“I hate ocean planets.” Severyne gazed through the viewport at the looming shape of Vega Major, and the gentle curve of Vega Minor beyond. “All that water, none of it fit to drink. Wasteful and inefficient. There is darkness and depth and pressure, yes, if you go down far enough, but then, those depths are so often full of teeming monsters.”
Azad stood beside her. “On the other hand, there’s lounging on the beach, maybe someone attractive rubbing lotion on your back, you swim in the warm water, it’s got upsides.”
“There are species who consider such activities pleasant, I know, but the relentless sun is my own vision of horror.”
“So you sit under an umbrella, or wear a big hat. You’d look good in a big hat, Sev. Much better than you do in that flat cap with the little brim and the silver stars on it you were wearing when we first met. You can sip fruity boozy drinks out of hollowed-out examples of the very same fruit that’s blended up in the drink. Surely you can appreciate that – it’s efficient, right?”
Severyne’s lips twitched. She very nearly smiled. “You must think the Letnev a joyless people. It isn’t true. We simply take pleasure in things that your species, as a whole, does not. I find joy in competence, and order, and important work done well.”
“Sure, all that stuff is great,” Azad said. “But have you tried getting drunk and sleeping with a stranger?”
Severyne resolutely ignored that. “I assume this cloud of wreckage is our destination?” The screen lit up with hundreds of targets, ships all ringed in green to show the system didn’t consider them current threats.
“Welcome to the scrapyard of Sagasa the Disciplinarian. Biggest and best junkyard in the sector.”
Severyne narrowed her eyes. “I see Letnev ships among his inventory. How did he come by those? We decommission our own vessels in the Barony.”
“You’re looking at the far end point of battlefield economics, Sev. The Barony gets into the occasional fight, doesn’t it? And, contrary to what your national propaganda says, you don’t win every engagement. After a battle, the winning side recovers what they can, but usually they have to rush off to kill some other people someplace else, or they need to resupply, or they’re chasing down survivors, or they got beat up badly enough themselves that they need to limp home for repairs both medical and mechanical. There are teams of freelance scrappers who pay closer attention to politics than most politicians do, so they know where battles are likely to break out, and they hang around. After the surviving forces withdraw, the scavengers go in, and they gather what’s worth selling.”
Severyne had never really thought about what happened in the aftermath of a space battle. Logistics wasn’t her area, and neither was military engagement; she worked in what was sometimes called “inward-facing” security. “They loot battlefields and sell the spoils to people like Sagasa?”
“Only the junk.” Azad leaned on the curving black rail in front of Severyne’s chair, a posture that thrust out her rear end in Severyne’s direction in a rather distracting way. “Salvage that still works gets sold to mercenaries, or local forces, or sometimes they sell it back to the military that lost it in the first place, at a price that’s slightly cheaper than sourcing new stuff from a factory would be. The scavengers also perform other, ah, crucial functions. Delivering mercy, and the like.”
“That sounds like a euphemism. We don’t like euphemisms in the Barony, Azad. We prefer to view the world as it is.”
“They kill the dying, Sev. Space battles are different from terrestrial ones – they tend to be a lot more all-or-nothing, because if your ship gets destroyed, you get destroyed, so there are fewer wounded, overall. Fewer doesn’t mean zero, though, and there are always people lingering with significant bits of their anatomy missing in the aftermath, and no help on the way.”
“The scavengers murder battlefield survivors?” Why had Severyne’s required courses on military engagements not covered this material? Probably because the Barony didn’t like admitting to losses of any kind.
Azad said, “Oh, not always. Only the ones who are too far gone. They patch up people who can be patched up without too much trouble, and get them back home, for a price. Most factions will pay for the safe return of officers, and for grunts… well, ideally their return gets lumped into a purchase of weapons and supplies. If you’re an outside contractor or a mercenary though? Forget it. Nobody’s paying to get you back.”
That was disturbing, but Severyne knew the military had to make difficult decisions. “Freelancers are summarily executed?”
“No, you’re not thinking like a scavenger,” Azad said. “Try again.”
A test, then. An intellectual exercise. Severyne had always excelled at those. It was translating them to practical application that was proving harder than she’d ever anticipated. “If the point is to extract maximum value, turning what others view as waste into profit, and there are survivors who cannot be converted into money, they must instead be converted into… labor? The scavengers enslave them?”
Azad turned and gave her a smile. “Very good. Really it’s more like indenture, because that’s almost as good as slavery, and you get fewer rebellions from within and sapient rights complaints from without. If the scavengers save your life, and nobody pays them for the trouble they took to save you, you can always work off your debt. The pay is reasonable, and they treat their employees well, overall. Plenty of people choose to stay on even after their debt is paid, and some of them settle into scavenging for life. It’s dangerous work, salvaging battlefields – there’s always lots of unexploded ordnance that might explode when you touch it, flying debris that can puncture your suit or your lungs, things like that. There’s a lot of, let’s say, turnover, so new recruits are always welcome. Honestly, though, after you’ve barely survived a battle, being a salvager seems pretty safe in comparison.”
