The Salvageer

The Salvageer
Revised Edition v. 2
By Richard Ruth

    The acrid sting of smoke and brimstone struck deep into Jigs nostrils. Swiftly he adjusted his re-breather and rechecked the seal. He inhaled, sucking fiercely the stench burrowing its way into his skin, then exhaling gently, the ash next to his face plate never so much as stirring. Closing his eyes Jigs allowed himself another breath. This time the air was clear, sterile, filtered, though the breath before still saturated his mouth and nose with its vomitus taste.
    Good, Jigs thought. The blasted landscape around him groaned with fire, smoke and stagnant vapors, a haunted forest that was once a city. Laying there in a pile of ash, brick and twisted metal was little Jigs.
    God, I hope they don’t see me, Jigs prayed.
    The machines had been following him for two days, like a fox being tagged by a pack of hounds. Twice they had almost cornered him and yet twice he had evaded. Now he lay there, while the Constructs tirelessly picked through the broken ruins of the ancient metropolis.
Remember the four S’s, he said to himself, Sight, Sound, Smell and Signature. The four hints the machines could use to find you and inevitably kill you. They could see you and hear you move or speak or breathe. Your sweat and breath and body left a chemical trail that the metal beasts could sniff out. Without some Deepfreeze to inhale you would leave a heat Signature wherever you lingered too long.
    S.S.S.S. Jigs repeated. He bit down on his mouthpiece and inhaled bitterly. Deepfreeze struck him to the core like a hammer on an anvil. Jigs shivered violently. So fucking cold! Inside the mask of his re-breather Jigs teeth chattered like the drum roll of an execution. Slowly Jigs began to raise himself up from his ashy haven, his head snapping about. He saw only the fires, green and yellow horrors leaping from windows and the deep, oily grey smoke swimming from the many craters in the ground. Bringing himself into a crouch he again studied the area. They had destroyed everything, The Constructs. Rogue machines of war that turned on their human masters. All around him were the scars of their passing. At every angle there were squat, square houses torn apart by laser and appendage, along with broken, toppled and leaning towers, looking like sleeping giants afire from torch and missile. Tangled masses of charred bone and garbled steel pockmarked with the craters of bullets. The scene was almost as beautiful as it was grotesque.
    Still shivering Jigs rose, the ash that had settled on his body falling in silent clumps. With a wary eye he checked his wrist reader. Good, he thought again, only 20 meters. He struck out heading north toward the salvage his flotilla needed so badly.

-Two weeks earlier-

         
    Jigs awoke from his light sleep, the neon lights in his berthing room flickering to life. Straps yawned to life underneath, the two of them groaning and stretching and grumbling into action. Shoes laced, teeth brushed, chins shaved, suits donned, and tools checked. The rusted bulkheads of berth 251 were no more comfortable to Jigs than the dead of open space. Here on ship 212 or The Prudence, life wasn’t easy, and yet it was home. Leaking pipes that drooled like petulant children, rusted steam lines that sputtered and spit and electronics that failed almost as often as the petulant damn pipes leaked.
         A dull, static laden tone coughed from an overhead commophone. “C’mon team two, five one rise and shine.” Chief Taks mumbled, “The Prudence needs her lovin’”
         “On the way Chief,” Jigs grumbled, “Report ready in ten.” Jigs had just finished his inventory of tools. Hammer, Multi-tool, drill, steam-pressure attachment, carbide blade, hi-freq cutter, laser pen. It was all there, day fifty underway from Polaris, sub-light, and no apparent loss. Jigs looked from his tools to the portal. There were no windows on this deck; Jigs knew what was out there. All of that terrifying, frightful, gripping nothing. There was nothing but the bleak expanse of more space, especially at sub-light.
         “How long before the next jump?” asked Straps, always so inquisitive.
         “Four weeks—I hope,” replied Jigs, “The Uranium tank takes longer to charge with each leap and The Prude is one of the oldest babes in this flotilla, you know that.” Jigs returned his tools to his satchel and examined his apprentice. Buzz short red hair and stable green eyes. Straps was avionics and software technician, with eyes and skin as dark as the bare iron of most of the bulkheads. Both of them were pale, gaunt and thinning from the lives in deep space. Jigs examined his own features in his rack side mirror. His once sandy colored hair had grown blonde and his deep brown eyes were a shade lighter than when he remembered. Then again, there was no room for vanity in the flotilla. There was work, sleep, a chance to breed and always that catching, ruthless fear of the machines. The machines that man had made, now the machines that sought to unmake man.
