Tech Scavengers [Humorous, Action-Packed Space Opera]

Jeridan couldn't believe his eyes. Freshly showered and in a clean jumpsuit, he should have felt much better, but instead he felt a whole lot worse.

Because there was no explanation for what he saw in front of him other than that Nova had broken a string of laws and probably made some powerful enemies. As if she didn't have enough of them.

The combat mech stood in the middle of the room. It was two meters tall, with an oblong metal body atop two thin metal legs ending in feet with prehensile toes. The body had a pair of slug throwers, each capable of throwing two thousand rounds per minute. A stubby tube that looked like a grenade launcher stuck out of the top of the body. On spots all around the body were sensors to give it a complete range of vision in the optical and infrared spectra.

The entire mech was constructed of high-grade durasteel, designed to take the toughest abuse. And it sure had endured that. The armor was blackened and pitted in various spots, and one of the side guns had been blown off. The gun sat on a tarp by the rest of the mech, the spot where it used to fit now a mess of trailing wires.

This combat mech had been through the ringer. Jeridan knew how it felt.

"Are you familiar with this model?" Jeridan asked his gunner. Negasi may have sucked at chessboxing, but he knew his munitions.

"Yeah. It's a light infantry model, recent design. It has a computer AI, not meshed with human intelligence like MIRI, but still reasonably autonomous. We can program it so that it will protect us rather than mow us down."

"Well, that's reassuring."

"I'm going to call it Poopsie," Aurora said, coming into the room with her mother.

"Poopsie?" Jeridan asked.

The girl gave them both a hug. "You don't stink anymore. Yeah, Poopsie was a dog I used to have. We named him Poopsie because—"

"I get it." Jeridan replied, glad that Poopsie was no longer around.

"So can you fix it?" Nova asked. With a hard face, lips set in a prim line, and care lines all around her eyes and mouth, she was the polar opposite of her daughter. The practical joke of an hour before was long gone and Nova was now all business.

"We can fix anything," Jeridan said. I think.

He glanced at Negasi, who looked as uncertain as he felt. Neither of them had ever even had a close look at one of these things, let alone worked on its innards.

"We can deal with that later," Nova told Jeridan. "In the meantime, let's get to the bridge. Negasi, go to your post."

"We expecting trouble?" the gunner asked.

"No. I just want you to run a systems check. Stay there, though."

OK, so we're expecting trouble.

Jeridan followed his boss up to the command deck and entered the bridge.

The Antikythera was a Vega Class All-Purpose, a vessel that offered good speed, maneuverability, firepower, and storage. Before he and Negasi had signed on, Nova had made some alterations to up the speed and firepower at the expense of some of the cargo space. She'd also thrown on a lot of armor plating.

A good thing, too, considering how many dogfights they'd gotten into in the short time they'd been crew members.

The compact bridge—more of a cockpit, really—had four ergonomic smart chairs, two in front and two behind, and a control dashboard of the latest equipment. A large screen of glassteel gave a 180-degree view from the top foredeck.

Jeridan sat, the smart chair fitting to the contours of his body. He strapped in, a wise precaution considering how often he had to perform evasive maneuvers on this tub, and plugged MIRI into the slot reserved for the Artificial Intelligence.

The Antikythera's factory standard AI was computerized, with no human element. While it was good, it wasn't great.

MIRI was great.

"All systems performing at a hundred percent," she said in her sultry voice. "I detect that all previous damage sustained in our battles has been repaired."

"Stopped for some servicing, eh?" Jeridan said. Nova had sat in the seat next to him.

"The Antikythera needed it," she replied.

"Your mother has a talent for understatement," Jeridan said over his shoulder to Aurora, only to find the girl hadn't joined them.

She had performed her periodic disappearing act, probably to check on her mysterious little brother Mason.

Negasi's voice came over the comm. "Wow! You really stocked up on smart missiles. Mark Seven explosive rounds too. Nice one."

Great. That means she's expecting trouble, Jeridan thought.

Of course she's expecting trouble. This is Nova Bradford!

"Where to?" Jeridan asked.

