Salvage

The station wasn’t screaming yet, but she was definitely whimpering.

I wiped a smear of hydraulic fluid from my cheek, leaving a streak of black grease that felt hot against my freezing skin. The environmental scrubbers had crapped out three days ago, dropping the ambient temperature to something that made my breath cloud in the air.

I was wearing everything I owned. A thermal undersuit that had lost its elasticity two rotations ago, my heavy mechanic’s coveralls which smelled like recycled air and ozone, and fingerless mag-gloves that made my hands look like they belonged to a droid.

“Come on, you piece of shit,” I muttered, driving the wrench into the coupling of the CO2 scrubber.

It gave a metal-on-metal screech that vibrated up my arm and settled in my teeth, but the seal held.

My bicep cramped again and my fingers went instantly limp. The wrench hit the grating with a hollow clang that echoed too long in the empty corridor.

Six months.

I’d been alone on Mining Outpost O-12 for six fucking months.

The company had stopped sending supply drops four months ago. The comms array had gone silent three weeks after that.

The last message had been little more than static, but I did manage to make out the words “Voluntary Administration” and knew I was fucked.

Panicking, I’d trawled through terabytes of contract paperwork and realised that when I’d signed my life away, I’d missed a critical part of the fine print that, legal jargon aside, basically said:

You’re fucked.

I was just another piece of inventory left to rust in the dark. Except nothing rusts in space.

I hugged my arm to my chest and squeezed my eyes tight, trying to bite back the traitorous whimper that made me feel like I was three again, with a booboo on my knee. This one was bad. Eventually I was able to pick up the wrench and clip it to my belt.

My stomach gave a weak gurgle, reminding me I was down to the last of the protein paste. It tasted like wet chalk, but it kept me alive enough to keep the lights on.

Thump.

The floorplates shuddered. I froze, hand flying to the pry-bar at my hip. That wasn’t a system failure. I knew the rhythm of this station’s death rattle; I knew every groan of the cooling pipes and every tick of the expanding hull.

This was external. Docking clamps.

My heart kicked against my ribs, a frantic, bird-like fluttering.

Nobody came out this far. Not unless they were lost, or looking for something specific. And since the company had liquidated the assets, the only people looking for O-12 were scrappers.

And scrappers didn’t leave witnesses.

Panic kills you faster than a vacuum leak but fear? Fear keeps you moving.

I killed the lumen-strips in the corridor, plunging the hallway into emergency red, and melted into the shadows of a ventilation recess.

The airlock cycle hissed. The sound was deafening in the silence. Then, the heavy thud of magnetic boots on the deck. Not one pair, either.

“Atmo is breathable,” a voice crackled. It was deep, modulated by a helmet comms, but human. “Temperature is garbage. Gravity point-eight.”

“I’m getting bio-readings!” A second voice. Lighter, manic. “Faint, but there’s heat. One signature. Bipedal. Mammalian. Definitely human.”

“Find it,” a third voice rumbled, sounding like gravel in a cement mixer. “We’re on a clock.”

I held my breath, my grip on the pry-bar sweating inside my gloves. One human signature. They knew I was here.

A beam of white tactical light sliced through the red gloom, sweeping the walls.

“Come out,” the first voice said. It was the tone of a man who didn’t have time for hide-and-seek. “Thermal imaging says you’re in the vent recess. Don’t make me come get you. I’ve had a long week.”

I weighed my options.

Option A: Stay hidden, get dragged out, probably get spaced.

Option B: Come out swinging, get shot, definitely get spaced.

Option C: Show my face and pray they needed a mechanic more than they needed spare parts.

I stepped out. I raised the pry-bar, not like I was going to attack, but like I was ready to.

“Company property,” I lied, my voice scraping after weeks of silence. “Identify yourselves.”

The tactical lights blinded me for a second before they dipped.

Three of them.

Fuck.

And Christ, they were big.

They wore matte-black combat armour that looked fused to their bodies, articulated plates shifting over bulk that wasn’t natural.

The leader unsealed his helmet. His face was a map of hard lines and scars, pale skin, and eyes that stopped me cold. One ice-blue, the other a cybernetic optic with the standard black sclera, red iris, whirring “pupil” as it focused.

He looked at me. He looked at the grease, the shivering, the shaking weapon. He didn’t look impressed. He looked tired.

“Company liquidated this asset six months ago,” he said, his voice flat. “You’re salvage, kid.”

The massive one on his right removed his helmet next. He was a wall of muscle, easily seven feet tall, with a thick neck and a jawline you could break rocks on. He grinned, and I saw teeth that looked capped with chrome.

“Salvage?” He looked at the leader. “Does that mean we keep it? I’m hungry.”

The third one, wired with tech that hummed along his neck, stepped closer. “Bio-scan confirms female. Cortisol levels are through the roof.”

He didn’t take his helmet off, but his visor cleared to reveal eyes that were detached. Like he was looking at an insect or stool sample.

“She looks bony,” the big one

“Hmm. Body core temperature is critical,” the tech said.

The leader stepped into my space until I had to crane my neck to look at him. I could smell him now, the rich, heavy scent of old sweat and gun oil.