         Now, as ever, man would flee, in small fleets of starships separated by the vast, void ocean of space. Each flotilla would stop in a system just long enough to salvage and mine what it could before setting off into the endless night, praying that the ravenous metal monsters hadn’t picked up its trail.
-Planetside-
         Jigs dragged himself through the tangled mass of the ruined city, stepping into smoldering craters and over flaming piles of debris. The Titan had leveled everything within five kilometers to find him. The thought turned his knees into water and sent armored spiders crawling up his spine. Breathing with a rapidity that only sheer terror can bring, Jigs continued his trek to the salvage.
         After traveling only about eight meters he stumbled upon the view of his prize. While climbing up what seemed to be a blackened cliff face the wall collapsed underneath him, dropping Jigs into the upper reaches of an enormous crater. At its center struck the still smoldering effigy of a high orbit commercial transport. The glowing hell gusted pillars of coal black smoke and sickly green fire out of the mouths of its breaches. The whole scene looked like a massive blade pitted with rust, knifing its way through the crust of the earth beneath. Jigs shivered violently and squatted to take a breath.
         By the Grace of God Straps, please make that dropship. Jigs prayed. Moments before the Titan had come upon Jigs and his apprentice, Jigs had ordered Straps to call down a recovery craft for their return to The Prudence. When the great banded iron beast had descended on them, Jigs had sent Straps running. Luckily he had been able to lure the Titan away from Straps with his thermal beacons, allowing his apprentice to slip away. At least this is what Jigs hoped.
         The ash and charred rubble crumbled to dust around Jigs as his crouch eased into a sit. Taking deep breaths he tried to steady his breathing. As he laid his arms back upon the lip of the crater he felt something soft. Reaching back he grabbed the lump of softness and held it before him. Staring him straight in the face were the button eyes of a seared and filthy pink rabbit. Blackened bits of rubble and ash sent showers of tiny stars drifting from its body. Jigs tried to imagine children playing on this planet; he could even hear their laughter. Tears wrapped Jigs eyes as his grip tightened on the desiccated little toy. “You poor little bastard,” he whimpered, “I’m gonna take you home.”
         Before Jigs could satchel the burned bunny he heard it. It was steel scraping on stone, hydraulic pistons, pressure relief blowback valves, and the screaming metal of un-oiled hinges. The hairs on the back of Jigs neck prickled like tiny blades as he felt his bowels churn with terror. Like some sort of stealthy assassin the Titan pivoted through the lip of the crater and looked right at Jigs and his diminutive pink rabbit.
Its foremost hydraulic lance struck out in less than a second. Out of pure reflex Jigs vaulted back and pressed his body against the wall of the crater. The tip of the lance caught the stuffed animal as it was falling and carried it deep into the ground.
    A rush of memories assaulted Jigs in that instant. The Titans, made to be tamed titanium beasts of burden. They walked bipedal on two hydraulic jacks, bent backward like the legs of an animal. Its cube shaped body was topped with a sensory turret like a fat, beady head poking from the top of a turtle shell. On either side of its central frame were six, high yield, hydraulic lances for breaking up bedrock and laying foundations. The Constructs hive mind saw fit to add to its destructive regimen placing plasma torch pods and industrial cutting beams across the chassis, making this Titan look more like a mutated mushroom sprouted with cancerous growths, than a machine made for work and wrecking.
    Jigs rolled over the set lance in a fury of terror and ran spastically from the monster. The Titan retracted the lance with a resounding ‘ping’ and gave chase with an arc of laser fire and a spout of superheated plasma. The ground and air exploded around poor Jigs as he tripped over the remains of a concrete wall. The fiery onslaught of the Titan smoldered the surrounding desolation into atoms, throwing up clouds of vapor, ash and smoke. On sheer reflexive instinct Jigs fumbled open his hip satchel and produced a small remote control apparatus, the ‘O’ Scrambler it was called. Its’ signal could temporarily surge the circuitry of any machine allowing for a brief moment of chaos in an otherwise ordered set of processing. Jigs curled himself up into a ball behind his little wall and prayed for a moment’s pause. It came in only a few seconds, just enough time for Jigs to dive out from the wall and brandish his little remote at the massive machine. The signal connected with an almost inaudible ‘durp’ and the Titan went insane with overloaded programming. A dome of debris and a shower of fire erupted round the machine, its focus finally off of its prey. Jigs ducked behind the cover of the wall and searched breathlessly for some escape.
