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Ramses had something else to show them, which he had evidently been working
on at the same time as Operation Starframe. That was on the moon. This was
down on the planet, in their main, branch-themed, dome. It felt like he
invented something new every day, so while he wanted to show them, it wasn’t
done with any fanfare. He just summoned them all to one his labs, and showed
him the new thing. “It’s a slingdrive pad. Or a slingpad. Or something like
that. Instead of you taking the whole thing with you, it just sends you to
the destination alone. Since it’s ground-based, it doesn’t need a coherence
gauge. It always has as much power as it needs. We will still need our
arrays to come back, or go somewhere else, but this will let us do that
instantly, instead of waiting for our own gauges to recharge. They stay
topped up for the first trip.” It was pretty big, much larger than they
would need for just the seven of them, even if they each had to return with
two guests.
Perfect, they had themselves a real operation. Now they only needed to
figure out how they would determine where they were needed. The galaxy
hadn’t gotten any harder. Their top candidate was the Goldilocks Corridor,
but that was a delicate situation. They had that treaty, and while
individual interference didn’t technically go against it, they didn’t want
to complicate matters too much. They could leave that all to Team Kadiar.
“Great,” Mateo said. “Thank you. We’ll be able to breathe easier, knowing we
have a full tank of gas every time we go out. The question is, where are we
going?”
Romana separated herself from the audience, and stood next to Ramses. “I
took the liberty of compiling a list of candidates.” She flung the data to
their devices. “There aren’t any specific needs that we know about, but it’s
time we ignore the stellar neighborhood for the most part, especially the
Core Worlds. They’re mostly doing fine on their own as they have plenty of
infrastructure and systems in place. It’s the 26th century. Colonists have
made a lot of claims in the Charter Cloud, but many don’t have very useful
charters. They benefit from almost no protection or emergency services.
They’re also pretty deep into the Extended Bubble, which were given no
resources, except for what they could afford from Gatewood. We don’t know
who is out there, or what they’re lacking, but if anyone could use our help,
it’s them. I know I’m the navigator, but I’m asking for your input. Should
we throw a dart and pick one?”
Leona stopped looking at the spreadsheet. “I don’t care how you do it. You
choose one, and send us there. I’ll even let you select the team. It could
be all of us, or only three. You can put yourself on it, or not. It’s all up
to you today. We’re all ready, right?”
They all nodded in agreement. They were itching to be productive.
Romana was pleased. “All right.” She swiped through her lower arm interface.
“Okay. This colony is called Tartarus, which I find both interesting, but
also worrisome enough to maybe investigate in case there’s something weird
going on? It’s 290 light years from Earth so they don’t have to follow any
rules. The colonists were set to arrive a few days ago.” She turned to
Ramses. “Do you need to stay to monitor the equipment?”
“Nope,” he answered. “I’ve already tested it with a bunch of probes. “It’s
ready.”
“Lovely,” Romana said. “Then we’ll all go. Boot ‘n’ rally.”
They arrived to find that it was either named ironically, or something got
lost in translation. It was incredibly cold, snowy, and windy. And for some
reason their suits wouldn’t work, so they didn’t have access to their
slingdrives either. They were stuck here. No one else was around.
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