There was something about Azad’s voice. “You speak as if from experience.”
“I’ve spent a good chunk of my career as a deniable asset – nobody pays for my safe return. Either I make my own way home, or I don’t go home at all. I spent six months working for a salvage outfit that found me stuck in a crumpled escape pod tube in a wrecked ship after an engagement went bad. That’s when I met Sagasa, actually.”
“You have had a rich and varied life, haven’t you, Azad?”
“I like going new places and meeting new people.” She winked. “Just think, if my mission had gone more smoothly, and I’d snatched up Thales without getting all tangled with Duval and those pirates, you and I would never have met. Wouldn’t that be a tragedy?”
“If you hadn’t failed in your mission, Duval would never have attacked my station and put my life in danger, and I would be in my quarters right now, sleeping, instead of going to meet a criminal Hacan in a junkyard.”
“Life does take some unexpected turns, doesn’t it?” Azad said.
•••
A voice over the comms said, “Welcome to Sagasa Scrap and Salvage, we make old things new again, how can we help you today?”
“Tell the old crook his favorite scrapper Amina just brought him a top-of-the-line Letnev warship,” Azad said.
“What?” Severyne gasped.
•••
The station at the center of the debris cloud was a tangle of metal bolted together from castoff habitat modules, with entire scrapped ships welded into the middle of corridor rings. “It looks like a work of very bad art,” Felix said.
“The station started out as a standard modular system, but over the years Sagasa has embellished the place,” Calred said. “I know it looks like a haphazard garbage heap, but it’s built solid, and the placement of those ships isn’t random – they’re placed at set intervals, and their weapons systems are still intact, and pointed outward.”
“This is like a warlord’s fortress,” Felix said. “Does Sagasa really expect to be attacked?”
“Scrap and salvage is a cut-throat, low-margin business, and when you add in the Disciplinarian’s not-strictly-legal activities… a man like him can make a lot of enemies. The Vega Corporation doesn’t love having a hub of slime and criminality so close to their headquarters, either. Sagasa has repelled an assault or two over the years. He repelled them robustly enough that not many people have tried him since.”
“I’m glad we don’t have to steal anything from here,” Felix said.
“Indeed. Stealing from Sagasa would doubtless result in disciplinary action.”
They docked with the station and headed down to the airlock, Felix in the lead, Cal a step behind on his left, Tib in the back, clearly wishing she was invisible. (Calred said sneaking around Sagasa’s station wasn’t advisable. The Disciplinarian would be annoyed if he found out.) The interior of the ship did away with the scrap-heap motif, the corridor walls and floor made of smoothly polished metal, with discreet cameras dotted everywhere – but not so discreet you’d fail to notice them if you looked, which was presumably the point. Sagasa wanted you to know you were being watched, and watched by a professional.
A Winnaran in an elaborate jeweled headdress waited for them in the corridor beyond the airlock, hands clasped behind him. “Do you have any weapons to declare?”
“Not on us,” Felix said.
The Winnaran seemed unconvinced, and pointed a handheld scanner at them each in turn before nodding. “This way.” He turned smartly and led them down a twisting maze of corridors, and as they made it closer to the heart of the station, they encountered several reinforced doors with recessed gunports. Those doors didn’t open right away, and the Winnaran waited patiently at each one, clearly used to this level of security. Eventually their little group reached a cavernous waiting room that Felix recognized as the repurposed bridge of a Coalition dreadnought; that gave him a weird sense of pride. The stations and seats had been stripped out, replaced by large pots of lush green climbing plants that wound around the stripped frames of tactical panels and navigation screens. The overall aesthetic was like being in a spaceship that had crash-landed in a jungle some years before.
The door that would have led to the captain’s ready room on a functioning ship was flanked by a pair of guards wearing armored exo-suits so elaborate that Felix couldn’t guess the species of the beings inside. In addition to the plasma and kinetic weapons built into their suits, the door guards also held more primitive weapons – wooden poles with elaborately curved and recurved spikes of bronze on the heads.
“The Disciplinarian has a sense of theater, doesn’t he?” Felix murmured.
“Oh, just you wait,” Calred replied.
The Winnaran gestured for them to sit on a metal bench that was only partially covered in vines. Felix expected to be offered refreshment, but instead the secretary (or whatever he was) just said, “You will be called,” and left the bridge.
Felix looked at the guards. “Hi there,” he said. “Having a good day?”
The guards might as well have been statues.
“They don’t do small talk,” Calred said. “It would ruin their whole sense of menace. You might as well try to strike up a conversation with a particle cannon.”
“I bet he would,” Tib said.
