The Black Gate (The Messenger #11) - J.N. Chaney Page 0,64

screamed in raw agony as he shot it, and that was good enough for him.

When another salvage team found that the remains of a large, battleship-class vessel that Dash and Leira had cut into pieces with their power-swords was trying to heal itself, all of the teams were pulled out of the debris field.

“It’s just too dangerous,” Benzel said, and Dash nodded agreement. They were in the War Room, considering their next move regarding salvage. It turned out that the Deeper ships didn’t actually incorporate much Dark Metal for their bulk. In most, it consisted of some sort of keel-like backbone that ran the length of the ship.

Custodian speculated that it was some sort of data bus, facilitating real-time communications across the semi-living substance of the ships. There was no way to prove this without taking one intact and studying it. In the meantime, though, the relative paucity of Dark Metal, combined with the hazards posed by the Deeper debris, prompted Dash to issue a new direction.

“Custodian, what would happen if we just put the pieces of wreckage right into the smelters without separating out the Dark Metal first?”

“We would produce a liquid that is a combination of metals and ceramic slag. I have tested this, using a small amount of debris. It would be necessary to conduct a further refining step to separate out the various metallic components, including the Dark Metal, before it could be used as feedstock for manufacturing processes.”

“What about the organic parts of the Deeper materials?” Leira asked. “What happens to it?”

“The temperatures and pressures required to reduce the metallic materials to liquid reduce the organic materials to basic elements, which are extracted as degassing products.”

“In other words, turned to vapor.” Leira narrowed her eyes. “Works for me. Hell, anything that destroys that Deeper tech works for me. Gives me the creeps just thinking about it.”

“But it also means that our whole fabrication cycle is going to take that much longer,” Dash said. “I mean, it has to be this way, for the safety of our people. Custodian, we’ll leave retrieving debris to you—if you can just tractor it into the smelters, then that’s what we’ll do. Just liaise with Benzel in case that proves too slow, and we’ll figure out how we can recover it more efficiently, but also still do it safely.”

Lomas, who had returned to the Forge with her aide, Envaer, in tow, just shook her head. “Amazing. You people are sitting here calmly discussing how you can just repurpose our enemy’s wreckage into new ships and weapons—wreckage that’s half alive, at that.”

Dash spread his hands, smiling. “Welcome to the Cygnus Realm. We’ve been scavengers and packrats since day one.”

“It works, though,” Benzel said. “We won a war against the Golden by doing just that.”

“I don’t know,” Envaer said. “All of this seems complicated—not to mention dependent on defeating and destroying Deeper ships just to get your raw materials.” He shot Dash a glance. “I realize that we’re primitive compared to you, but it seems to me the old fashioned way of mining and manufacturing and the like is more reliable and less risky, isn’t it?”

“And we’ll do that, too,” Dash replied. “In fact, Harolyn is coming to your people with a formal delegation. One of the things we’d like to discuss is initiating some trade agreements.”

“What could we possibly have that you would want?” Lomas asked.

Dash looked from Lomas to Envaer. Lomas, he knew, was still shell-shocked from the destruction of the League fleet, and that now played out in her language, both verbal and body. Prior to the battle, she’d been confident, standing tall and straight, leaning into conversations. Now, she sat hunched, more withdrawn into herself, her confidence and self-assurance as badly mauled as her ships had been.

Envaer, on the other hand—

Dash gave Lomas’s aide a quick glance. Dash didn’t like Envaer. At all. He had a furtive, obsequious air to him, an opportunist who would tend to tell his betters, like Lomas, what he thought they wanted to hear. And anyone who threatened his comfortable little world of toadying and forever chasing his own interests was an enemy, expressed in the open, hostile contempt he’d been directing at the Cygnus Realm in general, and Dash, in particular.

Dash had met Envaer before. Many times. Every corrupt port official, every ambitious customs agent, every security officer on the take—they all had a streak of Envaer in them.

All of this flashed through Dash’s mind in an instant, and then he smiled