The 28th Gate: Volume 3

Episode 1-2

“It’s complicated,” I added with a sigh. “They almost didn’t let me return at all, but I fought with them to let me come back.” It wasn’t the entire story, but I didn’t think Quatra needed all of it just yet. I didn’t want to push too hard because I needed her help rescuing Katherine before anything else. “So, they gave me the little ship and threw me back through the gate, with the warning that they’d be taking further measures to prevent anything from coming through again.”

Quatra gave me another skeptical look. But then her gaze focused again on my left eye. Quatra knew about the artificial eye I had received from Maunhouser. I’d even let her run scans of the thing as payment once. So, when her gaze focused on my left eye now, I knew she was making the connection, because my left eye was no longer artificial. Well, I guess it still is artificial, in the sense that it isn’t the eye that I was born with. But it was clearly not the mechanical implant she had always known.

I’m still impressed by the team Aunwhal assembled to do the work. They managed to make the eye appear a perfect match to my right. Of course, it isn’t. In fact, it’s even better than the mechanical eye had been. I can see more clearly, and at greater distances. It might not cover quite the same range of wavelengths, but it still sees a lot farther than my right eye. At the time Quatra was staring at it, it also felt different, though it’s a bit difficult to describe. Almost like the mechanical eye had placed pressure on my socket, a subtle nudge that was always there and faded to the subconscious. But the pressure was gone, replaced by an eye that had been grown for me from my own genetics and then biologically enhanced.

“Your eye is different,” Quatra finally said, though her tone almost made it an accusation.

I simply nodded.

“You got it from there? And it’s biological?” She leaned in and stared at it more critically.

“Yeah,” I said. “Fully biotic. They debated whether to replace both of them to prevent an imbalance in visual acuity but didn’t like the idea of carving up healthy tissue to do it. So, they just replaced the implant.”

“Can I make a scan of it?” she asked, her tone carefully neutral.

I considered telling her no, but I decided that it wasn’t the time to be haggling over advantages. I needed her help.

So, I nodded. She could disbelieve my story—since it was, in truth, hard to believe—but she wouldn’t be able to ignore the fact I had a new eye. And if it meant giving her a few free scans, that was well worth it. “You can take a look at the shuttle, too,” I added. “It’s like nothing I’ve flown before. I’m gonna need it back, but if you agree to help me rescue Katherine, you can make all the scans you like.”

I wondered for a moment if my offer might have been just the sort of thing that you people in Civilization had been worried about. That individual drive, greed I suppose, would rule decisions more so than helping others. And I knew Quatra. She certainly drove for a deal that would leave her better off after than before, which might well seem like self-interest.

But I also knew she was more complicated than that. She has always used her personal ambition as the means to build things greater than herself. She was interested in the tech I offered because she could use it, certainly. But I think she was also interested in it because I had offered it, even after I already knew she’d been working to find Katherine before I returned.

Maybe in my making the gesture, I was showing her that I wasn’t trying to keep it for myself either. But we still had to remain true to our long-established relationship.

“I’ll need scans of the ship and unfettered access,” Quatra countered, falling into our usual haggling game.

“You get the scans and then your people are free to access the ship whenever it’s here, but I still take it when I need it,” I replied.

She paused a beat, then nodded. “Done. I’ll have the scans started while we work out our next move. So. What do you need?”

The funny thing about the question is I had been so worried about how to convince her to help me—how to convince her I was telling the truth about everything I’d been through—that I hadn’t considered the next step. I had been so focused on the fact I needed to get back to rescue Katherine that I hadn’t really considered how to do it.

But I no longer had that luxury.

“I’m going to need to get my ship back,” I started. “The Essta, I mean. My Q-com has a contact we’re going to need. Katherine and I left the ship hidden in the asteroid field around Maunhouser’s moon at Tegra III. If I’m lucky, it’s still there.”

Quatra made a face and shot Greene a look. “That’s going to be difficult,” she said, turning back to me. “Shortly after your… adventure, Maunhouser sent a full fleet into the area, including one of their largest battleships. The problem is it has since disappeared. No one knows where it’s hiding. I’m sure they’re planning something, I just don’t know what.”

I shook my head. “That won’t be a problem.”

Quatra gave me a hard look. “Hunter dear. I know you distain Maunhouser, but if they have a battleship guarding that gate, it will be a serious problem.”

I sighed. I had hoped to avoid telling them. I’d hoped to avoid even thinking about it. But it looked like that wasn’t really an option.

So, I told them.

After I’d shared my story with what I considered Civilization’s leadership, the Collective, they began asking me questions about the gate ring and the corporations and Oversight. Once I had answered their questions as well as I could, I finally returned with Aunwhal to his guardian installation to wait while the Collective deliberated.

“Would you mind a few more tests?” Aunwhal had asked me after we stepped through the small minigate connecting the facility to every other minigate in Civilization.

“Still worried about the new bioimplants?” I asked him.

“No, no. I am satisfied with those, and you seem to be recovering well. I am merely interested in following up on some anomalous readings we encountered in your bloodstream’s plasma. We knew you had foreign material from your corporate enhancements, as you say, but we detected some dormant particles that appear to be of an independent design.”

When I offered no objections, he led me back to the facility’s laboratory.

