Salvage
By
UCSBdad
Disclaimer: I'd love to salvage Castle, but it's gone. Rating: K Time: The future, after my story Shipwreck.
The locals stopped and one of them said something that none of the humans could translate. Then another spoke and finally a third.
"Who you?" Said the third local.
"I'm called Rick Castle. These are my friends Fenton O'Connell, Javier Esposito, Ann Hastings, and LT." He decided not to mention Kate in the ship.
"Why come?"
"We're looking for a crashed ship for our employer. We're pretty certain that ship isn't it, but we wanted to check it out anyway. Now that we can see it up close, it's not the ship we're looking for. So, if you don't mind, we'll be on our way."
Castle started to turn to go back to Lucy when the third man spoke again.
"You open ship?"
He turned back again.
"Do you want us to open the ship?"
"Yes. Open ship."
"Why?"
"Bad people take us. Make work hard. Put us in ship and take us here. Some got out when hole shot in ship. Many people inside."
"I'm sure the people inside are long dead. I'm sorry, but I don't see how we can help."
"People dead. But va still inside. Can't get out."
"Va?" Castle asked. "That's a new word to me."
"Va." All five tapped their stomach. "Inside ship. Can't attach to….,No have words."
"Rick, "Hastings said, "I think they might be talking about the dead people's souls. As far as attaching goes, they might believe in reincarnation."
Rick had heard the word before but wasn't quite sure what it meant. It had something to do with dying.
Hastings explained.
"Some religions, cultures, believe that when the body dies, the soul goes to another newborn and takes up residence. If you've lived according to the precepts of the religion, you're born into a more saintly person. If you've been bad, well, you might not be born as a human, but as an animal. Maye a rat or a flea, until you've improved yourself to the point that you can be born as someone more worthy."
"A flea? How would a flea improve itself…Forget it."
"Jefe," Esposito said, "maybe if we open the ship there'll be something good inside. Can't hurt to try."
Castle turned to the locals and agreed to try.
The humans were led to a dirt mound that the locals had piled up against the ship. On the mound were wooden stairs that led up to the hole that had been blasted in the Imperial attack. Castle went inside the ship with the English-speaking local. They climbed up until they came to a partially melted catwalk. At the end of the catwalk was a hatch. Around the hatch were various tools the locals had used to try to force open the hatch. They'd done no more than scratch the paint.
"Use heat thing…" the local tapped the blaster on Rick's walker. "Open door."
"I can't. I'd have to stand on the catwalk and this close, if I wasn't killed by the back flash of my blaster, I'd be knocked off the catwalk and I'd fall to my death."
"No can open?" The local said sadly.
"Not from here, but there has to be another way in."
There was another way in, of course. At the base of the ship was a ramp, now in the up position and flush against the hull of the ship. The humans examined it.
"Okay, let me work on it." Esposito said, bringing out the gear he'd used to open the safe on the pirate ship and began working. He worked for some ten minutes.
"Okay, the ship is Daneelian from the alphabet on the ramp controls and you need to tap in a three number code to get access. The Daneelian's use a base ten system like we do, so the numbers are 000 to 999. I can generate those numbers with my equipment. We'll be inside in minutes."
"Just how does a mercenary end up knowing how to open things from all these star nations?" Rick asked.
"Like I said, I get around and I learn things."
It took two and a half minutes before the ramp began to slowly come down, the metal groaning and shrieking as it did. The humans had to grab the ramp and pull it down the last ten meters or so, but it was down, and the locals swarmed aboard.
There were no further locks and soon they were carrying the remains of their fellows outside where their va could be released. The corpses were in an advanced state of decay and the humans stayed well away, in spite of the fact that no odors could penetrate their walkers.
Once the locals were out, they inspected the ship for anything worth taking. They were disappointed.
"All they have here is cheap consumer goods and obsolete weapons. Most of it was just junk before and it's worse now." Espo complained.
"Slavers usually use locals to catch the slaves for them and pay them off in what to some iron age barbarians are magical tools, weapons and toys." O'Connell replied.
On the way back to the ship, Castle spoke to Hastings.
"How come you know about reincarnation? That's not something your average mercenary knows about."
"My parents were professors at Shadowlands University on Welland. Dad was a professor pf philosophy and mom was a professor of history. All of their friends were academics and I picked up a lot growing up."
"How did you ever end up as a mercenary?"
"Things happen." Was all Hastings said.
Rick left it at that since it was obvious, she didn't want to share. But he was curious about her story.
The next ship they checked out looked easy. It was located on a large island in the middle of a large lake. It was easily the biggest body of water they'd found on the planet. They were able to land Lucy right on the island.
"It's not very big and it's kind of beat up." Rick said, looking at the ship once they had approached it.
