Tech Scavengers [Humorous, Action-Packed Space Opera]

"When do I get to see my son?" Nova demanded.

Jeridan frowned and crossed his arms. He was beginning to regret his decision not to shoot her the moment she boarded the Antikythera.

She stood in the pantry, her new prison. The room was crowded on three walls by shelves, only a narrow bit of deck between to move around in.

Jeridan blocked the doorway, Negasi hanging a bit behind.

"I told you already," Jeridan said, not bothering to keep the irritation out of his voice. "You get to see him when you answer all our questions. Explain to me what will happen if Mason no longer takes his meds. Give me a timeline."

Nova glowered at him for a moment, then grumbled and made an angry gesture.

"He needs boosters every eight hours. It's already been ten. So Derren's thought patterns will already be experiencing some fading, some scrambling, as Mason's own thoughts and personality take over."

"Oh, what a tragedy."

"It will be if we can't get the jump gates back online."

"So what happens after twenty-four hours without medicine?"

"Derren's fading gets worse. I've been warned against skipping the boosters. Missing one is bad. Missing three can have permanent damage. More than that … " she gave a frustrated shrug, shoulders tight against her neck. "They don't know what happens after that. They've never let a patient go that far. Derren will fade, though. All that knowledge will be lost."

"How far to this research station?"

Nova grimaced. "Ten days."

"Damn."

Jeridan looked at his buddy, but the gunner didn't have any easy answers.

Short supply of easy answers in this galaxy, Jeridan mused. Maybe we should set up some sort of charity to offer easy answers to tech scavengers who get in way over their heads with the wrong boss.

"He needs his booster," Nova said.

"Yeah. You mentioned that."

"If he doesn't—"

"Shut up. I'm thinking."

When Mason had come out of the holocabin, he'd been sullen and unresponsive. No amount of coaxing could get the boy to say anything, so they brought him back to his quarters and locked him inside.

Jeridan turned to Negasi. "What do you think?"

Negasi shrugged, then looked at Nova. "Can you deal with the Imperium station yourself?"

"I already told you no. If I could, do you think I would summon my husband back from the dead?"

Negasi glared at her. "I have no idea what you're capable of."

"Let's go talk to Helen," Jeridan suggested. "Get a second opinion."

"Not sure I value that opinion."

"Couldn't be worse than Nova's." Jeridan slammed the pantry door and locked her inside.

The baritone voice of the S'ouzz came over the comm. "Do humans have a set of customs to deal with conflicts between the needs of the individual and those of the community?"

"Heaps," Jeridan said. "And every culture is different. No one has a good solution for this one, though."

The alien didn't have an answer to that.

Negasi looked thoughtful, then asked, "What would the S'ouzz do in this situation?"

"We are highly individualistic, as you know, so the individual interest in paramount, except in extreme cases."

"Would this count as an extreme case?"

"An individual compared to the entirety of all known sentient species? Yes."

Jeridan rolled his eyes. Negasi would have to ask the alien.

"Let's go see Helen," he sighed. They walked down the corridor.

"Let's talk to her through a vidlink. I don't want her turning out to be a combat model."

"Good plan."

They got to Helen's door and hit the vidlink. Helen sat in a lotus position on the narrow bunk. Her head turned toward the screen.

If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.

How the hell did she know we just turned on the vidscreen?

"How is Mason?" she asked.

"The same," Jeridan said. "He went to the holocabin to talk with his father."

"What did they say to each other?"

"We didn't listen in," Negasi replied.

A smile crept across that pale face. "I knew you'd be kind to him, Negasi."

What the hell does that mean? Jeridan thought.

"Tell us, step by step, what will happen if Mason doesn't have his shots."

Helen gave the same set of consequences that Nova had.

Once again, Jeridan and Negasi were left standing in the corridor not knowing what to do.

The cybernetic woman sat calmly on her bunk, still in the lotus position, facing the camera. She didn't speak and her face wore an expression of benign sympathy.

What's she so content about? Jeridan wondered.

"So tell us about this organization you're in."

"It's called the League of Concerned Archaeologists. Mikael, or I should say Dr. Mikael Petrov, founded it twenty years ago. It started out as a loose organization of researchers who wanted to use our discoveries for the betterment of the galaxy. We shared information and technology. The idea caught on quickly, especially on the more oppressive worlds. Pretty soon we started an illegal trade in technology."

"You were industrial spies?"

"Not at all. Industrial spies sell their tech to the highest bidder. We traded information for free, sending comm probes with technological data to every participant. Of course this was in breach of intellectual property laws, but we felt this tech deserved to be shared, not sold. We focused only on constructive tech—medical advances or engineering innovations. We really helped some struggling worlds."

"Sounds like a great organization," Jeridan said. Helen smiled. He killed that by continuing. "So at what point did you decide to experiment on children?"

