Salvage
By
UCSBdad
Disclaimer: I'd love to salvage Castle, but it's gone. Rating: K Time: The future, after my story Shipwreck.
They reached the ridge with no problems and climbed it, then proceeded to their target. They found that the ridge curved away a bit from the power source they'd found, but eventually, turned back towards it.
"Whoa." Rick said, stopping. "Something up ahead. "It's huge and it's moving. Moving slowly but moving."
"I think I have it in the briefing material we got for Tallin." Kate said. "It's called a fur rug; from the way it looks."
"Agreed. If fur rugs were a meter thick and covered a couple of acres." Rick replied.
"It's pretty much both a plant and an animal. The brown is the local analog of chlorophyl, and the fur rug also extracts needed minerals from the rocks it goes over,"
"Is the damned thing dangerous?"
"Doesn't say that it is."
"And it doesn't say that it isn't, I bet."
Castle though for a moment.
"Okay, I'm going to walk across the thing and see what happens. Be ready to shoot. Okay?"
Castle began walking and found it was like walking on a large, soft carpet. He began to relax.
Suddenly, the fur rug enveloped him, wrapping him tightly.
"I can't tell where you are." Castle commed. "If I shoot, I might hit one of you. Shoot it."
'The thing is moving around and you with it. We can't shoot without taking a chance of hitting you." Kate replied.
"I'll try to…"
Before he got any further, he was shot into the air and landed back on the rocky ridge.
"What'd you do?" He asked.
"Nothing. I think it spit you out. I guess you don't taste good." O'Connell said, laughing.
"I bet Kate likes how he tastes." Hastings said, also laughing.
"It was nice enough to spit you out on the other side." Kate said. "I'm going to try to walk across it."
The fur rug did move away a bit from Kate, but it was too slow to get all the way from her. She crossed it and the rest followed.
They stopped at the end of the ridge.
"I can see some metal down there." Rick said. "There's just a bit of jungle between us and it."
Rick led the way, chopping through the jungle until they came to the ship.
"It's a ship all right, but it doesn't look like an Imperial Navy monitor." Rick said.
"It's taken some battle damage. We should check it out just the same." Kate said.
The hull of the ship had been shot open and they entered the ship easily.
"It's not the monitor." Rick said. "But look around. Pirates or whatever might have left something valuable around."
The team split up. Rick was the first to find the cargo bay.
"Kate, I found something. Must be the cargo."
Kate joined him. He looked over a large crate, then used his tentacles to pry open the crate.
"What are those things?" he asked, looking at the contents.
"Rainbow gems, Babe. Heat changes their colors back and forth."
"Valuable?"
"Very. When I was on the liner only the richest women wore rainbow gems. And they made sure we all knew how valuable they were."
"We're rich." Ric said, with visions of a wealthy retirement dancing in his head. He picked up one of the gems and watched as it crumbled to dust in his tentacle.
"What?"
"I'll bet whatever tore open the ship was so hot it overloaded the gems. Let's check the rest, Babe."
They did and one by one, the gems turned to dust.
"Okay, maybe there's something of value here."
Rick called the rest of the team, who had found nothing. They all met in the cargo bay. They found bales of what probably had been valuable furs but were now just moldy skins. Several large barrels had a few centimeters of sludge in the bottom that no one could identify. Crates and boxes held things that might have once been worth a fortune but were now just junk.
"Okay, we'll go back to the ship and check the next ship tomorrow." Rick decided.
The next morning Kate checked her sensor log.
"The closest neutrino source to us is pretty small. Not enough to power a starship, but a lot of military vessels carry auxiliary power units, so it might be the monitor. I can put us back down less than a kilometer away, but Rick will have to chop his way through the jungle to get there."
Rick chopped his way through the jungle, thinking that just because he'd been smart enough to bring tools like the machete was no reason that he should do all the work when he was hit by a blaster shot.
"We're being shot at." He yelled, looking for the shooter. Then, a solid projectile clanged off his armor. Then another blaster shot.
'There's something wrong with those weapons." He said. "They're too weak."
He took another couple of steps forward as another projectile clanged off his armor.
"There are dead animals here. I think the weapons are for them."
Then he saw movement. It was a robot that looked vaguely like a crab with too many feet. It stopped at an installation and began working. Rick walked up to it.
"It's a repair robot repairing some kind of a blaster. The slug thrower seems to have run out of ammo. I'll check it out."
To be careful, he picked up the repair robot and carried it a bit and then put it on its back. He looked around.
"Looks like some sort of a camp." He touched a tent, and his robotic hand went right through.
"There're some skeletons here. Not human."
"Is it safe to come in?" Kate asked.
"Come on."
LT looked at the skeletons, seven of them laid out in a row.
"I study extra-terrestrial races for a hobby. Nothing like these people is in my database. And this looks really old."
Castle thought for a moment.
"Okay, spread out and take a look around. The last place we looked could have been a treasure trove. Let's make sure we don't leave anything behind here."
