Frozen Soul, and other works: Chapter 224

(NEN Santiago, Nuevo Edo System)

“Captain! Unscheduled Gateway activation!”

Captain Ana Gonzalez looked up from her datapad, and the paperwork she was trying to catch up on, to focus on her sensor officer. Helena Sanchez was a good officer, steady, not prone to excitement. But something in her voice…

“Report, Ms. Sanchez.”

“The Gate code is not one we’ve seen before. Checking with the database… We have a match. It is coming from Shadowgate, Ma’am.”

Shadowgate? She’d read a report about that place. It had suddenly cut itself off from the Gateway network, right? No one knew how they had done it, though they all assumed there was some kind of Lost Tech involved. The Consortium had tried to protest, since Shadowgate had, technically, been part of the Consortium before then, but they couldn’t even approach the system.

And now someone had activated the Gateway from Shadowgate’s side. Captain Gonzalez took a breath, and brought herself up. “Alert stations. Comms, inform System Command of the situation.”

Captain Gonzalez nodded as she watched her crew snap into action. As they began carrying out her orders, and racing to their stations, Ensign Sanchez’s voice broke through the commotion once again. “Ship transitioning through the Gateway!”

She frowned as she examined the ship on the view screen. It was unlike any ship she’d seen before. For one thing, it had a strange, yellowish tint to it, that reflected the light of the Gateway in strange ways. And there were those structures on the hull. She magnified the image, and was shocked to see that the cylindrical structures, which she had taken as some kind of rail gun, like an external version of her Santiago’s main gun, were actually hinged, so that they could be raised up, perpendicular to the hull. What possible purpose could those serve?

The ship was small, barely the size of a cruiser like the new Hunter’s Bane that had just joined the fleet. That made it larger than the Santiago, of course, but still… There was something off about its construction. It didn’t look like a freighter, but she couldn’t see any weapon mounts. Unless that screening along the midline, running the length of the ship concealed some sort of weapon system?

She looked to her communications officer. “Any identification from them?” The officer shook her head. Well, that was just great. “Hail them.”

“Unidentified vessel, you are in Nuevo Edo sovereign space. Identify yourself or be considered hostile.”

An audio connection was made, rough and gravelly, as though their radio systems were not as advanced as hers were. “This is Shadowgate Naval Ship Liberdade. We seek the ones who have killed the Great Beast. The one that rules the Group of the Dark Star. The Council of Nine would speak to them.”

Gonzalez frowned to herself. There was an artificial tone to the words, as though they were being passed through translation software multiple times. The words were coming out as Gauz, but she had a feeling that the speaker was using some other language. And then they were translating the Gauz to Nuevo Edoan. Clearly, something was lost in translation here.

She checked to make sure that the transmission was being repeated to Naval Command. It was, and she had an order already. That made things easier.

“Open channel.” She took a breath, and said, “Shadowgate ship Liberdade, we are sending instructions for a parking orbit above our moon. Do not deviate from the flight path.”

The ship’s captain didn’t respond via radio, but they could see the ship turning as thrusters brought it about on a new course, and engines kicked in that got it moving slowly in the proper direction. It was very slow, in fact. Accelerating at 3.5 G? That was fairly quick, on a planet, but in space, that was practically a dead crawl. It made her wonder just what the Shadowgate people were playing at.

Still, it wasn’t her problem. She informed Command about the ship’s speed, and set the Santiago to follow it in. What to do about the ship was someone else’s problem.

(Conference Room, Black Star Hotel, Kyoto, Nuevo Edo)

“So, what can you tell me about our guests?”

It wasn’t uncommon for me to be in the Nuevo Edo system. I visited Nuevo Edo often, both because I had holdings here, and because I knew people here, who were happy to see me whenever I came to town. What was uncommon was for the government of Nuevo Edo to officially ask for me to come and speak to someone. I was, after all, effectively a head of state. An allied head of state, but still a foreign head of state. Being officially asked to come to Nuevo Edo was, therefore, unusual.

Raven shook her head. “Honestly? Not much. They arrived through the Nuevo Edo gateway yesterday, and said that they were seeking the ones who slew the ‘Great Beast’, and the ‘one who rules the Group of the Dark Star’. Of course, that was what came through after it was translated at least once.”

I nodded once. She didn’t have to tell me what she thought of that. Group of the Dark Star could be a machine translation mangling of Black Star Company, which meant they were coming to see me. The Great Beast was probably the Harvester.

I wasn’t surprised that people from Shadowgate would figure out that the Harvester had been destroyed. After all, the thing sent out one hell of a psychic scream, and Shadowgate is practically next door to Coldana. It wouldn’t be surprising if some of the Swarm had tried to hit Shadowgate, and were stopped by whatever craziness it was that kept everyone out of the system, even with conventional drives.

