Tech Scavengers [Humorous, Action-Packed Space Opera]

Negasi felt better being back with everyone in the main computer room. Despite all the tensions and mistrust among the crew, he felt reassured and comforted by their company.

Your unscrupulous former boss, a surreal boy/man, and a wisecracking teenager? Space has made you a lonely man.

They explained everything they had witnessed as the others listened with rapt attention. This was big enough news that even Derren/Mason put aside his work on the computer banks.

"We need her," Derren/Mason declared once they finished talking. "This is an unprecedented opportunity to learn about the Imperium."

"Like why ZHI doesn't remember a certain major invasion that was the biggest threat to the Imperium before the civil war?" Negasi asked.

Derren/Mason made a dismissive gesture, moving like an adult while looking like a kid.

"Her data got corrupted. She said so."

"And she conveniently forgot the one thing we need to know more about?" Jeridan asked.

Nova shrugged. "I don't know what you want to hear from us."

"The truth would be nice," Jeridan said.

"Just for a change of pace," Negasi added. "You know, mix things up a bit."

Nova frowned. "If I wanted sarcasm, I'd speak to my daughter."

"I heard that!" Aurora said through Poopsie.

"Now you know how it feels to always be listened to," Negasi told Nova with a smile.

"Look, we have no idea why ZHI doesn't remember the Rimscourge invasion. There's nothing more to say about it. We'll need about another half hour here. That gives you time to do some scavenging like you were going to do before ZHI scared the crap out of all of us. Why don't you get to it?"

"All right," Negasi said, then added. "Helen comes with us."

"We need her here."

"We want her with us."

"Why?"

"I think you know why."

Derren/Mason shook his head, muttered something, and got back to work.

"Then it's going to take us another forty-five minutes," Nova growled.

"That's fine. Gives us more time to scavenge."

They headed out, grabbing the antigrav transporter as they went.

Negasi stopped by Poopsie.

"Everything all right on the Antikythera?"

"Yup," Aurora replied.

"Heard from the S'ouzz?"

"Nope."

"Going through that minefield stressed him out."

"It stressed us all out."

"You holding up OK?" Jeridan asked.

"Yeah. Go ahead and save the galaxy. I'll be fine."

"Remember, at the end of all this we're going to a world with horses and beaches," Negasi said.

"Yeah. Sure."

"We will," Jeridan agreed. "We'll have earned it. Especially you."

"Nice that someone recognizes that."

"We do." Negasi nodded toward the main computer room. "They do too. They're just … preoccupied."

"What else is new."

"It'll be OK," Negasi said, patting the combat mech's head.

"I'm not a puppy!"

"With a nickname like Poopsie, I'm sure glad of that."

"Jerk!"

Negasi and Jeridan laughed. "See you soon."

They walked down the corridor.

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"You're good with children," Helen said.

For some reason that made Negasi feel uncomfortable. It was less what she said than how she said it and how she looked at him when she did.

Helen had been staring at him funny for a while now. If he didn't know better, he would think she liked him. But cyborgs didn't feel real emotions, did they?

"Where to first?" Jeridan asked.

"Armory, then let's check out that android."

"Sounds like a plan."

They got halfway there when Jeridan stopped.

He extended a hand to Helen. "Give me that connector cable."

"Why?"

"So you don't plug into anything else without permission, what do you think?"

"But it's a part of me, just as much as my implants or organs."

"People's parts aren't detachable."

"I'm a different sort of person."

"Hand it over."

Helen took it out of her pocket and handed it to Negasi.

He looked at it uncertainly. It felt warm.

Why give it to me?

He didn't want to think about the answer to that.

Negasi gingerly tucked it into his pocket and they kept going.

The armory door was the heaviest they'd seen on the station. There was no panel near the door they could easily open up to gain access to the wiring.

"Good thing I brought this along," Negasi said, pulling out a battery-powered blowtorch from his equipment bag.

Jeridan scanned the door, didn't find any power sources that could throw any nasty surprise parties, and nodded for him to get to it.

It took a while. The durasteel was of an extra dense variety and nearly two centimeters thick. Negasi managed to only create a fist-size hole before his battery ran out. He also managed to fry a bunch of the wires and circuitry behind it.

"Dumbass," Jeridan muttered.

"I'd like to see you do better."

"You're even worse at using a blowtorch than you are at chessboxing."

"Except I beat you all the time."

"Get real."

"Let's ask MIRI for the stats when we get back to the Antikythera."

"Yeah, let's!"

