The Fractured Void

by Tim Pratt

  Thales looked up briefly. “There’s a distinction?”

  “Piracy is going out on a ship and stealing something from another ship. Sometimes, you steal the other ship while you’re there. Burglary is entering a place illegally with the intent of removing something that doesn’t belong to you. Robbery is stealing something from another person directly, usually with threats of violence, or actual violence.”

  “I suppose every field of study has its own terminology. Burglary and robbery are outside your skillset, then?”

  “I didn’t say that, but part of doing a job like this is making use of expert assistance.” Flattering Thales couldn’t hurt. “You’re an expert on alien technology, aren’t you? So help us fake something that looks plausible enough to catch the director’s interest.”

  Thales put down his tools and scowled. “You need something that will pass for an alien artifact of unknown provenance. Something that has properties, or purports to have properties, that the head of experimental research and development at the University will find interesting, and want to see in person. I’m sure I can come up with something, though I may need some source material to create it. There’s nothing on this ship that would pass for a component of an alien device.”

  “Fortunately, we’re headed for a huge junkyard,” Felix said. “It should have all the weird trash you could ever want.”

  “No doubt you’ll feel very at home there,” Thales said.

  “Because I’m trash, you mean?”

  “That was my implication, yes.”

  “Do you remember our conversation about how you need to be less terrible all the time?”

  Thales chuckled, and it was a low, nasty, oily sound. “I thought we understood each other, captain. You’ve proven you’ll do whatever I ask, if it’s necessary for my project. That even if you suspect me of murder, you’ll obey your superiors and give me what I want. In light of those facts, I think we can dispense with all that nonsense about courtesy.”

  “Do you really want to see how far you can push me, Thales?”

  “I’m a theorist first and foremost, captain, but I’m also an engineer, and it’s useful for engineers to know the tolerances of their equipment.”

  Felix stared at him. “I’m your equipment, am I?”

  “You are one small component in a machine I am creating – a machine that will transform the galaxy and shift the balance of power, and in favor of your nation. You’re a vital component, captain, rest assured. I couldn’t do this without you. There’s no shame in serving your role properly. Let me know when we’ve reached this junkyard of yours, and I’ll solve your problem.” He turned his back. Felix was dismissed.

  Felix looked at a heavy wrench on a nearby table. He could pick it up, swing it hard, cave in the man’s skull, and ruin all that remarkable gray matter. Of course, he wouldn’t do that, but it gave him a warm feeling to know he could.

  I never used to daydream about murdering anyone, Felix thought. Thales was such a terrible person, he was making Felix into a worse one, like his terribleness was contagious. Or even radioactive.

  •••

  Vega Major wasn’t a particularly nice place to visit. The planet had beautiful rings, but those rings were infested by mining ships and surrounded by orbital habitats to support the miners – which meant, at least, that there were plenty of bars and other entertainments available, though they were a bit grease-stained and grimy. The surface of the planet was habitable, technically, but its seas were inhabited by vast numbers of unintelligent giant squid. There were colonies down there, but the colonists required a high tolerance for eating squid and, potentially, being eaten by squid, if they strayed too close to the water.

  The sister planet, Vega Minor, was a nicer place, and home to a respected company, the Vega Propulsion Corporation. (Felix asked if there was maybe an experimental power source there they could steal instead, but Thales said they didn’t have anything suitable, and then went off on a long rant about how the corporation had cheated him on some engine component he’d devised.) The stilt-cities that dotted the shallow seas there were home to thriving populations drawn from all over the galaxy, and the one time Felix had visited, he’d thought the place would fit right in as part of the Coalition.

  Alas, they weren’t going to Vega Minor. They were on the far side of Vega Major instead, approaching what looked like the aftermath of a horrific space battle. A vast cloud of floating wreckage filled their viewscreen, with hundreds of ships of all descriptions floating in various states of destruction or disrepair. There were Mentak cruisers, Federation pickets, Letnev thorn ships, even – “Is that a Muaat war sun?” Felix stared.

