The 28th Gate Volume 2

Episode Seven Artiguer Starship Works made some beautiful tools of destruction during the Gate Age, and one of the most elegant was their midrange particle cannon. Technically, any laser is a particle g*n because it fires a stream of particles. But imagining a laser doesn’t do justice to the magnificence of a starship-grade particle cannon. Where the best lasers fire with a pulse effect, particle cannons unleash all their energy in a single, unrelenting blast. Smaller cannon shots look something like the stronger warlock silvers, 7s or higher, and the big particle cannons have equally impressive charge times before they unleash their massive volleys. In my experience, the only way to get your hands on such a weapon is to find it. You can’t buy them. Try it and one of the larger corps will outbid you. Though, I have scavenged a few and made a tidy profit selling them through Quatra. Well, the ones I didn’t keep, that is. Any rota I could get my hands on a particle cannon was a good rota. “How are you doing, Katherine?” I asked over our comms, anxious to hear if she’d made any progress. “I’ve almost got it,” she replied, “but the system keeps reacting to my advances.” “You mean like another AI?” Gloria asked from beside me, her sudden concern mirroring my own. But when Katherine replied, I could hear the half smile in her voice, even though she was probably still deep in an interface. “No, nothing as advanced. This just has multiple layers of reactive programming, so whatever techniques I use to bypass one layer don’t work against the subsequent layers. I think I’m on the last layer now.” Gloria and I let her work in silence for a moment longer. “Got it,” Katherine said with a hint of smug triumph. I gave Gloria a grin. After I’d seen Katherine work on that derelict we scouted for Quatra, I’d been eager to set her on an independent salvage mission. I figured such a job would go a lot faster with someone who could splice into the code rather than having to rely on hard hacking like Gloria and I had. So, when Gloria picked up a tip about a possible salvage in the Pelum system, I figured it was time to let Katherine have a go. The hull of the ship looked like a total loss. It hadn’t been a large vessel to begin with, and it looked as if it had tried to split an asteroid with its prow, which hadn’t worked so well. I suppose the thing must have drifted through an asteroid field at one point, because the rest of the hull showed signs of numerous impacts. But the ship was large enough that it had survived—well, mostly. And that meant it might still have some valuables. I was hoping to find the ship’s guns. I knew better than to expect to find any personal arms, since the first few scavengers would have carried those off. But there was a chance we’d find one or more of the ship’s original armaments left in salvageable condition, or even a few pristine reserve parts. And I hoped the mangled shape of the hull would work in our favor, dissuading any who might have taken a passing look and assumed it to be a total loss. Of course, there was the possibility that it indicated exactly why we shouldn’t have wasted our time. We had maneuvered the Essta alongside, and Gloria and I cracked open the outer air lock. The first thing we noticed was that the artificial gravity was off—either dead or the plates had been stripped from the ship. Debris was everywhere, drifting through the hallways and occasionally rebounding off the bulkheads in awkward spirals. Most of the bulkheads themselves seemed to be in good condition and—since luck seemed to be with us that rota—so were a few other parts of the ship. The first prizes we found were a couple of the anti-fighter lasers that had somehow survived near the mangled bow, as well as one of the rear torpedo launchers. Gloria and I started with the lasers, since they’d be a quick job. I suppose they’d been left under the assumption they’d been destroyed with everything else mounted on the forward hull, but I’d learned long ago that it was always worth the extra time to make sure—particularly when starship lasers were involved. While Gloria and I were scouting for guns, Katherine had moved toward the bridge of the derelict, thinking she might be able to splice her way into the computer core. It had taken her longer than she’d expected, thanks to whatever reactive programming she’d encountered, but I took it to be a good sign. The harder a computer system is to splice into, the less likely someone has done it before you. “There isn’t much left here,” Katherine continued, sounding disappointed. “But I’ll keep looking. Some of it has been corrupted, though it might be salvageable.” I felt the pang of disappointment too. I’d been growing more excited the longer it took Katherine to weave her way into the system. But that was just how salvage trips tended to go. Besides, I knew the lasers alone would be enough to pay for the trip, and the torpedo launcher wasn’t a bad find either. “Gloria,” Katherine added, “I’m seeing some odd references in the power systems. They’re much more powerful than I’d expect for a ship this size, and there are massive power feeds from the engines to a couple pieces of equipment mounted low in the ship.” I shot Gloria an excited glance as we finished the laser extraction, but her expression said she wasn’t yet feeling the same. “What kind of references?” she asked. “Schematics or use logs?” “I’m not sure,” Katherine replied, a sour note in her voice. “A lot of the notation is missing. I think a bunch of this was done after the ship launched. It’s not as complete as a schematic should be.” I returned Gloria’s look. She shrugged. “I suppose it’s worth a look,” she added. And sure enough, it really was. Buried deep in the ship, we found the focusing systems and power guides for a pair of Artiguer Starship Works midrange particle cannons. The outer barrels had been stripped by scavengers or torn off by asteroid impacts, leaving little sign of their existence from the exterior. But the inner workings—the important parts—were all intact. It was an amazing discovery. My praise for Katherine was emphatic, and even Gloria seemed impressed. As such, I tried to assure Katherine it was fine if she couldn’t extract any more