Star Force: Perquisition Read Free Page B

waves.
    Those Tether systems were not all a secret, for some
had connections with the local star systems, but most were a private line of
colonization that Star Force was not making public back in the ADZ, nor were
most of the maps updated with their locations. If the V’kit’no’sat returned and
blew apart the ADZ, then Star Force needed somewhere to fall back to and
announcing the locations of your secret bases wasn’t a good idea, making the
few maps that the higher level Archons and Monarchs had at their disposal
closely guarded secrets.
    Trey had access to one such monster map back in the
ADZ, but there wasn’t one onboard this Ma’kri and he hadn’t felt the need to
bring a personal copy with him. Still, he knew that where they were going on
this mission was far beyond the current tip of the Tether on the order of 8,000
light years. The galaxy on the whole was approximately 100,000 light years in
diameter, meaning this little field trip was taking Trey and his Ma’kri 1/6th
of the distance from galactic core to outer rim, which was only possible thanks
to The Nexus allowing them to use their grid point transit system…for a fee.
    And it was no small price, but through the H’kar Star
Force had acquired access to The Nexus’s currency in lieu of bartering precious
resources and getting scammed in the process. The Nexus wasn’t totally insular,
allowing commerce with outsiders on a regular basis, but they often price
gouged them as a way of favoring member states rather than giving them a break.
Everyone had to pay for their ride on the interstellar ferry, just some paid
more than others.
    Star Force had been given access to the grid point
system a while back but rarely had cause to use it. It connected far flung
regions of The Nexus and unless you had business assets there it was far too
costly to use just for sightseeing. This mission had been given enough of a
priority for Davis to fund it, with Trey being given enough currency to move
about The Nexus at will rather than trying to huff it on gravity drives alone,
which would have taken years to make the trip rather than a couple months.
    Though that estimate might be stretched further if the
waiting lines were this long. The Nexus had a lot of Tilars , their name for the magnetic driven jumpships, each of which
was a spec compared to the construct but of whom some were so large they could
have carried a Star Force command ship. The one that Trey’s Ma’kri was assigned
was considerably smaller, and cheaper, with many of this model coming and
going, barely sticking around long enough to refuel before heading back out
again. They’d enter, braking against one giant disc, then launch off the other
to avoid collisions, and as Trey watched there were routinely tilars easing
into the center of the giant slingshot before disappearing with no fanfare.
    He’d been told that their turn was next, but he’d been
sitting on the bridge for the past 2 hours and was getting ready to say screw
it and head back to training when they finally got their go ahead. He had helm
follow the navigational prompts out of their parking orbit to avoid hitting the
other waiting ships then watched as they approached the massive tilar. They
weren’t all the same make, nor design, with this one being painted bright blue
and shaped like a crustacean with huge pincers that wrapped around the region
where the Ma’kri and other ships would be berthed.
    Other tilars were fully enclosed, some looking like
sails, and enough oddity of design to suggest that there was more than one race
responsible for their construction. When the Ma’kri docked inside the assigned
tilar it didn’t interconnect with the ship itself, rather settling into
position within the IDF field and being gently nudged into a fixed state by
several soft tractor beams. They couldn’t stop it from moving if they engaged
their engines, which the Ma’kri had very little of aside from gravity drives
that wouldn’t work in