Free AMP Blitzkrieg by Stephen Arseneault Page A

to give our capabilities away.
    He next moved on to an ion cannon that offered a 25% increase in power throughput with a 10% reduction in energy used. At that moment I was wishing that I had brought Gy or Rita along for a more in depth technical evaluation, but it was something that the Durians would not have allowed. Their word was their bond and they would not allow validation of any technology as it would only lead to that technology being stolen rather than paid for.
    The next item was the one that got my attention. It was an antenna array that was somehow able to project an image in every direction of what lay just on the other side of a ship. It had one drawback, in order for the image projection to be effective, the ship had to be moving at a constant speed in a constant direction. It was perfect for a head-on assault, but useless once in battle. I attempted to act only mildly interested.
    Bantoo continued with various other enhancements such as the ion engine update that I had been sold so many years before. The version he offered was not quite as advanced as ours, but I thought it was interesting none the less.
    When Bantoo completed his presentation we got down to the negotiation on the price of the items I was interested in. We ended with a deal on the image projection technology and an enhanced hand-held blaster weapon. In exchange for the technologies the Durian would take possession of the cargo in the hold of the Swift.
    It was hardly a fair trade, but I had hopes of future dealings with Bantoo. I told him we had much available for trade should he bring forward other technologies that we deemed significant. We agreed on a drop for the payment and the technical diagrams and then parted ways. Once the drop was completed we left immediately for home.
    "Sir, we did have an incident that I was not sure of how to handle. The sensors caught one of the hangar workers placing a device on our hull. It is nearly undetectable and would be so to most engineers. I ran three counter-cross sweeps for signals and was just able to pick this one out. It is very advanced. I would venture to say that the Durians are attempting to track us home."
    "After detecting that a stray, although minute, signal was there, I was able to isolate it to its location on the underside of the port wing. I took no action as I was waiting for your thoughts on what to do."
    I sat in my chair and punched in the coordinates for home. I then contacted the port control officer and arranged for our departure. Once away from Marcon, I set course towards the Fasture nebula. I turned towards Frig with a smile. "I think the Durian device is going to malfunction in the nebula. They can track us in there all they want, but they won't be able to track us out."
    Frig had a concerned look on his face. "I'm not sure what going in there will accomplish. I would have to believe the device is shielded from something as simple and common as negative ions Sir. Perhaps you are not telling me the whole plan."
    Frig had been around me long enough to know when I was leaving out important facts. I pursed my lips and nodded, "Indeed there is more. I am going to override our safety protocols and send a heavy ion pulse from our own cannon into that wing."
    Frig looked puzzled, "Your plan is to shoot us, what part am I still missing Sir?" Again my smile returned. "You are missing the part where our Aquamarine skin fractures and sloughs off, thereby eliminating the Durian device with it. If the device happens to survive the blast and if the Durians somehow manage to find it, the last thing it would have recorded was our ship being destroyed."
    Frig attempted to find fault with the plan, but there was none to be found. Shortly after entering the Fasture, I fired a heavy negative ion pulse into our port wing. As designed, the outer Aquamarine skin that Gy had applied fractured and disintegrated in an instant. Frig followed with multiple cross-counter sweeps of our hull and no Durian