Broken Stars (Universe on Fire Book 1), page 14
“Which puts us back at the start,” Kane interjected. “We need to decide which of these technologies are a worthwhile investment. The amount we can get for our resources is not infinite.”
“What about this?” Commander King asked as she swiped the list to highlight an item.
Aiko took a look and read through the description. She hadn’t had the chance to take a look at the full list, and she hadn’t even checked the items whose cost was greater than the estimate of what they would receive upon selling their goods.
“The bastard sells stations?” Chief Randor asked incredulously.
Aiko silently mirrored the sentiment.
“Yes,” Kane said. “Small ones, recon drones, satellites, and the like. But I have seen nothing in his catalog that would be of any use to us. Although I did not have a chance to take a closer look.”
“What we need the most is time, right?” Commander King said. “Well, this thing here, if I am not reading it wrong, is a system wide defense network. Satellites, defense platforms, patrol drones, everything that a system would need to be completely covered and protected. A few ships with a defense network like this one could defend a system from a much larger force.”
Aiko shook her head. “The Fleet back home already has plans on building a defense network.”
“But will they finish it in time? And even when we do have it in place, it will not be like a network we can purchase here. I took a look at the specifications, this system doesn’t have that much more than what we are capable of building, but it is probably a fairly fleshed out system. Ours will be built hastily, with a severe lack of experience in building such systems. We will need to learn as we go, the same as we did with Prometheus—and we all know that this ship is far from perfect, we have bugs and minor issues almost daily. We will make mistakes, and that will cost us,” Commander King finished.
The room was silent, everyone taking her words in and thinking on them. Finally Kane tilted his head and studied the specifications for the defense network. “Even if we wanted to buy it, we will not have enough credits to purchase it.”
“This is a star port where everything is for sale. We could sell some technology, our weapons are in part based on Qash’vo’tar weapons, and as far as I could tell everything here is of lower quality. We have scans of their weapons as well. And I know that you have seen the request boards, there are people here who would hire a ship and a crew for escort missions and the like. We can make credits,” King argued.
“We have less than two years before we must be back in Sol. That is not a long time when you account for travel times,” Aiko added.
“But we can make it,” King pressed.
“I’ll look into it,” Kane said at last. “It is one more avenue we can explore.”
“This is a pretty impressive system,” Chief Randor added at the end.
“We shall see,” Kane said.
***
Kane walked into the Prometheus’s mess hall and made his way around the tables until he reached one on the far end. There he took a seat across from Specialist O’nga. She acknowledged his presence with a short nod of her head and continued eating. Kane sat for a while before deciding to speak.
“You were awfully quiet during the meeting,” Kane commented. The Wanderer had barely spoken a word during their officers meeting.
“I have little to say on the subject,” O’nga said.
“You must have an opinion,” Kane said.
“I am not qualified to speak on the matters of technology, I barely understand it as it is,” O’nga said between bites.
“But you do know people, what do you think about us asking for help from the Zhal?” Kane asked.
O’nga didn’t answer immediately, but Kane knew her well enough to know that she was thinking. Then she finally raised her piercing yellow eyes to look at Kane.
“They are greater than you, there is no balance. Any help they provide will not come free of price.”
“We suspect as much.”
“The question then is not whether you should ask for help or not, but rather are you willing to pay that price. You have things that they will want, it is inevitable for the strong to take from the weak. It is left to be seen whether they will take from you peacefully or through force,” O’nga told him, never shifting her gaze from his.
“I take it that you have seen your share of that?” Kane asked. He knew little about the Wanderers aside from what they had shared, and they never shared much. Kane was aware that something had happened in their past which caused them to swear off practicing magic forever. They still used their skill and knowledge of the scripts to design spells but they never used them themselves. Whatever happened had caused the Wanderers to be regarded poorly by the other two races native to Ethorria. From what little the humans had seen, the Wanderers were regarded as an unwelcome nuisance.
“It is the way of things. The Elvarr take what they can, power is the only rule on Ethorria. I have seen nothing to make me think that it is different here.”
“You are right… Even on Earth, the strong are the ones that make the rules.”
“Then you need to find a way to gain more power, the closer you are in power the less the price they exact will be.”
