Trent & Sons – Space Salvage
The adventures of John Trent: Explorer, Engineer and Treasure Hunter
Trent & Sons - Space Salvage
Chapter One
By Jim Gallno
“Princess, the battle is lost! You must escape now.” The Royal Marine didn’t wait for the princess to
respond, he just tossed her roughly into the ship’s pinnace and slammed the bulkhead hatch shut. A
moment later, the princess was pushed back into the cushions and a safety net automatically deployed
and held her snuggly as the capsule accelerated in normal space, then winked out as it shifted into
subspace.
****
I’m the proud proprietor of Trent & Sons – Space Salvage. To be honest, there’s just me and I never had
a brother. My shop, yard, office, and home are located in a mined out asteroid which Amalgam Metals
abandoned. The asteroid hangs in space above a lifeless rocky world orbiting Algeron on the fringe of
the Terran Empire. My office and yard may not be located at the busiest crossroad in the galaxy but it is
cheap and I have lots of workspace. With all the pirate activity, space battles, asteroid collisions and
just normal wear and tear, lots of ships get wrecked or abandoned. Nevertheless, as they say, one
man’s junk is another man’s treasure and what’s obsolete on one colony world may be state of the art
on another. Therefore, I buy and sell used and sometimes wrecked space ships. With the right
knowledge, which I have, you can splice together parts from several wrecks and end up with a functional
but bastardized ship that is almost worthless inside the Empire but priceless on the frontier where I do
business.
I spent twenty years in the Imperial Navy as an engineer, and then I worked with my dad operating a
repair shop and junkyard. Today I’m familiar with most spaceship engineering issues. If it flies, I can
repair it.
I’m not getting rich but I get by. I’ve got a vat growing beef, an automated hydroponic garden, a
functional air, and water recycler and for entertainment, I’ve got over a billion movies and songs stored
on my computer. What I don’t have is human companionship. One major problem with my job and
social life is that my shop is not the sort of place most folks would really want to live. It’s been months
since I’ve seen a female and my robot, Rusty, is my only friend. He is an all-metal repair bot with the
social skills of a rock. However, after several years, I’ve adapted to my solitary life and I really enjoy
tinkering with my yard full of wrecked ships. I miss people but, heck, I get by.
To get new inventory, I mostly rely on trade-ins. On average, I make about one sale a month and that
includes parts. Just last week a farmer co-op from Mandalay bought an X-300 Fineman Engine I’d rebuilt
and that could be adapted to fit their fifty year old Maxster 5000 freighter. To overhaul the X-300 I’d
replaced the bearings and welded up a few cracks in the mounting brackets. My cash outlay was less
than 300 credits and I sold it for just shy of 50,000 credits. I figured they’d get another twenty years of
acceptable service out of it and if they’d bought a new OEM thruster, they’d have spent at least 100,000
credits more than I charged for the rebuilt. It was a win-win.
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One important but irregular source of inventory was salvage I located myself. There are stories of folks
salvaging Alien freighters stuffed with high tech gadgets or lost battleships loaded with weapons, fuel,
and food but that was mostly fantasy. I’d found several wrecks, frequently the hulls left over from a
pirate raid or pieces from a prospector’s rig after an accident or financial failure. There were also
refugees and escaped slaves that fled in rickety ships that weren’t space worthy or lacked sufficient air
or water and ended up as space flotsam. Their loss was my gain. Whatever the cause, any wreck I
found on my own was a real windfall. In forty years, I’d only found one valuable wreck, a small private
yacht that was holed and had been looted by pirates but I still made a million credits when I parted it
out.
I spent any spare credit to locate wrecks or other salvage using dozens of low cost automated drones. I
sent them hunting to sectors based on rumor, reported wrecks, and hunches. This side of the business
was treasure hunting, which sounds much more glamorous than salvage. In addition, I was gradually
expanding human known space. The Galactic Cartographers Association paid a small bounty for
cataloging asteroids, dwarf planets, comets, and other space objects. They didn’t pay well, mind you,
but it covered the cost of the drone plus a pitiful profit. If I ever hoped to retire, I knew I couldn’t live off
my tiny savings and so I kept slaving away hoping for a break. I needed salvage.
