Sean-Michael Argo - Carrion Duty

When she hit the last hinge, Sparks nodded. In response, Vader and Doak heaved against the handles of their prybars. The hatch rattled as the ambient heat created by the torch rapidly expanded, the force of the micro-burst of kinetic energy giving Vader and Doak just the boost they needed to slam the hatch open with enough speed that if there was a threat waiting behind the hatch the others would have a clear field of fire.

The group stood silently near the hatch for nearly thirty seconds, giving time for whatever ghosts that might be trapped on board to leave. It was a long-held scrapper superstition that Rhett considered rather out of place in this somewhat secular civilization. However, like the rest of the team, Rhett kept with tradition and stood in silence for the space of three breaths, and then it was time to go to work.

“Making entry,” announced Rhett and he stepped out over the open hatch and deactivated the mag-clamps on his boots.

Without the small magnetic bond the trooper’s body was immediately subject to the modest gravity of the ship’s bulk, which gently pulled him through the hatch and into the vessel. As he made the near seven-foot drop to the floor of the compartment Rhett activated the lighting tabs on his shoulders and the spot beam on his helmet. His boots connected with a muffled clang as he landed and immediately re-engaged his clamps. The ship was in a slow spin and Rhett wanted to work relative to the vessel, his new world for the time being. Rhett raised his rifle and moved forward, making room for Dante as the gunman made his own landing.

Rhett pressed onwards with Dante at his back, knowing that the rest of his team entered behind him. Quinn’s observations held, and Rhett plowed through a small cloud of cabin debris that looked to be an assortment of tools and personal effects. As his lights shone through the compartment he confirmed that they indeed had entered through a standard crew launch chamber. The team moved through the open doorway at the back of the compartment and plunged further into the vessel.

They moved down a silent passageway that connected the launch chamber and a staging area. From the size of the hatch and attached chamber, Rhett was somewhat certain that this was a crew deployment series of compartments. Judging from the amount of assorted debris still floating around, the explosive decompression that often ravaged entire ships when damaged, had not occurred here.

The gravity generator might have been deactivated or destroyed, and while this section did not have pressure at present, the debris present indicated that it had been a slow atmospheric degradation. Likely this section of the ship was sealed off directly, but small stress fractures at various points could cause loss of cabin pressure without the kind of rapid change in atmosphere that ripped everything apart. This was a good sign, and at least indicated that the ship was likely worth the bounty placed on it.

Rhett came to the end of the passageway and saw that the door was ajar, though upon closer inspection, he saw that the sliding barrier had been bent sufficiently to pull it off the track and make fully closing it all but impossible.

As he heaved the door open with his shoulder he could see that someone had been hacking at the metal, causing several rents in the door and bending it. Perhaps someone was attempting to get through the door by hacking out the lock, that or trying to prevent anyone from getting through from the other side. In the half-light of the dead ship it was tough to tell.

Rhett entered the crew chamber with his rifle at the ready, the beam of his helmet light cutting through the cloying darkness like a laser. Soon the ambient illumination of the light tabs embedded in the armor of the other scrappers made the room generally visible.

At first, it appeared to be of little consequence, just another room to pass through on their way to the ship’s command bridge, which happened to be on the, still, pressurized deck three.

Along the far wall of the room was a long row of void suit racks, a dozen at first glance, which would have been used by the ship’s maintenance crew for any external repairs or dock work needed. The tool lockers on the opposite side of the room for the most part lay open and had been stripped bare. Every drill, welder, spar and spool was gone. Bits of disposable equipment packaging floated through the compartment, along with several glittering crystals of what appeared to be machine oil.

But it wasn’t oil.

“Overwatch, eyes on!” whispered Rhett harshly, for a moment forgetting that even if he’d been screaming his voice would not have carried past the confines of his helmet.

“That’s frozen blood, Papa,” observed Doak in his exceptionally gravelly voice as he slid his sidearm out of its holster and thumbed off the safety. The man’s thick Jotan accent marked him as hailing from one of the harshest factory worlds operated by Aegis. “And somebody still on that rack.”

“Dante, overwatch, Drago, on me,” Rhett ordered crisply as he toggled the rifle’s safety off and began tapping his finger against the metal just above the trigger.

Rhett stepped closer to the rack of void suits, his light clearly showing the suit bore multiple, ragged tears and was soaked with blood, the body of the crewman still inside. The suit was still strapped into the rack, the person obviously having been assaulted while trying to don the void gear.

Staring at the viciously mutilated corpse had Rhett’s every instinct screaming at him to get the hell back to the Vulture .

Something was terribly wrong here.

“Look like he got went after by a safety axe,” observed Doak, clinically. He gently prodded one of the deep chest wounds with his pistol. “That one there what did him dead.”

“I did not see any corpses on the outside of the vessel during our approach,” said Drago, reminding Rhett of his presence. The trooper realized he was starting to let the strangeness of this salvage make him jumpy. “If anyone had opened the exit hatch everything in here would have been sucked out.”

“So, we have a minimum of eleven void suits and a full locker of tools missing,” nodded Rhett as he turned around, not wanting to brush away the ice and blood crystals that obscured the face of whoever lay dead inside the ravaged suit. “Obviously, I’m calling this a hostile salvage. Lethal action authorized. Captain, confirm.”

“Hostile salvage confirmed,” came the voice of Captain Estrada through the team’s comm-bead. “Management concurs, proceed with impunity, Calibos, secure my ship.”

Rhett backed away from the mangled corpse and turned his attention to the door leading into the rest of the ship.

“Dante, take point, Quinn, get us to the bridge,” said Rhett. At his signal, Dante plunged into the darkness, followed by Vader and Quinn, each with their pistols out. Rhett, Sparks, and Doak moved through the door next, with Drago bringing up the rear.

Rhett knew that the official record of this operation would now contain the force confirmation and concurrence by Estrada, which would insulate the trooper and his team from any punitive fines related to the seizure and delivery of this prize.

Scrap bounties were issued to individual ships in the Vulture fleet, and once the quarry was found, it was the responsibility of the teams to maintain as much inherent value as possible. Careful salvage was critical to ensure that no further damage was done to the prize. Without a proper record of authorization, the teams could be fined for any collateral damage they caused in the taking of said bounties. Self-defense was a factor taken into consideration when assessing the fines, maintaining clean records of communication and salvage protocol kept the team from risking the very paychecks they were risking their lives to make. Aegis might not be the feudal juggernaut that Grotto Corporation was, but the company was not in the business of allowing its citizen employees to take liberties with the Bottom Line.