Absolution by Rachel Ford

Author:Rachel Ford [Ford, Rachel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Goodreads: 45861735
Published: 2019-06-27T00:00:00+00:00

Part II

Chapter Twenty-Five

The Wastes were hell. The planets here were all but uninhabitable due to heavy radiation and frequent solar storms. But it wasn’t just the handful of sorry planetary bodies that suffered. The same hazards that made settlement nearly impossible also imperiled travelers. Even a ship like the Supernova, her hull reinforced to withstand the lethal radiation of interstellar travel, ran blind in these conditions. The radiation limited sensors, interfered with comms, and generally wreaked havoc on systems.

But it was more than the solar winds and solar storms, or the feeling of venturing blind into the unknown. The Wastes had long served as the de facto hideout for the Empire’s worst spacefaring characters, those dregs of Tribari society who plied their craft in the skies: the smugglers and traffickers and pirates who operated inside imperial space. There were dozens of planets and asteroid belts here that could shield ships and even encampments from passing sensors. And it was easy enough to move from one dead world to the next.

Elgin wasn’t hunting pirates, but that didn’t mean they weren’t as much a threat as ever. On the contrary, the war made the empire more vulnerable. And that, in turn, would embolden criminals.

The crew had been on edge since they entered the Wastes. He’d been on edge since they arrived. And that was three and a half weeks ago.

His nerves were so taut, now, that a stiff breeze might just cause them to snap. Still, after weeks of nothing, with only limited pockets of communication back home, this morning they’d finally picked up a trail.

It was more a breadcrumb, really, than a trail: a single piece of debris from a smallish vessel. It had been badly damaged, but as near as his team could tell after a quick analysis, it was part of a hull – a hull that had been ripped apart by military-grade munitions.

His best guess was that this ship had belonged to smugglers or pirates, and they’d come across either a more powerful, better equipped rival…or Admiral Lenksha’s fleet.

That Lenksha was based in the Wastes, Elgin didn’t doubt. There were dozens of resource rich planets and moons here. The Consortium had been investigating the possibility of extraction operations for years, but the cost had always been too prohibitive. Now, it would be the perfect base for a rogue fleet – hidden from prying eyes, with a near limitless supply of critical metals and fuels at hand.

It wasn’t just that they were well-suited for Lenksha’s needs. In the past few weeks, the loyalists had launched raids on several border worlds, and ambushed a supply freighter. The raids injured more than they killed, but the primary goal had been property destruction. The hit on the freighter was more serious, as all hands – and quite a bit of food – were lost.

To Elgin’s mind though, the proximity to the Wastes stood out the most. Every attack by, and every subsequent disappearance of, the loyalist fleet had happened within range of this hellscape.

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