Tech Scavengers [Humorous, Action-Packed Space Opera]

Jeridan left the Antikythera with a flechette pistol on his belt, a stun wand right next to it for less lethal encounters, and wearing an under-suit of Kevlar Flexweave. Not the best protection, but better than nothing. He'd prefer to wear the combat suit, but it only fit Negasi and would have been too conspicuous anyway. If you acted scared in this crowd, they might take that as a sign of weakness.

In a satchel he carried two bottles of the galaxy's best whiskey. He hoped no one had sufficient optics in their helmet to see through the satchel and notice what he carried. Two bottles of this stuff were enough to get you murdered in this place.

The airlock led to a private door that could be locked to keep out anyone on the station who might want to sneak into the ship and steal something, which was everyone on the station. The door led to a long, curving hallway of similar doors leading to other ships. Most of the private airlocks were occupied. Busy times at the station.

Jeridan walked along, whistling a tune to hide his uneasiness as he passed hulking mercenaries, shifty-looking smugglers, and several alien species that may not have been human, but shared the human traits of avarice, corruption, and inclinations toward violence. Some things were universal.

He took a left and entered a commercial section. Advertisements flashed images of weapons and electronics. A holobar caught his eye. He peered in the doorway and saw humans of several races and aliens of half a dozen species sitting at round holotables projecting their dreams and fantasies. Only one or two tables projected holograms of naked models. Most people wanted more than that. Some had projections of loved ones or entire families sitting with them, having a holographic meal. Others showed home worlds. One table near the door showed a closeup of Earth's globe, turning slowly on its axis.

Jeridan stared. So much history on that average-sized ball of blue and green and brown.

"You'll get there, buddy. One day," he whispered.

But first I have to figure out how to survive the next few weeks, and Dean can help me with that.

Ironic, isn't it? That's not how it usually turns out when I see him.

Hopefully, history won't repeat itself.

Jeridan asked a wall unit for directions to security. The wall unit suggested a shortcut through an electronics market, a cheesy form of advertising that probably earned the station a small percentage, but it did seem like the shortest route. He passed along aisles of gear for every make and model of ship.

"Looking for an AI?" a man's voice asked.

Jeridan looked around. No one was close. Then he saw a black box sitting in a glassteel case.

"Oh, hello," Jeridan said. "I already got one, thanks."

"Well, if you know anyone, tell them about me. I'm Model Four with all the updates. My ship got wrecked, and the crew sold me."

"Sold a Model Four AI?" Jeridan said, shocked. "They didn't deserve you."

"They were pretty desperate. What model is your AI?"

"Equal to you. Sorry, but I'm really not in the market. Take care, buddy."

Jeridan patted the case and moved on.

He crossed the electronics market and climbed the stairs the wall unit had told him about to the next level up. There he came to a doorway guarded by someone in a featureless combat suit, so bulky that he couldn't tell if the sentry was a man or a woman or even an alien with a roughly human form.

"I'm here to see—"

"Second door on the right," the figure said with a metallic buzz.

Yeah, of course Dean's been watching me on the security cameras.

He passed down a bright white hallway with doors on either side. The second on the right opened just as he stepped in front of it.

Jeridan entered a carpeted office. Security feeds took up one entire wall. Another was a holo of the station exterior, focusing on the section where the Antikythera was connected to an airlock.

Dean Solis sat behind a large desk of durasteel, all spiky angles and intimidating black sheen. Probably cost a lot. Jeridan half expected flamethrowers to shoot out the front.

Not that Dean needed them. The gun rack on the wall behind Dean's chair could arm a mid-sized insurgency. He may have been an aging drunk going to seed, but Dean Solis was a dead shot.

"You sneaky, conniving bastard," Dean growled. "What the hell are you doing on my station?"

Jeridan held up the two bottles of Sagittan whiskey. "I come bearing gifts. Well, bribes, really. And you've always liked those, haven't you Dean, old buddy?"

"Two bottles aren't a bribe. They're sampler."

"Oh, right."

He'd forgotten that about Dean. He could drink most men under the table, no matter what their species.

"May I?" Jeridan asked. He didn't see any seats.