    There, yes! God Yes! Jigs thought. Just in front of the Titan, the shaft of a sewer pipe thrust from the ground like a bent straw. The Titan had stopped is rampage and for a breath of time the land was still and serene. Jigs vaulted over his little haven and dove for the sewer pipe. The Titan came to in mid stride, spitting its lances like striking vipers, seeking the flesh of weak little Jigs. No spike found its mark as Jigs dove and rolled down the gullet of the sewer pipe. As he hit the floor of the drainage pipe, Jigs swore he could hear the Titan roar in frustration as it tore up the ground above him.
    Tears streaming from his eyes and his knees wavering like warm gelatin, Jigs once again continued his trek to the salvage. After what seemed like an endless journey of soiled ladder wells and dead-ends, Jigs finally exited to the base of the great airship. From his hidden little cranny Jigs scanned the surrounding area. Aside from the destruction located above there was no sign of the Titan. Jigs took his flare gun from its holster. ‘Twazz!’, ‘Twazz!’, ‘Twazz!’ came the sound as he set off a few rounds. The thermal beacons shot like birds blossoming orange sparks and trailing sky blue smoke.
    That should keep him searching for a bit, Jigs hoped. He scanned the ruin before him. Breaches in the hull gaped like giant, jagged mouths belching oily smoke. Several parts of the frame still sputtered gusts of yellow-green fire, it was beautiful. Jigs admired how such a magnificent piece of engineering could be devastated so completely. “Time to get the goods.” He mumbled aloud. He checked himself over to make sure he was secure. Breaches in the suit, zero. Total seal in the re-breather, check, reinforced plastic impact guards, check. Jigs took down his satchel and grabbed his reinforced gloves. The thought of having to scale jagged metal did little to settle his nerves. Jigs rubbed his hands together and moved in to begin his climb. Before stepping into the ruined ship he once again check his wrist reader. Bingo, he realized. Now if I could just remember Fusion Mechanics 101. Jigs took another sharp shot of Deepfreeze and started climbing.
    It was a short climb to engineering, thankfully. The core was still active and surges of electricity arced along its domed walls. Open pipes bled what were left of the reactors coolant, giving the core a deep blue glow. The central fusion matrix itself was still mostly intact, miraculously; even the primary airlock into the fusion chamber had been preserved, its solid titanium doors standing stoically vigilant in guard for the sweet prize beyond. Jigs found an access panel and broke it open; he used his multi-tool to hardwire an interface between his wrist reader and the surviving mainframe. It was only a matter of seconds before the great airlock doors groaned open, with the hard metal crying out from decades of neglect.
The core itself was almost pristine and Jigs had to stop himself from scrapping display monitors and server electronics. He was here for the fusion catalyst mechanism, not general salvage accessories. With a burst of exhilaration Jigs moved into the cores ante-chamber, his stomach a fleet of butterflies. Before him lay the F.C.M., propped up in its core mechanics looking like some religious idol on display at an altar of pipes and coolant tanks. Jigs pouted, stroking his neck with a thickly gloved hand. He smirked ever so slightly and got right to work.
It took only twenty short minutes to extract the mechanism from the core. Jigs hands moved deftly among the many ports and pipes, like a spider at home in the web. His job finished he stowed the oblong mechanism, now resembling more of a lava lamp, and started his descent.
Jigs plopped down to the ground and scanned the walls of the surrounding crater. There was nothing to be found. Maybe he went for it, Jigs hoped. He grabbed his ‘O’ Scrambler just to be safe. He pulled up his wrist reader. “Straps,” he called into it, “you livin’?”
“Dropship inbound, ETA two minutes!” replied a sweet, shrill voice. Jigs had never felt so accomplished. He could seen the incoming contrail well above the horizon. Jigs took another deep breath and smiled. Perhaps this trip will be over just as easy. Then came the sound of grinding metal, and Jigs ran, fast.
    The Gossamer Bride skimmed across the sky blasting hard and fast to recover Jigs. Straps held onto his troop seat as the G-force of their trek pushed him hard aft. The cargo doors of the troop area were open, to allow for quick on and off loading of personnel while the pilots cabin and medical bay were sealed with oxygen. Straps checked his re-breather again and secured his small pistol. Hmph, he laughed, small arms fire against a Construct, what a joke. The humor died as he glanced out of the cargo door. Fountains of white clouds seared the ground just ahead and below the Gossamer Bride and spears of orange light cut swathes of damage from the already destroyed surroundings. Using his visor Straps zoomed in for a better look and screamed. He saw Jigs running, pursued by the hell breathing construct.
