Tech Scavengers [Humorous, Action-Packed Space Opera]

"I have an idea," Jeridan said as they walked away from Luna's Lectronics, heading for the ramp to go back down to the main level.

His friend looked at him suspiciously. "When you have ideas, they usually lead to trouble."

"Why do you say that?"

Hadn't his ideas made them the best tech scavengers in the Orion Arm?

"Because if you're saying 'I have an idea', that means you're going to suggest something other than what we should do, which is get back to the ship as soon as possible."

"Come on, this is shore leave!"

"No it's not. Bruno Flashback could come back any minute and I spotted Max talking to a guy who I'd bet a hundred credits was a member of his crew."

"I saw that too. Don't worry. We got disguises."

"Which Max knows we bought."

"He doesn't know what we'll change ourselves into. We just need to get somewhere where we won't be seen and do the old switcheroo."

"Where?"

"Let's head down to the second floor. Keep a lookout for Max and that goon he was talking to."

As the ramp headed down, the giant erotic ice sculpture hid them from view of Max and the spacer.

"Now!" Jeridan said. He used the controller to take a default disguise. A moment later, Negasi got with the program and did the same. A Grish riding the ramp with them stared.

"We're trying to get away from our wives so we can go into Luna's Lounge," Jeridan told him.

The Grish laughed.

They got off on the second floor and switched disguises again as they got behind a stim vendor's booth.

"That little runt seemed pretty clever," Jeridan said.

"His species are very clever."

"Let's get somewhere private and switch disguises again. I'll feel safer."

"All right."

They walked along the concourse for a bit and passed through a door bearing the sign, "All species bathroom for males and equivalents."

On one wall was a series of urinals at various heights and with various attachments to deal with different excretory systems. A couple of humans were using them. At the far end was a ceramic bowl over which a Zenobian bat was hovering, a thin blue sprinkle pouring down from it.

"He could at least cover up," Jeridan grumbled.

"Zenobians don't have any body privacy taboos," Negasi told him.

They each took a stall, closing the stall doors behind them.

Once inside, Jeridan took a leak in the bowl, which could be adjusted to take a dozen different species of behinds, and was equipped with countless extra fixtures. Jeridan didn't know what most of them did and was glad he didn't. He then took out the controller, found a default appearance that looked pretty damn handsome, and whispered some modifications into it. He could hear Negasi whispering into his controller too.

A human voice called out, "If you're going to have a tryst, get a room. This is the crapper!"

Jeridan ignored him and finished the instructions. The controller had a selfie mode so he could see the result.

He smiled at his new image. Even tougher, more rugged, and handsomer than he was in real life. He didn't think that was possible, but this device worked miracles.

"You ready?" Jeridan whispered to the next stall.

"Yeah. Looking good."

"I don't need to hear that!" the human voice said.

"Take your dump and mind your own business," Jeridan told him.

Before the guy could respond, the door to the bathroom banged open and the floor shook with stomping footsteps of something heavy.

Jeridan pulled out his pistol and opened the stall door a crack.

A Grun'hon warrior, a giant heap of flesh and muscle a full three meters tall equipped with body armor and various weapons, thundered across the bathroom.

"Get out of the way!" it bellowed. "I ate some expired lard chips and I'm about to blow!"

It threw itself into a stall with the force of a crashing asteroid.

Everyone screamed and ran for the door. The Zenobia bat sped by overhead. Jeridan dodged the last trickle of its blue pee.

With everyone converging on the door, there was a bottleneck of half a dozen species, all trying to pull up their pants and make it out in time.

Too late. There was a terrible growl that reverberated through the air, followed by a spattering sound like a waterfall, if waterfalls were made up of boulders and not water. A moment later, a punishing stench wafted over the crowd, making Jeridan's eyes burn. The Zenobian did a sad loop-de-loop and fell from the air.

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Jeridan caught it and headed outside just behind a Grish who was losing his lunch all over himself.

There was too much of a rush of people and Jeridan ended up skidding on Grish vomit, cartwheeling his one free arm in an attempt to steady himself while clutching the Zenobian with the other.

His cartwheeling arm stuck someone behind him in the face. Jeridan heard Negasi shout "Ow!", and then felt someone push him.

That made him fly forward, straight into a security patrol, where he faceplanted into a durasteel breastplate.

Jeridan staggered, holding his nose. The saleswoman was right that the disguise didn't block sudden impacts.

The security guard frowned at him, obviously not taken in by his stunning good looks.

"What are you people doing in there … ugh … oh my GOD!"

The stench had made it out to the balcony.

There was a further evacuation as passersby hurried in both directions, desperate to escape the miasma.

Jeridan and Negasi, coughing and moaning, got to the ramp and headed downstairs.

"Thanks for the help," the Zenobian bat cheeped from Jeridan's hand. "You can let go of me now."

Jeridan let go. The bat hovered in the air in front of them. "Thanks a million, guys. Maybe I can help you sometime. Bye."

The bat flew off.

"Poor thing almost fell on the floor and got trampled," Jeridan said.

Negasi rubbed his head. He looked like a tall, muscular Mongol now.

"I need a drink," he said.

"That's what I was suggesting in the first place. You said it was a dumb idea."

"It was a dumb idea before we got poisoned. Now I need a drink and so do you."

"What about Bruno?" Jeridan said.

"We'll just have one or two. He's not due back for a while yet. And we can't leave until the maintenance crew is done. Besides, we have these disguises. Let's mingle and hear the scuttlebutt."

"All right."

They both turned in the same direction without having to speak. If you stopped at Luna's Layover and had some credits to burn, there was only one place to burn it.

Luna's Lounge.

