Sword of Minerva (The Guild Wars Book 10) Mark Wandrey (e novels to read .TXT) 📖

it could dislodge it from the main power cell. He connected the shield generator.

Since the compartment hadn’t been designed for the new component, he’d fabricated a mounting frame, which he now secured to the internals. The generator had to be electrically isolated from any other metal, or it could short to the main bus. Next he attached a new wiring harness to his grounding and sensory input wires.

“Wow,” Rick said and grabbed another handhold. “I just lost all equilibrium.”

“Sorry, just another minute.”

“How can I function like this?”

“I need to finish this before we can fix that.” Sato finished the connections, touched the power controls, and entered a code on the shield generator. The tiny indicator on it turned green. “Done.” He took out a data chip. “Load this, please.”

“It’s a good thing I trust you,” Rick said and took the chip, touching it to his pinlink. “Bios upgrade?”

“Yeah, but it’s passive. You won’t have to reboot your pinplants.”

“Well, that’s good.” There was a short pause. “Done. I’m not dizzy anymore.”

“Excellent. Are the new controls on your combat interface? They should be under Defenses.”

“Yeah, it says Shield right under IR Flash.”

“That’s it. I need to add some new components to your limbs to make it 100 percent.”

“Like what?”

“Energy guides, which will allow the shield to form.”

“Then why bother installing it?” Rick asked.

“Because it’ll work now, but only sort of.” Rick cocked his head, and Sato continued, “I tied it into your suit’s grounding plain and tactile sensors. This thing will work, with two big caveats. One, you’ll only have power for maybe five minutes. Less if you’re taking heavy fire. Your current main power cell can’t take more than that. The amount of damage it can take depends on the attack.

“The second is, activating it will destroy your tactile senses; touch to be precise.”

“I won’t feel anything after I use the shields?”

“Not until the sensors are replaced. In fact, it’ll hurt like hell, because I can’t get the bios to properly disable the pain receptors. I’ll work on it with Dakkar; there must be a fix.”

“Now I’m filled with confidence.”

“It’s better than nothing. Just remember, it won’t do shit against punches or grapples. The attack must have enough energy to interact with the shield. You can walk right through them. But big, heavy, fast-moving bullets or coherent energy, and they’re great. Your controls will have some feedback, so you’ll know the shield status.”

“What if I keep it up past the battery’s endurance?”

“Then your main power cell will fry, and you’re on backup.” Sato shrugged. “Maybe an hour or two of power, depending on what you’re doing. The shield’s own energy capacitor will control itself and shutdown when it’s absorbed as much damage as it can.”

Rick was quiet for a minute as Sato closed the armor up. When it was resealed, he spoke again. “You must be thinking something bad is coming, or you wouldn’t have given me a half-assed system like this.”

“I don’t know anything is going to happen,” Sato admitted. “But I had this much ready and decided it was better to install it now and not need it than wish you had it later. It only costs you a day’s food reserves.”

“Okay,” Rick said. “Hopefully I won’t need it.”

“Hopefully,” Sato agreed. Only Rick had been right. He had the feeling he was going down a one-way road at high speed, and the signs were all pointing in the opposite direction. Their destination was just a couple days away.

* * *

Vestoon emerged into normal space, and the navigation system automatically began verifying their position. It was one of the automation programs he and Dakkar had written to reduce manual labor, where a crewman might have handled the job before.

Location—Phi-Theta-Nine, the program reported after a few seconds.

“Right on target,” Sato said from the captain’s chair.

Rick was strapped into copilot again, where the navigator’s job was located. He’d studied up a bit on the job, just in case. He still didn’t trust his ability to get a correct result and was glad the computer was doing the work.

As before, Dakkar was stuck to the comms/computer position. The Wrogul’s eyes were staring at a slate held by two of its arms; pulsing lines of text flew past too quick for Rick’s translator to read.

“So, let’s see what’s here,” Rick said. He activated the ship’s sensors as Sato checked their residual momentum from entering the previous stargate. Sensors were something he understood better than most of the ship’s other systems. CASPers had quite a few sensors, and he’d been a good CASPer driver. Their ship’s sensors were vastly more powerful, and because of its duties, more diverse as well.

He started with a tight-band radar sweep and opened the covers on the various radiation arrays situated around the hull. Keeping them closed when arriving in a system was standard procedure in case you encountered debris upon emergence, which could blind you.

“No ships within a hundred thousand klicks,” he reported quickly. “Emergence point is fairly clear of debris.”

“Unusual for a backwater stargate,” Sato pointed out.

A star system’s emergence point would settle at a LaGrange point other than where the stargate was, usually on the opposite side of the planet. Every system had LaGrange points, as long as there was a star present. Phi-Theta-Nine had a star, a brown dwarf, and a single planet, a small gas giant. The stargate and emergence point were situated around the gas giant. Because stargates and emergence points were at LaGrange points—gravitic eddies as it were—they often collected trash.

“I have some larger structures,” Rick said, reading the displays. “Maybe a couple space stations around the gas giant or large ships. Waiting on energy emissions data.” He let the radar build up data on the objects visible in orbit while the radiation sensors tasted