96
was clear, Ikeprof re-activated the station interface and quickly
purchased one of the new MK II Morning star missles. Almost immediately
he felt the faint tremor as the equipping bot attached the missle to
his ships pylon. While the Venture class ship was not directly a combat
capable ship given it's single gun and minimal shielding, it could
still mount a missle as a last ditch self defense measure.

Tapping the launch button on the station interface, Ikeprof flipped the
ship smoothly over onto it's back and accelerated quickly towards the
Arkans cloud jumpgate after clearing the docking strut and the other
ships. Establishing communications with on duty combat coordinator, he
confirmed that the battle had lessened to some degree but the conflict
in Dark Gateway between Octavian and Solrain forces still raged.

Knowing that he had time before he was required in sector, Ikeprof
aimed for The Blasted Corner jumpgate rather than Arkans Cloud. The
swirl of blue and white energy cleared his viewport as he jumped, and
he slowly rotated towards the anomaly while scanning his radar for
anything unusual. A dozen OEC pilots where working side by side with
other Octavian ships in constructing the new jumpgate around the
anomaly. As TRI budgets shrank, the secret Zirgmirg construction laser
were released to the general pilot population. Prior to this, TRI
construction drones were responsible for all new station and jumpgate
construction, but the exponential rate of growth of the rapidly
discovered universe quickly outpaced the ability of TRI to keep up with
construction demands. The day's of dropping off construction materials
to a staging station and allowing the TRI drones to do the work were
over. Now faction pilots not only had to accumulate the construction
materials for new projects, they also had to load these materials into
their holds and fly to the construction location with a Zirgmirg laser
equipped and take an active part in building whatever the focus of the
day was. The Zirgmirg laser slowly used the commodities as it
contributed to the construction of a project. A wire frame holoimage
told the pilots where to aim the conlaser and if one watched closely,
you could see the solid construct form before your eyes.

Ikeprof chucked at the thought of the time that Capt DJMTPocket got his
ship trapped between two walls of a supply depot while proclaiming
loudly that "he knew damn well which way the wall was going to form".

"Some people are fighters and some are construction workers" Ikeprof
thought to himself.

It looked as if the new jumpgate was ½ done. Data probes had revealed
that this gate should lead to the newly discovered "outer loop". This
loop so far had consumed each probe in heavy conflux fire by yet to be
identified conflux class frigates, but the promise of discovery and
reward had energized most of TRI. Probe data had been intermittent, but
vast patches of pure roid fields and some artifact signatures had been
mixed in with the data prior to the probes demise. The name Outer Loop
was a rough name as it only circled 2/3rds of TRI space at this time,
but the general consensus was that it would eventually form a complete
circle. Armchairs Wound was the first sector discovered in the outer
loop connected to the Path of Hordes sector. It was unanimously decided
that the honor should go to Pilot Armchair especially after he suffered
his disfigurement during his pod malfunction while studying the
original anomaly.