Tech Scavengers [Humorous, Action-Packed Space Opera]

Jeridan had no idea what to do next. He could hear gunfire echoing down the corridor from where he sat in the hovercar right by the entrance, but he couldn't help because he had no weapons. He couldn't even walk.

His leg still bled freely and he had nothing to bandage it with. The hand wound wasn't so bad, except that it affected his steering. Plus his movements would get clumsier by the minute. He could feel the life draining out of him.

He looked up at the Antikythera hovering a thousand meters up, so powerful and yet so useless in this situation. It was up to him, and he was all out of ideas.

Then something in the back of one of the hovercars caught his eye—a length of pipe about 25 centimeters long and five centimeters wide stuck on the end of a wooden rod. At where the rod met the pipe was some sort of tab.

Jeridan steered his hovercar over to the older model and saw several of the objects lying in the back seat. Moving in a tight circle around the parked fleet, he saw several of the parked vehicles had them.

They looked like bombs.

Settling the hovercar down at the edge of the group of vehicles, he hopped out on his good leg, wavered a moment as his head spun, then grabbed one. It was lighter than he expected, and well balanced for throwing. Almost certainly a crude homemade grenade.

He started gathering them by the armful, dropping several thanks to his wounded hand.

Once he'd loaded the backseat with them, stumbling several times and nearly fainting with the effort, he flew the hovercar up to the top of the main dome and landed next to a corroded portion of the roof.

Then he pulled out a length of cord from a survival pack in the hovercar and tried to bind the grenades together.

This proved almost impossible. His hand had become numb and nearly useless, and his other one clumsy from blood loss. Jeridan kept at it, using his teeth to hold the rope as he tied off with his one good hand.

A distant shot made him turn. About twenty men and women from the town charged down that steep road from the town. They were still a good three hundred meters away and on foot. A couple fired as they ran.

"Hurry up, Jeridan," he muttered to himself. His hand fumbled and one of the grenades clonked onto the metal roof and rolled away.

"Cack! With this hand, I'm almost as useless as Negasi."

He got most of the grenades secured in a loose bundle, losing a couple more in the process, and heaped a few strays on top. Then he cut off the excess cord, getting a good ten meters of it.

Jeridan took this and tied it to one of the fuses.

That didn't go so well. He had only one hand to work with, his head wouldn't stop spinning, and he felt like puking. Little black spots appeared in his vision. Trying his tooth trick again, he managed to get the cord looped around, but when he tried to draw it tight, it slipped off.

A bullet ricocheted off the roof just a meter from his heap of grenades.

"Watch it!" Jeridan shouted at the oncoming horde. "The plan is to blow it up without me sitting right next to it. Stupid barbarians."

They loosed off more shots, getting closer now. Much closer. Pretty soon, one was going to hit, even with those crappy homemade guns.

Jeridan bent over the pile of grenades again, almost toppling as his vision dimmed for a moment, and tried to tie off the cord. Another bullet pinged off the metal roof.

Got it!

He stood up, fell back down, got on his hands and knees and, with limbs as wobbly as if he had drunk an entire fifth of Sagittan whiskey, fumbled over to the hovercar, playing out the cord as he did.

He flopped in the seat, looped the cord around his wrist and felt a bullet zing by his ear.

The crowd had stopped now, some going to one knee, all aiming at him.

He hit the upward thrusters just as they fired a volley.

Bullets drummed on the hovercar's hypertitanium hull. The hovercar shot up. He felt a tug at his wrist as the cord went taught, then a deafening explosion.

The hovercar lifted another fifty meters on the shock wave, nearly flipping over as Jeridan desperately tried to keep control with one hand.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

A sickening feeling twisted his gut as the hovercar listed to port and he nearly slid out. He hadn't had time to strap in. He jerked on the controls, overcompensated, and nearly tumbled out the starboard side. After another sickening wrench, he got the thing righted and he looked down.

A cloud of smoke hid the results of his humble attempt at demolition, but it didn't hide the crowd of barbarians picking themselves up and aiming at him.

Two of them had RPGs like the joker they had dealt with out on the flats.

"Uh-oh."

A series of detonations rocked the hovercar again. A plume of earth shot upwards between him and the raiders, stitching a ragged line along the rocky soil, like the ground had suddenly sprouted a series of jet engines. Jeridan hit reverse to gain some more distance.

And then he understood. It was the Antikythera, firing a spray of heavy explosive rounds at the enemy.

The firing stopped. The dust settled. The barbarians fled, hands in the air, having thrown down their weapons. Jeridan thought he spotted dark stains on the trousers of a couple of them.

Not a single one had been hurt.

So the S'ouzz doesn't like to kill. Fine by me. This worked just as well.

Jeridan looked back down at the dome and let out a whoop.

