Tech Scavengers [Humorous, Action-Packed Space Opera]

Negasi and Nova left the Antikythera two hours later. Jeridan stayed on board to guard the whiskey. Mason and Aurora were nowhere in sight. Good. Negasi still felt uncomfortable having them along on a tech scavenge.

Negasi felt uncomfortable going with Nova alone on this pickup too. It was all too secretive, and that data hacker (whose name he had never been told and probably never would) acted less like a hired contractor and more like an old acquaintance.

Plus, in a rumor mill like this station, it was hard to believe that there weren't eyes watching. People must have known a data hacker worked in that apartment, and it was obvious he and Nova were now returning for some results. Information, especially hacked secret information, was both money and power.

A perfect time for a mugging.

He kept his hand close to his pistol holster. He still had his rifle slung across his back.

Come to think of it, it did seem a bit quiet around here. The market wasn't nearly as crowded before. Maybe there was a big game being beamed from Jua Two. Or some famous stripper had landed and was performing in one of the bars. Or maybe people had gotten wind of something.

The crowd definitely looked thinner and subdued, and in the past couple of hours, several of the shops had closed.

Damn, this is a problem. He hit his comm to communicate with the ship.

"Jeridan, keep your eyes peeled."

"For you or for me?"

Negasi thought for a moment. He was the one sitting on a fortune of illegal whiskey. "Good question. Not sure."

Nova looked nervous too. Her features had grown taut, and her hand rested on her holster.

They got to the residential sector. No one in the corridors. Nova rang on the buzzer.

"Who is it?" the data hacker's voice said.

Don't you know? There's a security camera right above the buzzer.

"Upsilon eighty-one twelve."

The door clicked open. Negasi tensed.

The data hacker sat in front of her computer where they had left her. Negasi glanced around the room. No one.

They stepped inside. The door closed and locked behind them.

She turned and smiled. Her silvery eyes sparkled. Literally sparkled with little lights blinking on and off in them. Negasi shuddered.

"I did it," she said. "Like I said, it was a standard Imperium code. Didn't take long. Imagine a time when stuff like this only got standard encryption!"

Nova took in a sharp breath. "Then it's … "

"It is."

Nova let out a squeal of joy, stepped forward and gave the data hacker a hug.

Negasi nearly fell over. He'd never seen her hug anyone. Not even Mason. He had hardly ever seen her crack a smile, and now she was hugging this cyborg and hopping up and down as if the love of her life had popped the question.

What did happen to Derren, anyway?

At last they broke it up, and the data hacker handed over the Imperium data chip and a second one, which Negasi assumed contained the decrypted files.

"Be very careful with this, Nova, and good luck."

Nova tucked them into an inside pocket of her jumpsuit, zipping up the pocket and then zipping her jumpsuit right up to the neck.

They turned to leave.

"Negasi," the data hacker called.

He turned. She knew his name? Well, of course she knew his name. Probably knew a hell of a lot of other stuff about him too.

"Yes?" he said.

Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.

"Stick with Nova. I know she's not the easiest person to get along with sometimes, and you probably don't like being left in the dark, but stick with her. She needs a friend, and you'll witness history in the making."

Nova made a gesture to keep quiet, then stopped when she saw Negasi noticing. From her expression, it looked like she felt the data hacker had said too much.

"See you later," Nova said. "Hopefully in a month or so I'll have more work for you."

"A lot more work," the cyborg said and laughed.

They went back into the public corridor, Negasi more confused than when he had entered.

"I suppose it would be useless to ask what this is all about," he said.

"You'll make a fortune from this," Nova told him.

"You too."

"Yeah," she said as if that didn't matter. "Like she said, I know you don't like being kept in the dark, but it's got to be that way. We had a leak before and it cost me my crew."

"Who's 'we'?"

"My crew."

"Was that cyborg part of your crew?"

"No."

They continued to walk down an empty corridor, residential doors to either side. Negasi waited for an answer that didn't come.

The corridor turned, and just as they were about to go around the corner, Negasi grabbed his boss and leapt back, his other hand going for his flechette pistol.

He couldn't have expressed why he did that. Some people call it instinct, a sixth sense. He had heard psychologists of the leaning-against-the-bar variety explain that it was the ear picking up suspicious sounds on the subaudible level, the skin picking up subtle changes in the ambient heat and motion of the air. Or maybe even the nose picking up subtle pheromones of something that shouldn't be there.