"How about we fix the circuitry so we can get into the armory?" Helen suggested.

"We were just getting to that," Jeridan said.

"Right after I prove I'm the better chessboxer."

"Yeah, right. You can't even use a blowtorch."

"I'd like to see what's on the other side of this." Helen tapped her finger on the door. "Wouldn't you?"

Negasi and Jeridan traded a look and got to work. They had brought spare wires and a portable soldering iron for just such an eventuality and soon got the door rewired. Then Negasi attached an external power source to two of the wires and the door slid open.

The armory was smaller than they had hoped for, a square room barely four meters by four. A combat mech stood in a corner, plugged into an outlet that no longer gave it energy. Along one wall was a half-empty rack of rifles of a model that had already been reverse engineered. A smaller rack next to it was empty. On a shelf on the opposite wall were a couple of suits of body armor. That was a well-known model as well and had been reversed engineered years ago. Still, this was military-grade stuff and better than the armor they had, so they loaded up both suits onto the antigrav transporter.

"Will they fit you?" Helen asked.

"Yeah," Negasi replied. "They're made so they're fully adjustable. As long as you're not way off from the norm, you can wear it."

"Looks like it's the only thing worth scavenging in here," Jeridan grumbled.

Helen laughed. "Aw, you wanted something that would make a big boom?"

"We are in a war," Negasi said. "Should we take the combat mech?"

"We don't really have room for it on the ship, plus it would be a pain in the ass to reprogram," Jeridan said.

"Yeah, I guess you're right."

Negasi looked around. "Well, this is a disappointment. Looks like they cleaned the place out before boarding the Brunel. This rack looks like it held grenades, maybe stun grenades. I bet they had to do a lot of crowd control around that soup kitchen they set up."

He paused, thinking about the hundreds of thousands of desperate refugees from the city who would have been begging for a meal. The crew here would have known what they were getting into, but they went anyway, to give what comfort they could before the inevitable end.

Their distress beacon was still sending out its forlorn message three hundred years later.

Jeridan's voice snapped him out of it.

"I guess with that minefield and the combat mechs, they didn't feel the need to have too much weaponry. This is a research station, after all."

Negasi nodded, still thinking about all those who died because of the jump gates going offline.

"How could they do it?" he asked.

"What?"

"The rebels. They knew what would happen. How could they do it? They must have had friends and family on worlds that got sent back to the stone age. How could they sacrifice them just to destroy the Imperium? How could they sacrifice civilization?"

It was the old question people had been asking for centuries, and no one had ever come up with an answer.

The three of them stood without speaking for a moment. Then Negasi shook himself out of his funk.

"Let's check out that android Poopsie found," he said.

Jeridan grinned. "That's going to be worth a fortune!"

Negasi's mood brightened. Nothing like a good scavenge to act as a pick-me-up. He held up this tablet with Poopsie's map of the station. "And don't forget Poopsie located three more combat mechs and five service robots."

"Double fortune! Let's go!"

They gave each other a high five.

"You two really love your work," Helen said.

"We love it when it goes well," Negasi replied. "Tech scavenging has its ups and downs. We were in a pretty low period when Nova recruited us."

Which is probably why she recruited us. She needed people who were so desperate they wouldn't ask too many questions.

Getting the best pilot/gunner team in the Orion Arm was just a bonus.

The robots were scattered all across the station. They headed for the android first, picking up a service robot on the way. They found it in the middle of a corridor where its batteries had died as it was headed somewhere on some long-forgotten task. It was identical to the one Poopsie blasted apart. They put it on the antigrav transporter and continued on their way.

The android was not in a room, but rather a niche in a corridor between an engineering room and a chemical research lab. It sat on a bench set into the wall, a thick cable connecting a plug in the wall to its head.

Negasi shuddered at how similar that looked to when Helen plugged into a computer with the cable he still carried in his pocket.

That's where the similarity ended. The android was made of steel, with a face blank but for a pair of electronic eyes and a small rectangular speaker where the mouth should be.

He had never seen a complete specimen of an Imperium android, only poorly preserved parts scavenged from various places.

He'd seen them in old vids, though. The Imperium used to have lots of them. None were made to look entirely human, however. Apparently, Imperium citizens didn't want their robots looking too much like people.

"It looks intact," Jeridan said.

Negasi nodded. Calculating what this must be worth in the open market left him at a loss for words.

They drew closer. Negasi pulled out a scanner and did a full-spectrum scan on it.

He didn't get to see the readings, because the instant he switched on the scan, the android's eyes lit up with a piercing blue.