“Space is filled with junk, that which had once been someone treasure, and with the potential to be treasure again for someone new. This junk, is not always unarmed, and not always willing to become treasure.”

Anonymous Master Salvager

Usually the life of a salvage pilot is filled with seemingly endless waiting for a damaged ship to pop up on scans. It isn’t every day a ship breaks down close enough to detect or manages to get a distress signal off before being blasted by pirates, but today there was little of the lethargy normally present in a certain salvage station.

Jason grunted as his blocky ship finally got the ship within suit range of the station. It had been long nervous work getting to the ship, connecting with a part of the ship so that his rear thrusters wouldn’t damage the military transporter he was currently hauling, and getting it to where it was now, but the prizes within promised to be worth the effort. He stopped his ship, disconnected, and set his own to move out of gun range of the derelict. As it was moving, he slipped out through the shuttle port on the bottom of his ship, and made his way back to the derelict.

The ship was a odd ship dull and tubular, with only turrets sticking out of its stides, no doors on the outside, and it was oddly colored too. It blurred against the nebulae behind it. He actually had to use his suit’s highlighting feature to arrive to land on the part he wanted too. This was especially important with his dangerous cargo.

One might think this simply entails grabbing a grinder and hacking the ship apart, but in truth the riches lie in removing components intact, as the most valuable pieces are usually the most delicate. As such, Jason seldom rushed while salvaging a ship, instead preferring to methodically clean out small sections of the ship, cut the empty piece off, then continue to the next.

Once Jason picked out where he wanted to enter the ship, he quickly began assembling a device that could only be described as a large upside down flower pot with metal legs jutting out of the sides. This contraption, the ‘Fire Flower’, as he called it, was designed for the purpose of getting into ships and fast.

For most ships, a simple grinder is sufficient to cut through the outer hull and bulkheads, but when you need to get in and get in fast, especially through heavy armor, a handheld grinder just doesn’t cut it. Usually, most salvagers use a ship-driven grinder to bore a hole in the hull, but they still run the risk of being shot down by the exterior turrets before they can retreat out of range. Instead, Jason opted for a different, slightly explosive option, thermite*. Originally used to quickly weld steel, thermite’s high combustion temperature also makes it perfect for burning through various metals and armors.

One such armor was sitting between Jason and the untold riches of an intact military vessel, but thanks to the Fire Flower–and its load of thermite–no amount of reinforced steel could deny Jason his prize. But, just as he was securing the Fire Flower to his designated entry point, a small message popped up on the bottom left of his suit’s HUD,

Victor: Got a distress call. Not a normal plea for help, though, it asked for a specific person, do we answer it?

Jason immediately stopped what he was doing. A salvager’s entire life was based on answering such calls, and Jason wasn’t about to just leave some random person to die, not to mention what he could get out of it, saving people can give the strangest rewards. One such reward was Victor, whom Jason had saved from a damaged scouting craft. Once dragged out of the ruined cockpit and healed of his wounds, Victor elected to remain with Jason and work on the salvage crew.

In the end the only reminder of Victor’s near death experience was his muteness, whether kept as a mark of pride or shame, Jason never knew. He had asked Victor a few times but never got an answer, and just resigned to learning sign language to communicate with his new employee.

“They asked for someone in particular? Odd, but at least that pretty much rules out a pirate ambush.”

Victor: Yes, someone named Fade. Not sure who that is, do you want to investigate?

“Sure, no point in leaving someone out to die, and even if I somehow get killed, I can always respawn back here.”

The medical room, the brainchild of Xian Jones, was the sole reason humanity had been able to survive in the dangerous reaches of space, where death was always an inch away. Those intelligent enough to understand it were rarer than perfect class M planets, but for the average space engineer, there were only 3 things to understand anyway, 1: Medbays will only allow the existence of one person at a time, 2: that a medbay will only make a new life if DNA is gathered from 2 donors**, 3: that there is a terminal killswitch in every clone that enforces 1. Corporations had been trying for centuries to break these rules, program the medbay to make clones of its best engineers to make the perfect workforce, but none ever managed to crack Jones’ codes.

Victor: You didn’t say we, so I assume I’m supposed to hold the fort?

“Yeah. Sorry, but we’ll need someone to protect the base just in case we get attacked.”

Victor: Makes sense I guess, but if you don’t report back at least every other day I’m going to go looking for you.

“I can do that.”

Victor: Might head over even if you check back in as long as I can get the turrets off the transporter and onto the base.

“Uhh… Sure, just make sure you look up some instructions on how to set them up, don’t want you getting killed over and over again until I get back.”

Victor: Point taken.

Victor’s status changed to: Reading instructions

“Okay, I’m going to take the Norm and my fighter, you need anything out of them before I go?”

Victor: Don’t think so, watch out for pirates.

“Will do, adios.”

With that Jason flew back to his ship, leaving the Fire Flower in place for Victor to use. With two whole storage containers on the Norm devoted entirely to housing Fire Flowers, Jason could afford to leave one behind for Victor’s convenience. Once he imputed the coordinates of the distress call into his navigation–someplace he’d never visited, or even ventured close to–Jason slipped into one of the two cryo pods onboard, wondering who he’d meet once he got to his destination, he never did listen to the recording.

*: A flammable combination of iron (III) oxide and aluminum capable of burning through most known substances (including your face, don’t make this stuff at home kids).

** It had been theorized, and proven using livestock, that the medbay was programmed with the ability to create sustainable life from donors of different species. Unfortunately for humans, the new life would only be as smart as both species could sustain. Every human/animal hybrid had the mental capacity of the animal, and there has been no alien life to test it with two sentient species.

Author's Note

The Wonderful work of Killer2447, with my editing assistance.