"Hey. Look at this." O'Connell said, standing by a mound overgrown by shrubbery. "It looks like a wooden structure of some kind."
They all examined it.
"The logs are almost all rotted all the way through. This is old." Rick said.
"More over here." Kate called from the other side of the ship.
She had found the remains of a steel hulled barge, pulled up onto the shore. It was rusted through in several places.
"I think that's what's left of a grav drive in it." Kate said. "I think they jury rigged it to power the barge,"
"Damn old, too." Rick added.
"Let's take a look at the ship." Espo said. "Might be something worthwhile inside."
There wasn't.
"I'll bet the ship crashed or came down here a really long time ago and the crew cannibalized everything they had on the ship to stay alive. Eventually they died off."
"Old is right." Hastings said. "There's a plate in the engine compartment that gives the date the ship was launched as some two hundred and thirty years ago. It's written in Pallandian, which I can read."
"Some people, rich people, pay good money for old, classic spaceships." Espo said, still looking for a bigger payday.
"Two things, Espo." Kate said. "The word classic. That means something like a Rolls-Kinardly 150Z, or maybe Nortmann Anglesey. Not some wreck from some barely known race. Secondly, we only have one qualified pilot and engineer: Me. And I'm not about to try to fly that thing anywhere. You can try if you'd like, though."
Espo declined and they left.
The next ship they found sat in the middle of a large farm.
"I don't think the ship is armed." Kate said, checking the sensors. "I'd say it's a small freighter. It looks like the ship's power is running the farm." She zoomed in on the farm itself. "Uh, oh. I think the workers in the fields are wearing slave collars. There are some people with weapons, but I don't see anything that would damage our walkers."
Rick thought for a moment.
"If we walk right in and they do have more powerful weapons hidden someplace, we might just end up with a slave collar around our necks. But I'd like to check it out. We'll land Lucy, leave Kate with the ship and check them out on foot."
For once, Kate didn't argue about staying with the ship.
Once landed, the five humans headed for the ship. There seemed to be no sentries or any warning devices around and they got to within about a hundred meters of the ship and took cover in a small grove of trees.
Rick studied the place.
"Okay, that's definitely the control for the slave collars. One wrong move by a slave and you're either dead or in agony. But they have a three-centimeter heavy blaster set up. That could damage our walkers. We should leave. I don't see anything…"
Before he could finish the sentence, Hastings stood up, screamed and charged the farm, shooting as she went.
"Hastings? What the hell?" Rick screamed. "We have to go after her now!"
The remaining four charged, also firing.
Hasting's first shot had been into the slave collar control, destroying it. The slaves hesitated for a moment and then realized they were free of the collars. They swarmed over the overseers, dying in great numbers, but overwhelming their captors.
Rick and O'Connell knocked out the heavy blaster before anyone could man it and the rest of the slavers were killed, except for one. Hastings was holding him down with one armored foot.
"Stay away." She screamed. "He's mine. He's all mine."
"Okay, Hastings. He's all yours. Why do you want him?"
"Back before I became a mercenary, I was engaged to a young man. His name was Jerry." She screamed at the man under her foot. "Do you remember Jerry, asshole?"
The man gasped but made no reply.
"Jerry had a sister, Jem. A lovely woman, and we had…a thing for each other. Jerry didn't mind. But they were on a ship taken by Captain Vaughn here and held for ransom. Jerry and Jem's family were very prominent academics back on Welland, but Vaughn must have thought they were rich. He asked for a ransom they couldn't pay, even though everyone in Shadowlands University contributed. When the ransom wasn't paid, Vaughn tortured them to death and sent the parents a video of it. No one could stand to watch all of the video except me. I watched it and I took notes. I become a mercenary and I learned about torture. I'm quite good at it. Now, I'm going to spend days making the end of Vaughn's life as painful as I can."
"Hastings, we can't stay here for days. Just shoot him and be done with it." Rick said.
"No. Finding and punishing Vaughn has been my whole life. I won't let him die that easily."
"You signed a contract with me. And I…"
"I quit." Hastings yelled. "You can have my share of the money. You can leave me here. I don't care. I will not let you take this from me."
"Babe." Kate said over the radio." Why don't the four of you check the ship for valuables and then I'll come and pick the four of you up. We're not leaving Hastings on this planet."
Rick sighed.
"Okay. I think we can repair the heavy blaster and even if we have no use for it here, we can sell it later. Espo and I'll check out the ship, O'Connell, check the farm for anything useful and see if you can explain to the ex-slaves that they're free. They should do okay with the farm. LT, just keep an eye on everything."
The ship did have some valuables and a few weapons they could either use or sell later. They had made about an extra fifty thousand tooks each, so Espo was happy.
They moved the ship away, so they didn't have to see and hear Hastings torture Vaughn.
TBC