The Salvage Diaries: Whispers
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[Chapter 2]: Static and Bone
The Drifter’s twin jump engines sputtered to a stop, their wail fading into the void. The artificial gravity died with them. In the sudden weightlessness, the ship’s heartbeat shifted to the sharp, staccato hiss of manoeuvring thrusters as Glitch fought to hold position.
“I’ve got to let it pull us, or the tethers will snap,” Glitch’s voice cracked through the comms, thick with strain. “All scrap and inertia back there.”
“Moving’s fine, it’s the stopping that’s a problem,” Torvin called from his crash couch.
“Or moving from a stop,” Pixel added from his nest at the bridge.
“You know what’s never a problem? Shutting up.” Jazmyn snapped.
She released the restraints, drifting free of the crash couch as the gel sloshed back into place with a wet squelch. Her left arm whirred, the servos within the AHG-stamped plasteel housing humming as she grabbed the handhold. Weightlessness pulled at her shoulder, the metal socket digging into her bone. Five years had passed since an unsecured cargo crate had crushed her original arm during a routine freight run. The accident had taught her all she needed to know about physics.
Jax drifted past her, not bothering with mag boots. His long, stretched frame moved through zero-g with the ease of someone raised without gravity’s pull. He was the one who’d pulled Jazmyn from underneath that crate, tied the tourniquet, left the transporter crew to care for her. They started the Stardust Drifter together, two ex-Earth army grunts floating through the Outer Rim.
“Hey,” Jazmyn called, her cybernetic arm snapping out to grab Jax mid-air, fingers closing around his waist like a tether. She yanked him in, her other arm locking around his waist. “Wreck’s got a gash in the hull. Mag boots aren’t a suggestion, soldier.”
Jax’s laugh was a dry rasp, the kind the UEAF used in their ads to sell hope. His face had the right mix of pallor and scars, not too bad, not too broken. “Ay-ay, Captain,” he said, bending to her level.
“I’m not your damn Captain.” Jazmyn pushed him away, sending him tumbling across the galley. “It’s Corporal Silas, or Boss, loverboy.”
Jax caught a handhold, realigning his body until his feet found the deck. His magnetic boots snapped into place with a sharp metallic clink. “Aye-aye, Boss,” he taunted.
Jazmyn pressed her boots into the grates, wiggling her toes to trigger the magnetic soles. The artificial down pulled at her feet, but her inner ear screamed anyway. Her stomach lurched, but she kept it in check. “Let’s go see what Glitch didn’t space.”
The suit-up was ritual and routine. Fresh respirator pack, helmet, seals. Checked her own, then his. They cycled through the umbilical. On the other side, the freighter’s bridge was a zero-G graveyard. Silence pressed against the hull like a fist. Jazmyn’s boots struck the deck with a vibration that crawled up her spine right into her audio, each step ending in a sharp whine of feedback.
Without gravity, the gore no longer clung to the grates, rising in viscous globs that glistened in the helmet beams. Jazmyn retraced her steps to the bridge, stopping underneath the polished stalactite ring of nav-array conduits. The RAT she’d plugged into the main consoles was blinking green, illuminating the darkness and the freezing blood that moved through it.
“Pixel, talk to me,” Jazmyn said.
“Data’s streaming,” Pixel’s voice crackled in her helm from the Drifter. “Standard Outer Rim setup: Aether Dynamics’ nav-array, sealed tighter than a Vault door, the rest is junk from the cheapest auction.”
Jax clacked into the bridge behind her. His lanky frame, 1.96 meters of taut sinew and bone, loomed over Torvin, who followed him like a very solid shadow. He tilted his head up, light glinting off the Aether Dynamics logo etched into the conduit above.
“Aether Dynamics makes damn sure nobody forgets who owns the roads,” Jax murmured. “They won two wars with this tech. Now they collect the dividends.”
“Navigators take more in fees than ten trips across the nav-net,” Jazmyn said. She looked at the console where the navigator had been plugged in. “Wonder what this tub was hauling to make a faster transit worth the risk.”
“Boss,” Pixel interrupted, his voice jumping an octave. “I’m looking at the freight manifest. They were carrying air scrubber parts for one of Anvil’s habitats. The request is still open.”
