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Chapter 7

Step Three System Disassembly Unit

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Our six skids of troublesome ingots looked lonely sitting in Idwal's vast hangar. I stood looking around the bay while Saura secured our mechanical loader suit back inside the Hand's hold. I stood because walking to anything involved at least a two-kilometer hike. The far wall wasn't even visible.

Dock number xittikp nestled below a bundle of massive dock bumpers and between a pair of struts that supported a collection dish that would dwarf Mandragala Station. It was the ideal location to protect a valuable ship and cargo from the stray debris that must have crashed around the system when Idwal was active.

Our first view of the platform on approach had revealed a dark, tapering stub with reinforcement ribs running down its sides. A transparent ring circled the lower, smaller end and a massive bowl sat atop the wider one. It looked strange, but not impressive. Then Saura pulled a station video showing the disassembly unit in operation, and it was almost beyond comprehension. A grid of blue energy strands had once extended out beyond the mouth of the bowl to a width that would hold ten Earths. The operators were able to turn that bowl's blue mouth in the direction of their destructive activity to catch the shattered debris of a planet as it fell inward, propelled in a stream by the deconstruction machinery that crushed and shot it sunward. Idwal captured and processed the raw material, then shot it into folded space through an immense slot beneath the dish to another Proambu worksite, where it became part of their next ring project.

Then Endar aggression in the next system stopped the project cold and left the place abandoned.

Saura said that for all their technology, the Proambu were not a violent species and mostly ignored the Endar. I wondered if they ever considered setting Idwal down in the heart of the Endar Primacy and breaking up the homeworld the Endar called the Hive.

I chuckled at the thought. "So, what do we call a thing that breaks down planets into their constituent particles and shoots them across space and time?" I asked Saura on my comm.

"Proambu call Step Three System Disassembly Unit," she replied. The station lighting glinted off the reflective material of her light excursion suit as she stepped off the Hand's cargo ramp.

Time to make a choice whether to leave the 'shine' on our awaysuits for its higher protection against sunlight and flash weapons, or to dull it and lose some of its protective qualities in exchange for stealth. I stroked a control embedded in the sleeve of my awaysuit, and it dulled to a shadow-hugging gray. When I looked back, she had done the same.

The suits were Marine planetary surface garb, designed to protect the wearer from hostile environments and to enhance concealment. The light, flexible material allowed for ease of movement, but, if subjected to pressure beyond the defined safety range of our shipskins, reacted, becoming instantly rigid, capable of absorbing an impact force to prevent tissue damage. It could bounce and transfer the energy of a projectile from an earth weapon without the wearer feeling it—I knew that from multiple experiences boarding hostile vessels—and it prevented physical damage from explosive impact or sudden decompression while snatching and converting that energy to power for its own use. It could absorb tazer fire and short laser bursts while making the wearer nearly invisible.

Anyone who thought the suit made them invincible, however, was a fool. New and different weapons constantly showed up around the Outer Rim. In fact, as part of the deal to keep the suits, hardware in our bodies, and software in our heads, we were committed to seeking out and filing reports on any new tech we came across. Confiscating the stuff was recommended, but optional.

"I'll take the ship feeds, since Idwal is talking to you," I told her. She usually preferred to monitor the Hand, but today she was the only one who understood what was going on inside this place.

I ran a fingertip lightly over the controls embedded in my forearm beneath the dulled material and the Hand's feeds bloomed in my perivision.

I closed the ramp. The massive bolts slid into place with a solid boom and home was secure.

"Now go lower ring, locate new payload." Saura made an experimental leap in the light gravity of the station and sailed toward me.

"Seems like those clowns could have arranged for things to be on this level," I complained. The instructions that dropped for Saura while we docked said we would find our new load on the lower terminal ring. That area, with its public dock and debarkation umbilici, was the little glass ball on the far end of the platform, one hundred and sixty levels below us. In a place a lot less sheltered from the threat of open space than this area. It appeared the Proambu felt more concern for their expensive ships and cargo than they did for guests.

"No whine!" Saura thumped me in the back with her foot as she made another leap and sailed past. "Keep up!"

My suit stiffened from the blow, causing me to stumble forward. "This place is too damn big," I grumbled to annoy her.

Ignoring me, she gestured at a massive airlock in the wall ahead of us. "Instructions say take gravity tube down and proceed Section Ten."

"I sure hope everything here is in working order." One hundred and sixty levels on this station's scale was a long walk.

"Yes." Saurubi completed the distance to the lift and paced impatiently while I caught up.

"Damn," I exclaimed, staring up at the towering doors. They were big enough for a small ship to pass through. "How long will we have to wait for those things to open?"

"This for staff." She pressed a bar next to a smaller portal at the outer edge of the nearest door. It was a mere three times as large as a Human doorway.

The door slid open.

"Whoa!" I took a step back, suddenly appreciating the firm sensation of the deck beneath my boots.

We stood on the lip of a transparent cylinder approximately five meters in diameter, staring across the open space at the stars.

Or down a plasglass tube, depending on where your eyes drifted.

"Is okay. Is gravity tube."

