Rhett and the other convicts called it the ‘burner box’, and it was aptly named. Groups of ten convicts at a time would be marched into a metal container roughly the size of a standard cargo pod. Once sealed inside the convicts would be bombarded with a three-hundred-sixty-degree laser bath. Not only would it burn away the cheap paper jumpsuits the convicts wore in the refineries, but it would singe off every last strand of hair on their bodies, not to mention the first layer of skin. An instant after the lasers ignited, the container would be flooded with compressed air, making the entire room into a tempest of body ash for a few seconds before the filters picked everything up.
He zipped up his flight suit and looked around the berth, taking note of just how little he had in the way of personal belongings. Beyond a few sets of station clothes and a civilian grade tablet, the former convict had no material possessions. A man like him didn’t need personal affects, though Rhett, before opening the hatch and closing it behind him as he entered the narrow hallway of the berth deck. Anything he considered of value was transitory anyway.
He was reminded of Andromeda in that moment, the young woman whose scent still lingered in his nostrils, though more likely his imagination. The Vulture was surprised to discover that he wanted to return to the station, to feel those arms wrapped around him again. It wasn’t like him to form attachments to anything or anyone, much less a professional. He flexed his hand, opening and closing his fist. Perhaps he was feeling ill at ease with the, as yet, undisclosed bounty. Captain Estrada usually held the bounty briefing in pre-flight, before leaving the station. This time however, the meeting wasn’t until well after they were enroute.
The former trooper walked down the hallway and through the door leading to the main deck. He came to the large chamber near the center of the ship, a room that doubled as the mess hall and a meeting space. Quinn Eros was already there talking with Captain Estrada, something about having gone to watch the breakers take apart the AG16. The engineer had never been one to fully disconnect from the job when she had shore leave, so it was of little surprise.
In fact, Rhett decided, it might have been rather cathartic to see the AG16 get chopped. Pieces of that ship would end up being bought and sold across the sector, and the more he thought about it the more chilled he became at the prospect that the next time Vulture Six went in for repairs it could be that they ended up with pieces of the AG16. Such was the endless cycle of manufacture and refurbishing that kept the gears of necrospace turning.
“Calibos, you should have seen it,” said Quinn as she turned to greet Rhett before picking up her tablet and taking a seat near Captain Estrada’s folding lectern. “They flooded the agri-hauler with hydrogel after patching the hull, then did a rapid decompress. It was amazing, I’ve never seen a water capture before.”
“Usually, we don’t haul in a rotting corpse either,” said Bella Mons as she entered the room along with Sparks and Doak. “That’s the first bio-hazard we’ve had since the Flint, and that was years ago.”
“Good to put that one behind us,” nodded Doak before sitting down on the far end of the table, nearest the door that closed behind John as the former salvage marine entered the room and took a seat next to Rhett.
“Vultures are only as good as the last bounty,” said the captain while the remainder of the small crew assembled in the briefing room. “The sooner we sink our teeth into something new the AG16 will be old news, and you won’t be waiting long, we’ve already got a hit.”
Rhett was impressed that Bella had been able to get a hit so quickly after docking with Andromeda Station, that was a new record, even for her, which was saying something.
Vulture Six, like the other bounty scrapper vessels in the fleet, was equipped with an array of short, mid, and long range sensors, in addition to direct access to an Aegis transit database. As the tech officer, it was Bella’s job to find their next target.
“I understand that we have a powerful array on the Six,” John commented, folding his arms across his chest and turning his head sideways to speak with Rhett. “However, the headhunter was less than clear about exactly how we’re supposed to hunt down bounties out there in the void.”
“Well, it’s a proprietary tech solution mainly, not something they disclose until you’re part of the team, signed and sealed as it were,” said Rhett. “As we move through the sector, Bella will drop data spores, they’re these metal orbs that are about the size of your fist. She marks where she dropped them, and for the most part, they stay on the drift in that general area. They don’t have much sensor range, but she’s dropped hundreds, and they all feed data back to her. When a ship or void debris is scanned that data is compared to the bounty registry. She gets a hit, then we have coordinates and we launch.”
“It’s kind of like fishing,” offered Vitrian as he walked past the men and took a seat on the other side of Captain Estrada’s lectern. He met the blank looks he was getting from both most everyone in the room and snorted, “Never mind.”
“Calibos is making it seem less tedious than it actually is,” smiled Bella as she activated a three-dimensional display at the center of the table which showed the sector and dozens upon dozens of tiny pinpricks of light indicating the data spores. “Truthfully, I spend day after day sifting through what I get from the spores hoping to make a connection. Fleet rents me time on the station’s network so I have more computing power. The sector is huge, and my grid is full of holes, but we do okay. This is unmapped space, mostly because it’s just void and a few rocks outside of the shipping lanes. Most of the bounties we score are just scrap jobs, like the AG16, but every now and then we secure targets marked for recovery.”
“Those sit in the yard until somebody comes to pick them up,” added Sparks, “Those bounties are either tragic or spooky, never had a straight recovery that wasn’t some kind of horror show.”
“In my experience, any salvage involves wading through someone else’s tragedy,” John stated, before adding, “This is the job.”
“Okay, that’s everybody,” said Captain Estrada, his voice carrying through the small room as the twins, Dante and Drago, entered and took their seats. “Let’s get this started. Mons, if you please.”
Bella nodded and keyed her tablet, the commands making the display zoom in on one of the data spores near the edge of the sector where mapped space bordered the rugged frontier and unmapped space beyond. She brought up another display that showed close range photos of a wicked looking vessel, one of the sleek cutters preferred by mercenaries, smugglers, and slavers.
From the vids that followed, Rhett could see the ship slide by the data spore as the tiny machine’s optics took detailed scans of the ship’s dimensions, speed, and trajectory.
“No markings, no active propulsion, and look at those plates on the side there,” said Vitrian as he leaned forward in his seat to punch in a command that replayed the vid, before pausing it so he could point at the dull black plates grafted to the side of the ship, “Those are low grade stealth grafts.”
“It’s a miracle the ship came so close to the data spore, if it had been even a few kilometers out, the optics wouldn’t have picked it up,” agreed Bella as she took control of the display and brought up the other data readouts from the spore. “The grafts baffled all my scanners, so I had to identify this with visuals only.”