“They are just so far ahead of us…” Kane said, shaking his head. “Their technology is advanced, but we could catch up in time. But their resources… there is no way that we can catch up so easily. They hold almost two dozen systems, with populations eclipsing ours, they have an industry that makes ours look like nothing. I don’t see any way to bridge that gap, not quickly enough anyway.”
“You are thinking that power can only be a physical thing,” O’nga said. “It is not, there are other things that can give you power. Information, knowledge, secrets, all these things have value. You have knowledge that they do not, knowledge that they have no way of obtaining other than through you.”
“Magic,” Kane said.
“Yes.”
“But that it is also our only advantage, without magic we would not be able to match them. Our technology falls short without magitech augmenting it. If we give them that we will lose all the power that we do have.”
“I did not say that you should give it to them, I simply point out that you are not without power. I do not presume to know these people, but from what I have observed of you and yours, things are not so different than my home. These people have much, what is great effort for you might be inconsequential to them. Find something that they need or something that they desire, and use it to get what you want.”
Kane considered her words carefully, he agreed with her in many ways. And what she was speaking about did make sense, he just didn’t know how to accomplish it. “Thank you for your advice,” Kane said finally.
“Of course, Captain.”
***
A few days later Kane and Erika entered Jaquil’s shop after they received a message from him. They had spent the days prior exploring the space port and gathering as much information as possible as well as setting up an account with the station where they could keep their credits. The station had its own bank and could even issue credit chips that could be used in most places in this sector. In the process they had been convinced that the station was relatively safe as long as you didn’t break the rules, so Kane had decided to leave the rest of the team at the ship and take only Erika as backup.
As soon as they entered Kane noticed Jaquil hovering near the counter talking with another person of a race that he recognized from their research. She was R’issi, a bipedal just slightly taller than Kane with four arms. On top of her head she had three horns that curled upwards then back. He knew that she was female because she had three horns, whereas males had two. Her head was triangular in shape with two eyes, two holes for a nose, and a thin mouth.
He hadn’t seen a R’issi before in person, but he knew that they were an important race. They had been a part of the Zhal’Qash Empire before it fell, and both the Zhal and Qash’vo’tar had members of that race in their populations. But from what he had read on the net it was not uncommon for the Zhal R’issi to work as independent contractors outside of Zhal territory.
Ever since they had arrived here, they had seen many different races, some completely alien in appearance, but many had also looked fairly similar or at least were shaped similarly to humans. Enough so that scientists on the Prometheus already talked about convergent evolution. But from what they had seen on the Jar Allera net, the alien scientists were as baffled as any of the Earth ones.
As soon as Jaquil noticed Kane he turned and left the R’issi to come and greet them. The R’issi kept her eyes on Kane and Erika and seemed to be studying them intently.
“Hello there, Captain Kane!” Jaquil said as he flew over. “Good news, my friends, I have found buyers for all the goods you have for sale. Here is the amount that you will receive for the sale. As soon as you give the go ahead I can have my people come to your ship and off-load the goods and have the credits deposited to your account.” Jaquil sent the info to Kane’s datapad.
Kane took a look and saw that it was very close to the estimate he had given them before. “That is good, thank you.”
“No problem. Tell me, have you had a chance to look through my catalog? I have many articles that I think you will find interesting.”
Before Kane had the chance to respond, a loud crash startled him and he turned around to see a small alien, of the same race as the slave he had seen before on the street only this one had deep burgundy skin. He couldn’t gauge her appearance enough, but he could tell that she was young. And she wore a collar with a red light shining out of it.
“Stupid girl!” Jaquil flew around Kane and smacked the girl over the head.
In the alien girl’s large round eyes Kane saw pure terror, and he tightened his hands into fists to keep himself from reacting.
“Pick that up! You are embarrassing me in front of my customers. Waste of credits you are, trash. I should never have bought you,” Jaquil said as the little alien girl gathered the things that had fallen out of her box and then shuffled out of the room. If she was human, Kane would’ve put her at somewhere around fourteen. For a moment he thought about doing something. But he knew that this was not Earth, that there was no course of action that he could take to make that girl’s life easier.
