Salvage by Eric Brown

Author:Eric Brown
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: infinity plus
Published: 2013-07-08T12:00:00+00:00

7 /// Salvaging Pride

We slalomed through the asteroid belt.

Karrie sat forward in her sling, murmuring to herself, her right hand nervously tap-tapping on the worn control housing. I lay back and stared through the viewscreen, sweat marinating my ugly mug.

Ella lay between us, monitoring the read-outs with icy calm. She might have been running a simulation, not steering A Long Way From Home through an obstacle course on the edge of the Shlocken star system. The smartcore was jacked directly into her AI matrix, and her eyes were closed as she expertly manoeuvred the ship.

Karrie flinched suddenly and I gripped the frame of my sling. Asteroids cascaded towards us, seemingly dodging the viewscreen at the very last second. Of course, thanks to Ella’s dexterity, it was our ship doing the dodging.

And to think that, if we survived the asteroids, there was the possibility of Shlocken warships to contend with...

And then, if we evaded the Shlocken, we had to locate the exact moon where, a hundred years ago, a human-crewed freighter went down with all hands.

And that would be just the start of our troubles.

~

Karrie had said that attempting to salvage the freighter would be suicide.

“I mean, do we have to enter their system now, of all times? Look at what the Shlocken are doing to the colonists of Acrab.”

“All the more reason to enter their system behind their backs,” I’d responded. “They have all their ships patrolling the Acrab sector, and therefore fewer on the edge of their own star system.”

The Shlocken’s long running hostilities with the human settlers of the Acrab star system was hotting up again. The shrimps – as they were popularly known, for the obvious reason that they resembled the bug-eyed Terran crustaceans – had always claimed the system as their rightful property, even though they’d never colonised any of the planets there. Humans had settled a couple of planets in the system over a century ago and suffered at the hands of the hostile Shlocken ever since.

Just last week the shrimps had attacked a mining plant on one of the outermost planets, killing a hundred human workers.

“The shrimps are sadistic,” Karrie said. “They have no higher values. Their entire culture is based on conflict, combat.”

I said, “If we get in there, secure the wreck, and get out with it in tow... that’ll set us up for months, Karrie.”

She just stared at me, mutiny boiling in her grey eyes. “And must we enter the system through the asteroid belt?”

Ella explained, patiently, “Shlocken ships patrol the void in their dozens. But if we phase into normal space and approach the system along the plane of the ecliptic – through the asteroid belt – then we stand a better chance of being undetected by any warships that just might be in the vicinity.”

Karrie shook her head. “I’ll come along, but only under protest. This is insane.”

And as we dodged asteroids, with the possibility of warships to come, I was inclined to agree with her.

~

“There,” Ella said with impeccable sang-froid as the last asteroid slammed past us.

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