Obsolete (Terran Times Second Wave Book 24) (2 page)

It was a long and boring transport through the stars, rather like being in fancy aircraft without the sense of approaching their destination. Olena used the time to study and rest. At Nodak, she would change to a Nyal Imperium deep-space transport. What she really wanted was to be working again. Perhaps she would have time between transports to get her hair and nails done one final time. It couldn’t hurt to find out.

Having nanites bonded to her skull hadn’t even dented the advance she had received from the salvage station. Her hair follicles were now programmable, and she picked a fun purple to crown her on her start to a new life. It was in honour of her instructor, and she thought Heilos would enjoy the tribute.

She snugged her bag on her shoulder as she left the groomer’s salon. It was a short walk to the departure bay where she would step into the next phase of her new career. Her nails were reinforced with something akin to titanium and her hair was purple. She felt pretty good about redoing her exterior for the new start. Now, she just needed to get to her spot on the salvage station and she could settle in to her new reality.

Olena sat up on her twelfth day of work and rolled to one side, checking the salvage roster for incoming objects. Two scavengers were bringing in ships, and she had been assigned to the third scavenger who was hauling the detritus that had been floating around the same section of the asteroid field.

Olena checked the estimated arrival time and grimaced. It was too soon for a solid meal, so she was going to have to drink breakfast in order to get enough sustenance for the day. If she ate solids, she would be puking in the zero-grav segment of the nameless station she worked on.

She levered herself out of bed and took a gel shower. She smoothed the hot gel over her body and shattered it into microscopic dust with a sonic burst. The vacuum sucked away the particles, and she was left clean, dry and ready to get into her skinsuit.

She would have preferred to be in the workshop today, but if she were needed to take apart a new find, that was what she would do.

Fitting in at the station was harder than she thought. The majority of folks taking apart the ancient and obsolete had heavy beaks and grey eyes. Feathers and hair blended into a strange coating that ran over their bodies. Hrath were funny beings with a strict hierarchy built on ability and earning potential. Olena had gained the position of skilled trade upon entering the station, but now, she was working her way up to master salvager. It should take her six months or so, but she would do it. After she got master status, she would be allowed to spend her time in the workshops splicing tech together. She really wanted to earn it; the few hours she had spent in the workshop had been blissful.

Sighing, she pulled up her liquid meal supplement and stuck a straw in it. It tasted like thick nothing and that was harder to swallow than something bitter. She gulped it down in measured increments and washed it down with tea.

It hadn’t been a consideration until she got into space, but water was a commodity that not all stations enjoyed. This particular station was blessed in its locale next to asteroids and an ice field. All retrieved vehicles were cleared of ice first and that water ran all the necessary units of the station, including the tea dispensers. It was processed and sold to the vehicles that came in for obsolete parts. Just like on Earth, water was a commodity to be bought and sold. If you needed it to live, you would pay.

She rolled up and disposed of the food-supplement pack. She finished her tea and rolled the skinsuit up over her breasts, sliding her arms into the suit and pushing her fingers into the attached gloves. The suit came all the way up her neck and rested against her jawline.

She made a face before she stroked the small electrodes on the surface of the suit. The suit wrapped around her and slipped inside. This was the part she hated, the suit invading her body to deal with waste via an extensive processing system. She would shed dust at the end of the day. If there was anything solid in her body, it would be on the exterior of the suit and scrubbed by cleaners when she stripped on the docks.

Olena winced as the skinsuit invaded her in ways her gynecologist never imagined.

She breathed in and out. Heilos had never managed to impress the graphic nature of the suit to her. The first few steps were always awkward.

She checked the time and sighed. Time to take apart the past and use it to make someone’s future.

The walk to the salvage docks was a little embarrassing, but every one of the salvagers had to do the same walk of shame in the morning with their skinsuits bonded to their intimate regions and almost all secondary sexual characteristics smashed flat.

“Good morning, Master Thwip.”

“Good morning, Salvager Olena.” He inclined his majestically silver head, his eyes blinking slowly.

Other salvagers and masters were showing up and getting their vacuum suits and helmets.

Everyone checked the seals on everyone else’s suits. It was a tradition that kept them at the highest safety rating of all salvage stations. It was a nice statistic.

The klaxon went off, and the salvagers headed to their stations. Olena headed to her bay and got ready to enter the airlock that would take her to her workspace for the day.

The light went purple and everyone stepped forward into their assigned spaces.

Olena linked her suit to one of the charged tanks and clipped it to the leg of her outer suit. Her helmet was a tight dome around her head, and it provided an analytical display that assisted her in identifying the objects she was looking at.

The light in the airlock changed to blue, and she stepped out into her workspace where the load of the day was being delivered encased in ice that she would have to dissolve before she could get to the technology inside.

It always felt odd to be exposed to the cold of space, even through her suit, but when the delivery was completed and the doors slid shut, she missed the light of the stars.

When the seals were in place and the room warmed up, she pushed the pallet into position for heating. With the slow movements she had practiced, she put the leads onto each side of the twisted metal block, and she ran power through it to make it heat itself.

The water coursed into the grating in the floor and, from there, into tanks and sterilizers. Nothing would be wasted.

She checked the rest of her equipment while the block thawed and brought the safety scanners online. When the ice had melted, she turned off the power and unclipped the leads. Olena put on her tool belt before she fired up her cutting torch and got to work easing into the block of metal in search of salvageable parts.

The tangle of metal and wiring was foreign to her, and even her helmet was having a problem with it.
Origin unknown
kept coming up on her screen.

A voice suddenly came through her helmet. “Salvager, what are you seeing?”

