Star Force: Divergent (SF74) Read Online Free PDF

had to fix two pieces
that she didn’t have replacements for.
    Whoever had set this up had made it difficult on
purpose, but Jyra thought she finally had everything working and was glad to
hear the faint hum of the cooling device and no extraneous noise, suggesting to
her that it was, in fact, now working properly. After reattaching her pack she
slid onto the small seat that could accommodate two people in a crunch, she
gripped the control bars and elevated the speeder up through a small gap in the
canopy that she had to search around for, passing through the snow-covered
branches and dumping a lot of it off onto the ground as she pushed through…then
she was above the treetops looking out at the snow-covered landscape that
showed little bits of green in between the white dunes covering the branches.
    Highlighting the nearest waypoint, Jyra accelerated
the nearly silent bike in its direction and began covering ground in a blink of
an eye compared to her having had to run it on foot. Skimming the treetops also
allowed her to make a straight line path rather than the weave she had to make
around trees and up and down over hills on foot, making her appreciate the
speeder for all it was worth as she headed for the waypoint.
    Knowing not to run up on top of it, Jyra stopped early
and landed, choosing to approach on foot and finding another beacon…but this
one was coming from underground. It was two meters down, but there was no
visible way to get at it. Frowning, Jyra pulled her pack off and got a small
cubical rectangle out that unfolded into a shovel. She began digging, immediately
finding the ground frozen and having to chip away at it until the soil softened
with depth, but even then it was still firm and didn’t look to have been
recently dug up anytime soon.
    When she got down to the depth that the beacon was
coming from, for she could measure it to the inch on her HUD, she found
absolutely nothing. It took her a moment to dig a little deeper, then she
tossed the shovel out of the hole and angrily climbed out of it.
    “Shit…I’m so stupid,” she said, looking around in the
trees above her and in the scrub brush nearby. At first she couldn’t find
anything, but eventually she stumbled across a tiny box stuck in the side of
one of the tree trunks some 20 meters off, virtually unnoticeable, and Jyra
knew it was a signal misdirection device. The actual beacon signal was coming
from somewhere else, but with this one transmitting a counter signal it had
altered the calculations her helmet was making and caused it to indicate a
position that was where neither device existed.
    Knowing that she could do the math and use the false
point and the actual one of the disrupter to determine the true location of the
beacon, she input a waypoint on top of the tiny device and had her helmet do
the calculations…which resulted in a third waypoint that she walked over to,
finding a ditch that was almost completely filled with snow. She scooped it out
with her hands like a dog digging down through sand and eventually found the
book-sized box at the bottom. Pulling it out she headed back to where she’d dropped
her pack and subsequently retrieved her shovel before kneeling down and opening
the box.
    Inside it was two foodstuff packets, a small amount of
ambrosia, and a puzzle piece-like component that she guessed would interlink
with others found to form something, but at the moment she had no clue what it
was, for it had no buttons or markings of any kind.
    Jyra sighed. “Scavenger hunt indeed,” she said,
looking over to the spot where she’d dug that unnecessary hole and wasted so
much time. “Guess that’s my punishment for being stupid…all self-imposed.”
    Grabbing the items and stowing them in her pack, Jyra
took a moment to rest and clear her head before getting back on the bike and
heading towards the next waypoint, plotting out a course that would mean the
least amount of travel, for her power cell on the bike hadn’t