Tech Scavengers [Humorous, Action-Packed Space Opera]

As Negasi and Nova stepped out of the shuttle and onto the cracked pavement of the ancient plaza, half a dozen figures wearing oxygen masks approached them from the entrance to a crumbling building overgrown with vines. Negasi noticed Helen, the data hacker with the implants, among them.

She was of average height, but that was the only average thing about her. Her skin was the waxy white of someone who never came planetside and never used sun lamps aboard ship.

Even from a distance he could see the cyberunits plugged into the shaved side of her skull, and those silvery eyes that had seemed to look right through him.

Negasi felt naked in front of this half-human woman. Those eyes, fitted no doubt with the latest electronics, could read his pulse, his skin temperature, detect every eye movement. Negasi suddenly had the urge to check out her body.

No, don't do that. She'll see.

Hm, not bad. The tits are natural at least.

Damn it!

Helen laughed. Negasi felt like sinking through the ground until he melted into the planet's molten core.

"It's good to see you again, Negasi."

"Um, hi."

She kept approaching, arms going wide. For a brief, terrible moment, Negasi thought she might hug him.

Instead she put her hands on his shoulders. Bad enough. His skin crawled.

"You have a lot of questions," Helen said. He still had trouble thinking of this creature as having a name. "Hopefully we can answer some of them."

Not of all them, though. Of course not.

"Welcome to Yavari Prime," a man said.

Negasi turned. He'd been so preoccupied with Helen that he hadn't even looked at the others. They were men and women, all of middle age except for one husky young man of mostly pure Chinese descent with a heavy rifle strapped to his back and a pair of pistols on a gun belt.

But it hadn't been the security heavy who had spoken. It was a white-haired man with the wide, angular features of a Slav, deeply tanned skin, and a bulky body that looked strong despite being past its prime.

"I'm Mikael. The head archaeologist on this excavation."

That told Negasi a lot. Mikael was an academic. One of those who called themselves "archaeologists" and not "tech scavengers." From their comfy university positions on high-tech worlds, archaeologists looked down on honest, hardworking tech scavengers like Negasi and Jeridan. They thought of them as little better than grave robbers.

Grave robbers who were slowly bringing the tech level back to what it had been during the Imperium. Sure, tech scavengers sold their discoveries to the highest bidder, but those highest bidders tended to be major corporations or planetary governments. Soon that tech got incorporated into the economy, and sold on to other worlds.

The archaeologists didn't see it that way. They saw it as a commercialization and privatization of the past, selling off humanity's heritage like any other commodity. There was always some jealousy in their condescension. Tech scavengers had found a lot more useful old technology than archaeologists had. They made more money, too. Hadn't written as many obscure papers for university journals, though.

Mikael hadn't mentioned his university. Most academics mentioned it like it was an extra last name.

Come to think of it, he hadn't mentioned his actual last name either. Neither had Helen.

"Glad we're on a first-name basis here," Negasi said. "So what are you looking for, professor?"

Even though the bottom half of his face was obscured by the oxygen mask, Negasi knew Mikael cracked a grin by the way the rest of his face lit up.

"Wonderful things! This was an advanced research institute to create a new generation of jump gates, one that was still in the experimental phase when the Imperium collapsed."

Negasi looked around at the jungle and the ugly yellowish atmosphere that made everything look sickly.

"An advanced research institute? Here?"

"Oh yes, the Imperium liked to put their most important facilities on out-of-the-way planets. Of course it was less out of the way then, but given the small population and utter lack of tourism, it kept the institute out of the public eye."

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

"I see. So what have you found?"

Helen put a hand on Negasi's shoulder again, making him cringe, and turned to Mikael. "Shall we show him? I think he deserves it. And he'll be much more helpful once he sees."

Mikael hesitated for a moment, then nodded. "I guess it will be all right."

Negasi noticed he didn't look to anyone else for confirmation, but it was obvious that not everyone was enchanted with the idea, least of all the security guy, who looked like he wanted to eat Negasi for a snack.

Mikael gestured for him to follow and turned away. Negasi wiggled his fingers at the man mountain to say hello and got a frown in return. The others fell in behind Mikael and they walked across the plaza, having to step high so as not to trip on the roots and weeds shoving out from the cracks in the flagstones. The security guy walked right behind Negasi.

That didn't make him nervous. Negasi had dealt with lots of guys like this. He wouldn't do a thing unless the boss told him to. What really made him nervous was when Helen took his hand.

Negasi tried to extricate his hand without seeming like he intended to. Helen only squeezed it tighter.

