Tech Scavengers [Humorous, Action-Packed Space Opera]

Why is everybody screaming? Jeridan wondered. Don't they know I'm the best pilot in the Orion Arm?

A red light flared as the Antikythera's starboard side scraped against the canyon wall. The screams went up an octave.

The canyon was almost pitch black. The solar system's star was only a distant bright pinprick, hidden by the canyon walls. Ambient starlight gave little more illumination. Infrared sensors could barely register any temperature differences between the walls, the vacuum above, or the hidden depths below.

At least they were sensitive enough to give Jeridan a last-minute warning that the canyon took a sharp turn to the right. He jerked the controls and just managed to avoid smashing into a wall of ice.

"Looks like no one has followed us in here," Nova said, staggering onto the bridge. The shoulder of her jumpsuit had been cut away and Aurora had put a nanohealing bandage over the wound. Her pupils were dilated and her face flushed from stims.

"No Mantid can out-fly me!" Jeridan said.

A Dragonfly buzzed past the canyon opening half a kilometer above.

"Did they see us?" Nova asked, strapping into her seat.

"Probably." Jeridan went into a dive, plumbing deeper into the canyon's unseen depths.

"Our heat signature is going to show up in this place like a beacon," Aurora said over the comm.

"You've been paying attention to your lessons," Jeridan said. "Even if we settled on the bottom, wherever that might be, and powered down, it would take the better part of a month to get the hull down to ambient temperatures."

"Enough with the science lecture," the girl replied. "Watch where you're flying."

Jeridan swerved to avoid a shard of ice twice the size of the ship that had cracked off the left-hand wall and stuck out at an angle.

"No respect for your elders," Jeridan muttered. "But of course, respect has to be earned, and I will earn it by once again saving our skins."

The canyon narrowed. Jeridan kept to the center with little room to move to the right or left.

A Dragonfly buzzed overhead, disappeared beyond the lip of the canyon, and then reappeared, following the Antikythera's path without entering the canyon.

"Where are the other two?" Nova asked.

"That one is the lookout," Negasi said. "The other two will dip down in front and behind us. That's what I'd do."

"That's what I'd do too," Jeridan said. "OK, buddy. Focus your aim behind us. We'll take out the one in front."

"Won't a firefight in this small of a space bring the canyon walls down on us?" Aurora asked.

No one had time to answer her question, because just then the infrared sensors picked up heat signatures dipping into the canyon in front and behind them.

"Hold on," Jeridan said. Nova fired the pulse cannon at the lead Dragonfly while Negasi opened up on the one trailing them. Both fired back at them, explosive slugs drumming on the Antikythera's hull.

Jeridan would have liked to have angled up at the last second and let the two Mantid ships slam into each other, but the insectoids were too smart for that. The lead one approached slightly above the Antikythera, while the one behind followed slightly below.

That all changed when Nova made a direct hit with the pulse cannon.

To Jeridan's surprise, the Dragonfly in front of them wavered, lost altitude for a moment, then ascended. Its specialized shielding should have protected it from any pulse energy, but then Jeridan remembered Negasi hitting one above the planet with some explosive rounds. Was this the same ship? Had its shielding been damaged enough to let in pulse energy?

Nova fired again, to even more effect. Jeridan was impressed she could hit anything at all. She was as high as a kite.

The Dragonfly stopped firing and plunged down, its inertia hurtling it right at them.

Jeridan hissed, swerved to the left, scraped against the canyon edge, then jerked up.

The Dragonfly plummeted out of sight into the depths of the canyon.

Jeridan looked in the rear camera and didn't see the Dragonfly that had been pursuing them.

"You get him?" he asked Negasi.

"No, he ascended out of the canyon."

The canyon took a hard turn, and just beyond it narrowed sharply to only a few meters wide.

Jeridan pulled hard on the controls. The ship's comm filled with more screaming. Why did everyone have to scream when he needed to make complex maneuvers? Didn't they know how distracting that was?

The Antikythera ended up coming out of the canyon vertically, and straight into the fire of two Dragonflies and that damn destroyer. The freighter hung in low orbit above, waiting to cut off any retreat.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

The ship shuddered, jerked to the side not entirely from Jeridan's piloting, and then the destroyer hit their ravaged hull with a pulse cannon.

All the controls went dark.

The Antikythera plummeted to the surface, and straight into another canyon.

Jeridan jabbed at the controls. With the infrared sensors offline, they were falling blind. He had no idea if they were about to hit bottom or not.

"Why do I always end up in freefall with you?" Nova shrieked.

"Because you keep getting me into battles!"

"I want a raise!" Negasi shouted.

"So do I!" Jeridan agreed.

"Do something!" Aurora shouted.

The controls flickered, then went dark again.

"They're coming back online!" Nova said, letting out a panicked laugh. "Just give it another couple of seconds!"

Jeridan pounded on the controls. He knew that didn't do any good, but it made him feel a bit better. "Do we have another couple of—"

The controls lit back up.

So did the infrared sensors.

This deep down the canyon, they could barely make out anything. The canyon walls, tapering together to enclose the Antikythera, showed up as phantoms against the background cold, the bottom a barely detectible surface below.

"Two seconds until impact," MIRI announced.

It took almost two seconds to say.

Gritting his teeth, Jeridan pulled up, intending on taking the Antikythera from a vertical dive out to a horizontal path, and turning it up to ascend.

They didn't make it.

There was a jolt and a crash as the bottom of the ship hit a pile of ice sticking up from the canyon floor. For a moment Jeridan lost control, the ship slamming into one side of the canyon and then the other, before he leveled out and gained a couple of hundred meters.

