Revenant Slaves Chapter 39: Chapter 38: Luna

Read chapter 39 of Revenant Slaves by Zee on NovelPedia.

Chapter 38: Luna Both of the Inquisitor ships were traveling together to the same system. Although Adran had been pushing their ship extremely hard, they had also found the unusual activity around the gate to be cause enough to slow down and wait for them to arrive. “Everyone, please direct your attention towards Parker’s display.” Luna brought Parker’s display up on her own terminal. It showed radar reflections and recon data from the two probes the ship had sent out into Gate Space. The data also included attached visuals. The Gate was a tear in the very fabric of the space-time continuum, encased inexplicably in a metal ring. It bridged thousands of years of light travel in mere seconds for impossibly large masses. It defied all human knowledge and logic. It was also the reason why a species as destructive as humankind had survived as one incredibly large universal empire, answering to one absolute authority. It was because no one could replicate the emperor’s technology. For millions of kilometers surrounding the gate, thousands of ships orbited at incredible speeds, each waiting its turn to make the jump. Nothing ever stayed stationary in space, and getting things moving fast enough to make space travel feasible required so much energy that no one could afford to stop and wait for their turn. So the millions of kilometers of space surrounding the Gate were designated Gate Spaces, where ships orbited the Gate in layers of approach, awaiting their turns at the transit. The Gate was massive enough that its diameter matched some small moons, so they could support thousands of ships at all times, and there were separate corridors for military and important ships to bypass the usual transits. The tear in reality that represented the gate itself was nothing special to look at; it was the same black found everywhere in space. The only difference was that no distant stars dotted the black of the Gate. It was an absolute dark hole in space, encased by metal. As the probes neared the gate, they entered the debris fields. The computers tagged most of the debris as parts of the Patrol Class freighters responsible for gate security. The thousands of civilian ships that were haphazardly orbiting the gate were doing just that, simply orbiting; none of them approached or made attempts to cross the Gate. Their relative speeds were also greatly reduced; none of this boded well. “It’s your call now, esteemed Inquisitors,” Niko called out. “We could move away from Gate Space and await military support. This clearly smells of an ambush. With the Gate command being unresponsive, even if we do make it through this side. We have no idea of what awaits us on the other end.” Avraham took a moment before answering. “Change our direction of approach, to find the shortest possible burn vector to the surface of the Gate, activate our stealth drive, and burn for the Gate.” And as he said it, any hope of reprieve Luna thought she might get vanished. She was just about to experience her first high-G maneuver. “Understood,” the rest replied. The alarms changed tunes and rang rapidly for 5 minutes before finally going silent, and the red lights ignited throughout the ship. By this time, everyone would have already been strapped to their flight couches, preparing for a grueling time ahead. She closed her helmet and settled back into her seat, her terminal screens hanging in front of her, still operable; she still kept the Pilot’s display on and observed their trajectory. The computer had labeled all civilian ships in red. They were treating them as possible enemies. It took half an hour at a grueling 3G burn to reach the point where they would be least exposed to enemy fire, and would have the shortest route to the Gate. Her seat had reclined to adjust her body to the thrust of the ship, so that the blood wouldn’t pool in her feet and keep going into her brain, keeping her awake and functional. Luna felt physically crushed, greatly cherishing the brief respi