by T. A. White
All was not lost, however. The crew would have been in a rush, knowing death was imminent. They wouldn't have had time to do a thorough job.
That's where Kira came in. She was good at finding the spots they'd missed.
She pushed off the floor, floating up as she checked the fuel cells first. Just one of those in half-decent condition would keep her solvent for months.
She worked through the room, her hopes falling further and further as she moved.
"Couldn't have made things easy for me, could you?" she asked the body of an engineer as she pulled it from where he’d been wedged in a small recessed part of the engine.
So far, she'd only found two cells semi-intact. Not quite the score she'd been hoping for.
She gave the engineer a push, sending him floating in the opposite direction before moving into the tight spot.
"What's this?" she asked herself, staring at an intact compartment.
She got out her tools, careful as she took the compartment apart. Surprised pleasure suffused her as she revealed what was inside. A fully intact piece of their engine drive. Rare and valuable. She suspected there were three more like it in the compartments to her left, each one slightly bigger than her fist.
She studied the first with a frown. In its casing, it was stable, but removing it without the proper shielding would cause it to degrade. If it degraded past a certain point, it would cause a catastrophic failure resulting in an explosion.
Good thing Kira planned for everything.
She pulled a glass-like tube off her suit, removing each piece of her find and dropping it into the tube before closing it and pressing the button on top. It lit with a soft blue glow.
The cylinder had been developed specifically for this purpose. It would keep the elements inside from destabilizing long enough for her to get it to her buyer.
Inside, she danced a little victory dance. A score like this would keep her floating for a good year or more.
Next, she moved to the other end of the engine compartment, removing some of the electronics and stripping the wiring. The metal would fetch a nice price even if the original purpose was fried.
Each item she removed was stored in a bag at her side.
On this first trip, she was mainly doing reconnaissance, cataloging items of value and identifying the equipment she’d need to salvage when she returned. Only small items, or those considered too valuable to leave behind, would be salvaged on this expedition. A find like this could take years to adequately strip.
When she judged the engine room sufficiently deprived of the things she could carry in the small sack at her side, she headed for the command center in the foredeck. Buried in the most protected part of the ship, each command center looked and operated a little differently.
One thing remained the same—it was the military and strategic mind of the ship, a source of valuable intel if the Tsavitee ever decided to return.
This command center was in the shape of a hexagon with no exterior windows. On a human vessel, there would have been countless screens keeping track of conditions and data as circumstances changed. Not so for the Tsavitee. Another mystery to go along with all the rest. No one knew exactly how they flew their ships or sent orders out to their troops.
Kira floated to a stop at the door, careful now she was here. She wouldn't put it past the Tsavitee to set traps for the unwary. She'd seen it before.
She peered inside, her headlamps illuminating the large room. Parts of the space shimmered, giving her a glimpse of a strange, silvery cloud of dust floating inside.
Razor ash. Damn.
The captain of this ship had been smarter than she'd given him credit for. He'd read the signs of where the battle was heading and then deployed defensive measures to secure the information housed in this room.
Razor ash wasn't anything to fuck with. It was diamond-hard, capable of cutting through damn near anything, including her suit.
If even a few specks attached to her, she would decompress within seconds. The suit might be able to repair minor tears, but once the ash got inside, it would eat away at the lining and destroy any electronic circuits–to say nothing of what it would do to her flesh.
It wasn't a pleasant way to go.
The captain and his officers were buckled into their seats, their clothes ragged and their flesh pockmarked from the razor ash.
Kira hovered in the corridor as she considered her options.
The ash didn't have the same tracking system as the eel. It was meant to stand sentry, forever sweeping through the room on the lookout for intruders. Otherwise, it would have locked onto her already. As long as she didn't disturb it, she should be safe enough.
A smarter person would have turned around and left. The haul at her side was plenty.
She pushed off the wall behind her, plotting a course through the room to maximize the chances of avoiding the ash. Lucky for her, it had settled against the far-left side before snaking along the ceiling above, leaving an open path from the hall to the captain’s chair.
Kira wanted whatever the captain had deemed important enough to set the ash as a permanent watchdog.
She slowly floated through the room, careful not to use her thrusters. The energy signature their use would throw out would have the ash locking onto her within seconds.
She arrowed toward the console in front of the captain, judging it as the most likely to contain useful information.
She checked the ash's progress. It was stationary, but that could change at any moment.
Satisfied she was safe for now, Kira stripped the metal housing from the console, exposing its innards. The information stored in the chips inside was protected by several layers of metal sheeting. It would take time to reach the bits she wanted.
She was halfway through when the ash rippled, sliding through the room as it drifted into a new pattern.
Kira worked faster as the ash floated closer.
Almost there. Almost there.
Kira pried the metal loose, using a pair of force grips to wrench it free, much like a can opener would, the unique alien metal folding under the force and exposing the circuitry inside.
