Go reached back into the case. "It comes with strange gloves and these packs. Looks like they would fit on that belt."
Garrett spoke. "No helmet? What good would a battle suit be without a helmet? I’ve seen the ones the Saltons were outfitting the conscripts with. They all had hardened helmets."
I pulled at the fabric. "It’s lightweight and flexible. The material on the feet looks to be at least a little more rugged. And the feet are closed in. Go, see if that arm pad works."
Go studied the arm pad for several seconds, pressing it in different areas. "I don’t think it has power. Let’s put these packs on the belt and see what happens."
The first two packs clicked in place with no result. When the third pack snapped in place, the arm pad came to life.
Go grinned. "This is exciting!"
Garrett looked closely at the arm pad controls. "It isn’t much different than what we have today. Let’s see if it has a holo-display."
Garrett pressed the necessary buttons, and a holo-screen soon floated just above the arm pad. "Hold on, I’m going to try something."
Garrett pressed several buttons on his arm pad, and a holo-display popped to life just above his arm. Several swipes later, Garrett Rourke began to smile.
I said, "What is it?"
Garrett turned his display in my direction. "It allowed a direct link to my arm pad. I can explore everything it has from my own display. Hmm, this looks like the same Help icon we have. I wonder what we can learn from it. It looks to have a complete tutorial section."
The next four hours were spent trolling through tutorial after tutorial about the battle suit, the gloves, the packs for the belt, and the missing helmet.
I again tugged at the fabric of the suit. "Do you think the Governor knows what he's getting?"
Garrett swiped at his display. "I don’t think so. The logs say the last time this was powered up was two years shy of two thousand years ago. We are the first ones to see this since that time. Wow, I would have to say that
is
exciting, just as Go said."
Garrett continued, "Whoa. This says the suit can be activated, which makes the wearer not only invisible, but immune to all natural forces, so long as the power capacity of the suit is not overwhelmed. It seems that when something comes in contact with the suit, it consumes energy at a higher rate. The glove on the right has some drive mechanism that allows the wearers to power themselves around, while the glove on the left has a kinetic weapon of sorts. Says it fires tungsten pellets at half the speed of light."
Go sat back. "If this is true, that’s crazy!"
I sighed. "It means we can’t let the Governor get his hands on this. It also tells me that the Governor may be collecting artifacts, and if those artifacts are similar to this, he might be unstoppable if he decided to use them. You know, the texts that we all studied as children all mention that the AMP had its origins in this galaxy when a foe of unimaginable power was defeated in battle. We are all taught how it took a number of species grouping together to do it. They must have been armed with these suits."
Garrett spoke. "It says to make use of it, there is a bio-gel that has to be pumped into it, and the helmet has to be securely fastened. We don’t have the helmet or the bio-gel."
I released the suit and sat back in the chair. "Go, how good are you at dealing with memory stores?"
Go replied, "I know my way around. Have to when dealing with
Mabel
’s systems."
I nodded. "Do you think you could copy this data to your and Garrett’s arm pads?"
Go grinned. "That I can do. Here, Garrett, give me your arm pad."
Go continued, "It looks like we have about three orders of magnitude more storage than this. I can encrypt the entire thing and copy it to each of our storage units. I could also reset the operating system to a base configuration. All the tutorials and information linking this arm pad to this suit would be gone. It would just be a blank arm pad, waiting for input."
Garrett swiped at his display. "Do you think you could set this last access log date back so the next guy thinks he is the first to see this in two thousand years?"
Go nodded. "I can set that, and I can run a scrubbing algorithm on the memories so that anything that was there before will not be recoverable. The Governor will just think this is an old arm pad, and he won’t know what the gloves do either."
I spoke. "Should we risk keeping the gloves or the packs?"
Garrett shook his head. "I would bet the Governor is expecting those. Without all the tutorials and the control files we have taken, he won’t be able to make use of the gloves anyway. Without this software, it will likely just hang on the wall as part of a collection."
Garrett handed the gloves back to Go. "Put them back in there the way you found them. And check that data store to see if it has anything else hidden on it. If it’s clean, we at least know that the Governor has no way to make use of this suit. If it ends up on a wall in his collection, we will at least know where to find it if we figure out a use for it."
