Tech Scavengers [Humorous, Action-Packed Space Opera]

Negasi had never tackled a boss before. He'd stolen from some, snuck out of the ship he'd been serving on and never come back, and had even anonymously snitched on one because he had discovered the man was a human trafficker, but he had never actually tackled one sitting on a hovercycle fifty meters above a city square, risking a fall that would almost certainly kill both of them.

Then again, he had never had a boss aiming a highly radioactive and utterly illegal rifle at the local constabulary. If that thing went off, the cops would kill them more thoroughly than the fall.

Assuming the blowback from the uranium slug thrower didn't disintegrate them first.

Negasi slammed into Nova, wrapping one arm around her waist while hooking the other arm into the crash webbing. Both of them toppled off the bike and Negasi cried out in pain as the arm inside the webbing nearly got torn from its socket.

They swung down, Negasi still crying out as Nova cursed and the rifle fell to the ground below.

For a moment they hung there, rocking back and forth, Negasi's arm on fire with pain. He wasn't sure he could move. He knew he couldn't pull himself up without letting go of Nova, and he wasn't prepared to do that.

Yet.

"What the hell are you doing?" Nova demanded.

He asked his boss the same thing. Or at least tried to. He was in so much pain, and straining with so much effort not to drop her, he only managed to let out a grunt.

He grunted again as Nova clambered up his arm, then his body, and swung herself back onto the seat of her hovercycle.

"SURRENDER IMMEDIATELY!!!" The command came from a loudspeaker on the front of the police hovercar.

"Sounds like a reasonable request," Negasi said, grabbing onto the crash webbing with both hands. That made his injured shoulder hurt a little less. Just a little.

"Not a chance," Nova said.

She hit full power and shot over the plaza. Negasi yelped and ended up hanging onto the harness for dear life as he trailed behind the hovercycle. The police hit the siren and pursued.

"Stop! You're going to get us killed!"

"We'll outrun them."

"I want a—"

"Yeah, yeah. You want a raise. You've said that a million times before."

"Forget the raise. I just want to live past the next two minutes!"

Still clinging to the harness, he looked over his shoulder. The cops were in close pursuit. He was surprised they hadn't hit them with a pulse cannon. That would short out the drive and send them plummeting onto the roofs below. From what he'd seen of this planet's government, he wouldn't put it past them.

Or maybe there were so few hovervehicles on this planet they didn't bother importing any pulse cannons.

Just then, the police fired.

From a nozzle at the front of the police vehicle a wide net sprang forth, shooting at them faster than their hovercycle could fly.

Nova jerked the hovercycle to the right and up, nearly tearing the crash webbing from Negasi's grip. The net flew a centimeter past his boots.

"Enough already!" he bellowed. "If you keep this up, they'll use live ammunition!"

The loudspeaker on the police vehicle blared again. "STOP IMMEDIATELY OR WE WILL OPEN FIRE WITH LIVE AMMUNITION!"

"Nice job giving them ideas!" Nova shouted.

"I didn't have to," Negasi said, clawing his way up the harness and getting onto the seat behind her. Since neither of them were strapped in, Negasi gripped the handles on the side of the bike. Not the best way to stay on when taking evasive maneuvers, but he didn't think the cops would give him any time to untangle the harness.

"THIS IS YOUR LAST WARNING."

"Did you hear that, Nova? That bit about the last warning?"

Nova ignored him.

They raced over the city, skimming just above the rooftops. Far to their right, Negasi could see the flashing lights of another police hovercar approaching fast.

"I thought this was a medium-tech world," Negasi grumbled.

"Medium tech for the regular people."

Before Negasi could hold forth on the inherent inequalities of most economic systems, Nova dove down at a sharp angle, nearly making Negasi vault over her, the handlebars, and plummet into open air. Instead he merely headbutted her in the back of the head.

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"Ow!" Nova cried. "Cut it out!"

"That was your fault."

"Yeah, yeah. Blame the woman for everything. 'Oh, look at that woman driver! She can't steer worth a damn. Blah, blah, blah.'"

"You're not a woman; you're a cacking nightmare."

The hovercycle dove and swerved into a narrow alley. Negasi got a brief glimpse of a homeless man peeking out of a crate he used for shelter before Nova took a sharp turn onto a street, the side of the hovercycle nearly crashing into the far wall.

They sped down the alley, Negasi hoping no one opened a door right in their face. At their speed, that would be fatal.

So could whatever those cops had planned for them. Their sirens grew louder.

The alley opened up onto a wider street. A pair of uniformed officers stood not far off, one talking into a handheld radio and the other gripping some sort of assault rifle, aimed right at the entrance to the alleyway.

He let off a burst. Negasi and Nova ducked. A bullet clanged off the side of the hovercycle as Nova hit the accelerator and ascended at a sharp angle, more bullets chasing them.

Within moments they were up over the rooftops and out of sight of the officers.

And within sight of the two police hovercars chasing them.

No, wait. Three. Wonderful. Just wonderful.

The police didn't give them any more warnings. They simply opened up.

Nova anticipated the move and ducked down behind the next row of buildings. Shots shattered a couple of chimneys.

Nova took a hard right, sped down half a city block, skimming centimeters above the street, then took a left onto another street.