They headed back to the upper floor, where one entire side of the floor was devoted to the biggest and wildest bar in the Orion Arm.

They came to the broad, open doorway and dimly saw the pulsing lights inside. The sound and most of the visual details were muted by a translucent forcefield. A pair of Grun'hon warriors flanked the entrance, heavily armored and armed to the teeth.

"You guys haven't had any lard chips, have you?" Negasi asked.

"Huh?" one of the guards asked.

"Never mind. Can we go in?"

One of them held up a scanner, made some adjustments, and gave Negasi a hard look. Then he did the same with Jeridan and gave the same expression.

"If you guys want to hide your features, that your business. But don't pull anything. Luna doesn't like trouble. It's bad for business."

"Hey! You can detect us?" Jeridan said. "We just bought these at Luna's Lectronics."

"Come on, dummy. You think she'd sell something she can't detect?"

Before Jeridan could react to being called a dummy by a species not known for its intellectual refinement, Negasi cut in.

"What model scanner you got there?"

The Grun'hon warrior held it up. "The Penetrator X5."

"Top of the line," Negasi said with unfeigned enthusiasm. "Wish I had one of those." He turned to Jeridan. "Don't worry, buddy. On the planet we're going to, they're not going to have that level of quality."

"Head on in," the guard said.

While his scan, or just his own eyes, would have picked up on their weapons, he didn't seem concerned about those. Everyone here carried weapons as a matter of course. It was only the overcivilized planets like Sagitta Prime where only the police got to bear arms.

They passed through the doorway, the forcefield giving them a moment's resistance, and were hit with a wave of light and sound.

Even though Negasi had been here several time before, Luna's Lounge always bowled him over. It was a vast interior space with pulsing lights of red and blue. The walls were transparent, so the lights reflected off the ice of the comet's interior in a thousand colored sparkles.

Two main, round stages took up most of the center, where males and females and others of various species danced to pulsing synthpop. Negasi didn't like the music, but he sure liked the humans he saw dancing up there. Looking beyond a female Grish and her eight breasts, he spotted a human woman of South Asian descent in luminous body paint and nothing else.

Negasi stared.

Jeridan tugged his arm. "Come on. You know she's a working girl."

"Most beautiful working girl I've ever seen."

"No, she is," Jeridan pointed to the other stage.

Negasi looked and saw an Anglo man with an endowment that would put a Grun'hon to shame. Obviously an implant, but apparently a fully functional one.

"Very funny, Jeridan."

"Not him, dumbass. Her."

Next to the guy writhed a Sino-Amharic woman, overdressed in a leotard, doing impossible dance moves that sparked all sorts of mental images in Negasi's fervid imagination.

"Oh … my."

Jeridan tugged on his sleeve again. "She's a working girl too. You know you don't go in for that."

"A man can look, can't he?"

"You can drink and look and pick up intel all at the same time. I know. I've seen you do it."

The two stages were surrounded by tables occupied by groups of various species. A gleaming green bar ran the length of the back wall. A mirror behind it allowed the drinkers to watch both stages. They headed that way. The bar was always more social than tables and thus the best place to pick up rumors.

They took two stools between a female human spacer and an Awaari furball. The woman was downing a beer and the Awaari was sipping some sparkling orange mixture through a straw.

Negasi sat next to the woman.

"Just landed," he said. "What's the news?"

It was a typical greeting in spaceports and the opener least likely to be seen as a pickup line.

The woman let out a belch and said boozily, "Same old crap. More rimward planets have fallen to those aliens. Doesn't seem to be anything anyone can do to stop them. Live while you can! Hic!"

She lifted her beer and it sloshed a little.

"Yeah, I'm worried about that."

"Who isn't? I'm changing my runs. I used to work rimward but don't go anywhere close now. Moving further in. Hell, if this keeps up, they'll chase me all the way to Earth."

Earth. Negasi's eyes grew unfocused. More like a myth that a real place. But it had to be real. All those pilgrims went somewhere, didn't they? But until this drunk had said it, Negasi had never really thought of the possibility of the Rimscourge invading as far as Earth.

Would they nuke Earth like they nuked the rest of the planets they conquered? Would they burn and irradiate the old lands that used to be China and Abyssinia? Would they level the graves of his ancestors?

Negasi let out a little shiver, grabbed the drink Jeridan had ordered for him, and took a slug.

He sputtered. "Beta Rigelian tequila! Are you trying to kill me?"

Jeridan laughed. "We don't have much time, so let's make the most of it."

"That's what I say," the female spacer slurred, polishing off her beer and raising her hand to attract the bartender.

Negasi drank his drink, staring at the mirror and the beauty reflected within. Of course, sometimes the humans got obscured by the alien dancers, but Luna wanted to make sure everyone was happy. Good business practice.

"Any trouble around here?" Negasi asked his drunk companion.

"Nah. Some mercenary riffraff are on the station right now. Led by a guy covered in scars. They're not causing any trouble but I wouldn't spill a drink on them if I were you."

"Plenty of mercenaries around this place. It's a good place to get a job," Negasi said, probing.

"They're not shopping around. A buddy of mine wanted to hire them as guards for a dangerous run. They laughed at him and said they were already getting paid more than he could offer. That was probably true. They got a couple of Mantids with them. Those guys don't hire themselves out for cheap."

Negasi felt his blood run cold. Mantids. Mercenary Mantids. That could mean only one thing.

Well, actually it could mean many things. Mantids hired themselves out to all kinds of employers.

But the way his luck had been running since the day he was born, it really only meant one thing.

The Antari Syndicate had a hit squad here, run by a man who had held a grudge against them for years.