When the battle suit was neatly locked away, we turned our focus back to instructing Go on how to recover Garrett’s ship. A quick detour was made to Effica, where I was dropped off to be with Jallis, Garmon, and Layda. If all went well, Go would be back with the ship in three days’ time.
Jallis’s condition continued to improve; however, with a torn back muscle, the pain manifested itself in a howl whenever he attempted to move in the wrong way. The three had chosen what had previously been a lavish hotel on Effica. Many of the rooms had been raided by salvagers, but an entire floor had somehow been missed.
The food situation was less than desirable. Runs out into the city to look for food would be the priority job of the day. The cache of food that the Governor was privy to had been raided several weeks before. Garrett left me his spare blaster. Garmon and Layda had both seen salvagers landing in the city. It was almost inevitable that we would have an encounter.
As we prepared for a food search, I said, "There has to be some emergency food rations stashed around this city. Have you checked the security offices and hospitals?"
Layda replied, "All that we could locate. I think there may be other people that are still living here in the city. When the salvagers come in, they seem to destroy everything that they have no desire to take with them. We have come across only a few locations where only the food was taken; everything else was left as it had been. The salvagers don’t operate like that, so it's probably locals who remain."
Garmon spoke. "I used to work in a moderate-size factory. We made hats. We had a cafeteria for the workers so the bosses could monitor lunch breaks. This city has a number of such factories. If any have cafeteria kitchens, we may find food."
Layda replied, "I will search the city directory on the wall comm."
After several minutes of search, Layda spoke. "OK, it lists twenty-six factories with a hundred or more employees. We have two within a kilometer of this hotel."
I nodded. "We try those first and then work our way back towards here if we don’t find anything. I don’t want to leave Jallis alone any longer than we have to."
Jallis spoke. "I’ll be fine. Just go find us some food. We will have used up the rations you took from your friend’s ship by tomorrow morning."
I shook my head. "You are not fine. You are practically defenseless right now. We will do as I stated and be back in a little over an hour. Stay here with the door locked until we get back, even if we are late."
We left the hotel room and made our way down the stairs to the lobby. After carefully exiting into the street outside, we walked a kilometer, always trying to stay in the shadows or have a place to run to, should trouble arise. When we arrived at the factory, it became clear that it had already been picked over by the salvagers. We pushed forward to the second factory only to find the same result.
On our return walk, we began to inspect stores, warehouses, and homes. We came across a street lined with low-income row homes. The first house we entered had not been touched. I stripped a sheet from a bed, and we piled all the nonperishable food into the middle. I folded up the sheet and threw it over my shoulder.
Garmon laughed.
I spoke. "What?"
Garmon pointed to the white sheet bag. "I used to have a Human coworker friend. Every year his family would celebrate some holiday where a fat Human in a red suit would bring toys to the Human children in a white bag like that. They called him Sanda or something like that. What have you brought us today, Sanda?"
I smiled and replied, "Today I bring you canned Borak meat and dried minia beets, but you are not allowed to play with your food."
Layda shook her head. "You two are a strange pair."
As we walked back toward the hotel, I had a sudden feeling of calm come over me. That small interchange of what was arguably not even humorous had taken my mind off the state of things, if only for a few minutes. My troubles all seemed like troubles that I could work to resolve. Garrett’s original ship would free a planet of slaves. It would also give us a ship that would allow us to safely travel the Omega sector, a feat that would allow us to gather the resources we would need to take back SS241 and to eventually mount a sustainable search for Joni Salton.
As we rounded the corner onto the street that our hotel was situated on, I froze in my tracks. Two helocycles were parked in front of the hotel. I dropped the sheet full of foodstuffs and sprinted with my blaster raised. When I reached the front door, I peered into the lobby. No one was there.
I moved quickly to the stairwell and listened. No indication of the salvagers could be heard coming from above. I sprinted up the steps three at a time until I reached the floor where Jallis was recovering. I slowly opened the door and listened. Low voices could be heard.
