Tech Scavengers [Humorous, Action-Packed Space Opera]

Negasi aimed his pistol at the opening door, waiting for the combat mech to show itself.

It didn't. Neither it nor the service robot were anywhere to be seen.

What the hell?

"It's hiding behind the doorway," Helen whispered, coming to his side and gripping Jeridan's pistol.

"Or above it," Negasi said. "Nova, aim for the upper part of the doorway. I'll go left. Helen, you go right."

They waited. Seconds ticked by. A trickle of sweat ran down Negasi's back, tickling him.

Come on. Show yourself.

The mechanical spider popped out in the upper lefthand corner and let loose with those twin guns. Negasi returned fire. Helen cried out.

Then the spider disappeared again.

"Are you OK?" Negasi didn't dare look. He was too busy watching the doorway.

"Got me in the leg," Helen moaned.

"I hit the thing," Nova said. "I swear I hit it."

"You did. So did I," Negasi told her.

And it didn't do a damn thing.

They watched the door.

"Jeridan?" Negasi called.

"Coming."

Despite the stims, he still didn't sound too good. Negasi resisted the urge to check on him. He needed to keep his eyes glued to the doorway.

Through the sounds of Helen moaning, he heard the clatter of those magnetic limbs. The thing was moving.

Wait, both were moving.

Damn, they're moving in opposite directions so we can't tell which is the combat mech and which is the harmless service bot.

The spider leapt into view, this time in the lower righthand corner of the doorway.

Negasi leapt to the side, bumping into Nova, who hadn't moved quick enough. Slugs tore the air millimeters from him. Jeridan cried out.

The spider popped out of sight again. They hadn't hit it at all.

"Cack!" Jeridan cried. "Got me in the arm."

"The nanobots will fix it," Negasi said.

"The nanobots are already healing the other hole through my body!"

Negasi stepped back from the doorway. Nova followed suit. As he did so, Helen and Jeridan came into view. Helen was crawling to get out of the line of fire, dragging one useless leg. Jeridan lay on his side, clutching an arm that spouted blood.

Damn, if we don't get to him in time …

The spider popped into view at the middle of the top part of the doorway. Nova hit it dead on with a slug and knocked it free of its perch. It landed with a clang on the floor. Negasi and Nova chased it with flechettes and slugs, making a few glancing blows that didn't seem to slow it down as it scuttled behind the doorway again.

"We can't kill this thing!" Nova shouted.

"There must be a way, otherwise it wouldn't be hiding from us. It senses our weapons are strong enough. We're just not hitting in the right place."

"It's almost impossible to hit it at all."

Helen saw Jeridan struggling, turned around, and crawled back toward him, exposing herself to the line of fire.

A heavy clanking echoed down the corridor, growing louder.

Oh, hell. It's called for backup.

He took a deep breath and decided he'd charge the thing. It would give the others a moment to get under cover. Maybe Helen could help Jeridan. The bastard better build him a nice monument on a resort planet for saving his ass.

He could have sobbed with relief when Poopsie came around the corner.

"Get out of the way!" Negasi shouted.

Everyone hit the deck as Poopsie opened up with its twin guns, the sound thundering in the station's metal interior and sending vibrations through the durasteel floor.

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Negasi couldn't even hear if the spider robot fired back.

The firing stopped, followed by a second short burst. When Negasi looked up, he saw both bots lying in steaming, sparking ruins on the floor, their wire entrails hanging out of their broken bodies.

"Good job, Poopsie!"

The combat mech stepped closer, double tapped each Imperium robot, then turned and stomped away.

Looking for more combat mechs.

Nova must have read his mind because she leapt up and ran for the door panel.

"Let's get this door closed in case there are more of those spider things."

"We need to help them," Negasi said, indicating Helen and Jeridan lying on the floor.

"I'll be fine in a minute," Helen said. "My implants have already detected my leg wound and have released nanobots and stims. I'll help Jeridan."

Negasi stared, and realized her leg wasn't bleeding anymore. She crawled over to fetch the First Aid kit.

Nova handed him the slug rifle and he went to the corner of the corridor to keep watch while she worked on the outside panel the service robot had hotwired.

He glanced at the two destroyed robots. Poopsie had pulverized them. Oily black smoke rose from their blasted innards, filling the corridor with an acrid and toxic stench.

He turned back to the corridor and looked at the edges of where his light penetrated the darkness, waiting for something to move. A faint clank of metal on metal faded into the distance. Poopsie on his search pattern? He hoped so.

How the hell did that Imperium combat mech get plugged into a modern external power source? He could just about believe that someone had forgotten it and left it behind. He had four in his pack and the others did too. Plugging them in all around the station for various tasks could have easily led to one of Nova's original team losing track of one. But how did it end up plugged into a robot? Had someone on Nova's team betrayed them?