There were a few others there working in silence, but they had become accustomed to my conversing aloud with Aunwhal and had learned how strange I felt it was when everyone around me talked in silence through bioware I didn’t have. I didn’t think much as he sat me down and began taking more readings, letting my gaze turn to the large wall of windows across the lab, which looked out over the massive gate the installation guarded.

Aunwhal was murmuring to himself—a habit he said he’d picked up from talking with me—when the gate activated.

Aunwhal’s head snapped around and his expression shifted to the odd look of concentration I’d learned meant he was in the link, talking with others who weren’t there.

An instant later, a ship emerged from the enormous gate, and as the gate’s light faded, the facility illuminated the bold curves of a battle-rated warship of a design I recognized all too well.

A Maunhouser first-rate battleship.

“Aunwhal, that’s a—”

“They aren’t responding to us,” he interrupted without even looking at me.

In the harsh light, the battleship’s engines glowed sharply as the ship struggled to move, but the facility’s superior technology held it fast, just as it had been intended to do.

The ship’s lateral lights flashed in a quick, strobing pattern.

“That’s a warning pattern,” I added.

The forward mounted particle cannons of the battleship started to glow as the large ship’s massive array of weapons came online and began charging.

“Aunwhal! They’re about to—”

They fired.

Three piercing slices of destruction lanced out from the battleship, the brilliant light obscuring all else for a blinding instant. At the same time, the station rocked from the impacts. Aunwhal stumbled but maintained his balance, while I heard a crash from behind us as the others in the laboratory staggered against one of the lab benches. Beyond the observation windows, a plume of debris hurtled from the site of impact a few decks below us.

Aunwhal’s response was almost instantaneous. The guardian facility returned fire.

It started as two pinpricks of light on the hull of the battleship, but with astonishing speed, they expanded, flat swirling lights that blossomed until they merged, engulfing the entire ship. Then, with a brief flash like an implosion grenade, the light collapsed in on itself, vanishing into its own afterglow.

And the entire Maunhouser battleship, one of the most formidable weapons of my known world, vanished along with it.

After I finished telling them, Quatra sat silent for a moment while Greene remained impassive.

“That’s why I say the battleship won’t be a problem,” I added. “Because I already know it’s gone.”

“So, there’s no way Maunhouser can use the gate?” Quatra asked.

I shook my head. “Not unless they find a way to get around the fail-safes, which were set up by people who understand the gates far better than we do.”

Quatra frowned. “So, that’s why Katherine’s plan failed. And why Maunhouser hasn’t sent more ships through. They can’t.”

Then Greene finally spoke. “Have you considered that a slight modification to her original plan might still work?”

Quatra turned to c**k her head at him and then broke into a smile.

But I frowned. The last time I had thought about it, Katherine’s plan had not only failed to accomplish the goals we intended, it had made everything worse. “You mean try to warn Oversight about the gate?”

“In a way,” Quatra replied coyly. “I think what Greene means, Hunter dear, is that you should threaten Maunhouser that you’ll tell Oversight about the gate. After all, you know they have it, and they know you know. But no one else will believe you. If, however,” and her smile grew, “you had irrefutable evidence to present, then you could offer Maunhouser a trade—the evidence for Katherine’s freedom.”

“You mean blackmail?” I asked.

“Leverage,” Greene replied with a grim smile.

I nodded, considering the possibilities. “It could work,” I allowed, “though it would leave Maunhouser in the clear. I don’t doubt that it’s worth it to free Katherine, but I still don’t like the idea of handing over all the evidence against Maunhouser.”

Quatra scoffed. “Oh, that is cute. But I don’t think you quite understand. You hand over the evidence, and you get Katherine back,” she explained, breaking into a grin. “Then another source happens to make a public release of similar evidence, triggering a mass investigation of Maunhouser’s operations.”

I’ll admit the idea surprised me. I had forgotten Quatra could be so underhanded. But then again, she had managed to keep her business independent despite multiple major corps trying to overrun her, so I guess she’d had a lot of practice.

“That, I like,” I replied with a matching grin.

“Mmm, I thought you might, dear.”

“Alright,” I said, ignoring her as she slipped back into her playful tendencies. “That just leaves us with getting the Essta. It has the surveillance equipment to gather the evidence we need and then get out again.”

Greene frowned. “Even if Maunhouser is looking for the ship?”

I shrugged.

“Well,” Quatra added, “getting to your ship will be the difficult part, but I think your new shuttle might come in handy.” Then she stood. “Greene will have one of his aides bring down the latest reports on the resources Maunhouser has stationed around Tegra III. You might be able to use them in deciding how to get yourself back aboard your ship. I’ll let you consider your options while I get started on the scans of your shuttle.”

Greene nodded once in parting before he stepped out the door. Quatra started to follow, then paused at the doorway. “Is there anything else you need?” she asked gently.

She probably intended the question to be about my emotional state, though I can’t know for sure. Regardless, there was one other thing that had occurred to me. I suppose you could even say it bordered on being an emotional need.

“Yeah,” I replied with a crooked smile. “You think you could find me another warlock on short notice?”

Quatra leveled a reproachful glare at me. “Where is the one I sold you?”

I pulled its mangled shape from the holster on my thigh. It still pained me to see it like that. The gun had served me well. But I was going to need something functional.