Petrostai is a team lead of a crew searching around for resources. They have had good luck in their last few runs, even broke even on the last one, and the crew even added an engineer to do tech scanning. Things were going their way.
When pods and ships are able to claim decent resources, they have taken some crews around to make a living out of claiming resources and organic material from ships designed to collect it from battles. Many leave behind so much and there have been many battles over the past few years. Factions are still warring and business has been good.
A team like this isn’t allowed on a faction crew until they prove themselves worthy of joining any prestigious corner of the universe, and they haven’t nearly made such a name for themselves, but they are working on it. It’s a living.
On his scanner, he is coming to another battle from nearly a year ago that is in his data that might seem promising. They do save fuel with a slight use of engines and let the vacuum of space float them to their next location. They have enough food, true it is a food paste that had no taste, but it is filling, and they had lots of fuel to get around, but savings are the key. Using fuel for about five minutes at a time is slower, but they weren’t majorly in a hurry. Very few went after old trash battles like their race, it is always easy to salvage.
Coming up on a planet surrounded in asteroids is the home of such a battle, they slowed down to the outside of a pod, which they were lucky to find, they didn’t pick it up with a beacon like they often would, they knew where to start, and this one looked like it had been up to things, from the outside. It is in a different shape than most pods, a bit larger, and with a quick scan, it had very little resources being used, but from what Petrostai could tell, it hadn’t been boarded in a while, he had a maw for that sort of thing.
As an experienced crew, they knew their jobs, there is a front guy in hide armor and close-up baton for the rare pod that had guard bots, there is the newly hired engineer to scan specifically for traps, and two backup shooters for anything else including other scavengers. Petrostai made the lucky break of being the team’s lead and the other four should be able to handle a small pod like this, he would wait for any communication.
Their front crew member who is in most of the updated gear, an energy shield to block most ranged projectiles is already geared up and waiting at the entrance. They had to vent some air into the pod first, but no one else is there, so their claim is real, and they could take their time allowing air to flow in.
After a minute or so, they opened their door and looked into the dark pod, the front room is a sterile metal compartment, filled with stale air. Looking around there are no frills, no design, and no obvious storage of resources. It is so empty the group shivered from feeling like it is haunted. The muscle walked in and waited for a few seconds for anything from the engineer. He is looking around amazed at the empty room, but he nudged with his elbow to see if he is scanning, and out came the device.
The scanner checks for low-ranked traps used by these organic pods, and it doesn’t register any in this room, or any adjacent rooms, it has to charge for next rooms. The brute walks forward and the team had one walkway to go and a turn, right around the corner of the first wall, there is a guard bot and ceiling-mounted gun. When the brute’s eyes looked around the wall, the guard bot moved in to attack. The structural integrity of the bot is not high and it follows around the corner to chase after the man up front.
Being able to block the first couple of hits with his energetic shield, the other two blasted the bot from a few feet away and the front guy, sometimes called a striker, is able to block and whack at the bot without much effort. After a short few seconds, the robot broke apart. Continuing on, the striker put his shield at his head to take two shots from the mounted gun and ran up to break it apart. Blocking mounted guns isn’t as simple as it might seem, it shot him in the leg and gut, bruising under his armor, but doesn’t have the angle to shoot him when he stands right under it. Watching the scans, the engineer walks down the hall after hearing a few shots , and it has another shot in it before destruction, so it shoots and hits the engineer in the arm with a grazing hit before taking too much damage and retracting into the ceiling.
“What are you doing coming down the hall before the all clear?”
“I figured you had it under…”
“You aren’t here to figure anything. Well, you are here to figure out about traps and tech, and get credits from the ports, but that’s it. Don’t go walking down hallways when you hear shooting. Real stupid for a smart person.”
“Real smart for a brute,” the man whispered.
“I’m not the dummy walking down unsecured halls, just keep back.”
They continued down the hall. It turned back on itself to force the crew to go into each compartment, looking down this hall, there were no guns. The striker walked confidently down the hall as the engineer looked at his scanner. The engineer used his device and said there were no traps down this hall but there is in the next area. It had the striker confused, most pods he has been through have had at least a trap or two, but he didn’t care, they are different pods all over the galaxy.
There is a credit port along the wall where the turret popped in, the tech got to work plugging in and claiming the credits that are available at this port. It is only 18, which is very little for the danger they are currently in. The tech claims those small credits to split.
The striker asks, “Do you know where in the next room?”
The engineer answers, “It is far back in the room, I will be able to scan for it when we get there.”
Looking around the corner, the striker of the group sees a last compartment and two side rooms. The last area has another guard bot with a larger area to strike. It stands in place for a few seconds and when the striker looks back around the corner, he expects loud footsteps from the room, but hears nothing other than the heavy breathing from the rest of the group. There is also a canister of organic material behind the guard bot, protected by some sort of faceplate of metal. The metal had slits in it to see the prize, but no simple walk up and grab.
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The striker whispers to the rest, “Guard bot in the room, about in the center, and more in there, be ready.”
The engineer whispers to all as well, “If it is about where it seems on the scanner, the guard bot is part of the trap. Be careful.”
Weapons at the ready, the striker stands and walks around the corner. The guard bot stands its ground for a few seconds waiting on the first move. When the striker gets close to the middle of the room, the guard bot moves and walks towards him. Up comes the energy shield and baton, the first hit from the guard bot comes down, so does a retractable ceiling gun, behind the striker, aimed at the hallway targeting those waiting back.
