"With every crisis, opportunity."
- Ancient business proverb
"Tell me again how you're still breathing, Kelp?"
Telin hastily patched the cracks in his own visor, sealing it with crude industrial tape. A bargain basement solution; cheap by his own frugal standards. He could barely see. In a panic he dumped his gear all over the hold, desperate to salvage the situation.
Now he was trying desperately to salvage whatever remained of Kelpo's face. What little medical supplies they carried were swiftly used up. Kelpo's face sooner became more gauzing and hastily wrapped bandages than exposed skin. His suit bleeped at him petulantly, a constant reminder of his depleting oxygen levels. The entire facemask was broken.
"Thick skulled, hard-headed. Plain old stubborn." Kelpo's voice words came out thickly slurred. "Take your pick."
"Don't make me laugh. This is hard enough without you fidgeting."
"I'm not fidgeting." Kelpo scowled.
The man was a mess. The bullet had shattered Kelpo's helmet, fragmented and torn ragged chunks out of his mouth, cheek and left eye. It was doubtful the eye could be saved without prosthetic replacement.
In a way, the antiquated nature of their environment suits saved his life; the older respirator serving as additional protection from the shards of slicing metal. It was through this same respirator that Kelpo took ragged breaths now, his face swelling massively and sealing his ruined eye shut.
The most pressing concern was the environment suit. The terraformed atmosphere was acceptable in very limited doses, but prolonged exposure at surface levels was a death sentence.
So Telin did what scavengers did best. He scavenged.
First he needed a set of tools. HWK-44 remained embedded in the remains of Wen's face, where it warbled feebly. Telin crouched over and took a firm grip of the drone's chassis and gave it a firm tug. It didn't budge. Completely disgusted, Telin swallowed and tried again, this time adding a twist.
The drone ripped free, together with most of the contents of Wen's skull.
Telin did his best not to recycle the contents of his stomach into his environment suit. It proved a struggle.
"Still with me buddy?" he asked HWK.
The drone's left spinner was a mangled wreck, but it kept itself afloat; spooling up one of its propulsion generators to compensate. It hooted groggily.
"Good. We've work to do."
Speyer's visor served as an acceptable replacement for Kelp's, once it had been duly emptied of the loose teeth skittering around inside. Telin made Kelpo keep his original respirator. Primarily because he was concerned removing it would do more harm than good.
HWK-44 got to work fusing the back of Kelp's newly acquired helmet shut. Kelp held his head in his hands and tried his best to stay still. Telin had dressed the man's wounds as best he could with sorely limited expertise, but throwing gauzing at the issue wasn't going to help unless they got him proper medical attention, and quickly.
Meanwhile, Telin took inventory.
An initial glance gave them Wen's pistol, some emergency flares, and a wicked looking knife Telin found secreted in Speyer's boot. He then opened Speyer's pack, which afforded him three hand grenades and an emergency survival kit. Another knife. Some kind of knuckle duster. There was more inside, but something else caught his attention.
A squawking, tinny rasp emanated from the ruins of the dead men's suits. Speyer's men, doubtlessly looking for a sit-rep.
Then a heavy set of boots slammed down on the forward deck.
"Boss, you there?" a modulated voice called. "We're all set!"
The footsteps clanged closer.
Telin searched with increased urgency. He scattered the contents of the pack across the floor.
A lumpy box fell onto the ground. Telin snatched it up.
It unfolded in his hands. Detron was the brand stencilled along the side. Telin had seen the weapons from afar; carried by patrolling crewmen. He had never held one, nor had he any idea how it worked; how difficult it was to fire.
The footsteps rang closer; descending the the rear ramp now. Telin rose to his feet, ducking against the low wall. He waved at Kelpo. As groggy as his friend was, the message was clear. Kelpo lay flat on the deck, sprawled amongst the corpses of the two fallen marauders.
Telin held his breath and waited.
He heard the rasping of the rebreather before he saw the nose of the rifle poke through the open hatch. An arm followed, then the shoulder it was attached to. The crewman instinctively started forward when he spied the three bodies piled messily across the floor.
Telin pressed the Detron to the back of the man's head and squeezed the firing stud.
There was a keening flash, and a shockingly limited amount of recoil. A tremendous sheet of blood painted the far wall. The man's corpse clanged gracelessly to the floor, his skull neatly vaporised above cheek level.
The Detron, it transpired, was user friendly.
Telin looked down at the body in stunned silence. He had never killed a man before. In less than thirty minutes, three now lay dead from one not entirely simple find.
Part of him wanted to cast the weapon aside in disgust. A deeper, rage-fuelled part of him felt perfectly calm.
The squawks on the dead men's com channels grew louder, more insistent.
Outside, they heard a single large propulsion drive snort into life with roaring flare. The discarded gear scattered throughout the hold began to vibrate and jump under the ever increasing thrum of the drill gaining power. Everything rattled.