A hole had appeared, framed by jagged, twisted steel and big enough to lower the hovercar through the gap in the roof.

"I'm a genius!"

He lowered the hovercraft into the dome.

That didn't go too well.

Dizzy from blood loss, and with only one good hand and one good foot, all he managed to do was hit the edge of the hole with a thump, screech along the twisted metal, and tip through the hole.

Straight into a throne room.

The hovercraft's automatic emergency thrusters stopped Jeridan half a meter shy of crashing into the floor, the jerk of the stop making his head loll to the side. Blearily, he looked around.

At the center stood a dais atop which stood a huge metal throne made of random bits of junk fused together. It was draped in barbaric splendor with the pelts of wild animals. Crude trophies of animal heads and painted hides hung on poles or covered old pieces of equipment. A few men and women peeked out from behind various hiding places. A couple more lay unconscious or dead on the floor, hit by the avalanche of shrapnel preceding Jeridan's grand entrance.

An eruption of fire made Jeridan look to the far side of the giant chamber, where he saw the backs of several raiders firing into another room.

He didn't get to see any more, because suddenly his vision was taken up by the screeching face of an old hag, her skin peeling, her hair in patches, and her nails going for his eyes.

"Gah!"

Jeridan slapped her hands away, saving his eyes but getting several long scratches on his neck.

The woman sprang on him, stinking of B.O. and uncured leather, and continued scratching. Jeridan tried to fend her off with his one good hand.

"Watch it! I don't like hitting women, but I'll make an exception in your case."

Suddenly she got tugged away by the hair. Aurora hauled her out of the hovercraft. The next moment, they were a blur of hair pulling and kicking and biting.

Despite his blood loss, Jeridan sat up. "Oooh, a cat fight! Well, more of a cat and kitten fight, and the kitten seems to be winning. Biting? Oh, don't bite her, Aurora. That can't be healthy. Ouch! Good one, girl! Glad that's not me. Watch out behind you!"

A hulking man in furs, two meters of muscle and ugly, grabbed Aurora around the waist from behind, lifting her off her feet. Jeridan tried to get out of the hovercar to help and only fumbled. His limbs wouldn't obey his commands anymore.

There was the sound of a static discharge. The big guy convulsed and fell to the floor. Aurora jabbed some sort of device into the hag and again there was an electric crackle. The woman fell to the floor next to the man.

"A homemade taser," Jeridan said, focusing his dimming vision on what she held in her hand. "Where did you get that?"

"Science project."

"Huh?"

Aurora didn't answer. Instead, she hopped into the hovercar, pushed Jeridan into the passenger's side, and got behind the controls.

"What are you doing?" Jeridan asked. He could hear his words coming out slurred.

"Saving you."

"No, I'm saving you."

"You made a good start. Let me finish."

The firing on the other side of the room reached a crescendo. A few of the fighters over there turned and rushed in their direction, firing as they advanced.

"Gain some altitude," Jeridan said. He fumbled in the back seat for two of the grenades he had dropped while unloading. Maybe clumsiness wasn't all a bad thing. Aurora shot the hovercar up, nearly smacking Jeridan's head against what remained of the roof.

"Careful!" he yelped. "I'm going to have to give you driving lessons."

"Sorry. I'm not used to driving while getting shot at."

"I am. I'll add that to the lesson plan."

Jeridan retrieved the grenades. He sat for a moment, summoning the last of his focus and muscle control. He could feel himself sinking fast. Bullets smacked into the hovercraft. Aurora hid herself behind the dashboard.

Just one more minute, Jeridan old pal. Then you can let that loser Negasi take care of the rest.

Securing a grenade between his legs, a place he would never put it if he didn't have to, he pulled the fuse with his one good hand, grabbed it, and tossed it at the gunmen ten meters below. As the bomb detonated, he did the same with the second one and threw it at the group in the doorway.

Jeridan didn't have the strength to throw it that far, but it came close enough. Several of the raiders fell, and the rest scattered.

The hovercraft lurched, his stomach lurching as well, and they spiraled downwards to land right next to the throne. Aurora hopped out and pushed a button on the arm of the throne. A doorway in the dome rose with a poorly oiled squeak.

It was only then that he noticed a pair of old, battered hovercars with machine guns mounted on the back. The equipment from the Antikythera was heaped inside.

"Can you still drive?" she called over her shoulder as she ran for the hovercars.

"Sure," he said, trying to sound confident. He flopped like a fish as he tried to get into the driver's seat.

"Good. Follow me!"

Just then the big guy in the furs sprang up, grabbed a double-bladed axe from behind the throne, and rushed Aurora, bellowing with rage.

"Watch out!" Jeridan cried.

Another eruption of gunfire on the other side of the room drowned out his words. Aurora climbed into one of the hovercars, her back to the barbarian, unaware that he was closing in on her, axe raised over his head.