"Relax," she said in a sweet voice. "You'll get used to this in time. We're going to be close. I can tell."

Oh, crap. What if this is some weird cult that wants to put implants in my brain and turn me into some half-human freak that will do their bidding?

"Don't be silly," Helen said, squeezing his hand.

Negasi stopped. A little tug on the hand and then Helen stopped too.

"Did you just read my mind?"

"I can't read minds. But I can tell you were thinking something silly."

Mikael looked over his shoulder, his eyes smiling. "Come. We're almost there."

They headed to the crumbled remains of a rectangular building as long as a city block. Two large pop-ups stood to one side, one labeled "Lab" and the other "Barracks". From the size of the barracks he estimated at least thirty, maybe forty people on this project. A few masked figures moved around them, intent on various tasks.

Negasi focused on the ruined building. His expert eye could tell from the amount of rubble that it had been three stories tall, made of native stone. Bits of glassteel here and there came from what he guessed were once windows. A lot of Imperium facilities used the armored substance rather than regular glass or plexiglass. Even in the golden years, there had always been people or alien species who wanted to destroy their power.

Like the cyborg freak holding his hand.

Don't think too strongly. She's measuring your reactions.

Cack, what if that's why she's holding my hand? Maybe she's got sensors on her palm and she's taking my vitals, or even injecting me with nanobots!

It didn't feel like that. Her hand felt like a normal, soft, feminine hand. The kind of hand he hadn't held in far too long.

He couldn't be sure, though. Expensive polymers could probably be made to feel just like skin, and he knew for a fact that there existed microhypos that could inject nanobots without the subject feeling a thing.

He tried to slow his breathing. Calm himself. If they wanted to turn him into a test subject, they could simply overpower him. No need for subterfuge. He was alone among them.

Very much alone.

But if Helen wasn't sensing his reactions or injecting him with nanobots, why was she holding his hand?

The other explanation, the normal explanation for any other woman acting this way, didn't bear thinking about.

They made their way along a narrow path cleared through the ruins. It ran over a heap of rubble, the glassteel swept away and the largest or sharpest barriers thrown to the side. Over another hump of stone and down the other side, they came to a cleared crater where a set of old steps led down into the building's cellar.

It had been entirely cleared of debris. Deep cracks ran through the walls and ceiling. In one spot, the archaeologists had installed a thin durasteel column with a flaring base and top to hold up a section of roof. The corridor ran thirty meters or so before ending in a T intersection. A small light unit had been placed on the floor. Light coming from beyond the intersection showed the team had placed others.

"We'll walk single file," Mikael said. "Don't touch the walls."

"I know," Negasi replied.

He came right behind Mikael. The security guy tried to get behind Negasi but Helen put herself between them. That, and the fact that she stopped holding his hand, relaxed him a little.

They walked in silence. Instinctively, Negasi checked the walls and ceiling. Unstable but not dangerously so as long as he and Man Mountain didn't start blasting away at each other. Motes of dust hazed the air. Their footsteps echoed down the corridor, hinting at large spaces beyond the intersection.

They got to it. To the right, the corridor ran another ten meters before a big slab of stone had slammed down some time in the distant past and blocked the passage. Two more durasteel pillars held up what remained of the ceiling. A door close to the intersection opened into a large, empty room. Negasi wondered if the team had found anything in there, and if so, what.

Mikael led them to the left, where the corridor looked like it was in better shape. It ended at a security door that had been cut off its frame and set on the floor. They walked over this, their footfalls clanking, and into what had once been a lab.

Negasi's skin prickled. It looked intact, and ghost images in the thick dust on the counters showed the team had removed some equipment.

"What did you find here?" he asked, his voice hushed.

"Wonderful things," Helen said, taking his hand again. Negasi was so excited by this treasure vault that he didn't even mind all that much.

"But nothing compared to what we found next," Mikael said, indicating another security door at the far end of the room. It, too, had been cut off its frame and set on the floor.

They walked to the doorway, and Negasi noticed the light changed. It was no longer the cool white light of the illumination units the team had put everywhere, but a blue, fluctuating light. A faint crackling came to his ears.

They entered a long, rectangular room, completely unfurnished except for a strange device against one wall that Negasi couldn't even begin to identify.

Not that he took long trying. His attention shifted irrevocably to the sparking, coruscating blue curtain at the other end of the room. It took up almost the entire wall, framed by a steel rectangle backed by heavy cable.

Negasi could have sworn that his heart stopped beating. He recognized this image. Everyone on any planet with any sort of technology did. The shimmering blue curtain was familiar to every schoolchild from their very first lessons.

This was a jump gate.