  “It’s almost half of a Muaat war sun,” Calred said. “Last time I was here, Sagasa was bragging about winning the contract to scrap it. Someone else won the other half – the Embers didn’t want to give anyone the whole thing, lest they try to get it up and running again. All the armaments were removed, of course, but still. It’s an impressive hunk of metal, isn’t it?”

  Felix whistled. The Coalition had big terrifying weapons platforms too, of course – all the major factions did – but the Muaat war suns set the gold standard for horrifying military overkill. He’d never seen one of them this close up, and had always assumed that if he ever did, it would mean he was about to die.

  When they got closer to the debris cloud, it became more obvious this wasn’t a graveyard, but a recycling center. Drones floated everywhere among the wrecks, blowtorches sparking, saws spinning, articulated arms plucking and sorting components into carts that looked small in comparison to the ships around them but were actually the size of houses.

  A bored voice spoke over the comms. “Welcome to Sagasa Scrap and Salvage, we make old things new again, how can we help you today?”

  “I’d like a meeting with Sagasa,” Felix replied.

  “The Disciplinarian is very busy today, I’m afraid–”

  “Tell him I have a large black ops budget I’d like to spend on him,” Felix said.

  A moment’s pause. “The Disciplinarian doesn’t take new clients of that sort without a referral.”

  “Tell him Calred the Hacan is part of the crew,” Felix said.

  A long pause. “From Moll Primus?”

  “That’s the one,” Calred rumbled.

  “One moment please.” A longer pause. “Proceed to dock B and follow instructions.”

  Their ship interfaced with the Sagasa Scrap and Salvage docking system, the Disciplinarian’s computers guiding them on a safe path through the field of wreckage. From a military perspective, this place was incredibly defensible – any force that tried to get to the station at the center of this mess would have to navigate the debris field, and a lot of those ships still had working fuel and propulsion systems, which meant a lot of them could be easily turned into bombs. Calred said once you got deeper into the debris field, some of the ships weren’t wrecks at all, but fully functional warships, disguised as junk. Attack could come from any or all directions, in there. “I’m glad Sagasa is on our side,” he muttered.

  “Ha!” Calred laughed from his security station. “Sagasa is on his own side. He’ll make deals with anybody and everybody. He says we’re all equal in the eyes of the divine, so who is he to discriminate?”

  “I can’t wait to meet him,” Felix said.

  Chapter 16

  “I hate ocean planets.” Severyne gazed through the viewport at the looming shape of Vega Major, and the gentle curve of Vega Minor beyond. “All that water, none of it fit to drink. Wasteful and inefficient. There is darkness and depth and pressure, yes, if you go down far enough, but then, those depths are so often full of teeming monsters.”

  Azad stood beside her. “On the other hand, there’s lounging on the beach, maybe someone attractive rubbing lotion on your back, you swim in the warm water, it’s got upsides.”

&n
bsp; “There are species who consider such activities pleasant, I know, but the relentless sun is my own vision of horror.”

  “So you sit under an umbrella, or wear a big hat. You’d look good in a big hat, Sev. Much better than you do in that flat cap with the little brim and the silver stars on it you were wearing when we first met. You can sip fruity boozy drinks out of hollowed-out examples of the very same fruit that’s blended up in the drink. Surely you can appreciate that – it’s efficient, right?”

  Severyne’s lips twitched. She very nearly smiled. “You must think the Letnev a joyless people. It isn’t true. We simply take pleasure in things that your species, as a whole, does not. I find joy in competence, and order, and important work done well.”

  “Sure, all that stuff is great,” Azad said. “But have you tried getting drunk and sleeping with a stranger?”

  Severyne resolutely ignored that. “I assume this cloud of wreckage is our destination?” The screen lit up with hundreds of targets, ships all ringed in green to show the system didn’t consider them current threats.