data from the system. “Well, I’ll keep working at it,” Katherine told us. “Let us know if you find anything else,” I added. “And check in on the Essta when you have a chance.” I’d long before learned never to assume raiders weren’t around. “Oh, that’s a good idea!” Katherine replied. “The Essta’s computers could help me run through the data looking for salvageable fragments. Give me a few subchrons to get the connection established.” Gloria gave me a questioning look, and I just shrugged. If Katherine thought she could connect the Essta with a ship that had been drifting for who knew how many revolutions, I wasn’t going to question it. We just let her do what she was best at, while we turned to the task of tearing out those beautiful particle cannons. “There,” Katherine announced a little while later. “I’ve got enough of the computer up and running to connect with the Essta and, while I confirmed there isn’t much left here, I think I should be able to recover a few useful pieces.” “Good work,” I replied, though I was distracted, trying to disconnect a couple of power converters I assumed were still carrying live charges. “Any little extra helps.” “I’m also getting a strange message the Essta received. It appears to be a wide broadcast,” she added. “What kind of message?” Gloria asked, letting me focus on finishing with the first disconnect before I pulled back away from the converter assembly. “Here, I’ll play it,” Katherine replied. A moment later a new voice came through. “I repeat, this is Commander Darrell Umbstard of The Unification Initiative calling any aligned ships. Please respond.” The voice was male, and sounded urgent, but it also spoke with a strangely thick accent I’d never heard before. I gave Gloria a questioning look. Gloria shrugged. “Never heard of any Unification Initiative,” she said. “I haven’t either,” I murmured, still concerned about the accent. “I could head back to the Essta and take a look,” Katherine offered. I nodded, more for my own sake than anyone else’s. “That sounds good. Gloria and I will keep working on this cannon, but you let us know if you need anything.” “Understood,” Katherine replied, already starting toward the Essta’s hatch. Gloria shot me a look. “Think it’ll be trouble?” I shrugged. “I always think it’ll be trouble. But I still want this gun.” Gloria scoffed with a half smile. “Then I suppose we should get back to work.” I managed to disconnect the second converter without discharging the entire thing into my body, after which Gloria and I finished decoupling the cannon guides from the remainder of the power assembly. We didn’t get much done beyond that before Katherine called back. “Hunter, you need to come look at this. The Essta’s got that ship on scanners, and it looks small—probably doesn’t have a crew of more than one or two people. But the Essta’s also reading a couple of other ships moving to intercept, and I think they’re raiders.” I muttered a couple of curses. “Oh, of course they are,” Gloria replied sourly. “We haven’t tangled with raiders this subrev. Besides, who else would be this far out-system?” I considered the situation, not yet ready to abandon the cannon. Then I traded another look with Gloria. “Think you can finish this by yourself?” She gave me a skeptical frown. “You do realize how large this thing is, don’t you?” I nodded, but I wasn’t willing to give it up yet. “You’re in zero grav,” I countered. But she made a face. “Oh sure, so I can get crushed against the ceiling instead of the floor.” “Just do what you can,” I assured her. “I’ll go check with Katherine and we’ll make a decision from there.” Gloria nodded unhappily as she turned back to the cannon’s bracings, and I rushed back to the Essta as fast as the lack of gravity would allow. Unfortunately, reaching the Essta’s bridge did little to allay my concerns. It only took a moment to confirm that Katherine was right. “They’re definitely raiders,” I relayed to Gloria. “Two of them. Smaller ships, but they look to be well armed. And they haven’t bothered to contact the new ship, so they must be moving to attack.” “We have to do something,” Katherine said, concern in her voice. I shot her an irritated glance, but she didn’t back down. “Hunter,” she said emphatically, “we have to help.” “She’s right, Hunter,” Gloria added. “Even I don’t like leaving people to raiders.” “We can’t risk the Essta,” I countered. It had the firepower to take care of those two ships, but doing so would require revealing the cloak, and that was something I couldn’t do. I assumed one of the few reasons Maunhouser hadn’t launched a full hunt for me and the Essta was because I’d been careful to not reveal the tech it possessed. “Well, how fortunate,” Gloria replied dryly, “that the Essta isn’t all we have available.” She was right, of course. The Endurance could handle two small raiders, particularly if I could pull the surprise while they were distracted. But that didn’t mean there weren’t risks, and I almost started in with a new line of argument. Instead, I caught something in Katherine’s eyes. Without saying anything else, she fixed me with a steady gaze conveying both an undercurrent of supplication and a hint of challenge. Something about her look prodded me to action. “Fine,” I relented, letting my frustration go. “Gloria, see if you can get that cannon onboard by the time I’m back.” She just scoffed. I looked at Katherine, held her gaze for a moment, and tried to decide what to say. After failing that, I simply turned and headed to the launch bay for the Endurance. I didn’t even wait for Katherine to confirm my launch. I simply punched the throttle and felt the slam of acceleration as the Endurance tore away from the Essta. For the briefest of moments, I felt the strange tingle as the Endurance left the Essta’s cloak, and then I was in open space. It only took a moment to find the location of the raiders, and I readjusted my course to intercept. I considered sending the raiders some sort of message—a warning or a threat—but I declined. It wouldn’t have changed anything. In my experience, if you offer raiders a warning, they take it as a show of weakness and attack. If you issue them a threat, they respond with force. So, either way, I was about to be in the middle of a fight.