That kept them out of sight for all of ten seconds. Then one of the hovervehicles appeared in the sky above them.

"SURRENDER IMMEDIATELY OR WE WILL TAKE EXTREME MEASURES."

"Extreme measures?" Negasi said. "What's more extreme than what they're already doing?"

He got his answer in the form of a loud boom. An explosion in the street behind them nearly flipped the hovercycle. Bits of asphalt flew past. Nova barely retained control, careening around a corner and speeding down the next street.

"I don't dare get over the skyline," she said. "They'll blow us apart."

"Yeah, but we're risking civilian casualties."

"That's on them."

"It's on us too!"

"Don't worry. We're almost there."

"Almost where?"

A moment later, he figured it out. He recognized the street they were flying down.

"Wait. We're going back to the square?"

"You need your hovercycle, and I need my gun."

"No. We need to get out of here!"

"We will. Get ready."

They shot into the main square, heading right for the statue and Negasi's hovercycle, still floating next to the old Imperium ship held in the golden hand of The Powerful And Just Father Of All His Loving Peoples.

"Jump!" Nova shouted as she passed his hovercycle.

She barely slowed down.

Good thing Negasi would rather risk a fatal fall than stay on the back of her hovercycle a moment longer.

He flew through the air, tackling his hovercycle like he had tackled his boss a couple of minutes before. The pain shooting through his shoulder reminded him how he had nearly dislocated it.

Somehow, he managed not to slip off the hovercycle. He straddled it as from the corner of his eye he saw a police vehicle swoop down on him.

He hit the bottom thrusters and shot up.

The police hovercar fired, its cannon blowing a big chunk out of the face of The Powerful And Just Father Of All His Loving Peoples. Negasi got rained with gold chunks of the dictator's cheek and nostril.

He grabbed one.

"Cool!" Then he took a look at it. Aluminum with a thin veneer of gold paint. "Aw, I never have any luck."

He tossed it aside.

The other two police hovervehicles opened up, the projectiles whooshing by Negasi and Nova to chew big craters into the plaza.

Negasi and Nova hit full speed and tried to put as much distance between them and the police as possible. The cops fired a few more times, blasting holes in the upper stories of a couple of buildings, before they trailed behind and ended up out of range.

"Damn, I hope no civilians got hurt," Negasi said, pulling up alongside Nova.

"There wouldn't have been a risk of that if you had let me take the cops out in the first place!" Nova snapped. She had her uranium slug thrower strapped to her back. Negasi hoped it had broken in the fall. Then again, he didn't, because that would mean it was leaking radiation.

"You can't just disintegrate a bunch of police officers for trying to enforce the law."

"The law on this cackhole of a planet? Give me a break. Those guys are evil as hell."

"You don't know that. Everyone's trapped in the system."

"Yeah, and what do you think the system will do to that cop who literally defaced a statue of their dictator?"

Negasi didn't have a reply for that.

They dipped below the skyline and followed the roads for a while, keeping out of sight of whatever hovervehicles the authorities had in the city. Twice they had to veer off onto other streets to avoid police ground vehicles, but eventually made it to the outskirts, shot up into the air again, and raced over the trees until they came to the field where they had landed the shuttle.

"I'm surprised your hovercycle is OK," Negasi said as they parked in the back of the shuttle. "Didn't it take a shot?"

Nova shrugged. "I bought armored ones, of course."

"Of course," Negasi muttered. "Why wouldn't you?"

"I get enough sarcasm from my daughter, thank you very much."

Gee, I wonder why?

They strapped in and took off. As Nova flew, Negasi scanned for nearby vehicles and spotted a pair of fixed-wing aircraft flying their direction.

"We got company. Just a couple of kilometers away and closing fast," he said. His brow furrowed. "They look like … old-style fighter jets."

"Damn! That's because they are. Hold on."

Nova took the shuttle at a steep ascent and hit the accelerator, picking up more speed than the primitive flying machines were capable of.

But while they were faster than the jets, they weren't faster than the missiles they launched.

Negasi let out a yelp as Nova turned off the engines. The shuttle plummeted for earth.

"What the hell are you doing?" Negasi asked, feeling like his stomach had exited his throat and taken his teeth with it.

"Those are heat-seeking missiles. Now that I've turned off the thrusters they're passing right by us. See?"

"Oh, right. I know a joke about heat-seeking missiles. A guy walks into a bar and the bartender is this gorgeous—"

"I'm your boss!"

"Oh, right."

"I can't decide which of you two is worse."

"Jeridan. Would you mind turning on the thrusters now?"

"Oh, right."

Nova switched on the engines again, stopping them just before they slammed into a farmhouse. The shockwave blew open a chicken coop and chickens ran in all directions.

They streaked away over the treetops, outpacing from the fighter jets and the rapidly dwindling missiles. Negasi hoped those missiles landed somewhere unoccupied. This mission had seen way too much trouble for everyone in their path.

Nova ascended, and they didn't have any more trouble as they passed through the stratosphere and headed for the Antikythera.

Negasi breathed a sigh of relief until he checked the long-range scanners and saw the raider from the edge of the solar system bearing down on their ship.

That thing had nearly taken out the Antikythera, with all of its armaments and armor.

And he and Nova had nothing but a lightly armored shuttlecraft.