I moved up to the near corner and looked around. The door next to Jallis’s door had been kicked in, and two salvagers were rummaging around. I quietly walked over to peek in the door and came face to face with a Harpian salvager.
I grabbed him by the neck and pushed him backward. His skin was oily in my hands, making my grip around his thick neck tenuous at best.
I spoke as I aimed my blaster at his partner. "You…gently remove your weapon and throw it on that chair."
I looked at the Harpian that I held in my hand. "You do the same. If I sense anything going on, I won’t hesitate to squeeze this trigger on either one of you."
The second Harpian nodded, slowly lifting his weapon and depositing it on the chair beside him. The Harpian still in my grasp dropped his blaster on the floor. I motioned for the second Harpian to move to the side.
He spoke. "This is an abandoned planet. Everything here is fair game!"
I replied, "You mean, everything that hasn’t been claimed already. This is ours."
The second Harpian raised his hand and spoke. "OK, it’s yours, we’ll leave. It’s a big city out there. There’s plenty for everyone."
I shook my head. "I think you misunderstood. When I said this is ours, I meant this planet is ours."
The first Harpian spoke. "You can’t claim a whole planet!"
I replied as I squeezed hi neck, "I just did."
I spoke as Layda came in the door behind me. "Pick up their weapons. Where’s Garmon?"
Layda replied as she stooped, "He’s checking on his brother."
Garmon yelled out. "He’s hurt! Come quick! Help him!"
I looked at the two Harpians. "I take it you already visited the room next door. If my friend is hurt in any way, you are going to pay and pay dearly!"
The first Harpian panicked. "It wasn’t me, it was him! Your friend couldn’t move, so I said let him be! He dragged him from the bed and started kicking him for the fun of it!"
The second Harpian snarled at his partner. "And you laughed!"
As Layda reached for the second weapon, the free Harpian jumped, grabbing the weapon from her hand and firing a bolt in my direction. The midsection of the Harpian in my grasp exploded as I returned an equally deadly bolt. When the melee had ended, I was standing with little more than the shoulders, neck, and head of the Harpian in my grasp while his midsection was splattered across my abdomen. Layda lay on the floor, covered in the gut and bone of the other, stunned, but unhurt. I dropped the remains and hurried to the other room.
Jallis was conscious. "I’ll be OK. Only a few bruises. I think he thought he had done more damage to me because of the way I was screaming. I would give anything for a pain shot and a room with a magnetic healer."
I looked over his body for other injuries. "A magnetic healer?"
Garmon replied, "It’s a device that our doctors use. It speeds the healing of muscle and soft tissue. It is only effective on Feldons."
I gently lifted Jallis and set him on the bed.
He looked at my chest and then over at an equally bloody Layda. "What happened to you?"
Layda frowned. "I was slow and almost got us killed."
I pointed to the bathroom. "Go and clean yourself up. Garmon and I will go get the food. We found a pantry that had yet to be looted."
Garmon spoke. "The food is at the top of the stairs. We moved their helocycles inside to a storage closet."
I turned to sit on the end of the bed. Jallis spoke. "Hey! You are disgusting! Don’t get that mess on my bed. I am stuck here!"
I looked down at my chest and began to laugh. For only a moment, I was returned to that peaceful calm I had experienced a few long minutes before. Garmon and Jallis each joined in the laughter as Layda closed the bathroom door.
I said, "Well, Jallis, I think I have created a problem for us."
Jallis replied, "What’s that?"
I smirked. "I declared that this planet was ours. I’m afraid we may have to defend it from all the salvagers now."
Jallis smiled. "So much for lying low while we wait."
I nodded. "Tomorrow I will take Garmon. We will see if we can locate one of the magnetic healers you spoke of. I will leave Layda here with a blaster to watch over you and the food. Those two Harpians each had a blaster, so we now have three."
Jallis spoke. "Any of the hospitals or large medical facilities would have had one. They are only useful for the one purpose. You should be able to locate one if the salvagers haven’t destroyed them. Garmon knows what they look like."
