Salvage
By
UCSBdad
Disclaimer: I'd love to salvage Castle, but it's gone. Rating: K Time: The future, after my story Shipwreck.
"No, to begin with no one would believe the Emperor had given us an Imperial Rescript authorizing us to loot the treasury. That means we'd have to sell it to an interested party. But which interested party? A general, certainly, but which one? We'd have to pick a general whose staff wasn't thoroughly infiltrated by Singh's secret police, one who wouldn't pay us off with a blaster bolt to the head, one who had the guts to overthrow Singh and not just talk about it, one who…You get the idea. We don't know the players so we're better off dealing with Singh. And he knows it."
"So, some other general ends up running things here. So what?" Hastings asked.
"The off-planet merchants who run the spaceport don't care who runs the planet, but they do care that it's run well and peaceably. The dirtside spaceport and the orbital docks, repair facilities, warehouses and what not employ over 25,000 locals. If the planet becomes chaotic, every one of them is going to head for the spaceport along with their extended families, all their valuables and probably the family dog, or whatever passes for one around here. Some of them, maybe a lot of them, won't make it. In addition, the city businesses provide a lot of things for the spaceport. Food is too high bulk and low value to ship here, so they buy locally. Everything in this hotel was sourced locally down to the cheap plastic cups in the bathroom. And more, of course."
"If the city of Dorvan Prime turns to shit, the merchants lose money bigtime."
"Speaking if money, how much do we get for this?" Hastings asked.
"You four will each get eight hundred and seventy-five thousand Terran Economic Union Credits." Castle said. "And since Beckett and I are providing the ship, battle walkers and incidentals, we get more."
"Eight hundred and seventy-five thousand tooks?" O'Connell said. "Jesus, Mary, Joseph and all the Saints. That much?"
"We're giving the man back control of a planet worth a million times that much. To Singh it's chump change."
"How do we collect?" LT asked.
"The money has been put in escrow in an account in the Banco de Terra Interestellar here in the spaceport. When we come back, we go to the bank, hand over the rescript and Singh's man hands over the cash under the eagle eye of the bank manager."
"Can we trust the bank?" Hastings asked.
"Banks have learned not to cheat heavily armed and violent mercenaries. I haven't heard that any banks here have had a sudden attack of stupidity."
"When do we go?" Esposito asked.
"We pick up the battle walkers tomorrow, load them on the ship along with other supplies and we'll head out tomorrow night. The trip will take about a week."
The four left for their own rooms, leaving Rick and Kate alone.
"How difficult is this one going to be?" She asked.
"I don't know. Singh knows jack shit about Tallin since the Imperials shot the place up. It could be a walk in the park, or it could be bad. You could stay in the ship, you know."
Kate laughed.
"And let you wander around a dangerous planet all by yourself?"
"I'll hardly be alone. I have four pretty good people with me."
"Yeah, one of which is a hot young blonde."
"Really? I hadn't noticed. Who is it?"
"I don't believe a word of that, but because you were so very nice to say that I'm going to be very nice to you."
She walked towards the bedroom, slowly shedding articles of clothing. He followed right behind her.
The next morning, they took a shuttle up to the orbital warehouse of Walmer, the arms merchant, to pick up their battle walkers. Castle knew something was wrong as soon as he saw Walmer. He was smiling, as he always did, but he looked nervous.
"What's the problem, Walmer? If this costs me the job, I'll have your head."
"There's no real problem. A small concern. That's it. A small concern. Nothing more and I have already fixed it."
"Excellent. Let me have my six walkers and I'll be on my way."
"Yes, the six walkers. Those six walkers were…Uh…damaged. I have filed a lawsuit with the stevedore company. It's all their fault."
"How bad is the fault?" Castle said, resting his hand on the butt of his blaster.
"It will take two weeks to repair them. Perhaps longer. But I have…"
"A very odd idea of what a small concern is. I need those walkers now."
"I have some for you. I have eight brand new Tata Armaments of Terra fifteen-ton walkers, much better than your ten-ton walkers. I am actually doing you a favor. And it will only cost you an additional ten thousand tooks per walker."
Castle smiled.
"I must have a problem with my hearing. I thought you said that your screw up was going to cost me an additional ten thousand per walker. And by the way, only need six. That's how many people I have."
"Eight walkers are better, Mr. Castle. They can be programmed to follow the manned walkers and can be loaded with spare supplies instead of the crewman. Or crewwoman." He quickly added, seeing Kate and Hastings. "They can be programed to stand guard when you sleep."
"Like I'd risk my life like that." Rick shot back. "I might be willing to take the two extra walkers, and I might even be able to pay a little bit, repeat a little bit, extra for the two spare walkers."
"How much is a little bit?" Walmer asked.
"Say four thousand total."
"Four thousand? Do you want my first-born child as well?" Walmer shrieked.
"I've seen your first-born child. If she's part of the deal, I want the extra walkers for free."
The bargaining went on for half an hour until Castle got the eight walkers for an additional eight thousand total. He actually thought that the extra walkers would be a good idea.
