“Boss, I gotta say that sounds like Grotto propaganda talking,” said Samuel, keeping his tone light to lessen the sting of his words, “All due respect.”
“It is and it isn’t, Hyst,” answered Boss Ulanti. “Grotto and Helion are the two biggest mega-corps in mapped space, and they couldn’t be more different.
Propaganda is like the molded protein blocks they serve at mess, inert until you decide what flavor to infuse it with. They are force-fed just as much of it as we are. In their minds Helion is sleek, high speed, and focused on expansion through technological progress while Grotto is a lumbering juggernaught that consumes or recycles everything in its path. They underestimate us, Prybar, because to them, we are low tech brutes.
I’ve fought Helion half a dozen times in my life, and every time is the same. They think they’re better than us, and that makes them arrogant and sloppy.”
“At the end of the day they still buy their bullets from the same place we do,” chuckled Samuel with a gallows smile as the wagon shuddered from a sizeable impact. Whatever they had hit was sufficient to knock the ship off course and it took several moments of trick flying for the pilot to realign with the target.
“Welcome to the war machine,” laughed Boss Ulanti, and in that moment Samuel realized he’d never heard her do that. It was like watching a hyena preparing to steal a kill in the nature vids he’d seen during his compulsory education.
Samuel watched as the frigate loomed closer and closer until it had all but encompassed the field of vision provided by the view port.
“Initial sweeps of the vessel are indicating that the frigate still has life support and cabin pressure in the aft section, I’m definitely reading survivor activity,” reported the co-pilot as she tuned her instruments and continued to monitor the target, “So much interference out there, I wasn’t able to get a clean sweep till now.”
“See if you can get a lock on their comms frequency and phase them a Grotto standard surrender agreement,” ordered Boss Marsters as the shadow of the massive vessel began to engulf them. “That’s the engine and hard functions quadrant of the vessel, so the chances are that most of those survivors are Journeyman rated tech staff, possibly a few Master Class rates.”
“A surrender agreement, sir?” asked the co-pilot, turning in her seat with a look of confusion. “Don’t we just sweep and clear like always?”
“Helion won’t staff their Alpha vessels with any ratings below Journeyman,” explained Boss Ulanti just before the pilot dove under a large piece of shredded metal while the wagon neared its target. “The Entry levels wouldn’t be fit to scrub the floors on a ship like that. This time the crew is part of the salvage.”
A sudden chill swept through the cabin as the co-pilot looked to Samuel, who turned and met the cold eyes of Boss Marsters. The co-pilot turned back and activated her phase deck to send the surrender agreement after searching for the comms frequency and finding it very quickly.
Samuel could hear the high pitched keening of the frigate’s distress call, and found himself suddenly feeling very sorry for the surviving crew aboard the ship.
If Boss Marsters could see the value of capturing skilled tech staff, then Samuel had no doubts that there would be others lurking in space who would share that opinion.
The Reapers had not yet faced any slavers, but the distress signal had been broadcasting for over half an hour now and if someone was listening they would know that there were survivors.
Like the Reapers, the other carrion outfits that operated beyond the Ellisian Line were not in the business of taking prisoners. However, the rumor going around the barracks was that there was a new player in the trade war, some kind of highly organized slaver cartel called Tasca. If there was ever a chance to meet Tasca operatives it would be during just such a scenario, in Samuel’s thinking.
The fact that the Helion survivors had been broadcasting meant that they were trapped on the ship without any means of escape and were desperate for rescue. Desperate enough to alert anyone with a comms deck to their presence, likely knowing that they were a valuable commodity.
“Boss, if they’re broadcasting, then they want to attract attention, might be that they won’t put up a fight,” Samuel observed as the co-pilot activated the assault countdown for one minute, bathing the cabin in a strobing yellow light.
“Unless their plan is to attract a rescue party and attempt to seize our boat once they draw us into the ship,” said Boss Marsters. “Or they might come peacefully in the hopes that Helion will make ransom, and barring that, at least Grotto labor camps are less hellish than the life they’d endure if the slavers reach them first.”
“Tasca,” spat Boss Ulanti with a snarl of contempt, “I hope they try to steal our salvage. I’m getting tired of the mess hall rumor mill making them out to be the new bogeyman. Just carrion birds like the rest of us.”
“Half our cadre are new recruits, and not just from Baen,” said Samuel, feeling compelled to engage Lucinda Ulanti with a calming tone, something both he and Wynn Marsters had been doing more and more ever since the Vorhold campaign. “We can’t blame them for being spooked, they have no idea that we already fought and buried the worst of the worst. If a crew of well-armed slavers is the hardest meat they go up against, I figure that’s a blessing right?”
Samuel’s question hung in the air for a moment, as neither of his comrades chose to answer him. Then the assault countdown hit zero.
The scrap wagon’s armored prow, already battered from the rough trip through the storm, nearly buckled from the impact of its collision with the frigate. The pilot was good. He had managed to steer the wagon through the debris storm and wedge the vessel into a gaping wound in the frigate’s broadside.
Unlike the assault craft used in ship-to-ship conflicts, the scrap wagons were not intended to punch through the hull of an enemy vessel. The wagon jockeys, as they had become known, would pilot the craft directly into the massive breaches in enemy vessels that had been created during the prior void battles. The jockeys would push their craft deep enough into the target that they could eject their marine cargo and then actively begin salvage operations. If they had a light enough touch, the jockeys could reverse the vehicle and pull away from the target with extreme alacrity. This tactic would allow the wagons to work much like mosquitoes; they landed, they pillaged, then took off again to pillage the next site. In this way a ‘swarm’ of scrap wagons could plunder a vessel the size of the frigate in a matter of hours. Focusing only on salvaging the ten percent of materials that fetched the highest prices, leaving the remaining ninety percent of the salvage to less effective and profitable methods had allowed their own profit margins to make the careers of several bureaucrats and luminaries within Reaper Command.
Pirates, Red Listers, and other salvage outfits did not have the manpower, ships nor military might that would enable them to lay claim to the entire void sight. However, with small ships, moving quickly, they could surgically salvage large sites in much the same way as the Reapers. In fact, according to rumors that Samuel had heard in the mess hall, it was a pirate salvage operation that had given Reaper Command the idea for the scrap wagon swarms in the first place.
All of these factors combined to create a mad dash scenario wherein many outfits, including the Reapers, would rush into a salvage to claim the highest profit items, fighting each other for the spoils. It was a foregone conclusion that the massive hive fleets and corporate operations would do the heavy salvage of the sites, which was standard Reaper work, but the price point of those high value items was sufficient to warrant the expense and risk of the wagon swarms.