Well my luck changed one afternoon while I was daydreaming about selling off the salvage business and
buying a small bar, I’d been looking at on Algeron V. My computer beeped and a red light flashed,
letting me know that I had an incoming message. I hit the play button and saw that it was a message
from one of my automated drones. It had located something. A 3D image rotated in front of me and I
could see by the scale that it was small, which made it much harder to locate. The odds of stumbling on
this object were, well astronomical. A preliminary analysis showed the hull wasn’t made of any known
metallic alloy in the registry, but there was a stamped symbol on the exterior. I ran the image through
the computer recognition system and it came up blank. Now that was interesting. I asked for the
computer’s best guess of what we’d found and it came back pinnace-sized vessel, possible alien origin.
Whoa. First, Alien technology is almost priceless but I would need to be careful because if the Empire
got wind of my discovery, they’d just seize it. On the upside, most of the nearby struggling frontier
colonies would pay a huge bonus for an Alien artifact. Alien artifacts were rare and they frequently led
to important technology gains. I may have hit the Mother Lode with this find. I might be rich.
The Iron Pig was my go-to salvage rig. I told Rusty to get the Pig ready while I closed things up. I set the
shop’s security system to high and locked things down tight. Then I quickly boarded and set the Pig’s
navigation computer to the coordinates provided by the drone. It was twelve light years out and it
would take a week for the Pig to get there. Rusty brought several repair manuals along for his reading
pleasure and I brought a salvaged entertainment block, loaded with games, movies, and music. The
food would be algae paste and recycled water, which on the Pig always tasted metallic, so I’d be using
one of the meal enhancement programs. You just slip on a DBS (Direct Brain Stimulator), which was low
risk, and while I would be eating tasteless but nutritious glop, the program would mask that reality and
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feed the normal sensations dining on a culinary masterpiece directly into my brain. I love glop with the
DBS on.
After launch, there wasn’t much to do but wait, so I’d plugged into a VR program and was engaged in a
duel with a nasty Baldorian slaver for the hand of a fair maid when Rusty nudged me. “Captain, we have
arrived. Do you want me to make a visual inspection before we bring the salvage on board?”
I reluctantly unplugged and reverted to reality.
“Rusty, go ahead but keep your camera running and I’ll monitor the visual feed. We need to take this
slow. If it’s really alien, we have no idea what we’re dealing with.” I said.
“Alright boss. I’ll keep you in the loop.” Rusty stepped into the airlock and cycled through.
I could see the white oblong pinnace growing closer on the monitor as Rusty slowly approached it. A
bright red symbol that looked like a circle with roots or a maybe a sun with rays was emblazoned on the
hull. I couldn’t tell what it represented, it was alien after all.
“I think I’ve found a button that may provide access boss. Shall I push it?” Rusty asked.
“What else could the button be for?” I asked. “Go ahead.”
Rusty pressed the red button and a square panel swung away revealing a simple airlock.
“I’m coming over, so hold yer horses, Rusty.” I said. Rusty didn’t deal well with the unknown and this
whole venture about the unknown. I didn’t want any damage to occur from his carelessness.
I was soon hanging in space next to Rusty. My exo-suit was industrial grade and with thousands of
logged hours, I felt totally at ease. Space wasn’t a problem, but something inside the vessel might be.
“I’m going in.” I said as I stepped into the airlock. Once inside the airlock cycled and signaled the
atmosphere was okay, I exited my bulky exo-suit and began a careful examination of the interior, which
looked surprisingly familiar, further evidence the owner was a humanoid.
My eyes were drawn to a flickering green light on what I guessed was a stasis chamber built into the
wall. It was still working and a living creature was inside.
I stepped forward to look in the stasis chamber through a crystal viewport and my hunch was confirmed,
the occupant was humanoid. It also appeared to be female. Should I open the chamber now or bring
the vessel and with the occupant still in stasis back to the shop?
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Before I could decide, I heard a hiss and the stasis chamber door opened. I froze, not only was the
occupant a female humanoid, but she was drop dead gorgeous and wearing an unknown military
uniform. She gracefully rolled out of the chamber, drew a pistol, and aimed it squarely at me.
***
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