"Get us out of the Oort Cloud. Once we're in open space, the S'ouzz will take us to light speed. It's already plotting a course to the Makayamawe system."

"The Makayamawe system? Isn't that a low-tech world?"

"Medium tech. They crawled back from the Galactic Civil War better than most. They have basic industry. Late twentieth century, more or less."

"So we won't have to save your daughter from radioactive barbarians?" Jeridan asked.

"Hopefully not," Nova replied, looking like she didn't appreciate the joke.

Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.

"So what's in the Makayamawe system?"

"Something we need to pick up."

Jeridan's eyebrows went up. "From a medium tech world?"

"Yes."

Jeridan waited for an explanation. And waited. Nova nodded toward the controls.

Shaking his head, Jeridan took control of the Antikythera and steered away from the comet his boss had marooned them on three weeks before. He told himself that going into danger on a system he had never visited with a boss who never told him anything was probably better than sitting on a giant snowball in the middle of empty space.

Well, maybe not, but it would certainly be more interesting.

* * *

The Makayamawe system was only a few dozen light years away, so the trip took less than a week. Jeridan figured that given the length of time Nova and her family had been gone, they had visited some further system, maybe Eridanus Theta or the Iron Moon, both high-tech worlds. She had probably dumped them on the comet on that abandoned system because it was close to where they were going now.

Life on the Antikythera settled into its typical interstellar routine, with Jeridan and Negasi making regular systems checks and beating the crap out of each other in the holocabin.

Nova mainly kept to herself, checking over some documents on her tablet that she didn't share with the others. Jeridan figured they were the schematics for the old Imperial space station that they had fought so hard to retrieve and decode. It annoyed him that she didn't let him see it considering he nearly died getting it, but that was Nova for you.

He saw little of Mason, Nova's ten-year-old son. Now and then the boy would move quietly along the halls to use the holocabin, usually alone, and he'd come to the table at meals, but on those occasions he'd rarely say a word to either him or Negasi. He spent most of his time either in his room or in astronavigation with the S'ouzz, who somehow didn't mind the kid hanging around.

Aurora was more social. When she wasn't doing homeschool lessons with her brother, she'd usually be somewhere on the ship fiddling with electronics.

One day, Jeridan found her fiddling with the combat mech.

He walked into the workshop to retrieve a tool he needed for a minor repair and discovered her painting the thing.

Pink, of all colors.

"Hey, Jeridan! What do you think?"

Jeridan cocked his head. "Isn't that a little girly?"

"What's wrong with being girly?"

"Nothing. It's just that you've never been very girly before."

"I design and fix tech. That's totally girly. Oh, I made a modification to Poopsie. Check this out."

She stepped back from the combat mech, paintbrush in hand, and said, "Alpha 864."

The mech turned on.

"Whoa! Who gave you the activation code?"

"My mom. Said it would help keep me safe."

If she wanted to keep you safe, she'd drop you off on a planet somewhere, but then again, the Antari Syndicate might grab you.

"Careful. This isn't a toy, even if you have painted it pink."

"See that durasteel container I've added on the back? Check this out. Poopsie … poop!"

A flap opened on the mech's rear and a grenade dropped out.

Jeridan yelped, grabbed the girl, and flew out of the room, rounding the corner to get behind the protection of the wall.

"Let go, you spaz!" Aurora said, thumping her little fist against Jeridan's chest. "It's a dud I'm using for the tests."

He glanced at the open doorway, expecting a shock wave of shrapnel to fly out at any moment.

"You sure?"

"Yes."

"You sure you're sure?"

"It hasn't blown up, has it?"

"Um, I guess not." Jeridan let go of her and peeked around the corner. The pink combat mech stood placidly in the middle of the room, the grenade looking like a little metal turd behind it.

"So what do you think, loser?" Aurora asked.

"I'm not a loser, I'm the greatest starship captain and chessboxer ever."

"That's not what Negasi says."

"Listen very carefully to what Negasi says, because the exact opposite is true. And what do I think of your modification? Impressive. I'll check your work to make sure everything's OK. But … "

"But what?"