"No. Not okay." Even with the descriptive name, I hadn't expected a big, long, vertical tube full of nothing but air! Cautiously I leaned forward to peer downward. No bottom in sight. "Saura, have you ever used one of these things?"

"No. Are common in some Union cultures. Step inside, same as elevator. Fall will detect weight and form resistance to suspend. User controls acceptable rate of descent."

'Fall' and 'acceptable rate' did not work together in my vocabulary. I could speed vertically or horizontally in vacuum tubes, hauled along by a towline, but not vertically, in gravity, with no floor beneath my feet. "I'll walk. I need the exercise."

"Vivi," she said in her best put-upon tone. "Is one hundred sixty levels. Can control speed by brushing fingertip down side of cylinder. If wish to ascend, brush fingertip up strip. Movement will reverse and go up at chosen rate of speed."

"What if it fails?"

"In two thousand years of operation, is no history of gravity tube fail."

"Is that true?"

"Don't know. But information supplied says no accidents in last two hundred years."

"How do the Tabisee know all this stuff and Humans don't?"

"Because Tabi Empire is full member of Whooex Union over four hundred of EA years; EA has barely established diplomatic relations with quarter of members."

True. We constantly scrambled to update our education system to incorporate all the new information we encountered.

"A quarter you say. Who have we missed?" I stalled, building up the fortitude I needed to step out into the air.

"Gave research material. Read! If Humans ever allowed on Moneyworld, must know information."

"Yeah." I mentally vowed to do a better job of keeping up with the stuff she shared. Meanwhile, here was new technology and a chance to discover something about another species. I sighed. "How do I get inside?"

"Step forward." She bounced past me, out into the cylinder.

When I recovered from my shock, I saw that she had not plummeted to her death, but stood calmly in the air, looking at me. "Fall will not operate until you tell it which direction to move." She gestured at the wall nearest her. "Is individual. If want stop movement, press finger." She demonstrated by stroking downward and sinking a meter. She pressed again and stopped in sheer space, staring up at me.

I thought I was going to lose my most recent meal.

"Don't dare," she warned fiercely. "Now stop being infant."

"How do you know it will recognize a Human? Our contact with these creatures is minimal—if any."

"Don't call creatures. Is offensive. Fall will recognize you. Stop stalling."

"You'll miss me if I plummet to my death." I held my breath and stepped out into the air.

It felt as if I had stepped onto a firm surface.

Great. The thing worked and I remained alive. I avoided looking down into the void beneath my feet as I reached over and tentatively stroked my finger downward. If Saurubi heard my stifled gasp at my sense of movement, she mercifully refrained from comment.

After a few moments of steady downward movement, I grew confident enough to turn and look at the universe outside the plasglass outer wall. It was intimidating, staring out into space without the frame of an obvious barrier separating me from quadrillions of lightyears of airless vacuum. It also grew quickly boring. I turned back and stroked the black strip to speed up my descent.

"How far down this thing are we going?"

"Station ring is bottom level."

A long way to go. I stroked the strip again, and Saura made an impatient sound as I dropped past her.

She knew what was coming.

Before I reached the bottom I'd become a real pro at using a gravity fall. I had danced around the perimeter of the tube, jumped and done a forward roll with only a mild shock to my forehead when I struck the invisible floor, experienced a fast fall just for fun, and floated face down, staring fearlessly into the depths beneath me.

I stuck the landing on the elaborate mosaic floor of the public ring. "Whoo-ho!" Grav tube was the way to travel.

Saura gave a sniff of irritation as she reached out and moved her glove in a horizontal gesture across the wall. The exit door slid open to reveal a spacious vestibule. Paintings on the walls detailed a landscape full of odd, exotic plants and trees that probably reminded a station crew of what they were missing while they worked out here on the edge of nowhere. I didn't see how anyone could miss a coarse vine with finger-long thorns, but I guess everyone thinks there's no place like home.

Saura and I simultaneously drew our tazers and set them to stun—never assume you're safe, even in the heart of civilization, and especially on the edge of it—then crept the vestibule's short length to peer out into the ring.

The space the Proambu had designated for travelers and station personnel stretched approximately a half-kilometer across and high, and was a lot less chaotic than Human dock rings. I could see a few freestanding kiosks and shops and some brightly painted blocks of color with stenciled glyphs, similar to shipping containers. There were also a few huge machines and loaders, but most of the heavy stuff appeared relegated to the massive area at the top of the facility.

Lights, situated below the support beams high above, gleamed on the metal surfaces of the floor and machinery. The lower ring had appeared dark from space. I wondered if the MoMo had arranged for internal illumination to activate with our use of entry codes, or if the glass shielded the light from the outside.

At least I would be able to see whatever suddenly tried to kill me out here on the edge of nowhere if something attacked.

"Looks quiet enough." That didn't mean someone hadn't gotten here before us and found a place to lie in wait. I picked up a small vase of withered plants off a nearby table and pitched the thing out into the ring. It hit the surface with a horrendous clatter that echoed in the vastness.

There were no answering flashes of hostile fire.