Dean pushed a button. A circle opened in the floor in front of the desk and a chair rose up. Jeridan sat. It was plastic and not very comfortable. He supposed another button brought up a comfy chair for important guests.

"That's a damn impressive ship you're flying," Dean said.

Jeridan nodded. Dean would have scanned it thoroughly. So thoroughly he saw the bioforms Nova had hidden in the cargo hold? Maybe. Those containers probably had some sort of shielding. Even if Dean could sneak a peek, this station was one of the few places where someone in his position wouldn't care.

Dean produced two squat, heavy glasses with complex patterns cut into the sides. Jeridan nodded in appreciation. They looked like real glass.

Jeridan held up one of the bottles. "The real thing, good buddy. The best booze in the Orion Arm."

Dean's eyes widened a little. Jeridan placed the second bottle on his side of the desk, having to lean over to reach the damn thing was so wide, then made a show of breaking the seal on the first one. A fragrant, heady aroma wafted out. For a moment, the two men closed their eyes and simply breathed.

"Two fingers neat?" Jeridan asked.

Dean gave him a smile that actually looked genuine. "Some things never change."

Jeridan poured out some of the golden liquid into Dean's glass, then did the same for himself. They raised the glasses and locked eyes.

"What are we drinking to?" Jeridan asked.

"You repairing our business relationship after leaving me in the lurch."

Sounds like it's going to take more than a couple of bottles of booze.

"To old friends reunited," Jeridan stated.

Dean snorted, then got a look of ecstasy on his face as he put his nose into the glass and inhaled.

The bouquet really was exquisite. While Jeridan had pounded down the whiskey on Sagitta Prime where it was cheap, he and Negasi had avoided the temptation to open any of the bottles on the past month's flight. Out here, they were worth too much.

Jeridan took a sip. Warmth spread through his body and eased the tension in his muscles.

When he opened his eyes, he saw Dean in a similar state of bliss. The second bottle had already been whisked away.

The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

"You're almost forgiven," the head of security said.

Jeridan grinned. "I'm sure glad we're friends again."

Dean glowered at him. Jeridan wilted.

"We're not friends, we've never been friends, and we never will be friends, especially after you lost me my commission."

"They caught me. It was squeal or go to the Chamber of Unease."

The Chamber of Unease was a Canopan revival of an old Earth torture. You got locked in a small room too low to stand up in and too short to lie down. You wouldn't lie down anyway because the floor was all jagged angles. So were the walls. Whatever position you tried to take, your body would get contorted into an uncomfortable shape with at least two or three parts of you getting jabbed by spikes or sharp angles.

For the first hour, it's only annoying. Then the muscles weary from trying to hold yourself up, the bruising starts, and fatigue sets in from the constant shifting of position. Sleep is impossible. Taking your attention off your condition is doubly impossible. It works on your mind. Sanity begins to fray.

By the third day, most people crack. They might collapse out of sheer exhaustion and fall unconscious for a while, only to wake with agonizing cramps and an unbearable sense of desperation. No one can stay in the Chamber of Unease for more than a week and stay sane.

The Canopan "justice" system often condemned prisoners to the Chamber of Unease for several years.

Dean grimaced. He knew this as well as Jeridan did. He was lucky he didn't end up in one of those chambers himself. Jeridan tried to calculate the bribes he must have paid to avoid it and couldn't do the math. The numbers were too big.

"It was a lousy thing to do," he grumbled.

"Maybe I can make it up to you," Jeridan said.

Those cutting eyes got greedy. "How?"

Jeridan lifted his glass, waggled it, and took a sip.

"How much more you got?" Dean asked, leaning forward a little.

Careful now. This guy could impound the ship.

"Depends on the deal."

"I know a market for this whiskey."

Jeridan perked up. "Really?"

"A customs official on Jua Two who has contacts with organized crime in the capital."

"Perfect."

"My commission would be—"

Jeridan held up a hand. "I can't negotiate without Negasi here."

"Still partnered up with that guy, huh?"

"Best gunner I ever had. Good xenoanthropologist too. Real useful when dealing with alien types."

