Chapter 645: Portal Travel
"But I am not as aware about your current plan. I just know you left the Underworld System. Where are you off to next?" Salem asked.
Jace hummed. "Deep into Kitinol territory." He answered honestly and got a confused expression in return. "I do not want anyone knowing what we are doing. Which is why we are running dark. No one will know how we made the power source or the gravity shielding device until after they reclaim that portion of the galaxy from the kitinol."
Salem hummed but then her head snapped to the side. "I have to go. I wish you the best of luck." She then faded out of existence and Jace returned to reality.
He blinked as he found himself sitting in his office. He looked out the window to see space passing them by. He might as well go to the bridge for the teleportation portal jump.
He walked out of his office and onto the bridge. Finding Shilla sitting in her chair looking bored. "Hey!" Jace nodded at her as he walked in. She looked over at him with an equally bored expression. "What is up with you? Why do you look so bored?"
"Because it is boring. I mean, space travel used to be days to months at a time for you guys, and maybe a few days for my people. But the Lance travels at such a high speed that I have to stay on the bridge in the event we arrive early somewhere. In fact...." She looked toward the front most screen as they came out of warp. "We have just arrived in remote space between two sparsely populated colony systems that are uncontested at the moment."
"Perfect." Jace nodded and hummed. "I will just watch."
"Engineering, finish your report and then prepare the teleportation portal cannons. How long will it take to prepare them?" Shilla asked.
"Only a few moments. We had them prepared ahead of time since we knew they would be needed." The engineer declared. "And all senior officers are preparing observations. We have it down to make quick observations and the Chief Engineer looks over them when he has time."
"Good system, does it satisfy your and Hielo’s strict requirements?" Shilla asked as she glanced side eyed at Jace.
"It does." Jace nodded. Taylor would be more than satisfied with that. Having multiple points of observation was a fantastic idea. Gorund was back in the Underworld System helping Hielo with construction so who was the chief engineer? He felt a sudden shiver down his spine. It was an inexplicable sense of being off.
"All systems are ready. Stealth systems are being disabled. We are now detectable by long range scanning equipment and manual observational equipment." The security officer declared.
They had to turn off the stealth equipment in order to operate the teleportation equipment. It was one of the things they observed while running tests. If they tried to go through a portal or to a point to point jump with stealth systems operating it would cause the reactor to go down.
"Firing portal guns now." The engineer announced as several beams of blue light launched from the ship and met in a space in front of the ship. After a few moments a swirl of light began forming and expanding until after a few minutes it stopped and a large portal lingered in space. "The portal is stable."
"Perfect. Take us through." Shilla ordered.
The pilot moved the Lance forward and it slowly crawled through the portal. Once they were inside the entire space was white. Not white like snow, but white like the colors on the screen had been inverted.
"Woah..." The engineer mumbled. "Is this inverted space?"
Jace raised an eyebrow and hid a smile. There was a black dot ahead of them. "Move toward the black dot. That is the other side of the portal." Jace instructed. Shrugging when Shilla glared at him. "You were just as shocked as the rest of your crew."
Shilla puffed up her cheeks. "Pick up speed. From now on we should go through the portal at half speed. Not one twelfth speed."
The Lance moved quickly and exited through the other end of the portal. Once it was through the stars and space returned to view for a moment before it was suddenly filled with planetoids of varying sizes.
"We have entered real space again." The engineer declared. "Firing the beam to close the portal." A view of the rear of the ship popped up on the screen and showed the portal before a red beam hit it at the edge. The portal almost immediately began shrinking until it disappeared completely.
"Scans show only a minor gravitational anomaly." Another bridge officer declared whose sole and only purpose was to read out scans.
"Engineering will make a record of the anomaly for the future." The engineering officer declared.
"Good. What system are we in?" Shilla asked.
"Records show..." The navigation officer began. "This system was only seen once in any historical record and that was by the... Vexical Exploratory Fleet? Umm... the system is called Parthos and the records are blank."
Jace flinched as Shilla glanced at him. "Haa..." He rubbed the back of his head.
"Is there any reason there is no record of this system?" Shilla asked Jace.
"Correction, there is information but those were just holographic captures. The only other things are names for the planets and codes?" Another bridge officer declared in confusion.
"Jace?" Shilla asked.
"Make an in-depth scan of the system and start making a record. But ignore the historical records." Jace instructed. "There should be a list of necessary ores and other resources. Focus on locating those. We can make the star engines last."
"Not going to explain the very suspicious cover up of information on behalf of your former nation?" Shilla asked with a scoff. Getting a chuckle from some of the other bridge members. They probably thought Shilla was joking. But Jace could tell she was serious.
Unfortunately she had hit the nail on the head. He had forgotten to check the ’official’ records before coming. The unofficial records had a lot more detail about what the Vexical Exploratory Fleet had down out here. Which was bad enough that they permanently removed and did not share the unofficial records when they joined the Victorium. The High Priestess had been granted access and agreed that the records should be kept secret.
"Nope." Jace only had access because he had been poking around for resource rich systems and found this one. He had looked into it and discovered enough to realize what he was looking at.
Shilla narrowed her eyes but turned her attention away after a few moments. "Okay. Have you found anything?"
"Kitinol. A lot of kitinol. But we also found plenty of untapped ore deposits. Most of which are in space. But a massive one is on the planet called Kager-1." That caused even Shilla to flinch as she glared at him. He only shrugged in response.
"I will lead a ground team." Jace declared. Shaking his head when Shilla looked at him. Telling her he would still not explain. The word Kager roughly translated in a vague Kamot dialect to ’testing ground’. With that piece of information he was sure Shilla would soon figure out that the Hellion Group was somehow involved in this system. "How many resources are not in this system?"
"Three major ones." The officer in charge of scanning admitted. "So we will probably have to leave to a new system."
"Keep us a distance away from the nearest planetoid with kitinol life. I do not want to risk them detecting us early and sending out their version of artillery." Shilla declared with annoyance which was definitely directed at Jace. "Commander Wintry. I suggest you go prepare your ground assault. I can handle the space action."
Jace rolled his eyes as he turned and walked out of the room. Going back over to his office to look over the information that came from the scan of the system and the planet he would need to land on.
After he left he did not hear what happened next on the bridge. Mostly because he was not trying to pay attention to it.
A few seconds after the door closed behind him. One of the officers looked over at Shilla. "So... they named a system full of kitinol testing grounds?"
"Yeah..." Shilla sighed as she rubbed her head. "Not very discreet. But something immoral and illegal probably occurred here."
"What makes you say that?" One of the other officers asked with a swath of sarcasm.
Shilla rolled her eyes before giving a real answer. "Because if it was just illegal it would not matter. But, since even Jace feels it necessary to keep it a secret, it must be because the problem is not just illegal but also highly immoral and scandalous."
"When they call something ’testing grounds’ it must be." One of the officers pointed out.
West felt slightly uncomfortable in her position. But her mind was still working. "Soo... was the Vexical Exploratory Fleet the group that predated MILD?"
That caused a monetary stir before everyone looked to Shilla who shrugged before looking at one of the bridge officers. The man grunted. "It is one of them. MILD was the condensed and unified spy organization. Before them the Vexical Spy network was massive and was rogue in how they operated. The former emperor and consort created MILD in order to reel in on rogue behavior."
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