“I just try to make meaningful connections wherever I go. It’s called networking. It’s the key to diplomacy. You could both learn–”
The doors to the ready room slid open, and a burly, hairy humanoid bustled out, muttering to itself and adjusting a brown cloak. He was a Saar! Felix didn’t think he’d ever met one of that species. The Saar kept to themselves so thoroughly that you could forget they were part of the galactic community at all. Didn’t most of them live out in an asteroid field somewhere, among the rubble of their exploded home planet? They probably had a pretty vast and ongoing need for ships, in that case, so they must be a great market for Sagasa. The Saar took no notice of Felix and the others as he stomped by and away.
Felix half rose, but the guards lowered their pikes, crossing them over the open doorway, and then the doors slid shut again. Felix sat back down, and the guards moved their weapons to vertical.
“The Disciplinarian likes to take a breath between meetings,” Calred said. “He centers his mindfulness or whatever. I’m pretty sure it’s just a show-of-power thing. Make it clear to us we’re penitents, and he’s the one granting an audience.”
Moments later, the doors slid open, and a voice beyond barked, “Come.”
They went in, Felix in the lead, only hesitating a moment as he passed the imposing armored guards, but they didn’t even twitch. The ready room was as lush and green as the waiting area, but dominated by a large desk made from artfully welded-together starship parts, surfaces polished like the rest of the station.
The Disciplinarian sat behind the desk in a chair that was really more of a gleaming metal throne, high-backed and elaborately decorated with vines made of twisted wire stems and gold-foil leaves. Strange choice of décor, overall, for someone from a monastic order in a desert… or maybe Sagasa’s arid background explained why he liked growing things here in the different desert of space.
Sagasa was flanked by a pair of unlikely guards, or attendants, or recording secretaries, or who knows what. On his left stood a Naalu, though “stood” probably wasn’t the right term for what a man-sized serpent with arms did. Rested on its huge scaly tail? He… it had to be male, since the Naalu were a matriarchal culture, and you’d never see a female working for a Hacan or anyone else. Naalu could read minds, or sense intentions, or detect lies, depending on who you asked, though some people said it was just the females who had that power. There were a few Naalu in the Coalition, but Felix hadn’t met any. He decided to be scrupulously honest, just to be safe.
A N’orr crouched on the Disciplinarian’s right: a looming nightmare of chitinous claws, a head made of hideous triangles, a mouth surrounded by dripping mandibles, the whole thing balanced on entirely too many spiky legs. Felix wasn’t bothered by spiders, but spiders weren’t usually taller than him, with mouths big enough to engulf his head. There were a few unhived N’orr in the Coalition, Felix knew, descended from prisoners on the original penal colony, but he wondered how this one had ended up here. The N’orr didn’t have a hive mind, despite popular misconceptions, but they didn’t prize individuality either, and so their species didn’t produce many outcasts or rogues or wanderers.
“Just you wait,” Calred had said. The Hacan definitely knew how to make an impression.
There was one chair, suitable for humans, on the other side of the Disciplinarian’s desk. It was made of wood-textured plas, had one leg visibly shorter than the others, and the back support was held together with wire and industrial tape. As if the power imbalance wasn’t stark enough already, but any edge you could get in a negotiation was worthwhile. Felix decided he’d stand.
The Disciplinarian gazed at them. He was older than Calred by at least a few decades, his mane nearly white, his eyes steady and dark, his muzzle marked with scars. He wore an elegant buff-colored robe worked around the neckline and sleeves with a vine motif, and even seated, he gave off a sense of strength and mass and gravitas. His eyes settled on the security officer. “Calred. May the sun warm your back, brother.”
“May blood redden your claws,” Calred said with equal formality.
The Disciplinarian smiled broadly. “It’s nice to talk to someone with manners. I had a Saar in here a minute ago, and he actually spat on the floor!” He inclined his head toward the N’orr. “Counselor An’Truk here wanted to spear him through the thorax but I said, ‘Maybe spitting is a compliment in their culture.’ It’s important that we all get along, eh? Look at you three, all working together on a starship. The Temerarious. You’re supposed to be patrolling a colony system, Captain Duval, yet you arrive at my humble scrapyard boasting of a covert operations budget. Have you been under very deep cover, or is this a recent promotion? Given the presence of Calred, who I know to be a steady sort, I will omit the third possibility – that you’re lying or delusional.”
Felix inclined his head in an acknowledging nod. “We are on a mission. I can’t tell you much about it.”
“That’s fine. I deal in tangible things, not information. Information gets too close to politics, and I value my reputation as a neutral party who plays no favorites. How can I help you with this mission I don’t want to know any details about?”
“We need to borrow a ship,” Felix said. “I’d also appreciate it if you’d let a scientist we’re traveling with paw through some of the more exotic wrecks out there.”
“All things are possible,” Sagasa said, “if the price is right.”