Jaquil turned around and looked at Kane. “Apologies, friend, the slave is a new purchase, but fear not she will be punished appropriately. Now, where were we? Right, you were just about to tell me if you had seen anything interesting in my catalog.”
“We have seen a few things that have caught our eyes, yes,” Kane said, feeling sick to his stomach as they approached the holographic display in the middle of the shop.
“That is great! Here, you can just bring up the items you are interested in and I will tell you more about them.”
Taking a deep breath Kane put the incident aside, focusing on the task at hand.
Kane debated starting with a few of the smaller items they had decided to purchase, but instead he went right for the big one, not wanting to stay in the alien slaver’s presence for a moment longer. He used the fairly intuitive controls at the bottom of the display and found the article he wanted.
Jaquil didn’t respond for a few moments, then he turned to look at Kane with all four of his eyes. “Razov System Defense Network? This is a surprise, may I ask why you would want it?”
“The people my ship deals often with have many assets in many systems, it would be useful for us.” Kane told the story they had agreed on. It wasn’t meant to convince Jaquil that it was true, it was supposed to tell him that they would rather keep the truth to themselves.
“This costs more than what you will get for your goods, unless you have more to sell?”
“No, we were hoping that we could come to an arrangement.”
Jaquil grew quiet and his eyes blinked rapidly. He glanced back at the R’issi and then again at Kane. Then he finally seemed to make a decision. “There is something that we could do. If you do me a favor, I would be willing to sell it to you at a price.”
Kane raised an eyebrow at that. “A favor?”
Jaquil gestured to the R’issi and she walked over.
“Captain Kane, meet Captain Anterix of the Hadsone.”
Kane knew very little about customs and cultures here, so he simply nodded and said, “Captain.”
She returned the nod but otherwise remained quiet.
“The good Captain here has just informed me of an interesting opportunity. You see she has just received a tip concerning a potential old tech cache in the Neutral Zone. If you are willing to go check it out, and retrieve anything you find I would be willing to drop the price of the defense network system, as well as compensate you appropriately, of course.”
Kane looked at Captain Anterix, who gave a look to Jaquil that he had no way of identifying. “Why doesn’t she retrieve it by herself?”
“Unfortunately her ship is currently undergoing repairs, the Hadsone had a chance hostile encounter with another ship, she is unable to travel,” Jaquil said.
“I thought that it was illegal for ships to stop in the Neutral Zone or to scavenge the old empire’s tech.” Kane tilted his head and narrowed his eyes.
“Well, technically it is, the Zhal Confederation and the Qash’vo’tar don’t like other star nations rummaging through the remains of their old empire, but technically passing through is allowed. But they do punish scavengers severely.”
“And you want us to take the risk for you?”
“Ah, that is actually the beauty of this proposition. There is a very small chance of you being discovered, but in the event that you are noticed, it is unlikely that you will even be punished.”
“How so?”
“You are new to this area of space, your kind and ship are unknown here. You can claim ignorance, and the Zhal will most likely warn you off and send you away. Any ships that I could send would certainly be captured and imprisoned. And in the improbable event that they attempt to do anything more to you… well, your ship is very well equipped to handle the Zhal patrol ships, from what I can gather.”
Kane mulled it over for a few moments. He would need to speak with Aiko before committing to anything, but he knew that they would agree. It was not that they needed the defense network enough to risk it, but the chance of getting their hands on the tech of the Zhal’Qash was too good to pass on. They had been sent to find something that could give them an edge against the Qash’vo’tar, and this was it. “Tell me more.”
***
“This could be exactly what we need,” Commander King said.
Aiko looked around the table at her officers, aside from Commander King there were three more people present. Captain Kane Reinhart, Chief Gene Randor and Specialist O’nga Uhra were her top officers. The offer Kane had brought her was a good one. The prospect of getting the defense network was a great one, but finding a piece of technology that not even the Qash’vo’tar possessed? That was exactly what they had been sent to find.
They still knew very little about the Zhal’Qash Empire and the specifics of how it fell, but they knew enough to know that the survivors of the war with the Val’ayash had been those on the fringes of the empire. Left isolated and with very little in the terms of resources, they had barely survived. The survivors had lost a lot in the fall, things that they had were nothing compared to what technological marvels had existed in the Zhal’Qash core.
