Tech Scavengers [Humorous, Action-Packed Space Opera]

"Don't worry, Jeridan will save us," Negasi said.

They were locked inside a small shed. It was a cramped, barely big enough for the two of them to sit, and lit only by the sunlight peeking through cracks in the wood planking. The air was stuffy and the inside smelled like it had been used to store fertilizer. Negasi kept the neckline of his jumpsuit over his nose.

"You sure about that?" Nova asked. "He's kind of an idiot."

"Well … yes. He's a good man in a fight, though. He won't give up."

Nova stood, looking up at the ceiling. "I hope the kids are all right."

"They're safe in the Antikythera. The question is, how are we getting out of here?"

They had stripped Negasi of his body armor. He had no comm, no personal electric defense shield. Nothing.

There was a knock on the door. Negasi and Nova glanced at each other. Then they heard the rattle of a bolt being slid back, and the door creaked open.

Negasi blinked in the sunlight for a moment before he recognized the grizzled gunman who had first stuck them up. He still had his gap-toothed smile, and he still pointed his musket at Negasi's head. It felt like old times.

"Glad to see you're up and moving," Negasi said in as friendly a voice as he could muster. "The last time I saw you, you were draped over the back of your horse."

"I got better."

"I see that. Why did you knock?"

"In case you were having some fun in here."

"I have a headache," Nova said.

"What she means," Negasi explained, "is that she is a headache. Actually, we were thinking of ways to escape."

"Come up with anything?" their captor asked.

"Nope."

He jerked his musket. "Come on. The council of elders wants to speak with you. Hands up, please."

They came out into a muddy street to face a semicircle of men and women holding muskets or wielding machetes. They had been in the shed for a couple of hours. If Jeridan had a plan to spring them, it sure would be nice if he'd go ahead with it.

"This way," their new friend said, jerking his musket a second time. Negasi wondered if this was the origin of the term "jerk".

The town was still a mess thanks to Jeridan's stunt. Heaps of thatching covered much of the street, and children still chased chickens and goats that had broken out of their enclosures when the sonic boom panicked them. That boom had been clearly audible as they rode back to town on the mountain trail and had warmed Negasi's heart.

It didn't look like it had warmed anybody else's heart, though. The people lining the street to watch them pass glared and them, hands balled into fists.

"This looks like a lynch mob," Nova whispered.

"We did kill several of their friends and relatives."

This was a small enough town that probably everyone knew someone who had gotten killed. That made Negasi feel bad, but more than that, it made him feel angry at this so-called "council of elders" for putting its own citizens in harm's way in order to kidnap people from a technologically superior planet.

Their guards led them to a long, low stone building. The large wooden door stood open, flanked by crude stone statues of what he supposed were a pair of local heroes. They were so badly done they looked more like the bipedal jellyfish from Sirius Zeta. Perhaps they were supposed to be conceptual. Or perhaps the state of their fine arts was as bad as their ideas on interstellar relations.

Two guards came out and stood at attention, holding their muskets sloped on their shoulder, bayonets gleaming in the sun. These guys were noticeably bigger than the ones who had captured them and wore a sort of uniform of dark green cloth.

"In you go," their escort said.

Negasi glanced at him. "You're not coming?"

"Nope. We haven't been called. This is a rare privilege to get called like this."

"Does that mean you're going to let us go after we enjoy some local beer and women?"

"Probably not, no."

Negasi grunted, and he and Nova passed over the threshold.

They entered a long hall flanked by benches, all unoccupied. Standing at attention before the benches were several more uniformed guards. At the far end was a row of cushioned seats raised up on a platform. A dozen gray-haired men and women sat there. A teenaged girl was going around pouring something from a large pitcher into silver flagons the old men held. A strapping young man did the same for the old ladies.

"Not a bad thing you got going here," Negasi said.

"Silence!" an old woman intoned. "You will not speak unless spoken to."

"All right," Negasi said.

The old woman frowned.

"Did you not hear what I said?" she fulminated.

"Yeah. Don't speak unless spoken to. You spoke to me."

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"Do not speak!" she shouted again.

Reminds me of that girlfriend I had when working on the space tug, Negasi thought. She could never make up her mind either.

The old woman took a pull from her flagon, let out a loud belch, and asked, "What does your ship contain?"

Negasi didn't reply.

"Answer!" she bellowed.

"Oh, I'm allowed to speak now?"

Nova elbowed him.

"What's in that ship?" one of the old men asked, putting a withered arm around the serving girl's waist. Negasi's stomach churned.

"Not much. We're not carrying any cargo," Nova said.

"We were addressing the ship's owner!" the old woman bellowed.

"I am the ship's owner," Nova snapped.

"Yeah," Negasi put in, "why assume the guy is the owner? Sexist."

"Silence!" the old woman snapped at him.

"You want me to talk, then you don't want me to talk," Negasi grumbled. A guard took a step forward, leveling his musket to bring his bayonet within centimeters of Negasi's belly button. Negasi stopped talking.

Nova put her fists on her hips and glared at the council of elders. "We don't have any cargo. We're tech scavengers and we're just setting out on a scavenge."

"You came to the wrong planet," one of the old men grunted. "But of course you didn't come here to scavenge. You came for this."

He pulled out a data chip from his tunic. Nova leapt forward. The guard nearest to her leveled his musket, forcing her to retreat back to Negasi's side.

"What's on this?" the elder asked. "You hid it on a backwards planet no one visits. Obviously, you didn't want it to be found, and more than a year later you come back for it. Why?"

Negasi glanced at Nova. She had said the data chip had only been on Capella Epsilon for a few months. Why the lie?

Nova kept a poker face and didn't look at him as she answered.

"It's a map to an Imperium outpost," she said, more honestly than Negasi expected. "No use to you."