They checked out the walkers and found that they were as advertised, brand new and in excellent shape. Meanwhile, Kate took a shuttle to get their ship.
On their second mission together, they had been transported by a smuggler named Krunk. As befitted a smuggler, Krunk had a fast small ship named Lucky Lucy. Lucy may have been lucky, but Krunk was not. He'd been shot during the getaway and Kate had to take over the ship. When he knew he was going to die before they got to anyplace that might have a hospital that could help him, Krunk had given Kate the control codes to the ship. That allowed her to take over the ship completely. With a bit of creative paperwork, Rick and Kate were the proud owners of a fine, fast ship.
Lucky Lucy was some eighty meters long and had a round hull some fifteen meters in diameter. Her two FTL engines had to be separated by pylons to prevent interference, so Lucy looked something like a winged aerial vehicle, which she was not, of course.
She did have a hull that was coated with collapsium, a dense man-made metal that served as armor.
Lucy was armed with two small blaster cannons, one mounted on top of the hull and the other on the bottom. They'd asked Krunk why his ship was armed since most smugglers depended on speed as their only defense. Krunk replied that the previous owner had installed the weapons and Krunk had found it was too expensive to have them removed. They didn't slow the ship down any, so there they stayed.
Kate backed Lucy into Walmer's warehouse. She could see the new walkers all lined up, ready to be brought aboard. They were some six meters tall, wide bodied with two "arms" that were medium power blaster cannons. One "arm" had a hand-like appendage for picking up things and the other had a "hand" that ended in metallic tenacles for more delicate work. Other light power blasters were situated around the hull to take care of minor problems. The walkers were armored with a microscopic layer of collapsium, the same as Lucy's hull. They had short, but powerful legs and were powered by a small fusion reactor. One by one, they were loaded into Lucky Lucy's cargo bay. That was followed by food, water, medical supplies, spare parts, the personal effects of the team, and other odds and ends they might need.
They were ready to go.
Kate took her place at the small bridge with Rick sitting behind her, at the engineer's station. Kate was the only qualified pilot and engineer they had, but the ship had an excellent AI and once in FTL, there wasn't much for Kate to do. Plus, Rick knew enough to help Kate if necessary.
Krunk the smuggler had had a painting of the very pulchritudinous Lucy by the bridge and he had always touched Lucy's boobs and asked if she was ready to go before take off. Kate did the same. Lucy always said she was ready. However, now she spoke in Kate's voice.
The trip took several hours under a week, but they arrived at the edge of Tallin's solar system.
"Shit. You could just about walk around the planet going from one mine to the next." O'Connell said.
"Someone tried that." Kate said, pointing to the view screen. There were the remains of a ship, torn and twisted by a mine detonation.
"No sign of life and no engine readings. She's dead." Kate said.
"Okay, this is where we start earning our money." Rick said. "Ready to broadcast the code to the mines?"
"Already doing that."
They moved in slowly and Kate made every effort to be ready to leave at maximum speed if things began to look bad. The closer they got to the orbital mines, the less chance they'd have of escaping. They passed within a hundred kilometers of a mine without incident, and everyone relaxed a bit. Kate put the ship in low orbit around the planet and ran a sensor sweep.
"Shit." She said when the sweep was done." We have a problem."
"What?" Everyone asked at once.
"We assumed we'd track the Imperial Navy monitor's location by the neutrino emissions from the engine. But there are dozens of neutrino emission sources down there. Ships must have avoided being destroyed in the bombardment and then were trapped by the minefield, plus there were probably installations that had fusion plants as well. We'll have to pick one and just keep looking until we find the right one."
"Anyone have any good ideas where to start?" Rick asked.
No one did.
"Okay, pick the nearest one and we'll check it out. We'll land right beside it, okay?"
They couldn't land right beside it.
"Those trees are monsters." Kate said. "They go up a good three hundred meters and are too big around for the ship to try to batter its way past them."
"Can we use the ship's guns to blast the trees away?" Hastings asked.
"Sure, but if it is an Imperial warship, loaded with missiles and a functioning fusion plant, a hit on it could blow us up along with half the planet."
"Okay, we'll land as close as we can and walk in." Rick said. "Kate, can you pick out a landing spot?"
She found one some ten kilometers away, not that far for a combat walker. Unless you're moving through a swamp.
"Dammit! I'm sinking!" Rick yelled over the comm. "Pull me out."
Hastings grabbed onto a tree with the walker's "hand" and wrapped the tentacles around Rick's walker.
"I'm not getting any movement." Ann yelled. "I need more help."
The rest pitched in and dragged Rick to solid ground.
"Okay, I'm going to climb a tree and take a look around." He said and went up the tree. He came back down in a few minutes.
"I saw what looks like a ridge a few hundred meters to the west. It'll take us longer to get there, but we'll get there."
The first problem they ran into was jungle vegetation.
"it's like walking through a solid wall." Esposito said as he tried to push through it.
"I have the answer to that." Rick said. "Strapped to my back is a king-sized machete with an edge of collapsium. That'll chop through the jungle like it wasn't even there."
And so, Rick chopped their way through the vegetation and soon the reached the rocky ridge.
TBC