close, but within subchrons I was well out of the Fayatt ships’ offensive ranges. After that I took a deep breath and settled in for the long haul to Selma III, still impressed by just how fast the little shuttle could move. By the time I arrived, I figure I must have covered the distance in a quarter of the time it would have taken the Essta, which is a rather swift ship in its own right. When I hit orbit around Selma III, I didn’t feel like taking the time with the general port, particularly considering the challenge of my advanced communications equipment. Instead, I blitzed right past the main port of the Citizens Unincorporated Municipal Area and forced a landing in Quatra’s small private port. This, of course, without any communications caused something of a commotion with Quatra’s security team, and I was grumpy enough I didn’t help matters. But after one of them was willing to relay to Quatra who it was that had landed at her private port, she quickly set things right. After that, a couple of her people escorted me into her building, and I was surprised when we entered the elevator and went down rather than up. I was so accustomed to the show rooms at the top of her grand tower, I didn’t even realize she had belowground infrastructure as well. The small, utilitarian room they left me in didn’t appear terribly inviting and was a sharp contrast to the airy, grand exhibit hall she preferred to host in at the tower’s top. Instead, this was a room easily secured from prying interests. I approved. Quatra and another man entered a few subchrons later, but before I could say anything, Quatra held up a hand. “One moment, Hunter dear.” She moved to a small electronics console on the wall where she worked for a moment. “There,” she said, turning back to stare at me with a critical eye, “now we can talk.” I shot a suspicious glance at the man still standing in the doorway. He was tall and thin but carried himself like someone with a lot of combat training. “Baratold Greene,” Quatra introduced. “My new head of security. He doesn’t have ties to Fayatt Corp.” There was more than a hint of bitter sarcasm in her voice, which was fair considering her previous head of security had been selling her shipping routes to Fayatt. But I had other things to focus on. “Do you know where Katherine is?” I asked. Quatra’s eyes narrowed a little, as though working through how to interpret the question. Then she gave me a slow nod. “From what I’ve been able to gather, Maunhouser has her. I’ve been trying to collect some information on where, but Maunhouser security has been rather… well. They had an incident with their prized research installation some while back, so they’ve been revamping all their security measures. It’s made things difficult for me.” Quatra paused, then gave me that penetrating look again. “But where have you been? It’s been subrevs since I tried to talk you out of that foolhardy assault on Maunhouser’s secret gate.” I shot another glance at Greene, who was still standing impassively by the doorway. “It’s fine,” Quatra said. “He already knows.” I nodded then took a deep breath, returning to Quatra’s question about where I’d been. It was, of course, a question I’d been expecting. I’d even spent most of my time in transit working through the best way to explain it all. And I figured if anyone would believe what I had been through, Quatra would. Even so, I wasn’t quite sure how to begin. “Katherine’s plan worked,” I started. “I managed to hold off Maunhouser’s forces long enough for her to get their secret gate, the 28th Gate, operational. But then she told me she couldn’t go with me—she’d planned from the beginning to stay behind while sending me through. By that point, it was too late to call it off. I was already drifting into the gate. Even so, I figured I would reach Oversight and they’d shut down Maunhouser before they dared do anything to Katherine. But the problem started when I didn’t arrive where we thought I would.” Quatra nodded. “I had Kyrshaw waiting for you near the Alopa Gate. When he never spotted you, I worried something had gone wrong.” She gave me that look again. “Do you think Katherine messed up?” I shook my head. “No, it wasn’t her fault. She didn’t know the gates have a secondary safety. If any gate becomes omni-programmable, it overrides control and defaults to a specific gate.” Quatra paused, trying to follow what I’d said. “So, you had to find your way to Oversight from somewhere else?” I shook my head again. “The gate I was sent to isn’t on our network.” This time Quatra’s eyes narrowed. “How is that possible?” “We don’t have the only network,” I replied. I took another deep breath. I still hadn’t worked out the best way to say it, so I just started in. I told her what Aunwhal had told me about what we call the end of the Gate Age, and about how it had formed what he called the Black Gates. I told her about the spread of the virus destroyed most of what we once had and about Civilization’s decision to cut off the affected gates to save humanity. “That’s the thing,” I added. “We all know the major corps compete for access to gate programming research because they hope to be the first through to a new gate where they can lay claim to planets with untouched ancient tech. But the other gates out there aren’t untouched. We aren’t the surviving remnants of humanity, Quatra. We’re the outcasts who were quarantined and left for dead when a biotechnological disease swept through whole systems, jumping through the gates. When Katherine reactivated the 28th Gate, she triggered a series of fail-safes Civilization had left behind, so that if the virus ever tried to come through to one of the untouched gates, they’d be able to trap it. Instead, they trapped me.” I glanced at Greene again, who remained stoic. “After they ran tests on me, they realized I didn’t carry the virus. I suppose that’s the only reason they didn’t kill me right then. Anyways, that’s where I’ve been all this time, trying to convince them to come back here and help me save Katherine. And everyone else.” It took her a moment to process it all, and I understood. If anyone had told me all that, I doubt I’d have believed them. I certainly hadn’t believed Aunwhal the first time he told me. After a moment, Quatra took a step toward the door as though she were leaving, but then she stopped and turned back toward me again. She stood that way for another moment until she finally stepped forward and sat across the table from me. “Where are they now, then?” she asked. “Why is this the first we’ve heard of them?” Maybe she didn’t believe me, but I guess we had enough of a history for her to give me another chance to explain. I allowed myself a bitter scowl. “Because they refused to help,” I replied. “They’d never imagined there could be survivors of the plague or whatever it was, which was why they hadn’t sent help before. They’d made the decision that it wasn’t worth risking all of humanity to check on the status of the disease. So, they left our gates disconnected from the real gate network—that must be why our gates defaulted to their own ring network. But Civilization never stopped developing technology. They have tech the likes of which we haven’t even dreamed,” I told Quatra. “All this time that we’ve been struggling to salvage and scrape together the technology from the Gate Age, and they’ve been building from it. They don’t even use the massive space gates now. They have personal sized ones on planets that just pop you from place to place. They have a few ships, but not many. It took me this long to get permission to take the one I flew here in. They could change our lives, save countless millions, but they wouldn’t help.” Quatra sat there quietly, listening, waiting for me to continue. Waiting for me to explain.