The Denial of Deliverance (The Gunslinger's Emancipation Book 2) by Young Troy

Author:Young, Troy
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2020-12-16T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fourteen: 53E9

Drick arrived a few minor phases after me. The pale beige world floated in front of us - I’d never been to a world so desolate. Even the most backward Negs had some traffic in orbit and a few active satellites. This world was devoid of all but a few dead satellites, long unused.

“I’m going to scan it, high orbit and then a lower one just to see what we’re dealing with,” I said. The sophisticated scanners on my ship were far better than anything on a commercial vessel. The jammers should avoid any devices monitoring the air. However, the state of the world left me with few doubts there would be anyone observing the airspace.

I banked my ship closer to the planet and set a high-altitude course. My initial pass showed only two settlements on the world: one in a rocky outcropping surrounded by a sea of sand and another near the planet’s terraformer. The two settlements were separated by a large expanse of desert. The surface temperature was cool and the landscape arid. Why anybody would have stayed behind escaped me.

I radioed my findings to Drick. “I’m about to start a lower orbit scan focusing on the two settlements.” Pushing forward on the stick, I aimed my craft towards the Terraformer.

The countryside around the massive machine was lush. The Terraformer spiked itself over three hundred triple spans into the atmosphere. Curiously, I noted the temperature here was more pleasant, although I was unsure if this had been the intent of the original builders or a modification to the gigantic device after the fact. The settlement itself proved primitive; solar panels and windmills dotted the area, meaning they had electricity but the individual dwellings were minor and sparse. It lacked any significant infrastructure.

I set a course to the other settlement and looked down at the desert’s breadth engulfing the the oasis at the Terraformer. Fine sand created dunes towering thirty triple spans high. There were no roads or other landmarks just the shifting landscape remade daily by the winds. At ground level the dunes would have stretched on beyond the boundary of sight.

Clustered around a craggy ridge that heaved itself out of the sand lay the other settlement. As I approached the original remnants of habitation came into view. A few thousand triple spans beyond, oil derricks pumped crude out of the ground. A landing port, complete with half-buried, derelict ships, lay half covered in sand on the town’s perimeter. The now silenced silica processing factories pressed close to the ruined spaceport. Beyond that I could see the hab towers the workers lived in; some floors appeared to still be in use while many stood abandoned. The ridge formed a bulwark against sandstorms; individual habitations, far newer than the initial construction, were dotted in alcoves and sheltered spots.

I noted over ninety percent of the town’s moisture harvesters appeared offline. The site’s power source flared on my screen, showing twenty-eight percent of its original capacity. More than enough

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