A sheet of razor ash moved in front of the door, cutting off her escape. She grunted as she reached in and started pulling pieces free, storing each one in her bag as the leading edge of the ash slid closer and closer.
Looked like it planned to settle right where she was.
It was inches from her helmet when she pushed off the floor, sliding to the left and away from the first edge of the ash. The move took her deeper into the room.
The ash settled into its new pattern, completely shrouding the doorway.
Kira huffed at the sight. She was well and truly trapped.
She flicked her eyes to the right, bringing up her stats. One hour and sixteen minutes of air left. Under normal circumstances, it should have been plenty to get her to the Wanderer.
Waiting the ash out would be her preference. Maybe it adopted a new pattern every hour.
Kira sighed. Her luck had never been the best. If she were wrong, she would have wasted valuable time when she could have been escaping. If she died from asphyxiation, Jin would probably follow her into the next world just to laugh at her.
Time for a new plan.
She pressed a button on her suit and swiveled to face one of the far walls. From what she'd seen on the way in, this wall was unlikely to be a bulkhead. It'd be thinner than the outer walls and would make a perfect spot for a new door.
She unhooked one of the tools, flicking a button. The laser torch ignited, a blue-white light flared out, blinding against the darkness as she set it against the metal.
The razor ash rippled, sensing the disturbance in the small space. A tentacle reached out from the mass as it snaked toward Kira.
Kira kept one eye on the approaching mass as she burned through the metal, counting down the seconds as death advanced on her.
She finished cutting a small door out of
the metal, sinking a savage kick against the wall. The sheet popped out, the edges glowing red-hot from the torch.
Kira didn’t waste any time, pushing off as she flicked her thrusters on.
This was going to be close.
The ash missed her by millimeters as she rocketed down the hallway, searching for the quickest way to space. She needed out of this ship five minutes ago.
Up ahead, a dark cloud swarmed out of a hallway, eating through one of the dead crew as it raced toward Kira.
She arrowed down a corridor to her left, cursing her luck. It had found its way out of the room a lot easier than it should have.
That meant it was programmed to search and destroy once triggered.
Lucky her.
Kira spotted a hole in the hull and shot toward it, the ash only feet away as it chased her through the ship.
She turned her thrusters on maximum, pushing for more speed. She needed every bit if she didn’t want to die an ugly death in the next few seconds.
Kira darted through the hole, barely clearing it on either side. She was already broadcasting before she was clear. The message was set on a loop in case the Tsavitee ship was still playing havoc with her comms.
“Jin, get the ship ready. I’m coming in hot.”
*
"What do you mean it’s broken?" Kira stared into the innards of the ship's engine.
"Someone decided to haul tail for the ship dragging two eels and a crap-ton of razor ash. You're lucky the damage was this minor," Jin snapped. "If I wasn't the amazing pilot I am, the ship and you would have been toast."
"If you were so amazing, the ship would never have been touched," Kira muttered to herself, prodding the offending part.
"What was that?" Jin's voice was sharp.
"Nothing."
"That's what I thought you said. Nothing." Jin's voice trailed off as he turned away from her.
"Can't you fix it with one of the 3D printers we have on board?" Kira complained.
That's why she had paid an arm and a leg for one after all—to make the necessary repairs when they were in the deep of space.
"No. Someone decided not to pay the tax on the last batch of material, so I don't have enough to fabricate what I need."
Kira looked away. She was that someone. In her defense, the tax had been increased nearly fifty percent this last time. It was robbery, pure and simple. They got away with it because most ships waited until the last minute to order the raw materials they needed for the printer. The station was one of the few in several million miles that looked the other way on some of the salvagers’ less-than-legal business endeavors.
Kira rubbed her forehead, trying to soothe away the headache beginning to sink its claws into her.
"Even if we did have the material, it wouldn't matter. That part is highly technical. It's impossible to replicate. I can fabricate a workaround but it has a limited shelf life. Once it goes, we'll barely have sublight speed."
Which for a ship out on the edge of nowhere could be a death sentence.
Kira's headache got worse.
She let out a frustrated sigh. "Alright, let's route to Omega Station. We can get the part we need there."
"Can't," Jin said, his voice slightly tinny and flat.
"Why not?"
"Because the part we need is at O'Riley Station."
Kira stiffened, turning to look at her friend. Jin hovered several feet above the deck, his spherical body no bigger than her head. His shell was an out-of-date military grade drone coupled with all the advances she could get her hands on. Although his parts might be metal and hardware, his mind was pure organic sapience, with all the pitfalls that might bring.
"You can't tell me Omega doesn't have what we need."
Jin was the cool voice of logic and reason in almost any situation. But every now and then, he developed vexing opinions. When he did, things tended to go very badly for Kira.
It was on the tip of her tongue to ask what he was up to. She refrained. If she were wrong, the question would offend him, and she'd have to live with a grumpy drone for the next few days—one with control of the ship's internal sensors including temperature and hot water.