Whatever the explanation, Negasi knew they had to get back from that corner right away.

A moment later, he discovered he was right.

A Mantid stepped around the corner, holding a sword of all things.

The insectoid alien stood well over two meters tall, a head taller than Negasi, if you could call that green blob with the multifaceted eyes, razor-sharp clacking mandibles, and long antennae a head. Negasi preferred to call it a nightmare.

The thing wore no clothing except for a leather harness which held a holster for an unusual pistol Negasi would not like to see in action and a sheath diagonally across the back for its sword.

A sword. Why the hell did it bring a sword when it must have known Negasi and Nova had guns?

Because it wants to chop us into cutlets, that's why.

The Mantids had the unpleasant habit of eating sentient species. That got them banned on many systems. Negasi had assumed they were banned on Latimer Station too. Apparently, that was incorrect. Mantid culture held the view that the best-tasting meat came from a sentient foe prepared for eating in the course of a battle.

In other words, that long, keen steel blade was an oversized carving knife.

Negasi and Nova backpedaled, drawing their pistols. Negasi had no time to unsling his rifle. That was all right. Negasi was a quick draw with a pistol.

The Mantid, of course, was faster.

In a move almost too quick for the eye to catch, it bunched those spindly legs, which bent in the wrong way in a most unseemly fashion, and sprang at them. It somersaulted in the air and its taloned feet hit both of them square in the face.

Negasi landed hard on the floor, maintaining just enough control not to smack his head against the steel and knock himself out. He turned that fall into a roll, coming up on one knee, his flechette pistol leveled.

The Mantid stood not three paces away, sword upraised. Nova was flat on her back next to Negasi, no help for the moment.

Negasi gave it a long burst right in the chest and was horrified to see the little needles bounce off its exoskeleton, barely leaving dents.

The Mantid charged. Negasi switched his aim to its armpit, where a seam between two portions of the exoskeleton allowed it to move its limb. He had just enough time to see a bit of whitish fluid spray out of the vulnerable spot before the sword came down at him.

Negasi dodged to the side so fast he slammed against the wall and nearly dropped his pistol, but at least that blade didn't cut him.

It left a mark on the steel floor, though.

Oh, wonderful.

Negasi struggled to position himself for another aimed shot, the Mantid towering over him when the creature flinched.

Nova had gotten into the game, firing a burst at the creature from behind. A hail of flechettes ricocheted off the thing's exoskeleton, some nearly hitting Negasi, but enough got into the same chink in its armor that Negasi had hit that one arm fell to hang uselessly from its side.

It still hung onto its sword with the other hand, though, and spun around to swing at Negasi's boss.

Now normally Negasi wouldn't care so much about his boss's overall state of health. In fact, he'd had a few bosses he'd have swung a sword at himself, but this was a widowed mother who had so far dealt fairly with him. The fact that she had consistently lied and withheld information was a point against her, but that didn't qualify Nova for the "go ahead and decapitate and eat her" level of bosses.

Negasi lashed out with his feet, hitting the Mantid's legs just below those backwards-bending joints. It felt like kicking a pair of iron railings, but the thing staggered enough that its blade screeched along the wall just next to Nova's head rather than cleaving her skull in two.

"I want a raise!" he shouted, lifting his pistol and giving the thing a burst at the base of its head. Nothing happened except to create a fountain of deadly spikes flying every which way.

Including right into Nova's shoulder.

"Ow! No way," she shouted back.

Nova fired again, this time aiming for one of its bulbous eyes. That had a better effect. It let out an ear-splitting screech as a greenish ichor shot out of its eye and sprayed Nova in the face.

Green from the eyes, white from the body. An interesting biological detail, Negasi thought, ever the xenoanthropologist.

The Mantid flailed around, nearly decapitating Negasi and forcing him to roll away. He ended up on one knee and fired the rest of his magazine into the joint between the head and neck. The insectoid shuddered, its sword clattering to the floor. Then it went stiff and fell.

It ended up on its back, its limbs curled, looking for all the world like a dead cockroach. Negasi had worked on a freighter infested with cockroaches once. Canopan cockroaches that were as big as your hand. Not a pretty sight.

An even less pretty sight was the trio of Mantids charging around the far corner of the corridor, armed with rifles.