Tech Scavengers [Humorous, Action-Packed Space Opera]

Negasi thought he was dead, but at the last instant, Nova reappeared and sent a burst at the thing. It howled again. Negasi didn't know if it turned away or simply backed off. He was too busy crawling up and over the lip of the hole in the wall. It was too small for both him and Nova to fit, so he knocked his boss off her perch as he came through.

He figured she probably didn't want to hang out there anyway. That thing was still sending up ear-splitting cries and stomping so hard the ground shook.

Negasi tumbled, did a somersault, banged his shoulder, and fell flat on some hard surface. Shaking his head, he shook his head and discovered he lay on the floor of what looked like an old warehouse. Mikael had turned on a lantern and with its soft light they could see several large machines spaced between stacks of metal crates. Everything was covered with mold and creepers from where the jungle had broken in.

Nova picked herself up off the floor next to him, then pulled him upright.

"I got the dinosaur's other eye," she said. "We shouldn't have any more problems with it."

The dinosaur shoved its head through the hole in the wall, spraying them with debris. One big chunk hit Negasi in the stomach.

That probably saved his life, because it knocked him down again. The dinosaur's jaws snapped shut less than a meter above him.

Negasi rolled to the side. Nova and Mikael had already made it halfway across the room.

He scrambled for them as the dinosaur, blinded and with both eyes streaming ichor, sniffed around.

It snapped at Negasi again just a moment after he scrambled out of range.

Nova and Mikael fired at it. Once Negasi made it to his feet, he unslung his rifle and fired too.

The dinosaur roared and thrashed, its powerful neck, as thick as the trunk of an old tree, smashing into the sides of the hole, widening it.

"Kill it before it can walk right through!" Nova shouted, slapping another magazine into her rifle.

"I'm not sure we can!" Negasi shouted back as he reloaded.

He would sure as hell try. The other option was to become lunch, although if the Antari Syndicate was on this planet he might skip lunch only to become dinner to a squad of Mantids.

One problem at a time, he thought as he pumped rounds into the dinosaur's neck. The thing's skull seemed impervious.

But the fusillade began to have an effect. He and Nova focused on the neck, tearing apart the hard outer skin and pulping the flesh beneath. Even Mikael's flechette pistol began to do damage to the ravaged, exposed flesh.

Negasi hoped it would be enough. The dinosaur burst through the bottom of the wall, making a large chunk of the roof collapse, and set one unsteady leg inside the building.

That was the last thing it did. It shook for a moment, then keeled over, crushing a stack of crates.

For a moment, the three survivors stood and stared, breathing heavily.

"That was close," Negasi said.

"Thanks for stating the obvious," Nova said.

"I think I peed myself."

"Thanks for saying too much."

They all reloaded, keeping a mistrustful eye on the monster that lay on the other side of the room.

"Let's find what we came for," Mikael said, his voice shaky.

"All this stuff looks too weathered to be of much use," Negasi said. "You think they put the good stuff in the cellar?"

"I hope so, otherwise two promising scholars died for nothing."

Mikael picked up the lantern and they moved around the warehouse. Despite the daylight pouring through the huge gap made by the dinosaur on the wall and part of the roof, the interior still managed to look gloomy. Everything was covered in dirt, animal droppings, moss, and creepers.

"I doubt we're going to scavenge much from here," Negasi said.

"You're getting picky," Nova said.

Negasi nodded. There was a time when a discovery like this would have been the apex of his tech scavenging career. There must be plenty here to reverse engineer, sell for scrap, or even fix.

The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

Things had changed, though. Now he was after spare parts for a second-generation jump gate, something he hadn't even known existed until a couple of hours ago.

"There," Mikael said, pointing.

A set of double durasteel doors stood against one wall. They went up to it. Locked.

Mikael brought out a set of electronic lockpicks. Negasi raised an eyebrow. The Open Sesame 5000. Those went for a bundle. Most of the people who used them were government agents on high-tech worlds or leading burglars. Negasi wondered which job description suited Mikael more.

As the archaeologist got to work, he studied the man's features. While clearly scared and shocked, he didn't show any signs of grief for the two assistants he had lost, a man and a woman he had been working with for months, perhaps years. He didn't look any more affected than Negasi, who didn't even know them.

There's a little bit of Nova in you, Mikael, Negasi thought. That's not a good thing.

The lockpicks only took a few seconds to crack a high-tech Imperium lock. The double doors creaked open and Mikael held up his lantern. Beyond they saw a concrete ramp heading down.

They checked the floor, walls, and ceiling. It all seemed stable enough, so they slowly moved down the ramp, driven by what they might find inside. Not even the thought of Feng back there at the shuttlecraft could keep them from checking out what the cellar might hold. They'd have to deal with Feng sooner rather than later, but first priority was finding out what treasures this cellar contained.

