The Salvage Tag
The tag clicked into place at 02:17 orbital time, a small sound inside Nia Bako’s helmet that meant money, medicine, and another month of air.
Her gloved thumb pressed the lock tab twice, then traced the edge of the Salvage Protocol seal. The plate sat flush against a Vethrak hull fragment, bonded to crysteel that looked like matte stone until sunlight rolled across it.
The skiff, the Rook, drifted a hundred meters off her shoulder, patched in mismatched metals and running on a thruster cluster that belonged in a museum. The tether line between them held steady, bright yellow against the blue curve of Earth.
“Tag placed,” Nia said. “ID N7-BK-118.”
Jiro’s reply snapped in her ear. “Copy. Propellant at thirty percent. Patrol window opens in twelve minutes.”
Twelve minutes to turn a dead alien ship into a clinic voucher. Twelve minutes before Security started sweeping contractor IDs.
Nia warmed her cutter and traced the seam where the fragment still clung to a tangle of truss. The joint gave way. The hull section drifted free with a slow, lazy roll.
It snagged.
The resistance came through her boots. Nia pushed along the fragment’s underside and found the cause wedged in its shadow, half hidden behind scorched cable: a human escape pod, white composite burned to gray.
Its status light blinked once, paused, then blinked again.
Her wrist display caught the pod’s weak transponder and pulled what little it had left to broadcast. Internal pressure. Temperature. Oxygen.
Four percent.
“Jiro,” she said. “Pod. Life support is active.”
Static, then his breath, long and strained. “We cannot tow both.”
He was right. The fragment was twelve tons. The Rook could barely haul half of that and still make a dock without begging a convoy for a tow.
Nia pressed her palm to the pod hatch. Frost crusted the seam. A faint vibration hummed under her glove, steady in the way only machines got to be.
“Protocol will take the fragment,” Jiro said. “Mark the pod location. Let Security pull it.”
Security would pull the fragment first. The pod would be a footnote, if anyone bothered to check the emergency band at all.
Nia looked at the blinking light again. The pause between flashes had lengthened.
“Rig the tow line,” she said.
Silence held for a beat, full of math and anger. Jiro’s voice returned, quieter. “That fragment buys your father’s meds.”
“I know.” Nia swallowed and forced her breathing down. “I am still bringing the pod.”
She clipped a tether around the pod’s forward ring and tested it twice. The ring held. Human engineering still mattered out here.
The suit nav flashed a warning about the incoming cutter’s sweep arc. Ten minutes now.
Nia pulled a second Salvage Protocol tag from her pouch and pressed it to the crysteel beside her first seal. The contractor menu buried a setting nobody used unless they were desperate.
Beacon mode.
The tag pulsed a tight claim packet into the void. Claim ID. Location. Time stamp. The battery would broadcast for a few days if it stayed out of shadow.
Long enough, if anyone cared about rules.
Nia reeled herself and the pod along the tether toward the Rook. Jiro had the cargo cradle open and ready. The winch motor whined as it took the pod’s weight. Straps pulled tight.
“Get inside,” Jiro said, voice flat. “I am burning for Prometheus.”
The airlock cycled. Warm recycled air hit Nia’s face as she pulled her helmet free. The cabin smelled like metal and old coffee. Her suit readout still showed eighty percent oxygen. The pod telemetry on the console flickered at three point six.
Nia stripped her gloves and rerouted a power feed to the external cradle. The pod’s status light shifted from red to amber.
Relief bought time. It did not buy enough.
Prometheus Station grew from a star into a ring of light. Dock control answered on the third ping and sent a lane without questions.
The clamps hit with a solid thunk. Gravity plating caught Nia’s boots as the hatch seal engaged. Med techs waited in the corridor with a pressure cradle and practiced hands. The pod disappeared behind crysteel and rolled away toward intake.
Jiro stayed by the hatch, eyes tracking the med team. His anger had drained into something tired. “You did the right thing,” he said, the words forced out as if they cost him.
“We did,” Nia said.
Hours later, a message pinged on her slate while she sat outside Dock Twelve, suit packed into a bag at her feet.
CLAIM CONFIRMED: N7-BK-118.
RECOVERY COMPLETED BY UEN SECURITY CUTTER SABLE 3.
CREDIT ISSUED: MEDICAL REDEMPTION CLASS B.
A second message followed.
POD OCCUPANT STABILIZED. THANK YOU.
Nia stared at the words until her eyes burned, then looked up at Jiro.
“They honored the tag,” she said.
Jiro let out a slow breath. “Maybe the universe still has rules.”
Nia stood, the station’s gravity settling into her bones, and started toward the clinic tram.
Her father needed medicine.
Someone else had gotten to keep breathing.
The rest was choice.
[!note] Author’s Note
This story takes place in Year 5 (2130), during the final stretch of the Crisis Period. Salvage Protocol claim tags turned wreckage into currency while keeping civilians and Security patrols in constant tension.