The smile vanished, and Helen hung her head. "What we did was terrible. I hope you can forgive me, Negasi."

Why does she keep addressing him?

Jeridan glanced at his friend, who looked uncomfortable.

When Negasi didn't respond, Jeridan said, "So what happened?"

"Archaeologists are paid to find old tech, but they delve into the culture and history of the Imperium too. As much knowledge can be found there as in the technology, although the governments that fund research institutes don't see that."

"If they were so wise, why did they slit their own throats?"

A sad smile spread across her face. "It seems like that's the story of humanity. We can't stop making the same mistakes. The League of Concerned Archaeologists traded academic findings too. Our members didn't like the cutthroat competition that academics are forced into, where one has to hide their findings from their peers until publication. Knowledge should be freely shared. One discovery that sent ripples through the network was the discovery that the Imperium staved off an invasion about fifty years before the collapse."

"The same aliens we're facing now?"

"Yes. The Imperium called them the Rimscourge. They came from the edge of the Orion Arm, just as they're doing now, and hit some of the outer rim worlds. They caused a lot of damage in their initial surprise attack but thanks to the jump gates the Imperial Navy was able to rally a huge fleet and destroy the attack force. Even so, they took heavy losses and a couple of planets were destroyed."

"Damn. If the old Imperial fleet had trouble with them, we don't stand a chance!" Negasi cried.

"There's always a chance when people band together," Helen replied. "The attack was the biggest threat the Imperium had faced in a couple of generations and the damage it caused shook the government's confidence. They assembled an even larger fleet and set out after the aliens."

"Did they find their home world?"

"No. They only found defeat. Once the fleet got past the last of the jump gates they were at a significant disadvantage. The aliens let them get a few weeks past the outer edges of the Imperium and then attacked. The Imperium fleet found itself surrounded and was only able to get out of the trap with heavy losses. Then they had to engage in a fighting retreat all the way back to the Imperium. Like with our own ships, we have the disadvantage of slower movement. Only with the jump gates do we have an edge on them."

"Great," Jeridan muttered.

"After the defeat, the aliens tried to invade again, only to get pushed back a second time. Then they disappeared. Long-range sensors monitored their fleet as they dwindled off into space, heading past the outermost edge of the rim. They were never seen again, until now."

"Where did they come from?"

"No one knows."

Jeridan thought for a moment. There was an outer arm of the galaxy beyond the Orion Arm called the Perseus Arm, but it was so far even those advanced ships would have taken generations to make it. More likely, they came from one of the systems floating in the thin starfield between the arms.

"Did the Imperium research their ships? Find anything we can use to fight them?"

"They discovered many things. Unfortunately, all this data was kept on military computers, the very same computers that got the most destroyed during the civil war. The few of those remaining are almost impossible to hack. The League of Concerned Archaeologists did find one partially intact research station that contained the remains of some of the alien lifeforms, preserved for study all these years. We recently transferred those bodies to our main research lab."

"The biotubes!" Jeridan said. "Nova was smuggling biotubes when we first joined with her."

Helen nodded. "Yes, those contained the ancient alien bodies."

Jeridan found himself feeling a wave of relief. So Nova wasn't a sentient species trafficker. And she hadn't murdered her husband like Jeridan had once suspected. She wasn't entirely evil, just an overly driven and obsessed woman who had done one evil act.

That was enough. She still couldn't be trusted. Jeridan would never look at her the same again.

Negasi cut in. "It sounds like your organization is pretty big. You guys have ships and cash and specialists … "

"Our organization has expanded greatly since we discovered the threat of the Rimscourge. We've decided that we can't trust any planetary government or confederation of planets. They are too short-sighted and slow moving. So we've organized in secret. Unfortunately, that has sometimes put us on the wrong side of the law and now the Syndicate knows far too much about our plans."

"We're going to need to see all the data you have on the aliens and their technology. I'm sure you have it in your mind, so you can download it to a tablet I'll give you," Negasi said.

Jeridan nodded. A tablet was a good idea. No way could she be trusted to hook into the ship's computer. She might give MIRI a virus.

"I'll have to ask the League if I can—"

"You'll do what you're told or I'll drop you off at the nearest planet and tell the police you aided in sentient species experimentation. That's life on most planets, death on some."

Helen looked hurt. "You wouldn't do that, Negasi."

"Try me."

MIRI's voice came over the comm. "We are being hailed by the Karnak."

"We'll take it on the bridge," Jeridan replied. "We got to handle this one carefully."

They headed to the bridge. Jeridan looked at his pal.

"Why does Helen talk to you like that? It's like she's got the hots for you."

"Shut up," Negasi grumbled.

"I'm not messing with you."

"I know you're not messing with me. Shut up."