Part 3

Onboard the Albatross:

Field engineers are a cred a dozen. Still, life aboard a salvage/recovery barge is better than life in a production facility. Those poor bastards have it real bad. Constantly under the gun, trying to meet this deadline for that modification. Not for me, pal. Not for me.

Luckily for me, I'm no engineer. I'm a simple grunt. I go in with the salvage teams, keep them safe, and mow down anything that threatens them. Yup, baby sitter extraordinaire. I'm assigned to the 173rd Squadron, Sharks Teeth we're called. 'Course, I'm on semi-permanent loan to a bunch of salvage weenies at the moment, but one of these days I'll get back to the 173rd.

"Derek, get your ass out there. We don't have all day. One of the 'vettes thinks we got a shadow, so look alive."

Sure, and one day I'll publish this book I'm writing too. Closing out the vox recorder, I key the radio. "Yeah, yeah! I'm moving. Don't get your panties in a twist."

Well, show time. At least I won't be sitting in this behemoth, sweating my 'nads off, waiting to go anymore. The radio crackles again and some engineer puke makes a funny about my armor. "Watch that First Step. It's a lulu."

"Wow, haven't heard THAT one ten million times before. Thought you eggheads were supposed to be bright."

Two steps and my modified First Step take me out of the cargo hatch and into the vacuum of space. I kick my thrusters on and start moving toward the pieces of some poor ship that got itself slagged. Sliding in and out of some of the bigger pieces, I find a perch on which to watch the kids go to work from.

Yeah, that'll do nicely. I match rotation and velocity with the block of shredded hull and land without disturbing its spin. Stabilizing pins fire into the scrap from my armor's feet, anchoring me to the hull. Time to check on the boys. I key the mic, "Hey Tzar, you on station yet?"

"Affirmative. One kilometer at 270." Sergey's a good trooper. He hates the job, but he's too professional to admit it.

"Washer, you up?"

"Moving as we speak, boss. ETA five seconds." Private Wassor's got a few things to learn, but he's as eager as a puppy to please. Don't know how he lucked out in drawing this duty.

"Captain, watch dogs on duty, you can let the kids come out and play." He's not a military captain, but the title makes him feel better. Calling him that also makes my life a whole lot easier.

The mouth of the barge opens up and out steps the poor sods that have to move all this junk. Four orange suits accompany eighteen blue ones, marking the engineers. The ones I pity are the kids in blue. Too slow to make soldiers of them, to dumb to make scientists, they get stuck with laborer jobs on tubs like this. At least they're good at something.

It's like watching an ant colony. Not that I've ever seen one, mind you, but that's what I hear. The orange ones rush out, marking the pieces of junk they want, and the blue ones direct them toward the ship. There, some kid who is a little smarter than the blues, locks onto the junk with a tracker, and guides it into the hold. Kind of fun to watch. Yeah, for about thirty seconds.

One of the engineers starts heading for the ship. Guess he found the transponder. Hopefully they'll know what took this hulk out in a few hours. Maybe, they'll even tell us. Too much to ask, probably.

I tap into the ships sensors and radios to find out what's going on with our escorts. They're nowhere in sight, and even the fancy tracking stuff some wiz-kid stuffed into this suit can't detect them. From the com unit I get a better idea of what's going on. They're off chasing ghosts leaving us with only three sets of armor to guard a barge and twenty-one workers.

Time to frazzle the old man. "Captain, you want to send out Zorry's crew? Our escorts are off playing cat and mouse and we're sitting naked out here."

"I've got Zorry's and Rillaf's crew on their way out. Something with that scrap has the engineers spooked. Look at that piece you're on and tell me what you see."

Ok. I'm game for just about anything. "Looks like it's been slagged to me. Wait a minute. I've never seen a weapon leave that kind of mark before. This thing looks like it's been chewed."

"Yeah, that's what's got them spooked. We're ordered to continue salvage and then get the hell out of here, so I've got everyone one I can spare going out to get us out of here faster. Stay cool out there, Derek." One of these days he'll actually put a sergeant in front of my name.

"Like I have a choice."

I watched as six sets of power armor leapt out of the barge and dispersed through out the debris field. A minute afterward, over eighty blue suits scramble out and start grabbing junk. News must be traveling fast, 'cause these guys were running like a raped ape. Not that I'd know how a raped ape runs, but I've been told they move pretty fast.

We started moving around. Have to show the kids that we were here and they were safe. After a half an hour of a show of force, or lack there of, the workers have most of the junk inside. They start working the last four multi-ton pieces back to the hold when I my sensors light up.

I had a warship exiting from the rings around this pit of a planet and heading straight for us. I brought up the IFF and preyed that it was one of ours. When the blip turned red, I knew we were in trouble.

I key the emergency override. "This is Sergeant Derek, everyone inside the Albatross now. Captain, fire her up and get ready to move, company just showed up." Before he can answer, I flip over to the platoon's freq. "Heads up, people, we have a hostile inbound. Arm the Rippers and wait for it to get in range."

The platoon fell onto its training, working like a fine tuned machine. As we waited for the enemy to show, I hear mutterings over the com, hopes that this new ship is Dark Night. IFF finally identified the interloper and our hearts sink when seeing the readout.

"Albatross, all your people are onboard. Button up and get the hell out of here. Get those 'Vettes over here on your way out. We'll try to keep them off your back." Yeah right! Like we have half a chance against a SLA Warlord.

The barge started moving out, but the Warlord's course wasn't changing. It was still over a thousand kliks beyond the Rippers' range. Too bad, these little missiles might at least bloody this guy's nose.

One Corvette shows up on my sensors, but they're too far to make it in time. The Rippers on our shoulder are pointed in the right direction and are ready to rock as soon as the Warlord gets in range. In unison, the squad brings the cannons up and online. Forty mm rounds against a ship is only going to piss this guy off. But the DU might, repeat, *might* keep his attention on us.

The Rippers start screeching as they acquire lock. My first missile streaks off into the void toward its mark as the second and final one wakes up and takes a look. The rest of the platoon launches as I send my second shot after the first and start counting down the range marker, hoping to get a few shots off with the cannon before getting slagged. Who the hell am I kidding?

One final act of defiance. The others take my action as a cue, of sorts, and join me in a one-fingered salute to the Warlord that's bearing down on us. A grin spreads across my face as I key the cannon and open up one handed, keeping the bird flying.

We are so dead.

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