“I just got inside, but I can see nine couplings suitable for drive placement, metres of reusable wiring and the metal is graded for hull repairs. You have made a good score here, Scavenger.”

The low, relieved sigh was more of a growl in her ear, but she kept working. She freed the couplings and put them in the bin for refurbishment into shiny and new items.

Working in the gloves had required a bit of a learning curve, but the tight fabric let her work almost as easily as if she wasn’t wearing anything.

Olena spent the better part of her morning peeling her way into the wad of metal, prying away the plates and twisted wire that kept her from the centre of the structure. She was sure it was a structure. The organization of the wiring was definitely part of a propulsion system. She didn’t care who had built it; the inner workings were fascinating.

The inner portion of the helmet warned her with a yellow flare that her air was low. A huge ball of ice still remained inside the ship, so she figured it was a good idea to set it to melt while she went for lunch and a new canister.

She clipped on the wires, left the hard capsule and sent the salvaged parts to the processing centre where other salvagers would clean and prep the tech for reuse. She turned on the power to melt the inner core and headed off for lunch. The scavenger would get their payday and Olena would get a portion of the profit. Her account was growing by leaps and bounds. She would be a master sooner than she thought.

One bland liquid lunch later, she chugged down the last of her tea and returned to her workspace. The last of the object should be melted, and she would be able to see what was at the centre of the Easter egg.

She checked the yield of water and was impressed with how dense the ice casing had been. There was enough there to earn her every body mod she wanted in the next two years. She had her eyes on a nice optical enhancement that would help her switch from ten times magnification to standard with a flick of her lids.

For two hours after her shift, she planned for what she wanted to become and all of the choices she was making would make her life as a salvager easier. When she looked into her own future, she saw a workshop with as much scrapped and useless bits as she could manage. She could make great things, wonderful and unimagined things, she just needed the place and parts to do it.

Olena turned off and uncoupled the electrical unit.

She paused when she looked back at the metal and her scanners lit up. “What the hell is that?”

An electrical signal was coming from within the wreckage.

Control came online. “Salvager Olena, what is your status?”

“I am reading an electrical signature from within the wreck. Is my signal clear?”

“Wreck? We identified it as an engine compartment.”

“Negative. It is a derelict pod of some sort. My recordings verify that it is a wreck of a self-contained unit for a maximum of four passengers.”

She smirked a little as she approached the wreck and made her way inside again. They had been trying to keep her off any of the expensive salvages. While she was given the status of an experienced member of their profession, they had no trust for her skills and no reason to give her an assignment that would elevate her financial profile.

Since it was an accident, she was going to make full use of it. She was going to get every piece of saleable technology out of this wreck and that meant whatever had absorbed the energy from the thawing unit.

The low bier with no obvious openings was what she found inside the chamber that had been coated in ice. She looked over the eight-foot expanse, seeking the passive entry point and trying to scan to see what was beneath the surface.

She moved her gloved hands along the edge of the bier and sought anything different. On her third pass, she must have triggered something, because a seam appeared in the solid metal surface. There was a hiss of gas, and light began to spill from the rapidly widening crevice.

Olena stepped back as radiation levels rose, preparing to sound an alarm if they exceeded the safety protocols. When a hand shot out of the light, she did what instinct told her to do—she slammed the lid on the hand and ran like hell.

Chapter Three

“Control, there is a living being in the wreckage. Requesting security, medical and atmosphere in this work area.” She muttered it as she turned off her equipment before heading to the airlock.

The atmosphere flooded the chamber, and she winced. It was going to be docked from her pay.

The hot-pink glow flooded the room; antibacterial light streamed in as she waited for the creature in the bier to make its way out and attack her. It was the residue of too many horror movies in her youth, but she had never experienced the impulse to flee before.

When the lock chimed and security and medical came in, she went out. She was neither prepared, nor willing to deal with what she had just woken up. She hoped that whatever was inside there was happy to have something to breathe. It was going to cost her.

She staggered into the dispatch area and watched from the monitors. The wide hole she had carved in the hull was large enough for the security officers to make their way into the centre. The lid of the bier was off, and a glowing being levitated out to settle on the floor. The bright light on his skin slowly faded.

Olena pulled off her helmet and watched the security officers slowly lower their weapons as the man began to speak.

She didn’t recognize the language, but the officers in front of him responded to it. They holstered their weapons, and they escorted the very tall and extremely naked man out to where the medical teams were waiting. The medical officers ran scans, but Olena didn’t get to see the outcome.

The scavenger who had brought in the pod came up to her with his feathers ruffled. “They said you were bad luck.”

She sighed. “Anyone would have let him out. It was your luck that you brought in occupied salvage. You had it long before I was assigned to it.”

He clacked his beak and turned away, disgruntled.

Olena wished she was able to take the hit and accept her so-called responsibility, but she wasn’t going to let the rumour of bad luck destroy her career before it got started. Her abilities were the only thing she was really capable of fighting for.

Being a woman on the station and being a salvager were dual sins. They couldn’t deny that she was competent, but they didn’t have to like it.

She headed to the dispatcher and nodded. “I am guessing that I am off direct salvage for the rest of the day.”

He nodded. “Be back tomorrow when we find out what you have woken up.”

“I will check the duty roster.”

“Good plan.” He nodded his head. “Go get some rest. You look like hell.”

She sighed and turned away, muttering, “I always look like this.”

Her long strides took her back to the suit room where she put her protective gear in her locker. The skinsuit remained uncomfortable as she headed back to her quarters where she deactivated and peeled out of it with a sense of complete relief.