  “Welcome to the scrapyard of Sagasa the Disciplinarian. Biggest and best junkyard in the sector.”

  Severyne narrowed her eyes. “I see Letnev ships among his inventory. How did he come by those? We decommission our own vessels in the Barony.”

  “You’re looking at the far end point of battlefield economics, Sev. The Barony gets into the occasional fight, doesn’t it? And, contrary to what your national propaganda says, you don’t win every engagement. After a battle, the winning side recovers what they can, but usually they have to rush off to kill some other people someplace else, or they need to resupply, or they’re chasing down survivors, or they got beat up badly enough themselves that they need to limp home for repairs both medical and mechanical. There are teams of freelance scrappers who pay closer attention to politics than most politicians do, so they know where battles are likely to break out, and they hang around. After the surviving forces withdraw, the scavengers go in, and they gather what’s worth selling.”

  Severyne had never really thought about what happened in the aftermath of a space battle. Logistics wasn’t her area, and neither was military engagement; she worked in what was sometimes called “inward-facing” security. “They loot battlefields and sell the spoils to people like Sagasa?”

  “Only the junk.” Azad leaned on the curving black rail in front of Severyne’s chair, a posture that thrust out her rear end in Severyne’s direction in a rather distracting way. “Salvage that still works gets sold to mercenaries, or local forces, or sometimes they sell it back to the military that lost it in the first place, at a price that’s slightly cheaper than sourcing new stuff from a factory would be. The scavengers also perform other, ah, crucial functions. Delivering mercy, and the like.”

  “That sounds like a euphemism. We don’t like euphemisms in the Barony, Azad. We prefer to view the world as it is.”

  “They kill the dying, Sev. Space battles are different from terrestrial ones – they tend to be a lot more all-or-nothing, because if your ship gets destroyed, you get destroyed, so there are fewer wounded, overall. Fewer doesn’t mean zero, though, and there are always people lingering with significant bits of their anatomy missing in the aftermath, and no help on the way.”

  “The scavengers murder battlefield survivors?” Why had Severyne’s required courses on military engagements not covered this material? Probably because the Barony didn’t like admitting to losses of any kind.

  Azad said, “Oh, not always. Only the ones who are too far gone. They patch up people who can be patched up without too much trouble, and get them back home, for a price. Most factions will pay for the safe return of officers, and for grunts… well, ideally their return gets lumped into a purchase of weapons and supplies. If you’re an outside contractor or a mercenary though? Forget it. Nobody’s paying to get you back.”

  That was disturbing, but Severyne knew the military had to make difficult decisions. “Freelancers are summarily executed?”

  “No, you’re not thinking like a scavenger,” Azad said. “Try again.”

  A test, then. An intellectual exercise. Severyne had always excelled at those. It was translating them to practical application that was proving harder than she’d ever anticipated. “If the point is to extract maximum value, turning what others view as waste into profit, and there are survivors who cannot be converted into money, they must instead be converted into… labor? The scavengers enslave them?”

  Azad turned and gave her a smile. “Very good. Really it’s more like indenture, because that’s almost as good as slavery, and you get fewer rebellions from within and sapient rights complaints from without. If the scavengers save your life, and nobody pays them for the trouble they took to save you, you can always work off your debt. The pay is reasonable, and they treat their employees well, overall. Plenty of people choose to stay on even after their debt is paid, and some of them settle into scavenging for life. It’s dangerous work, salvaging battlefields – there’s always lots of unexploded ordnance that might explode when you touch it, flying debris that can puncture your suit or your lungs, things like that. There’s a lot of, let’s say, turnover, so new recruits are always welcome. Honestly, though, after you’ve barely survived a battle, being a salvager seems pretty safe in comparison.”

  There was something about Azad’s voice. “You speak as if from experience.”