The elder looked at her doubtfully. "It's still intact?"

"That's what we're hoping."

"Couldn't be."

"Maybe not."

He dangled the data chip in front of her like a doggie treat. "What are you willing to give to get this back? You may have an empty cargo hold, but I'm sure you have heaps of nice stuff. The body armor and your weapons are a good start. We'll take that flying cart too."

"It's called a hovercar," Nova said.

"Is it? I was never good at history. What else you got? As you pointed out, the data chip is no good to us. We have nothing to read it with and no way to get to this supposed Imperium outpost. Maybe you can give us some solar cells and some more weapons? Got any more hover whatchamacallits?"

"Hovercars. No, we only have one, and your cheapass pulse cannon fried it."

"I'm sure you can fix it," the man said, still dangling the data chip. "And you can trade some more for this. Oh yes, a lot more."

"And if we refuse?" Nova asked.

The old woman who couldn't make up her mind or not about Negasi speaking gave them an evil grin. "Then we give you over to the mob outside. Blood money has to be paid. One way or another."

* * *

"You got that hovercar fixed yet?" Jeridan asked as he walked into the cargo hold.

"Just about," Aurora replied, bent over the open front hood and fiddling with some wires. "They zapped this pretty good. I had to use a ton of spare parts."

Jeridan watched her for a minute. The S'ouzz was flying the Antikythera from navigation, keeping it five hundred meters right above the town. Mason was nowhere to be seen. That kid was an expert at hiding.

Jeridan could see she had done a pretty good job. He could have done it quicker, of course, but Negasi couldn't have. He was kind of useless with most things. Bad at chess, bad at boxing, and messed up a simple retrieval mission on a savage planet. Jeridan reminded himself to kick his ass once he got him back on board. He didn't believe MIRI when she said Negasi had won by knockout out more times. Negasi must have hacked her somehow.

Negasi's voice came through the comm panel on the cargo hold wall. Jeridan had patched the ship's comm through here.

"Hey, bud, you crashed the ship yet?"

"Me? I'm the best pilot in the Orion Arm. How's it hanging?"

"A little to the left."

"Watch it," Jeridan said. "There are children present."

"I am not a child!" Aurora shouted.

"Age wise, you are. But you fixed this hovercar like a pro."

A strange voice came over the comm. "Oh, you fixed the hovercar? Great! You can add that to our list of demands."

"Nice one, Jeridan," Negasi said.

"Nice one, Jeridan," Aurora said.

"How could I know someone was listening?" Jeridan said.

"Because, like, he's a hostage?" Aurora said, rolling her eyes.

"Don't roll your eyes at me, young lady," Jeridan said, wagging a finger at her. "When your mother is away, I'm in charge."

"Yeah, sure you are."

"Um, hello? This is Negasi. Remember me, the hostage? They have a list of demands."

The strange voice came on again. "Hello, this is the Elder Farrier of the Council of Elders of Riverton. We have a list of things we want from your ship, and in exchange we'll release our two hostages as well as the data chip."

"I want to speak to my mom!" Aurora said.

"I'm here, Aurora," Nova said in a soothing voice. "Jeridan, do as they say. They're being pretty reasonable. They'll strip the ship, but they'll leave it spaceworthy. It's no use to them. They have no idea how to fly it. And they can't use the data chip either."

Jeridan was surprised they didn't demand to be taken off the planet. Maybe being at the top of the heap in that little town was cushier than trying to understand the technological worlds they had been cut off from for generations. And the Antikythera was too small to take the entire population, so maybe their own people wouldn't let them go since they all couldn't go.

The Elder Farrier's voice cut in. "All right, so here's the list. It's a long one, so grab a pencil."

"What's a pencil?" Aurora asked.

"Old tech. Never mind," Jeridan grumbled, pulling out a tablet. "OK, fire away."

The elder went through a long, mostly vague list of items, such as "all weapons, all power tools, all medicines, all photovoltaics," etc., etc. Since the Council of Elders didn't know how much they had on the ship, there was a minimum weight the delivery had to be as well. Four hundred kilograms. Plus printouts of instruction manuals for everything.

"We don't have enough paper to do that," Jeridan said. "We barely have any paper at all."

"We need those instruction manuals."

"I'll put them on something called a tablet you can read from."

"Whatever. We just need to know how to set everything up. We got big plans."

Jeridan had visions of Riverton becoming an expanding empire, with neighboring towns burning as Riverton troops marched ever onward. The elders would live in a vast palace, their every whim satisfied while peasants labored in misery.

But these were only visions, because there was no way in hell he would to let them keep all this stuff.

Nevertheless, he dutifully wrote everything down and double checked the list with the Elder Farrier.

"Looks like that's it," the Elder Farrier said. "We'll meet eight kilometers upriver from town where the river branches. There's some nice flat pasture there where you can land. Don't worry if you squash a few goats. What we're getting is worth way more than that. We'll ride up there with the captives and hand them over when you hand over the stuff. Minus the data chip. We'll give that to you exactly two days later at the same location. That gives us a chance to hide the stuff so you can't come in here guns blazing and try to get it back. We can communicate through this here helmet since that's part of our booty too."

"All right," Jeridan grumbled, trying to think of a way to trick them.

"Of course you could always blast us once you got the data chip, but that won't help you get your stuff back."

"Fine."

"Oh, and if you're trying to think of a way to trick us, there's one more thing."

"What?"

"That girl I heard on the radio, she's going to help with the delivery."

"No way, you pervert!" Negasi shouted in the background.

"Ease up there, buddy. We're not going to hurt her, but if she's there, your friend upstairs will be a little less trigger happy."

"No way I'm going to agree to that," Nova said.

"Yes, you will," Farrier said. Then Jeridan heard a sound he had heard only in old movies.

The sound of a gun cocking.