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When I stowed it away I remember thinking, “What’s the point of putting it in the vault?” Not only was it as close to impervious as it gets, it had enough intelligence to envelope me with ease and cooperate with my movements. Surely, it could break out of anything, and that was my main concern – it might get away. The plus side to this was that I didn’t have to worry about it showing up on almost any scan. I decided to stow my priceless, little artifact in the compeller. Even if a gravity map could be made it would only show up as a lump of superdense matter (time to clean my engine).
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I’m not saying my ship is overly penetrable, but I have been raided by pirates. Call them what you like, uniforms or not. Earth’s security is pretty straight forward, thanks to its very sophisticated net, but some areas of the universe have control factors that customarily acquire items that come within their grasp. Take Tilus IV.
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I could never forget Tilus IV. I’d been through the system many times before and was in good standing with the, so-called, enforcers of AGA (the Askler Garthry Alliance)- a treaty-based government formed by the two most powerful families that colonized the system. There’s a very low crime rate. I mean, it’s not a crime if you’re not breaking a law, and if you make the law… There’s no doubt in my mind those wanna-be gangsters had permission to wolf pack me. It’s part of their culture.
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A good example is a man named Chance Radrich, who had his entire estate plundered, legally. The intruders were taken into custody initially, but after cooperating with AGA laws, including revealing, in detail, how they accomplished the security breach, they were released and given what would amount to salvage rights. It’s part of their Wolf Clause. AGA is very blunt about their reasoning behind their Wolf Clause: ”Only the strong will survive.”
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The more I thought about Tilus, the more I thought about the armor, but I would snap out of it when I remembered how the top layer of my skin, all my hair, and about half of my nails were finely scraped away and consumed. But those nuts chased me ‘til my engines flushed, right outside of Bilbius, right in the middle of nowhere!
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My ship completely evacuated when they ripped open my hull (this was before I got the worm herders). As they plundered my ship they completely ignored me. It seemed like they only took the things that were precious to me. A few items they had left behind were already sold in Bilbius for considerable amounts. It was driving me crazy. They would be so easy to find!
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Before Tilus, I had never gone without eating for more than three days. Nearly five trillion kilometers from the outermost post of Bilbius, all I had was a three-day supply of liquid rations in my EVA (Extra-Vehicular Activity) suit. Oh sure, there was plenty of food, but everything was down to a few degrees Kelvin (some -300 degrees) and that included my batteries. It would take more heat to warm my food enough to consume than what my body would produce from the food.
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I’m sure some genius could have figured out how to warm the batteries without freezing to death, but I could not. Besides, even if I did warm them enough to really get some juice it was very likely that they were damaged beyond repair. When my hull was breached the temperature dropped several hundred degrees in just a few moments.
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Tearing into the power systems did nothing but frustrate me. There was