“It is suspicious, is it not?” O’nga asked. “This trader should not be willing to trust us so. We are an unknown to him, and if I understand it correctly, our vessel is one of the more powerful ones here. He should be worried that we will double-cross him and take what we find.”
“O’nga’s right,” Chief Randor said. “Something doesn’t feel right. Besides, he’s a slaver.”
Aiko nodded. “All the traders here are slavers. And I do agree, but we still need to take the chance.”
“What about this Captain Anterix? Do we know if we can trust her information?” Commander King asked.
Kane tilted his head from one side to the other. “We asked around a bit, she is known on the station, mostly takes escort gigs for the traders. But we have heard that she does deal in scavenged tech at times. Her ship is one of the larger ones operating out of Jar Allera, at around 400k tonnes, maybe half the size of the Prometheus—I guess that we’d call it a corvette, or a frigate maybe. It’s a light cruiser made by one of the private corporations operating in this sector. It isn’t really up to par with the Zhal or Qash’vo’tar ships of the line. At the very least it is plausible.”
“But why would she just let us take the tech instead of her? As far as we know old tech is extremely valuable,” King asked.
“Her ship is currently in one of the private repair bays, she might not be able to act on it now,” Kane said. “And from what Jaquil has told me, it is unlikely that the cache would remain untouched for long. There are many scavenger groups around these parts, someone will stumble upon it sooner or later.”
“And how is it that no one has found it until now?” Randor asked.
“Captain Anterix’s informant said that recent seismic activity on a planet uncovered something buried,” Kane responded.
“Something that the informant himself didn’t want to check out?” Randor quirked his eyebrow, not believing the story.
“As Jaquil tells it, the informant explores the Neutral Zone and sells information to the scavengers. Apparently, just trespassing carries a smaller sentence than scavenging.”
Randor snorted, but seemingly accepted the answer.
“We are going,” Aiko said. “We must take the risk.” She turned to look at Kane. “How long is the trip?”
“Two months real-time, one way.”
“So, four months to get there and back. That will leave us with about a year’s time before we must head back to Earth.” Aiko thought for a moment, then nodded. “Alright then.”
“What about this?” Commander King asked as she swiped the list to highlight an item.
Aiko took a look and read through the description. She hadn’t had the chance to take a look at the full list, and she hadn’t even checked the items whose cost was greater than the estimate of what they would receive upon selling their goods.
“The bastard sells stations?” Chief Randor asked incredulously.
Aiko silently mirrored the sentiment.
“Yes,” Kane said. “Small ones, recon drones, satellites, and the like. But I have seen nothing in his catalog that would be of any use to us. Although I did not have a chance to take a closer look.”
“What we need the most is time, right?” Commander King said. “Well, this thing here, if I am not reading it wrong, is a system wide defense network. Satellites, defense platforms, patrol drones, everything that a system would need to be completely covered and protected. A few ships with a defense network like this one could defend a system from a much larger force.”
Aiko shook her head. “The Fleet back home already has plans on building a defense network.”
“But will they finish it in time? And even when we do have it in place, it will not be like a network we can purchase here. I took a look at the specifications, this system doesn’t have that much more than what we are capable of building, but it is probably a fairly fleshed out system. Ours will be built hastily, with a severe lack of experience in building such systems. We will need to learn as we go, the same as we did with Prometheus—and we all know that this ship is far from perfect, we have bugs and minor issues almost daily. We will make mistakes, and that will cost us,” Commander King finished.
The room was silent, everyone taking her words in and thinking on them. Finally Kane tilted his head and studied the specifications for the defense network. “Even if we wanted to buy it, we will not have enough credits to purchase it.”
“This is a star port where everything is for sale. We could sell some technology, our weapons are in part based on Qash’vo’tar weapons, and as far as I could tell everything here is of lower quality. We have scans of their weapons as well. And I know that you have seen the request boards, there are people here who would hire a ship and a crew for escort missions and the like. We can make credits,” King argued.
“We have less than two years before we must be back in Sol. That is not a long time when you account for travel times,” Aiko added.
“But we can make it,” King pressed.