Surely there were easier ways to do that. If a Syndicate agent had wanted to screw up the mission, awakening an Imperium combat mech, or several of them, was a really bad idea. The Syndicate would have wanted to come here. Why make it dangerous for themselves?

So had the combat mech plugged itself in? How?

"All right," Nova said. "I've fixed this side of the panel, let's get inside."

"They could only open it up again."

"Yeah, but it gives us time. We can have Aurora call our combat mech back."

"She can't communicate with it when it's deep in the station."

"Oh … right. Let's get inside anyway."

Negasi decided even the dubious protection of a door was better than nothing. They moved back into the workroom and Nova hotwired the inside of the panel. The door slid shut and the vidscreen turned on.

Helen was up and about again, busy patching up Jeridan's arm. She looked a bit slow and wobbly, but otherwise fine.

"How are you doing, buddy?"

"Ugh."

"That good, huh?"

"He'll be all right," Helen told him.

Negasi studied her for a moment. She had gone into the line of fire to help Jeridan. Maybe she wasn't a danger after all.

Helen saw her looking and Negasi looked away, embarrassed.

She walked up to him and handed him the flechette pistol. "Is this what you were worried about?"

Surprisingly, no.

He took it and pulled a chair over to the vidscreen. He sat with a sigh and tried to relax. While the stims kept him from feeling pain or fatigue, he knew his body was in bad shape and he needed rest. The nanobots still had to do their work.

They sure seemed to have worked faster on Helen, though. She was actually walking around. Did she have a more advanced model of nanobots, or just lots more of them?

There was so much he still didn't know about his shipmates.

"Need help?" Jeridan asked, his voice shaky and weak.

"You just lay there and rest, buddy."

Nova paced around the room. "We can't afford these delays."

"Any idea how that combat mech plugged itself in?" Negasi asked.

"Maybe it was the service robot."

"No. When the combat mech returned with the service robot, it had the external power supply plugged into it. The combat mech must have plugged it into the service bot."

"I've never heard of an Imperium robot retaining its power to the modern day," Jeridan said.

"Good thing, too. It would make tech scavenging even more dangerous than it already is."

Helen, sitting on the floor by Jeridan, said. "None of our party would have plugged it in. That would have been suicide."

"It would have taken time to power up," Negasi said. "Combat mechs need a lot of juice. If one of your pals from the League of Concerned Archaeologists had plugged it in just before you guys left the station for the last time, it wouldn't have been a danger until you were back on your ship."

"Maybe, but why?" Nova said, still pacing.

"You tell me. You know these people better than I do."

Nova shook her head. "No. It makes no sense. None of them would do that. Even if they wanted to betray us, how would that help?"

Negasi shrugged. "Maybe so the combat mech would wipe out the boarding party, like it almost did with us, and then the Syndicate could move in with a fully armed and armored unit to take it out. Or maybe your man was working alone, thinking he could return with his own assault team. You lost two-thirds of your boarding party when those other two ships got destroyed by the Imperium mines. It could have been any of those people."

"All right, but they'd still have the combat mech to deal with. Even with an assault team they'd be in plenty of danger."

"Good point. Or maybe they had a workaround. Maybe they'd send in a couple of combat mechs. Poopsie sure took care of business."

"Any mech specialists in your boarding party?" Jeridan asked.

Nova didn't reply.

"Ibrahim," Helen said. "He was one of the Egyptians. He was the Karnak's astronavigator until we pulled him out for the mission because he was an expert on Imperium robotics."

Nova shook her head. "It couldn't have been him."

"Why not?" Jeridan croaked. Negasi gave his friend a nervous look. Those nanobots sure were taking their time.

"Because it just couldn't, all right?" Nova snapped.

"It could have been," Helen said, then slumped. "Could he really have betrayed us? He seemed like such a part of the team."

"Could he have had any contact with the Syndicate?" Negasi asked.

The Antari Syndicate, the most savage criminal organization in known space, had been on their tail for a while now. Nova said it was because one of their crewmembers blabbed about their discovery in a spaceport bar and the Syndicate got wind of it. Maybe the leak ran deeper than that.

"Not that I know of," Nova said. "It would have been tough. We keep pretty tight security."

Obviously not as tight as you think.

The four of them fell into silence for a time. Aurora checked in on them, sounding worried, but they reassured her they were holding tight.

At last, Poopsie clomped into view.

"Finally," Negasi said. "Hopefully its recordings can tell us something more. Let's take the memory chips of those two Imperium robots back to the Antikythera too. Maybe we can get to the bottom of this and see what we're up against."