Jeridan bit his lip. "I don't really want you operating this. Combat mechs are for fighting, and knowing your mother, we'll have to use it sooner rather than later. I don't want you to get blood on your hands. It's not an easy thing to live with. Trust me."

"I'm only loading it with stun grenades and tear gas. I put in the pooper so I can maybe lower my mom's body count."

Jeridan turned to her and smiled. "You're a good kid, Aurora."

Aurora frowned. "Kid?"

"Sorry. Young lady."

Aurora smiled. "That's better."

They felt the ship shift as they dropped out of light speed. A moment later, Nova's voice came over the comm.

"Jeridan, come up to the bridge."

"Yeah, I'm coming," he said as he walked out of the room. He always piloted the ship when they entered a solar system.

"Come quicker. I've spotted a derelict ship on long-range sensors."

Jeridan broke into a run.

Getting to the bridge, he looked out of the glassteel screen at the vast tapestry of stars. One was a brighter pinprick. The sun for the Makayamawe system. Having stopped on the outer edges of the system, it was still too distant for them to resolve it as a disk without magnification.

Nova hit the magnification, but not for the sun. Instead, she brought up a view of a ship several thousand kilometers away.

Jeridan squinted at the screen. At this distance, it was hard to see, but it looked like a pretty large vessel. The readout showed no power or heat signatures. It wasn't sending out a distress signal either.

"You're right, it looks derelict," he said.

"I'm surprised no one has picked it up," Nova said. "According to the charts, this is a common entry route for this system."

"Look at the vector. It may not be under power, but it's moving pretty fast. It hasn't been visible along this route for long."

"It must have been going at a pretty good speed before it lost power. Let's go check it out. Negasi, are you at the turret?"

"Of course."

Jeridan took over the controls and sped the Antikythera toward the ship. This far at the edge of the solar system, he could afford to go quick since there would be little risk of slamming into a microasteroid or some other body. This might be a good scavenge, and he wanted to get there before anyone else spotted it. Tech scavenges went to the first person to get there, assuming you had the firepower to assert your claim.

As the ship grew on the magnification screen, Jeridan's brow furrowed. It wasn't a design he recognized.

"MIRI, is that an alien ship?" he asked.

"Negative," the AI replied. "It is an Imperium-era freighter. Class XI-v."

"Oooh. I love it when you talk sexy."

"Stop flirting with your AI," Nova said. "It's an irritating habit."

"You don't think an Imperium ship is sexy? I sure do."

"It's probably been stripped to the beams."

The S'ouzz came onto the comm link, a rare thing for it to do. "Perhaps not. Given its vector, it has not been within a light year of any inhabited star system for 381 years."

Jeridan got a prickly feeling. This could be a hell of a haul, and certainly a safer one than Nova wanted to do. Maybe they could make their fortune and ditch this crazy woman before she got them all killed.

The ship grew in the screen. The freighter was a large one, with a couple of turrets, one of which looked damaged. There was also a gaping hole in the side.

"Looks like it lost a fight," Negasi said over the comm. "You think it got taken out during the Galactic Civil War?"

"And it's been floating out in interstellar space all this time?" Jeridan whispered. "Damn. Think what might be in that thing."

"If it lost a fight, it probably got looted," Negasi said.

"Looted of its freight, sure, but think of the tech that would still be in it. Stuff that would have been passed over back in the day, but worth a fortune now!"

"Oh, I'm thinking, buddy, I'm thinking."

Nova started tapping at her touchscreen. "I'm going to scan it. See what we can make out of the interior." She paused. "Hmm. Not getting any readings. It seems to have some sort of shielding."

"Direct a beam at that hole in the side," Jeridan suggested.

Nova tapped away, then frowned. "It's not going through."

"Huh? That doesn't make any sense. Unless … "

Jeridan jerked on the controls to make a 180 and hit the rear thrusters.

" … it's a multispectrum hologram!"

The Imperium ship suddenly powered up. The damage to the hull and top turret vanished, replaced with solid durasteel. Both turrets swung in the Antikythera's direction and fired.

Jeridan rocked in his seat as both weapons made a direct hit. The screen blared red, warning of significant damage.

The ship fired a second round.