After getting cleaned up, I went down to the storage unit to check on the helocycles. Both were disgustingly filthy, but in good operating condition. They would greatly speed our ventures out into the city. They would also vastly extend the range away from the hotel that we could safely travel during daylight hours.
The following day, a magnetic healing unit was located and retrieved. Within hours after its application, Jallis was showing improvement in his ability to move with less pain. Two additional runs were made for food stores. Enough rations were collected to last for several weeks.
On the third day after I had been dropped on Effica, Garrett returned. "Go made it to the ship and is working his way back. Two of the security stations questioned his credentials, but could not find any reason to doubt them after as much as a full day of delay. When he arrives at SS226, he will not request the final jump to SS241. Instead, he will fly the final five days without his transponder on. There is a lot of empty space out there, and I don’t expect him to have any other issues. If he can manage those final eight portal sweeps that he has remaining, he will be here within a week."
I replied, "The timing couldn’t be better. Jallis is on the mend and should be in good shape by then. Has there been any word from Telfor?"
Garrett nodded. "I have been camping out in that area when not on runs for the Governor. Word is that more than half of the planet has been liberated. The Talisans are focusing on stabilizing the mines they still control. They don’t want to kill the slaves that have escaped. The slaves are viewed as assets that need to be put back to work. They are trying to figure out how to deal with that."
I sat in a chair. "How did the delivery of the artifact go, and have you asked around about any others the Governor may have picked up?"
Garrett replied, "I can’t snoop around openly like that. I delivered the suit to him at the dinner. He was quite pleased when he opened it up. I don’t think he has any idea of its value other than as a relic. Several of the people he was showing it to commented that it wasn’t a battle suit. To them, it appeared more like a uniform. Either way, the Governor was very happy to have it.
"Once he was alone, I asked if he had other artifacts from that era, and he said yes and that he would love to show them to me someday. I told him that I would keep my eyes and ears open for other such items, to which he smiled and gave his approval. He then said that he thought he was close to discovering where the artifacts had originated. He thinks it’s somewhere in the Mensa sector."
I crossed my arms. "Suggest to him that you would like to be involved in that search. If he ends up trusting you enough to show you his collection, he may place full trust in you when it comes to searching. He has to have someone in charge of that, and with the cronies he had surrounded himself with, I can’t imagine they are very intelligent. The Governor likes to surround himself with muscle."
Jallis raised his hand. "What of Telfor? What are we going to do when your ship arrives?"
Garrett replied, "The Talisans have forty-two gunships in orbit there. I believe it to be the vast majority of their fleet. I have little doubt that the
Jess
can handle all forty-two, as they are little more than converted transports. The armor plating is crude, and the cannons on the
Jess
won’t have any problem with cutting through it. Their ion cannons are weak; however, if you don’t have armor on your ship, they would easily destroy you. They won’t harm the
Jess
."
Jallis smiled. "Their fleet is their power. Take that away, and they will go back to being nothing more than pirates. I should like to see them exterminated for what they have done."
Layda charged into the room. "Salvagers have landed and are crawling about on your ship!"
I stood, taking Layda by the arm as I pointed back to Jallis. "Watch him. If anyone comes onto this floor that is not us, don’t hesitate to shoot if they don’t leave immediately."
Layda scowled. "Anyone comes on this floor that is not one of you three, and I will shoot first. They have no business being here."
I held up my hand. "There are salvagers who are good people. All I’m saying is, don’t kill if it isn’t necessary. If you kill an innocent, you make enemies of those who knew them. If you hear blaster fire from below or from outside, then, don’t hesitate to shoot."
We raced out of the room and down the stairs to the lobby. The
Jess
was parked two blocks from the hotel in a vacant lot. When we reached the corner of the building that led out to the lot, we stopped to evaluate the opposition.
Garrett was the first to peer around the corner. "I see an easy two dozen out there. They look like the Harpians you killed earlier. I would bet they are looking for their friends."
I said, "Take up defensible positions."
Garrett grabbed my arm. "What are you doing?"
I replied, "I’m going to find out their intentions. If they are just here to salvage, they will pick up and go to another sector of the city. If they have other things in mind, they will let us know. Ether way, we can’t let them take or damage that ship."