The clanging of metal on the energy shield covers three calls for help that cry from behind the striker, but he is already busy, this bot is tougher than the first, and hits harder. One bot arm tries to grab the baton, the other is slamming on the energy shield protecting the striker, which is holding but crackling with spent energy. The baton hits the bot, clanging off its metal skin, and its fierce red eyes bore into the striker’s soul. His snout nose twitches a little, smelling his own sweat, and is that blood?
Trying something new, the striker tries to disable one of the arms of the guard bot, if it can be damaged, it won’t bruise, but with a few swings, and he puts a dent in the arm, bending it a different way. Clanging rings through his sensitive ears, but he has to ignore it for now, the guard bot is a huge threat, made of a stronger metal. Another swing from the striker hits the bot on the top of the head and it falls backward, a bullet flies towards the bot hitting its head, giving the striker a few seconds to look around.
Behind him there is one still standing who is covered in splashes of blood, there is a ceiling turret that is mangled behind them and it gunned down the other two. The last standing is just another grunt on the crew. The grunt shoots again, puncturing the head of the guard bot, even though it is well-dented and still gets up. The head is more mangled than the rest and it is still moving, making it be considered that the processing might not be in the head.
The baton keeps the guard bot back a few steps but it is still able to get a hit in, puncturing the striker’s arm with its sharp edges. The other grunt grabs one of the other weapons from the engineer and shoots away. Since the striker has most of the attention, he shoots many times without disruption and finds the processor in the guard bots chest. One solid shot on an unprotected chest drops the bot.
A slice of the first striker’s arm is freely bleeding. An injection of a ‘minor coagulant gel’ that he had enough credits to buy recently, prevents him from bleeding too much more, but he’ll need a medic. This crew however is too cheap to hire one, and they are never cheap to bring along on a job. Standing, he sees the organic material behind a guard wall. The canister of material that would set him and the crew up for a while is just a few feet away. Walking over, he is unable to fit his hand through any of the slots, too skinny, but there are four buttons on each side of the door with little indicator lights above them. He hasn’t seen something like this before, most of the time the organic material canister is available after guards and rare guns are taken out.
All of the buttons have little pictures on them, he sniffs the different buttons and smells nothing but metal, his K-9-like nose not giving him any hints. Without much more thought, he presses one of the buttons that looks like the guard plate, the rest of them had nothing to do with this pod. The light indicator above the button flashed a calm red. Seconds later, he is pulled back by the grunt with him. a blunt hardened plastic rod whips out lightning-fast to push him off his feet hitting him square in the chest. He feels like it puts a bruise on his ribs and his heart skips a beat. At such speed, it could have caved his chest in if he isn’t pulled back. The other grunt asks, “How often do you go around in a pod trying to kill us and press mystery buttons?”.
The striker answers, “The material is right there, we can get it. There are two buttons with that plate on them, they probably both need to be pressed at the same time.” The striker seemed adamant, but the grunt is suspicious about that answer. The secondary grunt walks back, standing far from the guard plate and where he saw the plastic thing punch out. The striker stands as far back as he could too, just far enough to press those two buttons. The indicator lights are turned on, one is green, the other is red.
Seconds later, multiple hardened plastic spikes shoot out from the disguised wall, puncturing his hand, arm, and far enough to puncture his chest, his blood spilling all over the metal floor, disappearing into small vents and drains in the area. Neither of them had any more gels, and this seemed like too difficult of a wound to deal with it anyway, probably not even with a medic. The plastic spikes slid back into their hiding place in the conspicuous wall, the striker slid down and flopped into a heap, all muscles failing him.
“Crap-dammit, the org material is right there, boss,” the last grunt calls through some sort of communication device. “The area is clear, but the rest of the crew is taken out. There is some killer wall here and we can’t collect, come help?”
The boss and pilot replies, “Killer wall? Fine, I’ll be there when I can, just have to lock down the ship.”
Petrostai walks through the metal hallway and passes the dead crew members, glad he won’t have to make those payments, but this is an unusual pod, most of the time they weren’t this efficient. He walks over and sees the eight buttons and got the quick version from the grunt.
The boss asks, “What about these other two rooms?”
The grunt shrugs his shoulders, “Didn’t check, just a few boxes in there. No room for anything else.”
The pilot rolls his eyes and walks over to the room to the right of the prize. The cargo boxes are made of a hard plastic, and empty and pull out easily, showing two pictures of buttons in that room. He tells the other to move out the other two boxes and check it. If their tech is still alive, it might have been able to figure out the puzzle and test things before the traps went off.
The last crew member walks up to the other room and slides out the boxes, he doesn’t see any at first, but walks in and looks more closely. He steps on a pressure plate and many steel rods quickly slide out and puncture the grunt’s body through his knee and mid-section, hitting something vital and making a scream escape from his lips. He can’t pull away or slide off of the rods, they are propped into the wall.
The pilot of the now dead crew looks over and sees the last, still propped up by metal poles. He walks over and tries to pull him free. The metal poles with some effort slide away enough to let his crewman loose, the body flopping to the ground along with the rest of the dead crew. In his mind, the pilot justifies the scene by them knowing the life they chose.
If he can just get this material he wouldn’t need to split it and be well set for months.
Looking around the poles which were still expanded, he sees the other two buttons that need to be pressed. He walks over and fashions his hands into the buttons he had to press. He presses them all at once and two buttons turn green, but the other two are red, giving him a clue he is off. He jumps back quickly as the spikes jet out from the wall, almost skewering him as well.
He tries again, a nest egg behind this guard plate is so close, and he can jump back each time if he fails. This time he presses them one at a time trying to figure out some order needing to be pressed. All of the lights turn green as he presses them, but then flash red after all four are pressed.