Them finding out that the Harvester was destroyed was pretty much a given, really. But finding out the particulars, that was surprising. Shadowgate had cut itself off from the rest of Known Space a long time ago, and no ships went in or out, as far as anyone knew. If they had found out about what actually happened at Coldana, then that meant that they had ships going out and spying, without getting noticed by the Consortium. If they had managed to get into Coldana, finding out about Black Star would have been child’s play. But then…

“Why did they come here? If they found out enough about us to know the Nuevo Edo address, they should have found out that we’re based on Star’s Reach, and have the coordinates to reach us there. So why did they come through Nuevo Edo instead of our gateway?”

Raven shook her head. “Unknown, sir. Once they entered orbit around Requiem, they refused to answer any hails with anything but a simple ‘We await the Ruler of the Group of the Dark Star’. Once NEN told them that you were here, they started talking again, but only to get a meeting location. They asked for someplace to meet. We discussed it with the locals, and this conference room was decided on. After that, the Liberdade launched a shuttle which made its way to the planet.”

I leaned back in the chair, considering the information. “Fine. We don’t know why they picked this system, or why they want to talk to me. If they weren’t from Shadowgate, I’d make them wait for a bit, just because I’m annoyed with them for taking me away from monitoring the situation in Sol. But them coming from the biggest mystery box in the galaxy so far makes me interested. Right, we’ll meet with them. What can you tell me about them, and their ship?”

Raven frowned slightly. “There is no information on the Shadowgaters themselves. They have used voice or text exclusively to communicate. No video. All we know is that Nuevo Edo’s atmosphere is safe for them without undue precautions, and they declined any refreshments while on the planet, saying they’d bring their own sustenance. We don’t even have an image of them. Makes them out to be fairly paranoid, I believe.”

“As far as their ships go, however, the preliminary scans done of their ship has revealed a few interesting factors about their construction. The biggest thing to note is that, while they do look like they have grav plating technology, it does not look like they have inertial compensators. They also do not appear to have any shield systems, which is clearly unusual for what is definitely a warship.”

I perked up at that. This could actually be interesting. “A warship, really?”

“Yes. There are screens running down the center line on both sides of the ship. While the materials prevented passive scans, we took a risk with some active penetrating scans, and it appears that there is a series of gunports with some kind of cannons in them! Thirty-six guns in total. Sixteen on either side, in what resembles a broadside from wet navy records, and two each mounted fore and aft, as chase weapons.”

I shook my head. Broadsides and chase weapons, coming from static gunports? No shields to offer protection, and the lack of inertial compensators meant that you were limited in how much acceleration the ship could use without risking the crew. None of it made any sense, from the perspective of modern naval warfare.

“If this is a warship, just what the hell kind of war are they expecting to fight?”

Raven smiled at me. “Well, after conferring with the science teams, it is suggested that they are expecting to fight in areas where the laws of physics don’t necessarily apply. The yellowish color of their ship is due to electrum alloy in their hull armor, same with the screens over the gunports. And those structures on the top of the ship? We think they’re some kind of mast. This ship probably spends most of its time in the dark matter universe that the logs from the facility told us about.”

“Hmm. Well, we knew that they had some kind of Lost Tech, since they were able to block access to their Gateway, and even stop ships from going the ‘long’ way to meet them. So, I guess having a method of FTL that we only just discovered was possible is par for the course. Still, if this is what a dark matter universe ship is like, I’m not impressed. Too specialized for my liking. Regardless of how they work in that sub-universe, in real space, they’re simple cannon fodder. I won’t have my crews in something like that until they can actually be made effective, in real space as well as that sub-universe.”

Raven nodded. “As you say, sir. If we could get samples of their technology, then we may be able to engineer something that would better suit our needs. They may also be able to give us more empirical data on the nature of this sub-universe.”

“You’re right, of course. Which means we’ll need to talk to them. Hell, we were going to have to talk to them anyway. I don’t for a minute believe that this is all just some kind of coincidence, with the most isolationist group in the galaxy suddenly popping up and demanding to speak to me, just as it seems that space is trying to rip itself apart at the seams. I’m just hoping that they’ll have something that will help us figure out what is going on.”

I took a breath, and said, “I really don’t want to start going in too hard on some of those experimental drives we got data for. They are all inherently unpredictable, and not as useful as the ones we already have. In fact, I’d say that if the ship the Shadowgaters have shown us is any indication, they’re probably Lost Tech because they were simply technological dead ends, or were surpassed by other methods.”

“There’s the possibility that they found it necessary due to local conditions, of course.”

“Yeah, that is what worries me.”

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