He kept his own, modest sensors locked down, but felt a kind of buzz against them, as if something were trying to get in.
He and his crewmates’ defenses, both physical and systemic, had been formidable, but there had been a couple of times their systems had almost been breached by viruses.
It had not been optimal to learn they weren’t as formidable as they’d believed, too. And they’d worked since then to close that weakness gap. Even as only partly cybernetic, he had those formidable defenses woven into his systems.
He felt the shudder of the decking under his feet. Something, or many somethings, were incoming.
The big one smiled. It wasn’t a friendly smile, more one of triumph.
“You should not have left the protection of your ship,” he said.
Even as the man spoke, more of the smaller aliens began to appear. All were armed and all of their weapons were pointed at him.
“The law of salvage,” Tim tried again.
“There is no law out here,” the big one said.
The smaller one might have giggled.
“Do you need backup?” Riina’s voice was in his ear.
“No,” Tim said. They probably wouldn’t need to ask when or if he did need backup. It would be obvious.
He extracted his own weapon but also readied his cybernetics for additional defense. Truth be told, he wasn’t exactly sure what they all did yet. He hadn’t had time before deploying to test everything. He’d been focused on learning to walk and fight again.
Again, with no warning, the aliens opened fire.
Tim felt the bloom of a protective shield and wondered if it was visible.
It took the impacts, protecting him from the worst of the hits. He still took some, but again, they were mostly annoying.
He didn’t fire back. He wasn’t sure why. The cyborg Tim would have already leveled them all and moved on. But he’d come out to talk. He needed information as much as he needed not to be killed or captured.
All the shooting paused, and Tim noticed they were making adjustments to their weapons. To up their fire power?
On some level, one not apparent to his conscious mind, he felt the change, and saw the energy wave surge out from him. It passed over most of the aliens firing on him and they cried out and dropped their weapons.
That was interesting. He’d never had that capability as a cyborg. It seemed his Garradian doctors had been tweaking his capabilities. Or CabeX? He felt a certainty as he thought about this captain.
CabeX had been transferred to a human devoid of cybernetics, so it wasn’t a surprise he’d try to do all he could to protect his crew.
“What?” The big one finally shouted at him.
Did that mean he was ready to talk? Or was he hoping to stall until more reinforcements arrived? Tim wished he was better at this.
“You can’t have my ship,” he said. It felt wise to repeat his demand, rather than risk revealing something by talking too much.
He almost grinned at that thought, and what Riina would say if he said he was afraid of it. Talking too much wasn’t a Najer crew problem.
“I’m going to leave with my ship, in my ship,” he added.
“No one leaves here without my permission,” the big one said. His tone had a faint edge of a sneer, but Tim had a feeling he was uncertain of his facts.
And then the big one said, now on a whine, “My first Garradian shuttle! Do you know how rare they are? I will buy it from you.”
Tim blinked. He’d seen many Garradian ships of all kinds, but even he knew not to say that.
The big man reached out and stroked the side of the shuttle.
