Salvage
By
UCSBdad
Disclaimer: I'd love to salvage Castle, but it's gone. Rating: K Time: The future, after my story Shipwreck.
Or, as Rick thought, hanging on the back of the damned tank.
Rick managed to edge towards the rear roadwheel of the tank, being careful not to let go. He swung his blaster rifle around to cover the roadwheel and opened fire. At first nothing happened, then a small spot began to turn red. The spot slowly grew larger.
The tank crew must have figured out what was going on as they suddenly reversed. They crashed through the jungle, aiming at trees in the hope of knocking Rick off the tank. Luckily, the trees weren't all that large and Rick hung on. They almost got him when the reversing tank slammed into the large rock he'd initially hidden behind. He was hit a glancing blow as the rock was crushed by the tank, but he hung on.
The inside of the roadwheel was now mostly red hot and Rick was beginning to feel the heat buildup in his walker. Then part of the roadwheel began to turn white hot. Rick did his best to concentrate his fire on that white hot spot as the tank bounced all over the jungle, trying to shake him off.
He saw a blaster bolt shoot over him.
"Hey!" he yelled into his radio, "I think one of them is outside the turret trying to shoot me off. Will someone please discourage him? And quick."
He could see blaster bolts hitting the turret of the tank and heard cursing coming from the tank's radio. The shooting stopped.
Very slowly, the roadwheel began to deform, and then, all at once, it collapsed. The tank's tread came off and was thrown into the jungle. The tank came to a stop.
"Hokay, wiseass." Said a voice over the radio. "You stop us, but how you gonna get away? You move away from da tank and we gonna get you. Get you good."
Rick had to admit that he hadn't thought that part of his plan all the way through and he had no idea how he was going to get away from the tank. Even if he waited for dark, he was positive the tank had good night vision equipment. He began to think really hard about his escape but was coming up with nothing.
Luckily, Kate had an idea.
"Hey, tank." She called over the radio. "You left a wonderful track back through the jungle, you know. I followed it all the way back to your base camp. It's pretty nice for this hellhole. There are other people there, plus machinery of some sort, a couple of small vehicles, a power source, bunkers and heavy infantry weapons. You even have a little garden to grow food. Now, you let my teammates go and we'll leave. Otherwise, I'll shoot up your base and you'll be left with a wrecked tank and whatever you have in there with you. What about it?"
"I don' think you gotta gun on dat little ship." Came the reply.
Kate sighed.
"Okay, a little demonstration."
Rick could hear Lucy making her run on the camp and could see heavy blaster fire in the distance.
"How about that?" Kate said. "I didn't do any damage to your camp, and I even did you a favor. I shot up all the vegetation around your camp for a couple of hundred meters. You have a nice, open field of fire for your weapons now."
"How we know you not shoot up camp once we let team go?"
"You don't. But you can be damned sure I'll shoot it up if you don't let them go."
Rick waited for some of the longest three minutes of his life. Then the tank commander went on the radio,
"Okay. Team go."
Rick unlatched himself from the tank and stood up. No one shot at him. He began trotting away from the tank as fast as he could. He could see the other members of the team ahead of him, moving as fast as they could.
Kate came on the radio again.
"There's a granite ridge about three klicks ahead of you. I'll be on the other side. Get aboard quick and we'll put some distance between us and that damned tank."
Rick was happy to swing aboard Lucy and even happier when Kate took off.
"How's Hastings?" He called to Kate, in the cockpit.
"I hooked her up to the autodoc. "It's looking her over. You might check on her though."
Rick opened the door to their autodoc. Hastings was conscious and hooked up to the machine.
"How are you doing, Ann?"
"I hurt like hell coming back, but the doc gave me something and I'm very mellow now. Very, very mellow."
Rick leaned over to check the readouts on the autodoc.
"Sorry this is taking so long, but we don't have a top-of-the-line autodoc. This one is going to check out every system in your body instead of just looking at your arm. It'll be a few minutes more."
"S'okay. Like I said, I'm really mellow." Ann giggled. "You know, Rick, you're really hot. And so is Kate. That's what I like, a man and a woman. A man just feels so natural, but a woman is so soft and gentle. A woman knows what makes another woman happy."
"Uh, Ann, you know that Kate and I are a couple and we…"
"Love each other." Kate finished for Rick as she leaned into the autodoc.
"I know. I know." Ann said, "And I wouldn't want to do anything to screw your relationship up. I just want what you have, someone to love and to love me. But in my case, I want a man and a woman. That's all."
"We can't find you true love," Kate said, "but do you know Sluggo's back in the spaceport on Dorvan?"
"Everybody knows about Sluggos.' Ann said, slurring her words slightly. "Never been there, though. Too expensive."
"Tell you what, Ann. You be a good girl and don't get hurt again and we'll pay for a nice orgy for you at Sluggo's. You can have any man and woman you want. On us."