They all looked around and were back in ten minutes.
"Any ideas?" Rick asked.
Only Esposito had an idea.
"I did security once for a company doing exploration for valuable minerals. I can't tell what the machines here are or what they do, but the camp kind of looks like that one."
"So, if they're valuable minerals here, data would be worth something?"
Espo grinned.
"You bet."
"Okay, check the machines and see if we can get any data from them. One other thing, anyone have any idea how these people died?"
"They must have died slowly." Hastings said. "Someone had time to lay the bodies out in a nice row."
"What happened to the last who died?"
Hastings just shrugged,
It was LT who found the data.
"Here it is, Rick. Data cubes. About seventy of them. Should we try to read them? They might be just outgoing mail that never got sent."
"We don't know if our data readers are compatible with the cubes. We'll split them up six ways and when we get back, if they're worth anything, we divide the profits six ways."
They went back to the ship and Kate planned what they'd do tomorrow,
"It's a ship, all right and a warship. It doesn't look like a monitor, but we should look anyway. And I can land right next to it.
The ship had landed tail first but was leaning slightly to one side. It appeared intact, although probably damaged.
"I'm sure that's an antenna that was shot off." Kate said. "We'll go in slowly."
They were within a kilometer of the ship when a brilliant shot from a blaster cannon roared past them.
"Attention alien ship!" Their comm blared loudly. "That was a warning shot. This is the Imperial Gupta frigate Bonecrusher, Captain Vorpal commanding. If you do not leave immediately, you will be utterly destroyed."
Kate had the Lucky Lucy headed away from the ship before Vorpal had finished her first sentence. She hid the ship behind a thick granite mountain.
"That was lucky." She said. "At that range, we would have been fried instantly."
"At least we know that's not the Saffavid navy monitor." Rick said. "Anyone ever heard of this Gupta Empire?"
Hastings had.
"It's not much of an empire. About one tenth of a planet over by Scanlon's Rift. As far as their navy goes, they're nothing but a bunch of pirates dressed in uniforms.
Then the comm blared again.
"Attention alien ship! That was a warning shot. This is the Imperial Gupta frigate Bonecrusher, Captain Vorpal commanding. If you do not leave immediately, you will be utterly destroyed."
"There was no warning shot." Kate said. "Why are they calling us again?"
Rick smiled.
"I think I know. We'll wait here for a few more minutes."
Every three minutes, the very same warning was broadcast, but there was never another warning shot.
"That's an automatic recording." Rick said. "I'll bet the ship is crewless with just a computer running things. I have an idea."
"Babe, we'll be just as dead if we're shot by a computer as by live people."
"Which is why I have a cunning plan. I'm going to work on one of the message torpedoes."
There was no interstellar equivalent of radio, providing instantaneous communications between solar systems. Messages moved only as fast as the FTL ships that carried them. Ships were usually equipped with message torpedoes in case of an emergency. A message could be downloaded into the torpedo, and it would head to a preprogrammed solar system. Once there it would radio for someone to come get it.
"What are you doing?" Kate asked, following Rick.
"I think the damaged antenna we saw is part of their fire control array. I'll bet if we approach from that side of the ship, it won't be able to shoot at it."
"Why do we want to look at that ship?"
"It's a pirate ship. They might have something valuable aboard."
Rick reprogrammed the message torpedo so that it would not go FTL and could be controlled from the ship. He launched it and guided it to the grounded frigate, keeping it headed towards the damaged antenna. Nothing happened.
"Okay," Kate said, "But suppose it's only programmed to shoot at targets big enough to be a threat?"
"Good thought." Rick said. "I guess we'll have to walk."
They did walk to the ship without any problems. They were also able to access the storage area of the ship.
"Beer?" Esposito said, looking at the cargo.
"Cheap beer. Very cheap beer." O'Connell added. "No one would drink this stuff if there were anything better around. I bet they wanted to sell it at inflated prices to thirsty pirates here. And as long as it's been here, it's valueless."
"Okay, let's look at the bridge." Rick said. "If we can, we'll pull the computer's memory core. I'll bet we can interest some space navies and intelligence services in information as to where this ship has been."
"How are we going to get there, Babe? The passageways to the bridge aren't tall enough for us to get through."
"No, but we can crawl there."
And crawl they did.
Rick was the first one to the bridge.
"A nice big bridge. We can stand up. And I think I can see the computer."
As Rick and Kate worked on removing the memory core, the others looked around.
"Hey," said LT. "This must be the ships' safe. Maybe we can cut it out and take it with us. Open it later."
"Unless it has a booby trap to keep people from messing with it." Esposito said, coming over to look at the safe.
"Okay, let me take a look at this puppy." He said, taking some sort of gear from a small pocket in his walker.
"What is that?" Rick asked,
"Something that'll let me look inside this puppy. I've been around a while and learned a few things."
TBC