The enormous series of junkyards scattered around the Ash system were one of Kyle’s favorite places to go. What had started as the wreckage of untold thousands of warships, United Worlds, Empire, Directorate, and Republic from one of the largest battles of the second galactic war had only been compounded over the decades since, growing as the dubs paid for the scrap, and then resold most of it after giving it a passing glance for anything of interest.

  The newer, fresher, bits were almost always looked over; usually bought by freshly graduated mercenaries using a loan and fixed up as a starter starship. That still left enormous swathes of older materials.

  There were parts of it that the dubs had never even bothered to look at, or had even missed, and numerous scrapyards made a living by refurbishing them or parting them out; technology had changed and advanced over the years, but quite often older gear could be refurbished to a modern standard, or even had advantages over the new stuff.

  The ancient republic carrier Kyle was currently looking over through the shuttle screen was actually from before the second galactic war. From an era when ships had clusters of dozens of weak, rapid-fire point defense lasers, and equally large numbers of smaller, more fragile, missiles.

  Sometime during this era, the Empire had started coating their missiles with the same material they used for their hulls; and while it made them bigger, heavier, and more expensive, each missile could now absorb so many shots from that kind of cluster that a single Empire missile cruiser was devastating to the opposition, and the idea of one missile detonating and killing others if they were too close was mostly gone.

  It had given them a commanding advantage in the first galactic war, and later ships started using less point defenses, but stronger ones, and including flak and railguns in point defenses. It all made sense. Less missiles, more impacts, and the armor covering them was cheaper than more warheads.

  Which, amusingly, meant that sometimes they didn’t prepare those ships for handling more, weaker, targets.

  Nabbing this missile bank might not just be useful against an unsuspecting modern ship… but it might also be good against a dragon. Especially if it wasn’t empty.

  After all… its only ‘point defense’ was that damned plasma breath… and it melted right through modern missile coatings with ease. You just needed to nail it from a different direction, or while it wasn’t spitting at you.

  “...I’m gonna take a look at this one, Sari. I think this one might have some stuff I need.”

  He glanced over at her. This was the first time he’d met her showing this little skin, as she was wearing a full-body grey utility skinsuit, only her face exposed. She looked a bit confused.

  “...You sure about that? This thing is at least a century and a half old. In fact…. I think this is one of those mothballed ones that the Republic was throwing into the last battle because it was running low on all the modern gear.”

  He chuckled. “Bring us in closer, and toss a line over. I’m gonna go inside. I think there might actually be some missiles left in there, if they didn’t go off when it got killed.”

  “..Like… really old, crappy, missiles.”

  Kyle glanced over. “Quantity has a quality all its own. If I throw a hundred crappy missiles at someone I get for a few credits each as scrap, are they gonna be any less dead than the guy I shoot five missiles at for thousands of credits each?”

  She looked thoughtful… and then shrugged. “Fine. I’ll shoot over a line. You go have fun looking through the wreckage of an old pile of junk.”

  She shook her head… as Kyle smiled, gave her a little wave… and pulled his helmet in place. The skinsuit had enough air for a bit on its own, but just in case, it was good to be ready. He pulled an O2 tank off the wall, attaching it to the back of his helmet… and both a cutter and a grapple gun as well.

  He checked himself over as he sealed the tiny shuttle airlock. All seals appeared to be good.

  This particular area was ‘unclaimed’; by anyone but the dubs themselves. They’d already reviewed all of this junk, determined they didn’t want to analyze it, and left it. At some point, some enterprising dealer would undoubtedly buy this sector, start sorting through it, and sell it by the ton or component. For now? He could literally fill the cargo hold of a freighter with ‘scrap metal’ for a few thousand credits. If this baby actually held missiles?

  Regardless of what he’d said to Sari, a cargo hold full would be worth quite a good total no matter how old or crappy they were.

  As he hit the button on the outside airlock, he tapped the side of his helmet. “Comms check.”

  ~Check clear, Mister Huxley.~

  “Thanks, Sari. Want me to pass over the video?”

  ~You can if you’d like, but there’s gigatons of floating debris out here. I’m mostly gonna keep an eye out.~

  “Affirmative. Don’t leave without me.”

  When the air had finished escaping, he turned to focus on the wreckage. Right now, it was so much scrap metal.

  As he fired his grapple at the hull near the gaping wound in the hull which had killed her, he considered the story that had led her here.

  The ship’s hull had a name in chinese script that his HUD automatically translated for him; Republic Warship Diexi. He considered for a moment how that was pronounced… before doing a history check under the keyword Diexi.

  This was one of hundreds of Cruiser-class Republic vessels built for the first galactic war, but which hadn’t seen action til the Empire was already surrendering; its sole battle in the first war was after the official surrender had sounded. Updated a few times over the years, went on patrols for over fifty of them, and finally went into storage… only to be pulled out and staffed up again just in time to fight a single battle against the Empire in the second war. Two battles. Hundreds of dead crew. One dead ship.

  This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

  All the lifepods were gone, so its possible not too many died.

  When his hands touched the hull, the magnets auto-activated… and he crawled over to examine the hull… which went right through the enormous flight deck of the starship. He could see the scrap and ruins of dozens of antique Mars-class fighters just like the ones he’d already gone through months before.

  There would undoubtedly be tons of useful parts in there for making them; he had turning one of those old junk fighters into a drone down to an art.

  Still. Carriers typically didn’t have many big guns, just point defenses. Most of their arsenal was in the form of missiles. And if this place hadn’t been thoroughly checked…

  At first, disappointment. The first door was already cut open. Someone had already checked her out.

  He started working his way upward; whoever had been in here had been heading for the bridge. They cut a path directly there…

  When he arrived… the place was ransacked. They’d grabbed every console, every computer… and the server room behind the bridge had been cut into as well.