"Talk to him. I'll talk to my contact, find out what he's willing to pay per bottle."

"Pay per crate," Jeridan corrected.

Dean stared. "You got crates?"

Jeridan nodded. While he didn't like to reveal so much so soon, he knew Nova would be in a hurry. They needed to get this deal done quick.

"There would be a delay in shipping," Jeridan said. "We stowed them in a sealed container in the Oort Cloud."

Jeridan could practically see the wheels turning in Dean's head. The washed-up soldier wondered if that was true or if there was a fortune in illegal whiskey aboard the Antikythera, ripe for the taking.

Jeridan stopped those wheels turning by asking a question.

"I wouldn't mind reducing the price for a trade. Would you be up to that?"

Dean's eyes narrowed. "Trade in what?"

"Information."

"Like?"

"Who the hell we're working for."

Dean smiled. "I thought you couldn't negotiate without your partner."

"He'll want this."

"I can dig," he said in a way that made it sound like he had dug already. Dean was smart enough to know that in a place like this, information was the real currency.

"Find out as much as you can, and those crates can be wholesaled to you at a bargain price."

One that will still make us rich.

Dean seemed lost in thought for a moment, then he settled back and took another sip, his eyes going dreamy. Jeridan relaxed a little. Like in his old army days, Dean was in a tight position. While he could make up some excuse to impound the ship and search it from stem to stern, that sort of thing wouldn't go down well with the kind of people who came to Latimer Station. The Freebooter's Collective wouldn't like the loss of business, and it was Dean who would take the blame.

"So what's news?" Dean asked after a moment. Jeridan relaxed further at the change of subject.

"We've been interstellar for a while. By the way, any S'ouzz come to the station?"

Dean looked surprised. "S'ouzz? I've never seen a S'ouzz. Why you asking?"

"For a friend."

"How you been making your way lately? Tech scavenging?"

"Yeah. Didn't find anything."

Again that suspicion. Jeridan hurried to keep the conversation going forward.

"What's news around here?" he asked.

Dean grimaced. "Station has been pretty quiet. The usual fights. Nothing we can't handle. But we got another comm probe from the Outer Rim."

Jeridan shifted in his seat. "More about that alien race?"

"'Fraid so."

Dean hit a button, and a holo screen appeared in the space between them. A newsvid came on. An attractive young woman in a conservative suit appeared.

"The latest report from the Tyrul system documents the fall of Tyrul Alpha just two weeks after the fall of Tyrul Sigma."

"Two weeks?" Jeridan exclaimed. "But to get from Tyrul Sigma to Alpha, they'd have to—"

"Shh," Dean said.

The newsvid went on. "Before the end of the last battle, the government on the primary world of the system, Tyrul Alpha Three, sent out a wave of two hundred comm probes. Only four made it through. This is the footage from one of them."

The announcer's face disappeared, replaced with orbital footage showing the same strange ships of massive proportions that Jeridan had seen in the earlier newsvid way back on Sagitta Prime, only much closer up. The camera zoomed in on the nearest one.

Jeridan gasped.

A series of bulbous sections, oblate spheroids but with impressions and bumps in a seemingly random pattern, were connected by thick bars resembling girders. The largest sections measured half a kilometer in width, the thinnest girder fifty meters thick, and the entire arrangement five or six kilometers wide, according to the unbelievable figures appearing in the lower righthand corner of the screen.

He could see no windows anywhere on the black surface. He saw thrusters, though, and weapons.

Lots of weapons.

Lasers cut through the interplanetary vacuum of the Tyrul Alpha solar system, hitting human ships that flared up as their engines and weapons systems got incinerated. The lasers moved back and forth in wide arcs, like spotlights at some nighttime event.

Jeridan gasped and leaned forward.

"Lasers," he whispered. "How the hell do they have the energy for that? And how are they keeping the beams focused at such long distances?"

Before Dean could answer, the announcer's voice cut in.

"The full system fleet of Tyrul Alpha was defeated in this engagement, including five battle cruisers, ten orbital gun platforms, and two hundred smaller ships, with an estimated loss of life of ten thousand crew members. None of the ships are known to have survived."

