Like some plague born from the void, they had swept over more than one human colony leaving nothing in their wake but charred remains.
The death toll had been in the millions. Any progress humanity had made in the centuries since they’d started space flight was wiped away in a few years.
Earth was among those hit with humanity's homeworld reduced to a shadow of its former self. Since then, humans had reclaimed Earth but the cost had been great.
This debris field with its hundreds of dead ships had been the turning point. It should have been humanity's end, but instead, by some miracle, they'd salvaged a victory, stopping the Tsavitee and destroying the backbone of their fleet.
There might have been battles after this one, but this was where historians would point to as the beginning of the end.
Many believed the Tsavitee were gone now, never to return to this region of space, but Kira had her doubts. While the Tsavitee had been beaten, they had not been eliminated.
They were a deadly force, almost single-minded in their purpose. Beings like that weren’t going to give up. No, they would withdraw, analyze the data, and then return stronger than ever.
It was one of the reasons the scientists needed to understand as much as they could about Tsavitee technology; Kira securing a decent payday as a result, was a bonus.
Half an hour ticked by as she twisted her way through the corridors, many of which had collapsed into a floating obstacle course. Luckily, she was small, and her suit was among the best, giving her an advantage other salvagers lacked.
She passed several more corpses on her way, careful not to disturb them. They might have been the enemy, but this was their tomb. It was best to leave the dead to their restful peace.
Large tears in the wall gave her glimpses of the wreckage floating outside.
When she finally found the engine room, it was in shambles. Her hopes the crew had spared the engine were in vain. There would be no recovering a fully functional engine, the holy grail for any salvager.
All was not lost, however. The crew would have been in a rush, knowing death was imminent. They wouldn't have had time to do a thorough job.
That's where Kira came in. She was good at finding the spots they'd missed.
She pushed off the floor, floating up as she checked the fuel cells first. Just one of those in half-decent condition would keep her solvent for months.
She worked through the room, her hopes falling further and further as she moved.
"Couldn't have made things easy for me, could you?" she asked the body of an engineer as she pulled it from where he’d been wedged in a small recessed part of the engine.
So far, she'd only found two cells semi-intact. Not quite the score she'd been hoping for.
She gave the engineer a push, sending him floating in the opposite direction before moving into the tight spot.
"What's this?" she asked herself, staring at an intact compartment.
She got out her tools, careful as she took the compartment apart. Surprised pleasure suffused her as she revealed what was inside. A fully intact piece of their engine drive. Rare and valuable. She suspected there were three more like it in the compartments to her left, each one slightly bigger than her fist.
She studied the first with a frown. In its casing, it was stable, but removing it without the proper shielding would cause it to degrade. If it degraded past a certain point, it would cause a catastrophic failure resulting in an explosion.
Good thing Kira planned for everything.
She pulled a glass-like tube off her suit, removing each piece of her find and dropping it into the tube before closing it and pressing the button on top. It lit with a soft blue glow.
The cylinder had been developed specifically for this purpose. It would keep the elements inside from destabilizing long enough for her to get it to her buyer.
Inside, she danced a little victory dance. A score like this would keep her floating for a good year or more.
Next, she moved to the other end of the engine compartment, removing some of the electronics and stripping the wiring. The metal would fetch a nice price even if the original purpose was fried.
Each item she removed was stored in a bag at her side.
On this first trip, she was mainly doing reconnaissance, cataloging items of value and identifying the equipment she’d need to salvage when she returned. Only small items, or those considered too valuable to leave behind, would be salvaged on this expedition. A find like this could take years to adequately strip.
When she judged the engine room sufficiently deprived of the things she could carry in the small sack at her side, she headed for the command center in the foredeck. Buried in the most protected part of the ship, each command center looked and operated a little differently.
One thing remained the same—it was the military and strategic mind of the ship, a source of valuable intel if the Tsavitee ever decided to return.
This command center was in the shape of a hexagon with no exterior windows. On a human vessel, there would have been countless screens keeping track of conditions and data as circumstances changed. Not so for the Tsavitee. Another mystery to go along with all the rest. No one knew exactly how they flew their ships or sent orders out to their troops.
Kira floated to a stop at the door, careful now she was here. She wouldn't put it past the Tsavitee to set traps for the unwary. She'd seen it before.
She peered inside, her headlamps illuminating the large room. Parts of the space shimmered, giving her a glimpse of a strange, silvery cloud of dust floating inside.
Razor ash. Damn.
The captain of this ship had been smarter than she'd given him credit for. He'd read the signs of where the battle was heading and then deployed defensive measures to secure the information housed in this room.
Razor ash wasn't anything to fuck with. It was diamond-hard, capable of cutting through damn near anything, including her suit.
If even a few specks attached to her, she would decompress within seconds. The suit might be able to repair minor tears, but once the ash got inside, it would eat away at the lining and destroy any electronic circuits–to say nothing of what it would do to her flesh.
It wasn't a pleasant way to go.
The captain and his officers were buckled into their seats, their clothes ragged and their flesh pockmarked from the razor ash.
Kira hovered in the corridor as she considered her options.
The ash didn't have the same tracking system as the eel. It was meant to stand sentry, forever sweeping through the room on the lookout for intruders. Otherwise, it would have locked onto her already. As long as she didn't disturb it, she should be safe enough.
A smarter person would have turned around and left. The haul at her side was plenty.
She pushed off the wall behind her, plotting a course through the room to maximize the chances of avoiding the ash. Lucky for her, it had settled against the far-left side before snaking along the ceiling above, leaving an open path from the hall to the captain’s chair.
Kira wanted whatever the captain had deemed important enough to set the ash as a permanent watchdog.
She slowly floated through the room, careful not to use her thrusters. The energy signature their use would throw out would have the ash locking onto her within seconds.
She arrowed toward the console in front of the captain, judging it as the most likely to contain useful information.
She checked the ash's progress. It was stationary, but that could change at any moment.