It made my knees weak. Or maybe that was the fear.

He wrapped a gauntleted hand around my pry-bar. I tried to hold on. He didn’t even jerk it; he just applied steady, hydraulic pressure until my fingers popped open.

“I’m Vorne. Captain of the Chimera" he said, tossing the bar aside. “You’re coming with us.”

“I can work,” I stammered, backing up until my spine hit the cold wall. “I’m a Class-A mechanic. I can fix anything. Hydro-drives, atmos-scrubbers...”

Vorne leaned down. The red eye zoomed in on my pulse jumping in my neck.

“We don’t need a mechanic,” he sighed, sounding like a dad explaining why we can’t get a puppy.

“We do,” the tech chirped. “What we don’t have is an organic variable.”

“There’s parts here, if that’s what you want,” I tried, “look if you want.”

Vorne narrowed his eye as I pointed to the tablet on the wall, welcoming him to help himself to the station’s stats and inventory. I knew there wasn’t much of value: anything worth anything had been cleared out by everyone else when they evacuated. The food was gone, and I’d managed to make the cells stretch out for a few extra months, but they were almost toast as well.

The big one loomed up behind Vorne. “She smells good, Cap. Like fear and fish. My two favourite things.”

Vorne’s human eye dropped to my mouth, then lower, dragging over the shapeless coveralls as if he could see the shivering heat underneath.

“You want I get off this can or not?” Vorne asked.

“...Yes,” I whispered, resigned. There was no real choice here. Either I stayed and died a slow, miserable death, or I went with them and managed to live long enough to get sold into a less desirable trade than mechanical engineering.

Fuck it, I thought, at least I’ll be warm.

“Strip.”

“W-what?”

“All salvage needs be decontaminated before loading into the Chimera.”

I hesitated, looking at the other two.

”Strip.” He said again. His voice was louder this time. Like a command from a cop in one of those old movies Mum and I loved to watch.

“Here?”

“Here.”

Rix stepped forward with a scanner. “Alright. Let’s see if you’ve got any nasties.”

My fingers, clumsy inside the thick mag-gloves, hovered over the primary latch of my coveralls. My brain screamed fight, but my body knew the math. Three augments against one malnourished human with a pry-bar? That wasn’t a fight; it was a meat processing event.

Besides, my pry-bar was gone now. What did I have? Teeth and nails? Hardly, my gums had started bleeding a few weeks ago and my fingernails had given up the ghost when the solar lamps had run out of juice.

I didn’t look at them. I looked at the rivets on Vorne’s chest piece as I unsealed the gloves and let them drop. They hit the deck with a heavy thud.

“Slowly,” Rix murmured. “We don’t want you setting off any traps.”

“Yeah, like Rix said,” the big one mumbled, but traps were clearly not what he cared about right now.

My zipper was stiff with grease and ice. I yanked it down, the sound tearing through the silence like a rip in fabric.

The cold air hit my chest instantly, a physical slap that made my nipples harden against the thin, worn fabric of my thermal undersuit. I shrugged the heavy coveralls off my shoulders. They pooled around my boots, leaving me standing in the grey, threadbare thermals that clung to me like a second, starving skin.

“The underlayer too,” Vorne said. His single organic eye was unblinking. The cybernetic one whirred, aperture contracting.

“I’ll freeze,” I rasped, hesitating.

“We’ll keep you warm,” the big guy grunted. The massive wall of muscle took a step closer, radiating heat like a blast furnace.

“Back up Krix,” Vorne clipped.

Surprisingly, the giant obediently took two heavy steps back, but his eyes didn’t leave my chest.

My fingers were completely numb, but I managed a loose grip on the hem of my shirt. I pulled it up over my head, and tossed it aside. Then I shoved the leggings down, kicking them away until I was standing bare on the frost-slicked grating.

The cold was agonizing. It bit into my thighs, my stomach, my breasts. I instinctively wrapped my arms around myself, trying to shield my body from their eyes and protect my vital organs, but Vorne stepped in.

He grabbed my wrists and pinned them to my sides.

“No,” he ordered. “Rix needs to scan you.”

I stood. Shivering violently, exposed under the harsh, emergency red lights that turned my skin the colour of a fresh bruise. I felt small and pathetic. A soft, pale thing surrounded by hard black armour.

Vorne’s gaze dragged over me, slow and tactile. He inspected the grease smudged on my hip, the scar on my ribcage, the way my stomach hollowed in from months of rationing.

“Malnourished,” Rix noted.

“C-can-n-n w-w-we hhhhur-r-r-r-ry th-th-thisss up-p-p-?”

“Muscle density poor,” Rix stepped forward, a scanner in his hand humming. He ran a beam of blue light over my shivering form.

“Tits are nice though,” Krix offered, leaning down to sniff at my neck. His breath was hot and wet against my frozen skin. “Pink.”

“Reproductive systems intact,” Rix said, looking up from his display with a smirk. “Hormone levels borderline.”

“I hhha-v-v-v-n’t-t had-d-d a p-p-p-eriod-d-d-d in-n-n m-m-mon-nth-ths-s-s.”

“Krix,” Vorne said. He released my wrists. “Baggage handling.”