“I’ll look into it,” Kane said at last. “It is one more avenue we can explore.”
“This is a pretty impressive system,” Chief Randor added at the end.
“We shall see,” Kane said.
***
Kane walked into the Prometheus’s mess hall and made his way around the tables until he reached one on the far end. There he took a seat across from Specialist O’nga. She acknowledged his presence with a short nod of her head and continued eating. Kane sat for a while before deciding to speak.
“You were awfully quiet during the meeting,” Kane commented. The Wanderer had barely spoken a word during their officers meeting.
“I have little to say on the subject,” O’nga said.
“You must have an opinion,” Kane said.
“I am not qualified to speak on the matters of technology, I barely understand it as it is,” O’nga said between bites.
“But you do know people, what do you think about us asking for help from the Zhal?” Kane asked.
O’nga didn’t answer immediately, but Kane knew her well enough to know that she was thinking. Then she finally raised her piercing yellow eyes to look at Kane.
“They are greater than you, there is no balance. Any help they provide will not come free of price.”
“We suspect as much.”
“The question then is not whether you should ask for help or not, but rather are you willing to pay that price. You have things that they will want, it is inevitable for the strong to take from the weak. It is left to be seen whether they will take from you peacefully or through force,” O’nga told him, never shifting her gaze from his.
“I take it that you have seen your share of that?” Kane asked. He knew little about the Wanderers aside from what they had shared, and they never shared much. Kane was aware that something had happened in their past which caused them to swear off practicing magic forever. They still used their skill and knowledge of the scripts to design spells but they never used them themselves. Whatever happened had caused the Wanderers to be regarded poorly by the other two races native to Ethorria. From what little the humans had seen, the Wanderers were regarded as an unwelcome nuisance.
“It is the way of things. The Elvarr take what they can, power is the only rule on Ethorria. I have seen nothing to make me think that it is different here.”
“You are right… Even on Earth, the strong are the ones that make the rules.”
“Then you need to find a way to gain more power, the closer you are in power the less the price they exact will be.”
“They are just so far ahead of us…” Kane said, shaking his head. “Their technology is advanced, but we could catch up in time. But their resources… there is no way that we can catch up so easily. They hold almost two dozen systems, with populations eclipsing ours, they have an industry that makes ours look like nothing. I don’t see any way to bridge that gap, not quickly enough anyway.”
“You are thinking that power can only be a physical thing,” O’nga said. “It is not, there are other things that can give you power. Information, knowledge, secrets, all these things have value. You have knowledge that they do not, knowledge that they have no way of obtaining other than through you.”
“Magic,” Kane said.
“Yes.”
“But that it is also our only advantage, without magic we would not be able to match them. Our technology falls short without magitech augmenting it. If we give them that we will lose all the power that we do have.”
“I did not say that you should give it to them, I simply point out that you are not without power. I do not presume to know these people, but from what I have observed of you and yours, things are not so different than my home. These people have much, what is great effort for you might be inconsequential to them. Find something that they need or something that they desire, and use it to get what you want.”
Kane considered her words carefully, he agreed with her in many ways. And what she was speaking about did make sense, he just didn’t know how to accomplish it. “Thank you for your advice,” Kane said finally.
“Of course, Captain.”
***
A few days later Kane and Erika entered Jaquil’s shop after they received a message from him. They had spent the days prior exploring the space port and gathering as much information as possible as well as setting up an account with the station where they could keep their credits. The station had its own bank and could even issue credit chips that could be used in most places in this sector. In the process they had been convinced that the station was relatively safe as long as you didn’t break the rules, so Kane had decided to leave the rest of the team at the ship and take only Erika as backup.
As soon as they entered Kane noticed Jaquil hovering near the counter talking with another person of a race that he recognized from their research. She was R’issi, a bipedal just slightly taller than Kane with four arms. On top of her head she had three horns that curled upwards then back. He knew that she was female because she had three horns, whereas males had two. Her head was triangular in shape with two eyes, two holes for a nose, and a thin mouth.
He hadn’t seen a R’issi before in person, but he knew that they were an important race. They had been a part of the Zhal’Qash Empire before it fell, and both the Zhal and Qash’vo’tar had members of that race in their populations. But from what he had read on the net it was not uncommon for the Zhal R’issi to work as independent contractors outside of Zhal territory.
