Night Song (The Guild Wars Book 9) by Mark Wandrey (best ereader under 100 .txt) 📕

Alan redirected his camera and saw a stargate. That was a surprise, because Paku’s records had said the system didn’t have one. What was more of a surprise was, the stargate was glowing. The filigree network of solar panels gave off a greenish-blue glow, which seemed to radiate away until fading out. “What the fuck is that?”

“It’s an interdiction field,” Anderle explained.

“A what?”

“Interdiction. Apparently stargates can be switched to block transit out, even if your ship is equipped with shunts. Not only that, you can set them so any ship passing within a certain distance is drawn to it. Like a weird tractor beam you see in sci-fi, I guess. Nobody knew about it.”

“Except the Cartography Guild, I’m sure,” Alan said darkly.

“Right.”

“So why? What’s going on here? What’s this installation?”

“It’s owned by the Engineering Guild.”

“There’s an Engineering Guild?”

“Apparently,” she said with a chuckle. “This is where they mine Astatine-222.”

Alan opened his mouth and stopped. He was about to express his mystification again, when the word Astatine struck an old memory. “Wait, isn’t that in the hyperspace nodes?”

“Bingo,” she said. “I didn’t figure it out until I looked it up in the GalNet. It’s in all the hyperspace systems. Little trace amounts, but it focuses and transmits the energy that lets you transit into hyperspace. Stargates use a bloody fuckton of it.” She gestured at the industrial buildings. “We’ve learned a lot about it since we got here. Apparently this is also the only source of it in the galaxy.”

Alan nodded and thought. Suddenly some of it made sense. “The fight, it’s with the Cartography Guild, isn’t it?”

“How did you figure that out?” she wondered.

“You’ve been stuck here, so you don’t know. The Mercenary Guild isn’t taking any more contracts. There’s an internal squabble for control.” He explained how the war had ended, including the Raknar in Sao Paulo, Peepo’s death, and Nigel Shirazi representing Humanity in the Guild. He also told her briefly about the Terran Federation.

“Sounds better than that Earth Republic; what a cock up. But Shirazi representing Earth? Sounds like sending a bull as a representative to the china sellers’ convention.”

Alan laughed, agreeing; it was a good analogy. She shrugged, then continued painting their situation in more detail.

“The Cartography Guild is trying to take over. The Engineering Guild was caught somewhat flat footed. All they had was a medium-sized garrison of Lumar mercs. They figured nobody knew about this place, but it seems like the elephants knew there was a secret source of Astatine-222. The story the Engineering Guild gave out of a dispersed sourcing didn’t add up. They must have figured it out and come loaded for bear.”

“What’s the opforce?” Alan asked.

“Mostly Pushtal.”

Alan shook his head. “Makes more and more sense; those cats on Klbood are gatekeepers.”

“It used to be the main depot system for shipments out of here. They took that system, then hit here. The Sumatozou took control of the gate, but the Engineers took it back. They couldn’t hold it, so they put it in this interdiction mode, and dickered up the systems. So we’re stuck here. As ships show up, they’re shot to shit. If they’re mercs, they try to hire them.”

“Nobody tried to hire us when we showed up,” Alan pointed out.

“You were in a Zuul ship. The Zuul company who followed you was hired by the Cartography Guild. So when another Zuul ship showed up…”

“The Engineers opened fire on sight,” Alan said. She nodded. They were approaching the industrial buildings.

“It’s a mess, overall. The Zuul are good, but outnumbered by the Pushtal, who don’t seem to coordinate well with them. We’ve got the Lumar, but they’re strictly garrison—been here for ages, long enough that they have some of their females with them, and they’re not much interested in getting out into space.” Jill shrugged, gesturing ahead. “We were basically maintaining a stalemate, and our options were getting limited.”

“Any way to destroy the interdiction field and get out?”

“You know any Sumatozou?” The breather covered the bulk of Jill’s expression, but Alan could feel the frustration of the woman he’d worked with for years. “Anything we could think of has just as good a chance at taking out the gate, and none of us have a shunt to get us out of here. We might as well be at the ass end of the galaxy, so our best bet has been to find a way to win out.”

“And is. With the dropship gone, we don’t have any space-worthy assets to add to the mix. We do have an understanding with the Zuul we came in with, though.”

“That’s a story I want to hear.”

“You will—were you able to track any other dropships from the Paku? That’s the Zuul ship we came in with. We couldn’t fit everyone on our dropship, so the captain made space in one of their assault shuttles to take the rest of Second Squad.”

“We track everything we can. I’ll get the data pulled and sent to you.”

“What about Starbright?” Alan asked, feeling some dread. “Was it destroyed?”

“Destroyed? No. Shot to shit, yes. She’s grounded over there on the far side of those industrial buildings.”

“Grounded? She can’t land.”

“Only 0.2 of a G, remember?” Jill jumped a little and sailed over a meter up before landing. She bowed and spread her arms, making Alan laugh. “We can get her off again, but she’s barely functional. The Pushtal have six missile corvettes, and the Zuul a cruiser. It’s chewed up, like ours, but it’s still in the fight. We wouldn’t stand a chance.”

Impossible for her to see him nod in the CASPer, and he couldn’t open up in this lack of atmosphere. “Pretty fucked up situation,” he said.

“Alan…” His second’s reluctance was clear in the slow drawing out of his name. “The Zuul here