That was a bigger fleet than most systems. Jeridan saw the problem immediately. Not only was a large fleet powerless against these things, but the aliens moved so much faster on interstellar trips than the ships of any known species. It would be impossible to organize any sort of unified defense among the various independent planetary governments.

The Outer Rim had probably been trying, but by the time comm probes had gone back and forth a couple of times, the systems were being taken out one by one.

The narrator went on. "The comm probe from which this footage came was already well beyond orbit when the attack on the primary world of the Tyrul Alpha system began, but was able to get some long-distance images as the unknown ships closed in."

Jeridan leaned forward in his seat, not wanting to see but unable to tear his eyes off the screen.

He didn't dare. Because eventually, he was going to see those massive ships coming for whatever system he was in at the time.

He had to know what he was facing.

Several of the ships moved in on the primary planet of Tyrul Alpha, population three billion. A couple more veered off in other directions, probably to attack other inhabited moons or planets.

The invaders had already taken out the orbital gun platforms, but the defenders of Tyrul Alpha had an ace up their sleeve. From all across the globe, little sparks marking rocket flares glittered like sunlight on frost. Ten thousand smart missiles flew through the atmosphere. The aliens' lasers targeted them, trying to probe through the atmosphere to blast them out of the sky. They couldn't reach far enough in, however, the air diffusing and refracting the concentrated beams of light, so they missed their targets. Only after the missiles reached the stratosphere, and closing in on the ships, could the lasers aim properly.

The lasers swept in on the missiles with the same shocking accuracy they had used on the Tyrulian ships. The missiles were linked to some sort of AI net, because Jeridan saw them corkscrew and zigzag, darting between the baleful beams.

It wasn't enough. One by one, they exploded. Their numbers dwindled as they drew closer to the ships. Jeridan leaned closer to the screen. He noted that the schematics of the missiles were being fed through a data stream in the lower righthand corner. The Tyrulians wanted everyone to know everything possible about the battle. Survival advice from the dead.

Jeridan groaned as the wave of missiles thinned almost to nothing, a groan that turned into a cheer as they began to hit. One alien ship floated front and center in the frame, and eight missiles slammed into it one after another. Several hit one of the main structures, blasting off chunks of the outer casing. Jeridan squinted, trying to see details of what was inside, but the comm probe was too far and the image was already getting pixilated.

Then a missile made a direct hit one of the thinner struts and snapped it in two. A large section floated away into space. Tiny specks drifted out of it. Debris? Equipment? The aliens? Too small to make out.

In the background, he could see several of the other ships get struck. None seemed to get taken out of action.

Now it was the aliens' turn.

Portals opened up on the ship, and sleek cylinders that looked like missiles but of a strange design shot out. They hurtled into the atmosphere, several hundred artificial meteors heading for every land mass.

The Tyrulian ground defenses got to work, knocking out missile after missile. The alien missiles, like those fired by the planet, were linked to an AI system, far superior to the one the humans had. Only a few of the missiles got hit midair. The rest got through.

The announcer said, "Analysis from the footage suggests each missile had its own AI."

"Its own AI?" Jeridan said in a strangled voice. "They're killing themselves."

Dean took a long drink of his whiskey. Jeridan thought that was a good idea and did the same.

The missiles, dodging and weaving, plunged through the atmosphere.

What happened next made Jeridan cringe.

Mushroom clouds blossomed all along the land masses, hitting every city, every spaceport, every major body of fresh water.

"What the hell?" Jeridan gasped in horror. "They're destroying the planet. Why? Don't they want to occupy it? Why do that?"

The lower righthand corner of the screen kept scrolling data. Cities hit. Casualty estimates. Radiation levels. Jeridan was no scientist, but he could tell that with so many hits, the radiation would spread out evenly around the globe until the entire planet became uninhabitable for any species above the level of the toughest insect.

They were killing everyone. Everything.

The screen went black as the comm probe got out of range and sped off on its mission to warn the rest of the Orion Arm.

"Why?" Jeridan whispered.

He sank back in his chair, stunned.

Suddenly, his troubles with his boss seemed irrelevant.