He slowed, spotted a stretch of the canyon bottom that looked relatively flat, and landed.

"What are you doing?" Nova asked.

He gestured at the Antikythera schematic, most of which shone yellow and a quarter of which glowed red.

"MIRI, damage assessment."

"Several minor hull breaches, all automatically sealed. Numerous weak points on armor. Structural integrity intact. Numerous short circuits to the electronics system due to explosions and the pulse attack. I can repair most internal systems."

"How long?"

"Three hours."

"Do it."

"Initiating."

"We don't have three hours," Nova said. "They'll spot us within three minutes."

Jeridan looked up, then zoomed the camera to a closeup of the canyon opening more than two kilometers above. All he saw were a few twinkling stars.

Then a Dragonfly made a slow pass along the length of the canyon. Everyone held their breath.

It stopped right above them, then zipped away.

Jeridan lifted off until he got a hundred meters above the bottom of the canyon, enough to feel relatively safe from hitting any outcroppings but far enough down that they'd make a tough target.

To his surprise, the Dragonfly didn't return with his buddy.

Instead, the infrared view of the top of the canyon got overwhelmed by a blindingly hot heat signature.

"The destroyer!" Nova shouted. "The destroyer is hitting the canyon with torpedoes! They want to bury us!"

Jeridan hit the thrusters, shooting along the narrow canyon far too fast for his liking.

The blazing heat signature faded, to be replaced by massive chunks of falling ice. One the size of the ship plunged down right in front of them, Jeridan hitting the fore thrusters to slow down enough not to slam into it. A moment later, he had to hit the rear thrusters to speed out from under another slab.

He could do nothing to avoid all the smaller pieces, smaller as in bigger than the average truck. The hull reverberated with impacts, and while the armored shell could take it, they lost altitude, forced closer and closer to that jagged canyon floor.

They broke free, the canyon collapsing behind them. Jeridan slowed as the canyon made a gentle turn, rising a little but not daring to show the ship on the surface.

A large heat signature of tumbling, blasted ice up ahead made him brake to a halt, hovering in the air. A heat signature behind told him the Mantids had sealed off that way too.

Jeridan didn't wait for them to bury the Antikythera in an icy tomb. He flipped the ship to point vertically toward the stars, shouted, "Hang on!", and hit the rear thrusters at maximum power.

They shot up out of the canyon just as a pair of torpedoes slammed into its edge. A fragment nearly the size of the ship banged into the Antikythera and for a moment Jeridan lost control. The ship spun out, scraped the surface of the planet before Jeridan could pull up, and then they were flying up and out, trying to gain as much altitude as possible against the planet's gravity well.

The destroyer and two Dragonflies, hovering over the canyon nearby, came right after them.

Jeridan scanned the surrounding area. He saw only two choices—dive into another canyon and get buried, or shoot for the stars and get caught within a few hundred kilometers. The Dragonflies were faster than the Antikythera, and that destroyer could at least pace them. The freighter in orbit high above could cut them off.

And there was no chance of outfighting all four.

We're dead.

Damn, the kids …

Jeridan heard the voice of the S'ouzz come over the comm.

"We will die if we face them in open battle or try to run."

"Thanks for telling me what I already know," Jeridan said, banking hard to the left to dodge a stream of explosive rounds.

"Head for the station," Nova said. "It will provide us cover and they might join in the fight."

"I'm not endangering a bunch of innocent people!" Jeridan said.

"Innocent?" Nova laughed. "Them?"

"Good, honest criminals who have never done anything to you," Jeridan said.

A torpedo came hurtling toward them. Negasi blew it up. The Dragonflies drew closer, firing as they came.

"I agree that going toward the station is the wrong direction," the S'ouzz said. "Go maximum speed at 90 degrees from the orbital plane."

Jeridan automatically did as he was told, then did a double take.

"Wait a minute. You're not going to try to go light speed this close to a planet, are you?"

"I see no other alternative," the S'ouzz said.

A stream of flechettes stitched along the hull, weakening it further.

"It's suicide!" Negasi said.

"In my culture, that is the greatest sin. Staying here is suicide."

A torpedo struck the Antikythera, sending it into a spin that ironically made the next two torpedoes miss.

"We're barely out of orbit in a busy spaceway close to a space station," Jeridan said. "There's got to be a million objects between us and open space."

"105,893," the S'ouzz corrected, then added, "That I can detect."

"But even smaller objects can—"

"Yes."

Jeridan took a deep breath. "And you think you can steer us through all of them at light speed?"

"Possibly."

MIRI cut in. "The chances of fatal impact are—"

"Quiet," Jeridan cut her off. "Seriously? You are seriously telling me we have a better chance of doing that than standing and fighting?"

"Yes," the alien navigator replied.

Jeridan looked at the incoming Dragonflies, the destroyer just behind them, the blaring reds and yellows on the ship schematic, and at the open space ahead.

Not open space. Between them and the vast outer reaches of the solar system floated countless asteroids, micrometeorites, old satellites, defunct comm probes, comets, and bits of discarded equipment. Hell, even a large screw could cause significant damage at light speed.

Jeridan closed his eyes. "Do it."

"It's my ship, and it's my decision," Nova said.

"Fine," Jeridan conceded. "Pick the way you're going to die."

Nova paused. Another trail of flechettes ground into the hull, followed by a spattering of explosive rounds.

"Do it," she husked.

Jeridan opened his eyes wide to take in the blackness before them, the false emptiness that held innumerable deaths.

The S'ouzz hit light speed.