"Really? You are the best."
The autodoc chirped and Rick and Kate read the readouts.
"You have a bad shoulder sprain, Ann. Nothing broken though. The doc is giving you something to heal your shoulder and to let you sleep. But you'll be out of action for a few days."
"I think we should all be out of action for a few days." Rock said. "Let's find someplace to land and just relax for a few days."
They found a nice, flat-topped mesa about two hundred klicks from the tank and put Lucy down there. While Hastings rested and recovered, the rest of the team checked her damaged walker. They didn't have any way to repair it, but it could still be sold as salvage once the mission was over. Then they got one of the spare walkers ready for Hastings. Other than that, they rested.
After three days they were ready again.
"Where to this time?" Rick asked Kate, with the rest of the team eagerly listening.
"About four hundred clicks from here there's an odd looking, circular structure with some kind of a structure in the middle, and it shows neutrino emissions. It's as good a place as any. I don't think we'll find the monitor there, but it might be worth a look."
The team had made some money over and above what they would get from the Governor-General back on Dorvan, so they agreed.
"We can set the ship down right on it." Rick said.
"Maybe not." Kate replied. "It might be some kind of defensive installation. We should land away from it and walk."
"A defensive installation the Saffavid navy didn't destroy?"
"Nobody said they were the most professional navy between the stars." Kate shot back.
"Okay, we walk."
They found a nice open meadow about five clicks from the structure and began walking. They took turns chopping through the jungle with Castle's huge machete. It was Castle's turn when they were attacked.
It hit him so hard that he was knocked down. Whatever was on top of him was trying to bite and claw him with no success. He fired one of his smaller blasters and killed the beast, only to find another one right on top of him. He kept firing until he could stand up again. He saw Kate, Hastings. and O'Connell standing back-to-back shooting at a seemingly endless horde of the beasts. They looked to Rick like a cross between a grizzly bear and a Zaratrhustan damnthing. He saw that Esposito was on his feet, shooting and moving towards Kate and the rest. LT was still down with at least four of the things on him. He was firing, but the beasts kept coming.
Rick shot another beast and went to LT's aid. Between the two of them they shot the beasts off of LT and the two of them made it to the rest of the team. They stood and burned down the beasts until none were left.
"What the hell were those?" Esposito demanded.
"They're called grey waves." Kate said. "I read the briefing they gave us on this planet. They hunt in packs and once they find prey, they charge all together."
"Anyone hurt?" Rick asked.
"I got a few bruises when I got knocked down, but I'm okay." LT said.
"Okay, let's get going."
They made it to the odd structure.
"It's not just perfectly round, it's smooth. It looks like someone took a blaster cannon, fused the ground together and then polished it. Not much of a defensive installation if you ask me." Rick said.
"We don't know what kind of weapons every race in known space uses." Kate snapped back. "This could be…something."
"Let's check it out." Hastings said.
The structure in the center of the massive circle was a doorway with stairs leading down. They went carefully down the stairs. The stairs went down and down.
"I make it we're about two hundred meters down." O'Connell said. "I hope this thing doesn't collapse on us."
"It looks like the whole structure was fused with…something." Esposito replied. "Looks sturdy enough."
Eventually, they came to a vast, underground amphitheater. Every seat was occupied.
"They look like giant ants, but they're short one set of arms, or legs." O'Connell said.
"And they're dead." Rick said. "They're as cold as the rock they're sitting on."
"There's one sitting on a raised platform, facing the crowd." Kate said.
They walked towards the platform.
"He's got some sort of shawl around his shoulders. He's the only one who's wearing any kind of clothing." That was Hastings.
Just then a loud wailing filled the amphitheater and hundreds of giant ants appeared. Espo fired at one with no effect.
"Don't shoot. Those are holograms." Rick said.
The holograms danced, sort of, and a hologram wearing a shawl, presumably the one on the platform, did a number of things. He appeared to be pointing to a large spaceship, then to fields of some sort of crops, showing off smaller versions of himself, also wearing smaller shawls.
"His children, maybe?" Rick said. "I'll bet he's the king ant. He's being shown doing all the great things he did for his people in life. Anyone seeing this will know what a great king he was."
The hologram performance ended with the apparent death of the king, or whatever he, she or it, was.
"See anything useful?" Esposito asked.
"He's got all sorts of stuff around him. Miniature spaceships, some kind of ground vehicle, maybe a building and other stuff I can't ID." Rick said.
"Some cultures bury their dead with things that represent what the dead will need in the afterlife. King Ant here will have a nice spaceship, a car so he won't have to walk, a home, probably some sort of money." Kate said.
"Let's get out of here." O'Connell said. "This place gives me the creeps."
It gave all of them the creeps and they happily went back to the surface.
TBC