Ever since they had arrived here, they had seen many different races, some completely alien in appearance, but many had also looked fairly similar or at least were shaped similarly to humans. Enough so that scientists on the Prometheus already talked about convergent evolution. But from what they had seen on the Jar Allera net, the alien scientists were as baffled as any of the Earth ones.
As soon as Jaquil noticed Kane he turned and left the R’issi to come and greet them. The R’issi kept her eyes on Kane and Erika and seemed to be studying them intently.
“Hello there, Captain Kane!” Jaquil said as he flew over. “Good news, my friends, I have found buyers for all the goods you have for sale. Here is the amount that you will receive for the sale. As soon as you give the go ahead I can have my people come to your ship and off-load the goods and have the credits deposited to your account.” Jaquil sent the info to Kane’s datapad.
Kane took a look and saw that it was very close to the estimate he had given them before. “That is good, thank you.”
“No problem. Tell me, have you had a chance to look through my catalog? I have many articles that I think you will find interesting.”
Before Kane had the chance to respond, a loud crash startled him and he turned around to see a small alien, of the same race as the slave he had seen before on the street only this one had deep burgundy skin. He couldn’t gauge her appearance enough, but he could tell that she was young. And she wore a collar with a red light shining out of it.
“Stupid girl!” Jaquil flew around Kane and smacked the girl over the head.
In the alien girl’s large round eyes Kane saw pure terror, and he tightened his hands into fists to keep himself from reacting.
“Pick that up! You are embarrassing me in front of my customers. Waste of credits you are, trash. I should never have bought you,” Jaquil said as the little alien girl gathered the things that had fallen out of her box and then shuffled out of the room. If she was human, Kane would’ve put her at somewhere around fourteen. For a moment he thought about doing something. But he knew that this was not Earth, that there was no course of action that he could take to make that girl’s life easier.
Jaquil turned around and looked at Kane. “Apologies, friend, the slave is a new purchase, but fear not she will be punished appropriately. Now, where were we? Right, you were just about to tell me if you had seen anything interesting in my catalog.”
“We have seen a few things that have caught our eyes, yes,” Kane said, feeling sick to his stomach as they approached the holographic display in the middle of the shop.
“That is great! Here, you can just bring up the items you are interested in and I will tell you more about them.”
Taking a deep breath Kane put the incident aside, focusing on the task at hand.
Kane debated starting with a few of the smaller items they had decided to purchase, but instead he went right for the big one, not wanting to stay in the alien slaver’s presence for a moment longer. He used the fairly intuitive controls at the bottom of the display and found the article he wanted.
Jaquil didn’t respond for a few moments, then he turned to look at Kane with all four of his eyes. “Razov System Defense Network? This is a surprise, may I ask why you would want it?”
“The people my ship deals often with have many assets in many systems, it would be useful for us.” Kane told the story they had agreed on. It wasn’t meant to convince Jaquil that it was true, it was supposed to tell him that they would rather keep the truth to themselves.
“This costs more than what you will get for your goods, unless you have more to sell?”
“No, we were hoping that we could come to an arrangement.”
Jaquil grew quiet and his eyes blinked rapidly. He glanced back at the R’issi and then again at Kane. Then he finally seemed to make a decision. “There is something that we could do. If you do me a favor, I would be willing to sell it to you at a price.”
Kane raised an eyebrow at that. “A favor?”
Jaquil gestured to the R’issi and she walked over.
“Captain Kane, meet Captain Anterix of the Hadsone.”
Kane knew very little about customs and cultures here, so he simply nodded and said, “Captain.”
She returned the nod but otherwise remained quiet.
“The good Captain here has just informed me of an interesting opportunity. You see she has just received a tip concerning a potential old tech cache in the Neutral Zone. If you are willing to go check it out, and retrieve anything you find I would be willing to drop the price of the defense network system, as well as compensate you appropriately, of course.”
Kane looked at Captain Anterix, who gave a look to Jaquil that he had no way of identifying. “Why doesn’t she retrieve it by herself?”