Then there came a rattling of chains. A snaking, uncoiling sound, as they tightened.
The entire ship jolted, once.
Then the ancient ship began moving, emitting a metallic screech as it was dragged steadily across the subterranean cavern with ever-mounting speed.
Both scavengers swore as they drunkenly pulled themselves toward the front of the ship; lurching from stanchion to stanchion. The nose of the ship began tipping upward just as Telin pulled himself through the access wound.
The drill was above them, its chains taut with the strain of lifting the immense ship. Three immense chains secured the ship to the drill. Perched atop the ascending rig was the single surviving member of Speyer's retrieval team. He was gesturing frantically to companions far above and out of sight.
The ammo counter on the side of the Detron read: 4. Telin was no soldier. He had no spare ammunition for it, nor would he know how to reload it even if he did. Still, he was a scavenger.
Improvisation was in his nature.
He took aim at the heavy chains lifting the ships slowly from the cavern floor. He squeezed the trigger; once, twice, three times. He missed repeatedly. Three creaking chains continued to haul them upward, taunting him.
The ship left the ground entirely now.
Telin took careful aim, trying to see past the hastily taped patches obscuring his vision. He pressed the firing stud one final time.
His final shot missed the chains completely, sparking off the hull of the boring drill and sizzling the paintwork ever so slightly. The drill operator swore down at him with a balled fist.
Marksmanship was not his strong suit. Telin swore and threw the useless weapon aside.
"Tel!"
Telin looked down. Kelp had appeared in the gap of the hull, his gnarled face a frenzy of determination. He thrust something up into Telin's hands.
"You dropped this!"
It was Telin's battered plasma cutter.
The cutter was ancient. It had limited range, a temperamental battery; little to no accuracy. All but useless at the best of times.
It was perfect.
The cutter snarled to life in a flaring arc of plasma, slashing through the chains and spraying the cavern in a bubbling shower of molten sparks. The first chain snapped and the ship swung low like a pendulum, carving a runnel across the snow. Then the second chain then gave way, tipping the ship on its side entirely and spilling the two scavengers down onto the floor below.
The third chain groaned and quivered under immense strain. The drill operator visibly panicked as the rig itself spun giddily on its axis, entirely off-balance. Spinning with it was the ancient ship, suspended by a single tether. The metallic groan reached fever pitch.
Kelpo realised they stood directly beneath it.
"Move!" he bawled, hurling himself bodily into Telin.
The chain snapped. A shadow descended. There was a tremendous crash, and a splash of bubbling coolant.
Both scavengers blinked. Inches from them was the nose of the beached star ship, staring at them goofily. The glowing ends of the severed chains sizzled in the dark.
The drill disappeared up and out of sight, leaving them alone.
For a moment neither man spoke. They lay on their backs, battered and exhausted.
"Good shout with the cutter." Telin breathed.
"Yeah." Kelpo panted. "Thanks for patching me up."
"Don't thank me just yet. You look terrible."
"That's a first." Kelpo grin instantly became a grimace. He groaned and put a hand up to his bolted on visor. "Tell me you have a plan beyond me getting shot in the head again."
"Workin' on it." Telin propped himself up on his elbows. "I hate to say, but we need to move."
"Yeah, just let me rest here a moment."
Telin was already dusting himself off. He shook his head.
"No. No time. We need to go. Get the casket, wake the kid; back to our ship."
"What about the salvage?"
"Far as I can tell?" Telin hauled Kelpo back to his feet. "Kid is the salvage."
"You sure this is a good idea?" Kelpo asked a final time.
They stood before the golden casket. The ship had fortunately landed flat on its belly, though not before rag-dolling the various corpses strewn about the hold. Scattered gear lay everywhere. Blood coated the walls, flecked the ceiling. Before the abortive extraction, the room was a mess. Now it was like an abattoir.
The sleeper lay serene, oblivious to it all.
"You got a better one? We've no lift gear, and I'm not leaving the kid to thieving scum."
"Telin Voss, developing a conscience?" Kelpo asked askance.
"Hardly. We'll sell the kid. Get what's owed."
"You're all heart, Tel."
Kelpo knelt down before the casket, examining the control panel. For all its ornate presentation, Corpus variants had evidently borrowed large elements of its design. He began keying in the revival sequence.
"I hope this kid can walk." Kelpo grumbled as he typed.
The casket began to glow as its doors prepared to open.
"Focus." Telin shushed him. "He's coming around now."
"I'm just saying, I'm not carrying him. I don't even have a face anymore."
Telin didn't get a chance to respond.
The pod opened with a whooshing hiss as it vented air into the hold.
Neither man dared to breath. Their entire investment was on the line.
The boy's eyes snapped open.