  “I’ve spent a good chunk of my career as a deniable asset – nobody pays for my safe return. Either I make my own way home, or I don’t go home at all. I spent six months working for a salvage outfit that found me stuck in a crumpled escape pod tube in a wrecked ship after an engagement went bad. That’s when I met Sagasa, actually.”

  “You have had a rich and varied life, haven’t you, Azad?”

  “I like going new places and meeting new people.” She winked. “Just think, if my mission had gone more smoothly, and I’d snatched up Thales without getting all tangled with Duval and those pirates, you and I would never have met. Wouldn’t that be a tragedy?”

  “If you hadn’t failed in your mission, Duval would never have attacked my station and put my life in danger, and I would be in my quarters right now, sleeping, instead of going to meet a criminal Hacan in a junkyard.”

  “Life does take some unexpected turns, doesn’t it?” Azad said.

  •••

  A voice over the comms said, “Welcome to Sagasa Scrap and Salvage, we make old things new again, how can we help you today?”

  “Tell the old crook his favorite scrapper Amina just brought him a top-of-the-line Letnev warship,” Azad said.

  “What?” Severyne gasped.

  •••

  The station at the center of the debris cloud was a tangle of metal bolted together from castoff habitat modules, with entire scrapped ships welded into the middle of corridor rings. “It looks like a work of very bad art,” Felix said.

  “The station started out as a standard modular system, but over the years Sagasa has embellished the place,” Calred said. “I know it looks like a haphazard garbage heap, but it’s built solid, and the placement of those ships isn’t random – they’re placed at set intervals, and their weapons systems are still intact, and pointed outward.”

  “This is like a warlord’s fortress,” Felix said. “Does Sagasa really expect to be attacked?”

  “Scrap and salvage is a cut-throat, low-margin business, and when you add in the Disciplinarian’s not-strictly-legal activities… a man like him can make a lot of enemies. The Vega Corporation doesn’t love having a hub of slime and criminality so close to their headquarters, either. Sagasa has repelled an assault or two over the years. He repelled them robustly enough that not many people have tried him since.”

  “I’m glad we don’t have to steal anything from here,” Felix said.

  “Indeed. Stealing from
Sagasa would doubtless result in disciplinary action.”

  They docked with the station and headed down to the airlock, Felix in the lead, Cal a step behind on his left, Tib in the back, clearly wishing she was invisible. (Calred said sneaking around Sagasa’s station wasn’t advisable. The Disciplinarian would be annoyed if he found out.) The interior of the ship did away with the scrap-heap motif, the corridor walls and floor made of smoothly polished metal, with discreet cameras dotted everywhere – but not so discreet you’d fail to notice them if you looked, which was presumably the point. Sagasa wanted you to know you were being watched, and watched by a professional.

  A Winnaran in an elaborate jeweled headdress waited for them in the corridor beyond the airlock, hands clasped behind him. “Do you have any weapons to declare?”

  “Not on us,” Felix said.

  The Winnaran seemed unconvinced, and pointed a handheld scanner at them each in turn before nodding. “This way.” He turned smartly and led them down a twisting maze of corridors, and as they made it closer to the heart of the station, they encountered several reinforced doors with recessed gunports. Those doors didn’t open right away, and the Winnaran waited patiently at each one, clearly used to this level of security. Eventually their little group reached a cavernous waiting room that Felix recognized as the repurposed bridge of a Coalition dreadnought; that gave him a weird sense of pride. The stations and seats had been stripped out, replaced by large pots of lush green climbing plants that wound around the stripped frames of tactical panels and navigation screens. The overall aesthetic was like being in a spaceship that had crash-landed in a jungle some years before.

  The door that would have led to the captain’s ready room on a functioning ship was flanked by a pair of guards wearing armored exo-suits so elaborate that Felix couldn’t guess the species of the beings inside. In addition to the plasma and kinetic weapons built into their suits, the door guards also held more primitive weapons – wooden poles with elaborately curved and recurved spikes of bronze on the heads.