An Epic Run

Sentinels scoured the sky.

The Empire was strong.

The Atalanta dominated the crash-site like a space-faring whale washed ashore. A swarm of salvage drones buzzed around the Imperial wreckage, picking and scraping at the mechanical corpse. Overhead, a lone sentinel thrummed, its single red eye scanning the scorched earth, smoldering like a furious ember. 

“Here we go,” Komara said, hidden amongst the debris. Then she flipped the switch on her belt. After weeks of pouring over blueprints and calculations, she’d successfully modded her presence-scrambler with S-tier scrap: kinetic struts, high-capacity regulators, intact thermal panels—all she was missing was a crown. 

Power at 100%, the scrambler chimed in her earwig. 

A few meters away, Komara barely recognized the smudged-out form of another scrapper racing towards the ship.

Her stomach lurched.

The runner's camouflage stuttered, then winked out, revealing a disheveled man in tattered coveralls. He skidded to a stop, threw his head back, and cried out, "Death to the Empire! Freedom for all! Death to the Empire! Freedom—"

A plasma bolt cut through the man's chest, knocking him clear off his feet.

“Area Clear,” the sentinel announced, one of its pincers still glowing red hot.

Komara shut her eyes tight. What good is being first if you’re dead, Koko! Her father's words before she left their shack. Even Cid can't make a full run. You'll end up like one of those crazy freedom-runners! Her father didn't have the strength to stop her—not since the miner's lung metastasized—but he tried. Maybe Koko, his little girl, couldn’t cut it. It was easy to look down on a twelve-year-old girl. But Koko wasn’t the one making the core run. Koko wasn’t getting her sick father off-world for treatment before the Empire's disease took him.

“Like it took mom,” she whispered, unnoticed by the Imperial drone hovering directly above her.

Satisfied with her scrambler’s control test, Komara dashed toward The Atalanta’s wreckage, leaving the sentinel and the still smoking freedom-runner behind.

Tonight, she was going to make history. Tonight, Komara, Queen of Scraps, would be the first to steal a starship’s soul.

###

Live wires rained sparks overhead as Komara bored her way into the guts of the Imperial starship. She shimmied down a ventilation shaft, kicked open a grate into the long central passageway, and landed lithely, rolling to the balls of her feet. She’d stalk through the haze, like a Xeno on the prowl, like—

Power at 57%.

Komara arched an eyebrow. I couldn’t have been that off, she thought, looking around the corridor, from the burst pipes blasting steam to the interspersed electrical fires still sputtering smoke. Komara wiped her forehead, then dried her hands over her ratty coveralls. My only mistake, she mused, was thinking this would be easy.

Proper scrappers, not free-runners, always waited to raid a crash-site, even the Early Birds. But there was an art to the timing. Too late, and the Imps would leave nothing worth hauling back to the junkers. Too early, and the ship’s residual heat would overtax their scramblers. And once depleted, they were easy pickings for the trigger-happy murder-bots patrolling inside the starship.

Ahead, two sentinels thrummed toward her through the haze, scanning for life-forms.

What good is being first…

Komara gritted her teeth and counted her breaths. She needed to compensate for the ambient heat. Which means slowing down, she thought. But that was never an option, not on an epic run like this. So, I guess—

Komara broke into a full sprint, dashing right underneath the pair of oblivious sentinels. If she was running out of time, then she’d just have to beat it.

Power at 41%.

###

Out of breath, Komara reached the ship’s core, deep in the heart of The Atalanta. There were no fires here, only red emergency lights accompanied by klaxons blaring overhead. Beyond the reinforced blast doors she’d find only a massive terminal and a few unarmed maintenance drones. But inside the terminal—

Warning: Power Depleted.

Komara pulled an auto-picker from her pouch and inserted the toothy device into the door’s control slot. It whirred to life, teeth twisting and turning, releasing lock after lock. The blast doors were nearly open when a plasma bolt struck Komara right between the shoulder blades, launching her face-first into the reinforced bulkhead.

Silence, then—

“Area Clear,” the sentinel announced before hovering down a corridor.

Power at 29%.

Komara tasted blood, which was great because that meant she was still alive—though it hurt to breathe. Nearly gnawing off her bottom lip, Komara trembled to her feet. The thermal plate she slipped into her coveralls took most of the heat, but the blast’s kinetic force broke a few ribs. However, she's survived her gamble thanks to the modded alternator she added to her power supply. That blast should continue charging her scrambler—

Warning: Power Depleted.

“No!”

“INTRUDER ALERT,” a sentinel blared from behind.

Komara spun on her heels, her heart pounding at her throat, demanding a way out. “It should have worked…” she stammered. “Should have—”

The sentinel, a hovering metallic sphere trailing hundreds of cybernetic tentacles, raised two pincers, tips glowing red hot as it charged its infinite plasma repeaters—the weapon that won the Empire the war. The bolts screeched as they continued to charge, like hot iron dunked into an ice bath. It wouldn't fail to eliminate its prey this time.

The sentinel stopped, pincers falling limp. 

“Freedom,” it said in a hollow, almost human voice. Its glowing red eye sputtered before finally winking out. Then, the aegis of the Empire dropped to the floor with a thundering clang.

Warning: Power Depleted.

“What?” 

###

Komara didn’t know when, precisely, she’d wet herself. Thankfully, her dark coveralls indeed covered all. Urine was no look for a queen, not even one of scraps.

Outside, thunder clapped, over and over.

Warning: Power Depleted, the scrambler announced in her ear again. She pulled the earwig, letting it dangle over her shoulder.

Komara waited, half-expecting the sentinel to spring back to life. They should have come, she thought. Everyone knew if a sentinel audibly made an alert, they’d already broadcast it on the fold-net thousands of times over. By all conventional wisdom, a hail of plasma bolts should have turned Komara into a fine mist by now. She poked and prodded the fallen sentinel with her boot.

And yet...

Numb, she left the Imperial drone to finish unlocking the blast doors. Komara retrieved the ship’s inert soul shard from its core and stumbled her way back out of The Atalanta, undisturbed.

Outside, the Early Birds—Cid, Rota, and Beppo—were staring up slack-jawed, carts empty behind them. They were clearly visible. That’s odd, she thought. Even their carts should be smudged out if they're this close to the ship.

“Beppo,” Komara called to the round little man.

Beppo ignored her, staring up, pointing with a shaking finger. “It’s... it’s...”

Rota broke into a full-sprint, headed east, back towards town. She left her cart behind.

Cid simply pulled his lucky flask and took a deep, deep pull. He wiped his mouth and looked down at Komara and then to the massive crystal in her arms. "Never thought I'd live to see the day," he said.

"I was first," Komara declared, eyes unfocused.

"You were, your highness," Cid said, weeping.

Komara, finally, looked up.

Sentinels rained from the sky.

The Empire had fallen.