“Boss...” Torvin’s voice rumbled. His shoulders hunched before he moved, the shift a quiet warning. The crew’s heavy had family on Kepler-186f, the high-grav planet everyone called “The Anvil.”
“And another thing,” Pixel continued, “the longboat is gone. There might’ve been survivors.”
“Which means there’re eyes on this boat.” Jazmyn sighed, toggling on her helmet’s video feed capture. “This is the documentation of legitimate void salvage claim, performed by Silas, Jazmyn, registration ID 7-Alpha-9-Omega-2D,” she said into her microphone, already pulling her multi-tool out of her utility pouch. “We’re doing this by the book.”
By the book meant pulling data and dragging survivors from the cold dark. Void salvage was a trade as old as the first jump drives, crews chasing down emergency beacons of ships lost in the ether. In the void, a drifting wreck didn’t last long before Sirens found it. Stop? You died. Most emergencies only needed a tow line and a mechanic. Not this crimson tomb.
The nav-array core detached with a precise snap of safety pins. Aether Dynamics built quality hardware, but their people? That was another story. The data vault rested inside the outer lead casing of the fusion reactor, requiring Torvin’s brute force to free. Alongside the nav-link buried in the dithering madman’s skull, those were the three pieces that yielded the most credits. The ship itself would have been the fourth, but it wasn’t going anywhere any more.
Jazmyn planted her mag boot on the ragged edge of the hole left by the second engine. The wreckage drifted slowly toward the distant stars. She stared into a corner of her HUD, the cybernetic feed projecting onto her corneas. The comms channel flared with a friendly spring onion green.
“Glitch, how are we doing on fuel and cargo space?”
The pilot hummed, his voice a thread in the static. “If you’re thinking of hauling those scrubbers to Kepler-186f, don’t bother. We’ll cap mass before the hold’s half full.”
“Find a mapped asteroid to park this pile and log the coordinates for self-pickup. We ain’t running a damn charity.” Jazmyn tightened her grip on the thin net full with the kind of cargo that never saw a manifest. Her left hand convulsed, a spasm that shot through her nerves like a live wire. She cursed, the sound sharp inside her helmet, and stepped back from the breach, mag boots humming as they clung to the hull. The void yawned beyond, swallowing light, swallowing air. The wreck groaned, its ribs peeling open like a gutted beast.
“Cargo secured,” Torvin said, voice gravelly over the comms. “No more losses if the spine holds.”
Jazmyn clenched her jaw. “Salvage’s done. Everyone back to the Drifter, air’s credits.”
Jax stood at the umbilical, his gauss rifle clinging to his respirator pack by its magnet. The silence of realspace thickened around them, but his presence carved a narrow space between the void and her ribs. She nodded, the motion swallowed by the tinted visor of her helmet.
He replied as if he’d already mapped her next move, raising his hand in the spacers’ sign for “everything is fine.” One of the few gestures she’d committed to memory. She copied it before stepping through the hatch beside him.
Jax’s hand settled on her shoulder, firm and deliberate, halting her mid-step. The weight of it carried the same precision as his breath, each movement a calculated act. “You’re favouring your arm again,” he said, the audio codec compressing his voice into a flat rasp.
“It’s nothing,” Jazmyn said, shrugging off his touch as she backed toward the airlock, fingers brushing the metal of the hatch. “Riley can look at it later.”
“Jaz, you’re still paying that thing off,” Jax said, stepping close. His voice carried the weight of a debt he didn’t want to owe. “You need to stand on your warranty rights.”
Jazmyn spun, forcing him to retreat. “No rights out here, Jax. No laws but who’s got the heaviest gun. AHG won’t give a damn, not when it’s not their system’s fault.” She tapped her helmet, the sound echoing inside, reverberating in her audio system.
Before Jax could speak, Torvin lurched from the corridor, his bulk blocking the hatchway. “Nice of you to wait.”
Jazmyn slammed the controls, red and green lights bleeding into the tight space. “Wouldn’t dream of ditching you and keeping your cut,” she said, leaning against the bulkhead as the air rushed back in with a hiss.