The scavengers

Who are they?

Scavengers live off salvage that isn’t theirs: whatever can be recovered from ships and capsules. They are unlicensed salvagers, meaning they take wreckage without anyone’s permission. They strip capsules and wrecks (ships that have come to grief) before anyone else arrives. When there is no wreck, they jump whoever is heading home loaded.

They fly no flag and ask for none. They shoot the Zenith and the Nadir, the system’s two factions, alike. They are among the groups that attack everyone (see The people of Aurin).

What are they after?

The cargo, and vibrosteel makes their job easy. It is the system’s expensive metal, the one in screws and long rifles. It is one of the five ores, the rocks that metal comes from (see the resource guide).

Vibrosteel has a signature: a trace that can be picked up from far away. If a crew, a small mining team, can pick it up in a vein, so can anyone with a scanner.

That is why crews going after vibrosteel outside patrolled zones go armed. And that is why they mine fast and without showing off.

How do they strike?

They wait until the work is done. The crew has just finished mining and the cargo is already in the hold. Someone is about to say the worst is over. Then the ship’s console speaks up: “Mass signature on approach. Unauthorised vector.”

The scavenger ship is usually an old Tortuga, a heavy transport. It sets down in a clearing behind the crew, a few dozen metres away. Its people come down the ramp while a voice speaks on the open channel: “Leave the ore on the ground and your boots on. You get the ship back. Maybe.”

They fight with rifles, in threes, from behind the rocks. They miss more than professionals do and leave gaps between bursts. But they don’t tire and they don’t leave: whoever holds out longest keeps the cargo. A crew that takes cover and fires back drives them off. A crew that stands in the open does not.

What is left when they fall?

Their bodies stay where they dropped, and their ship stays landed in the clearing. They carry what they were carrying: the rifle and whatever ammunition they had left.

Who are the Cementerio pirates?

The scavengers who work in vacuum have a name of their own: the Cementerio de Aura pirates. The Cementerio de Aura is the debris band left by the war of Year 1. Their best-known named chief is El Notario, a character from the Crónica de Aurin who gives a receipt for everything he steals.

These pirates reach as far as the system’s remotest points. One is the Baliza Confín, a listening post on the edge of the system and one of Aurin’s strategic points. It gets the least traffic, and a raid there takes a long time to spot.