Sean-Michael Argo - Carrion Duty

As soon as the hatch was open, the troop compartment of the small dropship depressurized as it hit vacuum, the force pulling hard against the squad inside. Rhett felt the straps of the grav-couch release in time with the hatch, and he was sucked out of the opening into space.

The dropship, little more than a troop compartment with several micro-thrusters, piloted remotely from the bridge of Vulture Six, had rapidly arrested its momentum with reverse burn and ejected its human cargo a mere hundred meters from their target. The grav-couches were positioned to release the squad in a cascading fashion during decompression so that the seven vultures would be hurled towards their target with enough speed to swiftly arrive and yet not enough to kill them, usually, if they collided with the target before achieving control over their trajectory.

Rhett looked in front of him as he soared through open space and saw the target. The corpse of a starship designated AG16 hung in the cold void just under one hundred meters from his encroaching position. As the trooper closed the distance with the massive vessel he could feel the gentle pull of its gravity speeding up his approach. From the look of it, the ship had not suffered overmuch damage from whatever fate had befallen it. There was little in the way of debris in orbit around it.

It was obvious, though, something nefarious had taken place. Rhett was soon able to see several blast points on the far side of the ship’s hull, though it would take a closer examination to determine if the wounds were inflicted by ship-to-ship weapons or an internal explosion.

Perhaps, if Rhett had been part of the cor-sec navy, he might have had the knowledge to tell from this distance.

Vitrian Holt, the pilot of Vulture Six , had insisted from their initial recon sensor sweep that it was assault damage. It was better to be prepared than not, and while the Vulture had modest armament in the form of a skirmish class burner lance, it was far from being a combat vessel, so the dropship was launched with Rhett’s squad to investigate before Vulture Six came any closer. If this was a hostile salvage it was better for the squad to handle it in close quarters than to risk the ship.

Even out here, it’s all about looking at the risk and reward for the Bottom Line, snorted Rhett to himself. He rotated his body to the left and squeezed the trigger of his compressed exhaust booster to avoid crashing into a table-sized, jagged piece of metal that hung in orbit around the dead ship.

According to the bounty brief, the AG16 was an Aegis agri-hauler, a rather sizeable vessel that was designed to transport enough raw material to feed a work colony or industrial outpost for decades. In the ship’s hold there would usually be a plethora of active seeds, rich soil, fertilized water pods, and UV panels that could be powered by anything from combustible fuels to battery power depending on the capacities of the facility.

Aegis Corporation, as a general practice, was a company keen to enable its various ventures, both in mapped territories and necrospace, to be as self-sustaining as possible. The Aegis philosophy was one of heavy initial investment followed by minimal maintenance and the realization of incremental, but reliable returns.

In many ways, these agri-haulers and those outposts functioned similarly to the crew of the Vulture , Rhett mused realized as he prepared himself for landing. Each of the crew had been functionally purchased by agents of Aegis and were expected to out-perform the purchase price over time.

Rhett knew exactly what it had cost Aegis to buy out his penal sentence, and though he’d served admirably as an indentured bounty scrapper for five years already, there was a long way to go before the return on investment would be sufficient. Time to do the job or get retired, Rhett said to himself, and he prepared for impact against the aft section of the ship, furthest from the blast points.

The trooper squeezed the exhaust booster once more and expertly degraded his momentum enough that he was able to slam his boots against the hull of the ship and bring himself to a full stop. No sooner had he made the landing then he activated the mag-clamps on his boots. Low grade magnets held him in place with sufficient force to keep him from floating away but still allowed him to walk along the surface of the ship. In rapid succession, the rest of the squad made it shipside. Within thirty seconds of deployment the seven-person squad was moving briskly across the hull to the hatch that Quinn silently pointed out to them.

She had no doubt already put in the time to become intimately familiar with the internal layout of AG16, thought Rhett as he clomped across the hull, having likely studied deeper than just accepting the cursory schematics the squad had been provided with at the briefing. Rhett kept pace with Quinn, and the rest of the group fell in step behind them, with Dante and Drago bringing up the rear. They reached the hatch several minutes later, long enough for the lazy spin of AG16 to put Vulture Six on the other side of the hull and out of sight.

“Calibos,” said the voice of Captain Estrada through Rhett’s comm-bead, “Now that we are spinward our instruments are reading that the fore section of, looks like, deck three still has pressure.”

“Still not picking up any power sources?” asked Rhett as Quinn knelt before the hatch and motioned for Vader to accompany her.

“Negative, completely dead in the water,” responded the captain, “However, Calibos, be advised, we are now registering a number of heat sources that are disconnected from the ship systems.”

“Could be that somebody got that part of the ship sealed up before everything decompressed,” observed Quinn as she used a high rpm drill to bore a hole through the hatch, and then handed that off to Vader before she snaked a thin camera cable through the hole, “They’d be floating ice cubes by now of course. Maybe somebody has an active thermal rig.”

Rhett and Vader exchanged a look of exasperation at Quinn’s apparent need to state the obvious, and in Rhett’s mind it was something of a defining trait about the young woman. They were still glorified grave robbers, thought Rhett as he watched Quinn moved the cable around and watched what the camera saw on a wrist mounted monitor, a little respect wouldn’t kill her. After a few moments, Quinn retracted the camera cable and gave Rhett the thumbs up.

“Nothing out of the ordinary, just floating cabin debris,” Quinn reported, “The bounty for AG16 is nice and fresh, only six standard months, so most of the ship’s core systems shouldn’t have degraded past the point where I can’t jumpstart them. We might have to limp her back to the yard if the steering is fried, but I should at least be able to get us into the mainframe.”

“We limp or tow everything back to the yard, Quinn, it wouldn’t be on our list otherwise,” said Rhett, ready to get on with it, “Okay, people, let’s open the door and get this day done.”

At his command, Vader and Doak slid telescoping prybars out of their utility belts. The two men set the flat heads of their bars against the seams of the hatch, preparing themselves to pry open the door as soon as Sparks finished her work. The young woman knelt before the hatch and reached into her breaching kit to produce a compact high yield cutting torch of Grotto design. She pressed the tip against the seam of the hatch. The tool formed a seal over her target, allowing for the heat of the flame to do its work without being instantly snuffed out by the unforgiving vacuum of space. In seconds, Sparks had worked the torch over the areas where she knew that the hinges were embedded, having studied the make and model of AG16 enough to make an educated guess.