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Kesser blew out her breath. That was a concern for the future. “Tell me which event you want to meet during.” She would arrange to receive invitations for all of them under her name.
That shouldn’t be a challenge for her.
There were advantages to being the daughter of the planet’s leader.
CHAPTER THREE
A cyborg was never truly alone.
Transmissions from millions of Strike’s brethren flowed through his processors as he flew the modified freighter in the direction of the pulsing sound.
The noise remained at a frequency most humans and humanoids couldn’t hear. That could have been intentional. If it was emitted by a weapon, the wielders of that device wouldn’t want their enemies to easily detect its presence.
They also wouldn’t want anyone to uncover the weapon’s coordinates.
Strike didn’t yet have enough inputs to make that projection.
He programmed the guidance system to modify its trajectory to constantly maximize the intensity of the sound, and he scanned the space in front of his ship for any planets or vessels or other objects that crossed his path.
Information on the sector had been pulled from numerous disconnected databases and then cross-referenced and pieced together.
The space was controlled by multiple organizations and individuals. The data they’d gathered was disorganized and incomplete.
Strike wrinkled his nose in distaste.
That made navigating through the sector much more challenging. A star was detected to the west of his ship that didn’t appear on any of the collected charts. He added it to his own.
It irked him that he didn’t process that star’s name. But he noted its size, brightness, and other characteristics, and those were more specs than he previously had.
His ship approached a massive debris field. It stretched across the entire range of his monitoring system. All of that wreckage flowed in one direction. According to his life-form scans, it was devoid of life.
He hadn’t seen any large creatures flying through space. His ship had, fortunately, not disappeared. But one of the stories told about the sector appeared to have been based on truth.
The debris field did resemble an asteroid belt.
Strike activated his shields and guided the modified freighter through the space. The small bits of wreckage were bumped out of the way. He avoided the larger pieces.
The debris field was devoid of organic life, yet it wasn’t static. Robots detached engines from a split-into-two warship. Those valuable parts were strapped to floating containers.
Someone must be planning to recover those containers in the future.
And, as the robots appeared to be specifically modified for part collection, that someone projected there would be sufficient wreckage to salvage to justify that effort.
Now. And in the future.
As Strike progressed, his unease intensified. The partially destroyed ships varied in shapes and models, but they all had the same type of damage.
It was consistent with explosives.
They had been blown up.
The debris field wasn’t safe. Strike now viewed it as a war zone.
He slowed his speed and armed his weapons system. As he flew, he monitored the space for life-forms and functional ships.
His right index finger hovered over the controls. He was prepared to shoot, to fight the not-yet-processable threat.
That threat wasn’t identified. There was no activity.
