Sooth Sayer

The Forge region – Ihilakken constellation
Outuni system

16 January YC 127

When I warped to the location of the FTL router in Outuni system I was greeted by three frigates and three destroyers of Guristas persuasion guarding an acceleration gate.

“Where is that router?” I wondered, “There are no structures here.”

“Maybe in the next pocket, or integrated into the acceleration gate,” suggested Aura. “Does it matter?”

“For the moment,” I replied, noticing yellow boxes lighting up around red triangles on my overview, “no.”

Pithi Demolisher
Pithi Demolisher

I chose the gate as the centre of my customary 45-km orbit, activated the afterburner and let the pirates chase me. I have to say that, when it comes to impressing baseliners with the stories of my space battles, Guristas’ choice of ship names is simply perfect. I don’t even have to invent any sinister-sounding monikers when I say “And suddenly a wing of Pithi Demolishers emerged from the pirates’ lair and started annihilating my shield with their Neutron Blasters”. In reality, all those Demolishers and Destructors have 10-15 seconds to hit me with a hybrid charge until I get out of their range. After that, it’s only a matter of time before they themselves are annihilated. In that particular case the time was exactly three minutes for all six of them.

Pithi Destructor
Pithi Destructor

The wrecks did not contain anything of value, and I was about to jump to another pocket when Aura pointed at the overview and said thoughtfully, “Look at the gate name, Vlad. I’ve never seen such classification before.”

The overview showed that the gate was called ‘Newly Constructed Acceleration Gate’.

“How does the onboard computer know that it is newly constructed?” I asked, “And what is the significance of it being newly constructed?”

Aura made a grimace, “It may be nothing. Sometimes little differences are blown out of proportion in AI training and the model starts hallucinating. Instead of fixing the algorithm, the data scientists just go along with the AI and introduce a new object type. So instead of labelling every acceleration gate as such, they divided them into two separate groups based on an unimportant attribute.”

I thought for a moment, then smiled mischievously, “Do you hallucinate?”

Aura looked offended, “Me? Never!”

“And what about that time when you off-lined all the turrets and allocated the whole CPU to cracking a data chip?”

“That was just an error of judgement caused by incomplete information about the values you placed on the achievement of conflicting goals,” replied Aura haughtily.

“And it’s not what they call ‘hallucination’?”

“No,” Aura said firmly.

“Alright,” I said chucking, “let’s then jump through this newly constructed error of judgement and see what’s on the other side.”

I activate the acceleration gate and in a few heartbeats I finally discovered what pirates were hiding in the second pocket – nothing. According to the overview, the space in the radius of 500 km contained pure vacuum or at most, according to Aura, stuff that you can’t sell on the market.

I scratched my head, “Okay, now we know the significance of the construction time of the acceleration gate. It appears that we have arrived at a site where the base is just being built.”

Aura sighed, “That’s the problem with these expeditions – you never know if you get a proper base, a construction site or Tony’s Cannelloni mobile cafe where the owner of the commlink ordered a takeaway.”

“Mmm… I wouldn’t mind that last option,” I said longingly, “I am starving.”

Aura snorted, “Why didn’t you tell me that you were more interested in pasta than in overseers’ remains? Tony, unlike Guristas, makes sure that everyone knows where to find him. Warp drive active, Captain.”

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