  For whatever reason, the last folks to come here had really wanted some old Republic computers. Was it the data on them? Or the computers themselves?

  There was a nearby chair, bolted to the floor. There was a bloodstain on it… which was a bit troubling.

  There was no damage to the bridge… and no bodies. Those were still found in these wrecks, sometimes. Who got injured in here? As he studied the scene, he saw ancient marks from needle shots; tiny pinpricks that barely even existed. Had she been boarded?

  He could imagine the chaos. Good, solid republic citizens, people who might have been Sherry’s ancestors. Sitting right there. Fighting and dying for what they thought was suppressing the ultimate evil in the galaxy, arm in arm with the Directorate who they were so often at odds with.

  This ship had come here as part of a massive, joint, fleet, intent to do exactly what it had done… obliterate the AI research facility here. Were they right? Everyone had signed the agreement, yes, but… was AI really that dangerous?

  Didn’t matter.

  What did matter… was that they’d stopped at the servers. Which meant…. The supplies for fighter servicing, and the munitions bay? Anything they hadn’t fired before being taken out should still be there.

  He almost started drooling in his helmet before he fired up the cutter, and sent a message. “Just a warning, Sari, the ship has been locked down. I’m gonna need to cut open…. Three or four doors to get to my target. This is gonna be a while.”

  ~Got it. Dinner is definitely on you after this.~

  ***

  Most of the doors on a military starship doubled as airlocks; and had a handful of specific spots you could cut to force them open without power. Some of the others, like the door to the bridge? An absolute pain. Often there were built-in charges or gun ports that could be used to take out attackers, and sometimes even booby traps that would work automatically if you tried to cut them open.

  And, of course… the loading bay was one such chamber. The doors were heavily armed, and while the path to it; including going by the storage bay for fighter parts, which had a treasure trove of parts that could be used to assemble dozens of Mars-class drones; had only taken a few minutes per door, this last one…

  Was a monster. It took no less than seventeen cuts, and feeding a spotter drone through to see where the supports were, in order to breach the door.

  But once he had? It was worth it.

  There were two uniformed Republic officers, wearing the usual old-school dark green armored skinsuit that was popular at the time, complete with the red and yellow stars of the Republic flag on the shoulder. They looked… desiccated. One was mostly intact, while the other had a ruptured helmet; this was old enough that implants were few and far between, but before moving on, he checked.

  No… no way these guys were getting revived. Still, they’d need to get to the proper authorities so they could be handled. It looked as if they’d been trapped in here, in a room mostly filled with massive crates of the tiny slivers used for gatling needle weapons; endless chains that would feed into the guns of the fighters.

  That wasn’t all in the room, however.

  There was a rack off against the left wall with hundreds of 50mm munitions; he’d need to check the label, but those were commonly used in Republic man-portable grenade launchers, and if spacecraft used them it was for rapid-fire launch systems to take out fighters, gunships, or missiles.

  Then, there was the 100mm munitions. Standard-issue that fighters carried to take out each other or damage other starships. Bigger than the 80mm dubs used for their fighters, this was that magical point at which a good Breacher warhead could penetrate a capital ship’s armor, even if it needed to hit just the right spot… or have dozens of them hit… to do any good.

  While there was a shelf loaded with them, it was half empty; still. Dozens of them were there, and they were the right size for that missile launcher he’d seen on the outside. Enough for at least two volleys… which, depending on what kind they were, might be enough to kill a dragon.

  And finally, of course…. The 150mm munitions. And, oddly enough, a few 200mm ones. He hadn’t even seen a launching port for a 200mm missile on this boat, so he…

  He stopped, studying them.

  His geiger counter had started softly clicking when he’d entered the room. He’d barely even noticed, it was low enough to be mostly harmless.

  They might need some refurbishing to be effective… but there were nukes in this bay.

  Every nuke a mercenary was allowed to get hold of, including the one he’d gotten as a birthday present, had to be tagged and traceable. If any mercenary who operated in dub space dropped one on a population center, there needed to be a specific person responsible for the dubs to track down and execute; and if you ever managed to lose one, you needed to report it immediately… and would undoubtedly lose any sort of license you had.

  If he could acquire them without getting them checked in and marked? They could be used without it tracing back to him, so long as there weren’t any witnesses.

  This… wasn’t something he actually cared too much about. His mother, though? She’d be overjoyed.

  He had a few options here. If he spent enough credits, he could buy the whole ship, instead of letting anybody watch him load stuff into a freighter to buy it by bulk volume, or individual parts.. While old, there were numerous parts he could use for the Sapper. He might even cut off much of the external hull and use the internal frame of the Diexi as the basis for a bigger, better, Sapper. Essentially build a heavy corvette or frigate-sized vessel out of the most heavily armored parts of the carrier… which would make it slow, but damn tough for its size.

  Though….

  This was a cruiser, not some piddling little corvette. Even though it was a carrier, and thus much of the cost was in fighters instead of the ship itself, It had cost millions of credits to make, and an intact and functional new one of this class would likely sell for over forty million. You could, in theory, spend like ten million credits putting in a couple of new reactors, patching the holes, replacing the external and have a serviceable carrier, albeit an antique one, which could sell for closer to twenty or twenty-five.

  So. Without any of the munitions on-board, and in her current state… you’d get a 25-million spacecraft for about ten million worth of work. An old one, which nobody but a pirate or mercenary would want; even an independent system wouldn’t look twice at this thing. He might be overselling how much she could sell for, now that he thought about it.

  …Shit. He was gonna need to bargain for this one. If his mother found out he’d had this in hand and hadn’t snagged those bombs for her, she’d never let him live it down.