Free Wandering Engineer 6: Pirates Bane by Chris Hechtl Page A

in
shortening that list considerably.
    Still, the Rho sector was big, and he hadn't been to all the
planets, but Sprite had at least confirmed a surprising number were still out
there. He wondered sometimes if there were systems off the map, systems that
had been written off by the Federation Interstellar cartographers that refugees
had fled to in desperation. He shook his head, setting the thought aside.
    There were six ways into the sector since the sector wormhole gate
had been confirmed destroyed; one was in the North, which led to the Federation
core world sector. It was in the chain of dead systems between Senka and Beta
953ac.
    Clockwise from it, in the North East was Horath and south of it
Finagle. Finagle had a link that went North East to another sector, the Sigma
sector that also boarded the core worlds. In the East was Hinata, another world
most likely conquered by the Horathian Empire. It led to the Omega sector in
the outer arm of the galaxy beyond the Perseus arm.
    He was headed to the South East. Just south and a couple jumps
beyond Beta 101a1 was the Crellis system and one of the gateways to the Xenos
in the Sagittarius dwarf elliptical galaxy. The Fleet had destroyed or damaged
that wormhole. Maybe. It was all speculation at this point, something he needed
to nail down soon.
    He frowned and moved on. In the South West along the Seti Alpha 4
chain there was Aiera 3, a system that linked to Tauren space. That sector was
named Tau; most likely someone in the charting department had a sense of
humor... or just got it right.
    And finally, in the North West was a dead system that linked to
Syntia's World. The dead system's chain of jump points led to the Pi sector of
the galaxy.
    The sector's inhabited systems, or at least those known to exist
were quite small, shrinking the once thriving community. Sprite had also
confirmed that the sector's Dyson sphere and wormhole gate had also been
destroyed early in the war, wiping out many systems in the surrounding area.
That explained why down on the Z axis was a mostly a wasteland.
    Sprite was right; he was risking it all on Bek and the absence of
any information on the system over the past seven centuries.
    Absence of negative reports yes, but also positive reports as well
he realized. He really didn't know what he was getting into. It could be dead.
The Xenos could have inserted a nano weapon into the system and decimated it,
killing everyone without anyone getting a word of warning out.
    The more he thought about it, the more that thought preyed on him.
He didn't like the implications, but also knew the only way to know for certain
was to go and find out.
    The Rho sector had been hammered in the early phases of the war.
At one point it had had a massive fleet presence since it had been one of the
gateways to the Xeno galaxy. When the wormhole had been destroyed or disabled,
the war front had shifted to other sectors and the area had been left to die on
the vine.
    Die, or hide. He wasn't sure which. For some like Bek... it could
go either way. A star system could be self sufficient if set up right. Or it
could devolve to the point of self-sufficiency as some had in this sector.
Trade had alleviated that crushing problem, but not by much he knew.
    Bek had no outside trade, another point for him to consider. He
was attracted to it by his personal knowledge and history. However it had a
limited population before the war, under ten million. There was no telling what
it was now, seven centuries later.
    The Admiral had a history with Bek; he had taken a small support
task force in to the system to set up a hidden redoubt in the area during the
early phases of the war.
    Bek was hard to get to, it had only one safe zone in and out of
its area and the jump to Crellis was practically suicide for any navigator
other than a Ssilli or Cetacean. When Irons had been stationed there, he had
brought in a small ancient mobile shipyard to build the system up, and as an
asset to tuck away