Hopefully Feng would assume they were dead. That would give them a bit of time. After sounding that cry of a dying animal and hearing the fight in the woods, he wouldn't dare come out from behind the electrofence for a while. How they were going to get at him was a question they hadn't solved yet.

The ramp turned and rounded a corner, sloping down to a cellar. At the edge of the light cast by Mikael's lantern they could see several metal crates like those they had found upstairs, except these hadn't been destroyed by the elements. As they descended into the cellar, they saw a room about a quarter the size of the warehouse upstairs, half filled with crates.

Negasi's heart, still beating fast from his narrow escape, sped up. Everything looked perfectly preserved. No roots had broken into the cellar, and no water had leaked in either. It was a time capsule, shrouded in silence for centuries as the galaxy fell apart around it.

Mikael went up to the nearest stack of crates and read the label on it. Negasi looked too. It was in Old Terran Standard.

"Micro Jump Gate linear amplifier Model 2.4."

Negasi's heart beat even faster. He looked at the next crate.

"Micro Jump Gate insulating plates. Quantity: 4."

He kept reading, crate after crate of parts for the wonderous, almost magical technology he himself had gotten to try.

"Job done," Mikael whispered, his voice trembling with emotion.

"At least this part of the job," Nova replied. "Now we have to figure out how to get rid of Feng."

Negasi thought for a moment. "He's going to come here eventually. We'll just lie in wait for him."

"When he sees that beast dead next to the building, he's going to know we survived," Nova replied.

"He won't think three of us did," Negasi said. "Probably only one or two. And he's arrogant. He'll think he can handle us. Besides, we can't get to him while he's behind that electrofence. We don't have any grenades."

"He does," Mikael said.

"Oh, great."

Then Nova brought up some more bad news. "He acted like the Antari Syndicate was already here. What if he waits until they join him before exploring this?"

Negasi bit his lip. "We'll just have to hope he's greedy enough to want to check this place out before they arrive. I've met plenty of people like him. I think he'll come here alone. He'll be afraid of a double-cross and will want to strengthen his negotiating position with the Syndicate."

"I hope you're right," Nova said, "otherwise we're going to turn into a meal after all."

That quietened everyone down. Negasi thought of Maria, and wondered if his companions were thinking of her too, or only thinking of their own skins.

They went back up the ramp. Just as they were about to pass through the half-open doors and back into the warehouse, Negasi signaled them to stop.

He heard something.

The sound of tearing flesh, chewing, and strange mewing sounds from several animals.

He looked at Mikael, and the archaeologist's expression confirmed his fears.

That dinosaur they'd killed was being eaten by a pack of … something.

Then Negasi's eyes widened, because the only way he saw Mikael's expression was because his face was illuminated by the lantern he held.

A lantern that shone through the doorway.

He waved his hand at Mikael, who figured it out a moment later and switched the lamp off.

Negasi stared at the crack between the two doors, barely enough for him to squeeze through if he went sideways. He could see almost nothing of the warehouse beyond. No sign of movement.

The sounds had stopped.

No, not quite. He heard soft sounds, many of them, moving closer.

Negasi, Nova, and Mikael raised their guns as they slowly backed away from the doors.

They watched the thin strip of the warehouse they could see—a floor covered with moss and creepers, and beyond that a series of overgrown stacks of crates. Nothing else, but there was certainly something else there.

A shadow fell over the doorway, and a reptilian head peeked around the corner at waist level.

Negasi recognized it as the same species that had eviscerated that six-legged dinosaur.

It didn't stay recognizable for long. All three of them opened up and turned its head into pulp.

The body and a stump of a neck thumped to the floor.

For a moment, silence.

Then the doors burst open and a pack of them leapt and ran down the ramp, seeking easy prey.

Negasi swore, firing at the lead one, seeing it stagger back, then firing at the one right next to it. His companions added their fire, and some of the dinosaurs went down.

Some. Not all. Negasi realized that one shot usually wasn't enough to take these things out. Most of the creatures they hit only stopped for a moment, or fell and leapt back up with appalling speed. Mikael's sidearm barely had an effect.

Negasi kept up a desperate fire as the shrieking, bleeding mass moved relentlessly forward. Reinforcements crowded the doorway behind them. A trail of dead and dying dinosaurs heaped in the doorway and the few meters just inside, a carpet of bodies the rest of the pack scampered over.

The three humans kept walking backwards into the darkness as they fired, trying to put some distance between them and the pack, but the space between them narrowed, the flailing, shrieking horde of dinosaurs relentlessly advancing.

Until one reached them.