“Unfortunately her ship is currently undergoing repairs, the Hadsone had a chance hostile encounter with another ship, she is unable to travel,” Jaquil said.
“I thought that it was illegal for ships to stop in the Neutral Zone or to scavenge the old empire’s tech.” Kane tilted his head and narrowed his eyes.
“Well, technically it is, the Zhal Confederation and the Qash’vo’tar don’t like other star nations rummaging through the remains of their old empire, but technically passing through is allowed. But they do punish scavengers severely.”
“And you want us to take the risk for you?”
“Ah, that is actually the beauty of this proposition. There is a very small chance of you being discovered, but in the event that you are noticed, it is unlikely that you will even be punished.”
“How so?”
“You are new to this area of space, your kind and ship are unknown here. You can claim ignorance, and the Zhal will most likely warn you off and send you away. Any ships that I could send would certainly be captured and imprisoned. And in the improbable event that they attempt to do anything more to you… well, your ship is very well equipped to handle the Zhal patrol ships, from what I can gather.”
Kane mulled it over for a few moments. He would need to speak with Aiko before committing to anything, but he knew that they would agree. It was not that they needed the defense network enough to risk it, but the chance of getting their hands on the tech of the Zhal’Qash was too good to pass on. They had been sent to find something that could give them an edge against the Qash’vo’tar, and this was it. “Tell me more.”
***
“This could be exactly what we need,” Commander King said.
Aiko looked around the table at her officers, aside from Commander King there were three more people present. Captain Kane Reinhart, Chief Gene Randor and Specialist O’nga Uhra were her top officers. The offer Kane had brought her was a good one. The prospect of getting the defense network was a great one, but finding a piece of technology that not even the Qash’vo’tar possessed? That was exactly what they had been sent to find.
They still knew very little about the Zhal’Qash Empire and the specifics of how it fell, but they knew enough to know that the survivors of the war with the Val’ayash had been those on the fringes of the empire. Left isolated and with very little in the terms of resources, they had barely survived. The survivors had lost a lot in the fall, things that they had were nothing compared to what technological marvels had existed in the Zhal’Qash core.
“It is suspicious, is it not?” O’nga asked. “This trader should not be willing to trust us so. We are an unknown to him, and if I understand it correctly, our vessel is one of the more powerful ones here. He should be worried that we will double-cross him and take what we find.”
“O’nga’s right,” Chief Randor said. “Something doesn’t feel right. Besides, he’s a slaver.”
Aiko nodded. “All the traders here are slavers. And I do agree, but we still need to take the chance.”
“What about this Captain Anterix? Do we know if we can trust her information?” Commander King asked.
Kane tilted his head from one side to the other. “We asked around a bit, she is known on the station, mostly takes escort gigs for the traders. But we have heard that she does deal in scavenged tech at times. Her ship is one of the larger ones operating out of Jar Allera, at around 400k tonnes, maybe half the size of the Prometheus—I guess that we’d call it a corvette, or a frigate maybe. It’s a light cruiser made by one of the private corporations operating in this sector. It isn’t really up to par with the Zhal or Qash’vo’tar ships of the line. At the very least it is plausible.”
“But why would she just let us take the tech instead of her? As far as we know old tech is extremely valuable,” King asked.
“Her ship is currently in one of the private repair bays, she might not be able to act on it now,” Kane said. “And from what Jaquil has told me, it is unlikely that the cache would remain untouched for long. There are many scavenger groups around these parts, someone will stumble upon it sooner or later.”
“And how is it that no one has found it until now?” Randor asked.
“Captain Anterix’s informant said that recent seismic activity on a planet uncovered something buried,” Kane responded.
“Something that the informant himself didn’t want to check out?” Randor quirked his eyebrow, not believing the story.
“As Jaquil tells it, the informant explores the Neutral Zone and sells information to the scavengers. Apparently, just trespassing carries a smaller sentence than scavenging.”
Randor snorted, but seemingly accepted the answer.
“We are going,” Aiko said. “We must take the risk.” She turned to look at Kane. “How long is the trip?”
“Two months real-time, one way.”
“So, four months to get there and back. That will leave us with about a year’s time before we must head back to Earth.” Aiko thought for a moment, then nodded. “Alright then.”
