Tech Scavengers [Humorous, Action-Packed Space Opera]

Sleeping on it didn't solve their problem. Negasi awoke to the sound of Nova and Jeridan screaming at each other in the hallway right outside his door. Grumbling and rubbing his eyes, he went out to see what the trouble was.

The trouble was the S'ouzz, as he should have known.

"We have to give it a stimulant!" Nova shouted. "We're almost to our destination and we're dead in the water!"

"I told you she'd want to give it a stim," Negasi said.

"No, I told you that," Jeridan corrected.

"No. I told you."

"No way! I said, 'we can't ask Nova because—'"

"Will you two stay on topic!" Nova shouted. "And Negasi, put on some pants before one of my kids comes out here."

"Stop shouting and they won't wake up," Negasi grumbled as he went back into his room.

The argument continued without him. When he came back out, now wearing pants, he found that it hadn't progressed.

"We're giving it a stim," Nova said in a tone that she thought brooked no argument.

"Nope," Jeridan and Negasi said in unison.

"The fate of the galaxy rests on this mission!"

"That excuse is wearing pretty cacking thin," Negasi said. "And you're not in charge anyway."

Nova crossed her arms and glowered at the two friends. "So what's your big plan?"

"We can go to the station using MIRI. We'll have to go slower, but we can do it," Jeridan said.

Nova shook her head. "We can't."

"Why not?" Negasi asked.

"Because there are … anomalies."

"Anomalies?"

Negasi didn't like the sound of that.

Nova sighed. "When Derren and I went there last time, the Antikythera wasn't the only ship. We brought two others. Lab ships like the Petra. Crewed by good men and women. We had tracked down the Imperium research station together. Knowing we were onto a good thing, we had brought the lab ships along because we anticipated a record haul. But when we approached the station, they were taken away."

"Taken away?" Negasi asked.

Nova turned pale. "That's the only way I can describe it. One moment the ship was there, and then it was gone. We signaled to it and didn't get a response. Searched for wreckage and couldn't find any. We did scans on all wavelengths and found an anomaly in space where it had vanished."

"What do you mean by an anomaly?" Jeridan asked.

"I'm not sure. The lab people had never seen anything like it. In a space a few hundred meters in circumference was an area where the electromagnetic waves didn't work right. They were inverted. The lab people thought it might be antimatter but we didn't dare get close enough to check. The anomaly was hardly visible to our sensors, so we decided to draw back."

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

"You said one ship was taken. What happened to the other?"

"It hit another anomaly as we tried to back off. After that, we stopped the Antikythera until we could do a full, detailed scan. There were anomalies all around us. We'd never seen anything like them. The Interstellar Encyclopedia, our AI, our navigator, none of them knew a thing."

"What did you do?" Negasi asked.

"At first, we stayed put and tried to study them, but we couldn't get a fix. They were almost invisible, and the readings didn't make any sense, like we were looking at something that operated under different laws of physics."

"Oh, come on," Jeridan scoffed. At least he tried to scoff. There was a note of fear in his voice. Fear that Negasi shared.

"I can't explain it. I just know it ate one of our ships. There one moment, gone the next." Nova shuddered. She paused, took a deep breath, and said, "Then we saw they were moving."

"The anomalies moved? Where, toward you?"

"At first, we thought so. We panicked, almost moved too soon. We began to analyze their movements, steering clear if an anomaly got too close. We were hoping they were set to some sort of pattern."

"Did you find a pattern?"

"We … did." Nova hung her head. "But not before the other ship made the wrong move and got evaporated by one of the anomalies."

Everyone remained silent for a moment. Finally, Negasi spoke.

"So you found a pattern."

Nova nodded. "Yes. I can feed the pattern to the S'ouzz and it can get us through them."

"MIRI can do it."

"No. The other ship's AI was just as cutting edge as yours, and it failed. The Antikythera only made it through by sheer luck. We need a S'ouzz for this."

Jeridan put his fingers to his temples, squeezing his eyes shut. "So let me get this straight. There's a bunch of nearly invisible, killer traps around the Imperium station that swallow up spaceships, and you were going to tell us about this when exactly?"

"Before we dropped into the star system."

"And why not before?" Negasi asked, glaring at her.

"This mission is on a need-to-know basis."

"We needed to know that!" Negasi and Jeridan shouted.

"Well, now you know. We have to wake up the S'ouzz."

"Wait a minute," Negasi said. "If we hadn't gotten a S'ouzz as an astronavigator, which by the way was the biggest stroke of pure luck in my entire career, would you have gone ahead with the mission?"

"It's worth the risk."

Negasi threw his hands into the air and headed back to his quarters. "I can't deal with this person anymore."

Nova stamped her foot. "I had to make that call. We need to—"

"—save the galaxy!" Negasi and Jeridan shouted.

Negasi went back to his quarters. Jeridan followed.

"Sorry buddy, I'm going back to sleep and not waking up until there's another reality," Negasi told him.

"I think we're stuck with this one."

Negasi lay down and closed his eyes. "Let's see about that."

"Come on, get up. We have work to do."

"Sorry. Sleeping."

"We already have one crewmember sleeping. We can't afford another."

"Consider it a scientific experiment. Maybe I'll wake up in a different reality and the galaxy will be saved."

"Get your ass out of bed!"

"Nope. Not until reality is different."

Jeridan snapped his fingers. "That's it!"

Negasi opened his eyes and turned to him. "What's it?"

"The S'ouzz won't wake up until reality is different. So … we make it different."

"How? Find it another S'ouzz so they can have ambiguous gender sex?"

"That would work great, but we'll have to settle for the next best thing. We'll make it think the S'ouzz are close and that we sent a message to them. That will cheer it up."

"You want to lie to the S'ouzz? He's been nothing but good to us."

"You want to sit here twiddling your thumbs until the Syndicate finds us?"

"No, but I don't really want to lie to the S'ouzz. We have enough lies floating around this ship already, and what will it do when it finds out we were selling it a line of cack?"

"Probably a lot less than some other people have done when they've found out the same."

"Good point. I still don't like it."

"I don't like it either, but our boss from Hell out there is right about one thing, we do need to save the galaxy, not to mention ourselves. The S'ouzz won't have a chance to get over its nervous breakdown if it ends up being the main course at a Mantid dinner party."

Negasi groaned and threw himself back on his bed, putting his hands over his face.

"If you start thinking and talking like Nova, I'm going to have to seriously kick your ass at chessboxing."

"You wish."

"So how do we do this?" Negasi said with a sigh.

"We'll, it's going to take a bit of theatrics, and a bit of help from MIRI … "