    “Salvageer two o’clock!” he shouted into the Brides’ commophone. Swiftly he lashed himself to the troop seat with the harness and pulled tight with a grunt.
    “Confirmed” the pilot acknowledged as the Bride banked left, hard. Straps slammed against the wall, the roar of the correctional jets almost blinding him. He peered out of the cargo door again to watch the scene unfold. “Bring us down now!” he commanded.
Jigs ran with a mission, he could feel the heat behind him, and felt the effects of the Contructs’ frenzy around him. Desiccated buildings were lanced to pieces by bars of orange light, white clouds consumed piles of rubble, and everywhere around him debris and shrapnel were exploding from the air. Heavy thuds of giant footsteps followed as he pattered his way to the skimmer. His breath came in fiery heaves as he saw the Gossamer Bride finally bank left and pitch in his direction. His whole body ached and his blood had turned to salty acid. He could feel bile creeping its way up from his stomach, burning like death with every breath. Still, Jigs sailed on through the destruction like a wolf to its prey.
Straps released his harness as the Gossamer Bride slowly hovered to the ground. He grabbed his pistol and released his shots at the Construct, praying desperately it might work to give Jigs more time.
    Jigs saw the Bride coming in low; he knew he would have to think fast. He had the FCM, he had his wrist reader, and he was Jigs, one of the best Salvageers in the fleet. He would have to make it before the Bride could be consumed by fire and cutting laser, with all lives lost and the salvage never reaching the fleet. While running he unclasped his reader from his forearm and clasped it to the strap that holstered the FCM. He pulled the device from his shoulder and loosened the strap. He could see Straps shooting at the Construct behind him, he almost laughed at its insanity. He pushed that much harder, his body a torture of acid limbs and smoky lungs.
    Straps emptied his third clip before stopping. His shooting was doing no good and Jigs was getting closer. The Bride began to climb ever so slightly. Then a bar of light bit into the flank of the skimmer showering sparks and pitching the Bride higher into the air, “We’re alright”, the pilot called over the commophone, “The armor took it but we won’t be able to get any lower!”
    “Ten seconds!” Straps called back, he strapped his waist into a harness and secured it on a floor latch. He was going to have to lean out and grab him. He almost puked when he saw what happened next.
    Jigs was running with abandon toward his rescue when the ground before him erupted in green fiery fury. His prize was wrenched from his hands and he was sent sprawling to the ashen ground. His ragged breaths came out in choked sobs as the acrid sting of the atmosphere permeated his senses. Each breath was oilier than the last. Jigs rolled over in a panic his eyes staring at the sky through a cracked faceplate. His breath came in grey puffs as the oxygen in his body began to bleed through his damaged face shield. He sucked back one final breath and removed the faceplate, his face fully exposed to the death around him. Just beyond his arm was his salvage. With a grimace he seized his prize and continued on, the rank of his last breath almost gagging him in the back of his throat.
    Straps cried out in horror as he saw Jigs running with a red face and no helmet. His brow was bleeding and his eyes were glossing over. Hopelessness seized Straps like ice water and he reached out for Jigs, still so far away, his breath coming in crushed gasps.
    Jigs began to feel elation. He saw the cutting laser lance into the Gossamer Bride but she held fast. He was going to have to make it a good strong effort to get aboard. The pain was gone now, replaced with a tickling numb that brought a peaceful fog at the corners of his vision. He sped toward the Gossamer Bride, so close yet so far and knew exactly what he had to do. While running he began to spin the FCM about his head, each pass giving the heavy liquid inside that much more momentum. With one last force of will he stopped and pitched the FCM into the air like a hammer throw, arcing toward the cabin of the Gossamer Bride, before his vision faded a strong, solid arm slammed him into the ashen ground. And then all was soft, darkness.
    “NOOOOOOOO!” Straps was screaming as Jigs launched his prize into the air. The straps of the harness just barely catching in his shaky grip as the Gossamer Bride began to roll away. Before Jigs could move the Construct pierced him through the back driving his upper body into the ground and leaving Jigs legs to topple, twitching. A roar of white cloud licked the sides of the Bride as she climbed higher into the atmosphere. Straps rolled over onto the floor clutching the FCM like a babe to his chest, tears streaming down his agonized face.
“Dropship inbound heavy one fusion unit, short one Salvageer.” The pilot sounded.
“Roger that Gossamer Bride, God Speed Jigs,” was the Prudence only reply.