"I've already checked the catalogs we downloaded during our last stop. They were out then and weren’t due to be replenished for several months. We'd be stuck in port while we wait for the next shipment of spare parts," he told her, a soft whir sounding as Jin turned to face Kira, a small lens observing her.
Kira knew he'd done it for her benefit, turning his “eye” on her so she'd know he was serious. She'd upgraded pretty much every part of him herself. There were over a hundred small cameras installed on his exterior to help him “see” and analyze the world. The lens was a joke between the two of them taken from an old Earth show he'd since adopted into his personal habits.
"We'd be okay short-term, but eventually it would fuck up the entire engine. You don't want to be out a few hundred million miles from the nearest station trying to replace it, would you?"
It was a rhetorical question. As the person who handled their money, he knew exactly how much they had in their accounts and it was nowhere near enough to outfit an entirely new engine.
She growled in frustration. "This had better not be you meddling in my life again. You know how much I hate that place."
He started for the door. "Maybe you should be more careful in your flight maneuvers then."
She threw a wrench.
The wrench froze three inches from him. There was a slight whomp as he tossed the wrench back toward her.
"At least this way, we'll get top dollar for the wreckage you salvaged instead of having to go through a middleman," he said, his voice trailing behind him as he left the room.
Somehow, his silver lining didn't make Kira feel any better.
CHAPTER TWO
Kira vibrated with impatience as she waited for the airlock to open. Jin was busy on the bridge, completing the docking checklist required of every ship prior to its passengers disembarking.
His job was made more difficult by the fact they'd chosen the cheapest option for a berth. It meant they docked on the outside of the station, lining their airlock up with one of many on the station's underside. It was less expensive, but it came with more security checks.
They could have chosen the more expensive route of docking on the flight deck on the interior of the station, but Kira had rejected the option before Jin could propose it.
They couldn't afford to waste the money. Besides, this option allowed for a quick getaway if necessary. She had a past on this station. Coming back here even after years away was tempting fate.
She fidgeted with the sleeves of her hoodie, pulling it over her hands. She was dressed simply in a pair of utilitarian cargo pants that fit nicely while giving her freedom of movement. A camisole and thin hoodie completed the outfit.
She was average-sized for a woman, barely hitting five feet, seven inches. She had a runner's frame, lean and lithe, with muscles stretched over her long lines.
Despite her apparent slimness, she possessed a hidden strength, surprising many an enterprising salvager seeking to take advantage of her. They saw the delicateness of her features, the burgundy color of her hair and gray-purple eyes that changed colors in a certain light, and made certain assumptions.
Assumptions she was happy to disabuse them of.
Jin floated toward her.
"You finished?" she asked. She was already itching to be gone, mostly because she wanted this trip over and done with. The sooner she got on the station and finished her task, the sooner she could return to the safety of the Wanderer.
"All done," he chirped. "The station's AI was extremely slow. It’s long past due for an update."
"You didn't talk to a human?" Kira asked.
"They ask too many questions. I hacked the station and dropped our application directly into their systems. We should be good to go."
It seemed her friend had thought of everything.
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She folded her arms across her small chest and turned to the airlock as he took up his customary spot, hovering to the left of her head. His small form nearly brushed against the hair she kept cut just below her chin. It waved around her face like miniature tentacles, one of the reasons she kept it short—the better to contain its madness.
"Remember the rules, Kira. Don't draw notice if you can help it. Don't start fights. Don't give people a reason to look twice at us," Jin warned.
"I got it the first time." And the second. And the third; to say nothing of the fourth. At this point, Jin was beginning to sound like a broken record.
"I want to make sure. You have a tendency of forgetting when it suits your needs," Jin said as the airlock hissed open.
Kira hesitated to step off her ship. Jin had nothing to worry about. She had no interest in bringing attention to them. Her entire way of life counted on staying beneath everyone's notice. She hadn't come this far to throw it all away.
"In and out. No problem," Kira told herself.
"There better not be," Jin snorted. "Without that part, we won't make it to the next station."
Kira ignored him and stepped into the docking tube, her plain black boots echoing softly around them as Jin whirred at her side.
*
"It's so different," Jin said in awe as he took in the station. "It looks nothing like it did during the war."
Gone were the utilitarian gray walls and narrow spaces she remembered from her previous visit. They'd been perfectly functional—sterile, not a small scrap of color to soften the place. Now, the station looked elegant and timeless, bright spots of color saving it from being too monotonous.
Peacetime had been good to O’Riley, taking it from an obscure military outpost to a thriving hub of trade and government. The central area where warships had once docked for servicing was now an open-air market. The atrium slightly resembled a beehive, with dozens of levels of terraces clinging to the edges and a wide-open space in the middle of the station where several varieties of small ships floated from level to level like bees sampling the different delights.