5th SEPTEMBER 7079, PLANET POMATTA

A sea breeze ruffled Madison's fur as she sat on the soft chalky beach watching the Laika unload. The ship had settled at the shore, a set of massive pontoons keeping it afloat on the water.

"It's a lot easier to fly than the last ship," Brewster was saying from beside her, his fur similarly rippling in the wind. "Autopilot capabilities on this thing are great." He rubbed his nose and sniffed, likely due to the salt in the air. "It's only my second time with it, as well. Our last mission..."

"On Ayperia," Madison said.

Brewster's mouth froze in mid-sentence. "Okay, yeah, you spoke with the others. Yeah, well, that was my first time piloting this ship, and I could not believe how incredible it is. Apparently it's a prototype, just going into a limited run."

Madison nodded. "It's a good ship alright. Plus, it has basketball capabilities. How many shipwrights can say that?"

Brewster snorted.

The hangar bay was alive with activity; Madison could make out a storm of massive shadows and the orange glare of warning lights. From the darkness emerged one of the enormous carrier vehicles, its huge wheels crunching into the ground as it left the Laika's retractable cargo ramp. On its back were several Volvo excavators, their black-and-yellow shells glowing in the sunlight.

Madison looked over to the abandoned smugglers' outpost, where some of the other salvagers were congregating. "Wanna go see what's going on in there?" she asked Brewster, pointing in that direction.

Brewster nodded back. "Sure."

They both stood and started over; as they neared the building, Whitney emerged from the nearest doorway. "Thought we were missing two," she chortled. "Come on, we've found stuff."

"Anything valuable?" Madison asked. It wasn't unheard of for those in the profession to pocket the odd trinket. The more larcenous side of her was secretly excited at the possibility of pilfering some smaller equipment from the downed OSA ship.

Whitney grimaced. "Nah. But come see what we did find."

Madison and Brewster followed the rotund Raccoon down a flight of stairs inside the small structure and into a warren of tunnels lit by small rechargeable bulbs. The others were indeed there, along with one or two others Madison didn't know from the other teams. Whitney approached a petite female Red Panda in the process of inspecting a small wooden box and slapped her on the shoulder. "Hands off, Tracey, that's my box."

The Panda shrugged and withdrew, muttering petulantly. Whitney claimed the object and hoiked a thumb at a stack of identical boxes. "They're in play, check 'em out."

Madison squeezed past Henriette, who was absorbed in her own box, and picked one from the top of the stack, opening it. "Beef bars, soup-in-a-tube, dehydrated muffins." She looked over to Brewster. "Not the most exciting find."

Brewster reached past her. "Let me try." He took one and opened it, his muzzle twitching with curiosity. He laughed as her inspected the contents. "Okay, now I know my girlfriend is prodding me from across the stars." He showed Madison the innards of his box.

Madison looked inside. "FreshPawz Foot Spray and ClearMuzzle Snore Solution?"

Brewster sighed and rolled his eyes, swivelling the box back. "Well, thanks for that, Kelly." He snapped the lid closed. "Anyone else got a slight-in-a-box from their sweetie?"

"I don't," Henriette muttered. "But then I don't have the abhorrent problems Brewski does."

"That's right, she doesn't," Milan put in; the Akita was nearby, examining an old terminal. "But she does talk in her sleep about making cheese."

Madison had to laugh. "Seriously?"

Henriette growled. "Well, I spent most of my puppy years doing just that, so don't blame me for being knowledgeable."

"Knowledgeable?" Brewster hooted. "Thanks to your mumbling, Hen, I know how long to age Mount Avary Hardened for."

Henriette sighed. "Should've stayed on Summerkin. If I hadn't seen that bloody TV show about salvaging, I wouldn't be here right now taking this crap."

"No," Whitney said drily. "You'd be using black pepper and lemon to create a variety of Cape Olivia Churn called Rhapsody."

"I'm going back up top," the disgruntled Summerkinian dog proclaimed, abandoning her box and leaving with semi-mock indignance. "Maybe I'll find some enlightened minds there."

"Woah, she's cheesed," Brewster laughed, getting a rancid glare from Henriette as she departed.

The hilarity was curtailed by the insistent bleep of Whitney's radio, and the Raccoon produced it. "Hey." She listened for a moment. "Right. Thanks." She pocketed the radio and looked at the others. "We're on, guys. Hunsiker wants us in the air pronto. We're taking the security officers in and flying escort for the trucks."

She led the way back up the stairs.

The beach was packed out as Madison and the others left the outpost. The massive carrier vehicles were ready to move out, their engines roaring eagerly, and the heavily armed crewers massing around the Saiga-77s caught Madison's eye. She recognized them instantly, their black body armour and backpacks marking them out as OSA security officers. OSA security officers were a different breed to the street punks, college dropouts and strays that the United Security Corporation hoovered up by the thousands. This lot wore expressions that ranged from surly to outright homicidal on their harsh-featured muzzles, and even the herbivores looked as if they'd have no qualms about roasting Madison on a spit.

Whitney obviously noticed where Madison's attention was going. "Yeah, these guys have nothing in their job descriptions besides 'shoot anything that moves'. Thing is, I usually assume that includes us, but we always luck out in catching them on a go-slow."

Madison nodded in mute agreement as she neared their designated shuttle. The security guards, chatting among themselves, looked up as Whitney's team approached. The nearest, a gigantic Beaver with teeth the size of bath mats, broke off and walked up to Whitney. "Hey. We're your security team."

Whitney nodded, reading the name on his flak vest. "Aye. Well, great to meet you, Rankin. You wanna board the shuttle? We're taking off now."

Rankin nodded without another word, and motioned to his underlings, who clumped up the ramp into the small ship.

Henriette rolled her eyes. "Sweet-talkers, ain't they?"

Brewster had the Saiga-77 in the air within a few minutes of that exchange, and soon they were on their way back to the salvage site. Brewster kept the ship low so that the security officers could be called upon to fire at anything that would threaten the carriers on the ground.

Soon after, the wreck of the OSA research ship loomed on the horizon, and the shuttle landed near it, some way inside the energy barrier perimeter.

The air hummed as Madison left the craft, no doubt from the spears forming the barrier, but she found herself regarding the enormous wreck. She wondered, for a brief moment as she studied the broken land and toppled forest, what it would be like to witness such a massive ship crashing; to see it, to hear it, to feel it.

Nearby, the carriers were unloading their cargo; the rumble of engines joined the hum of the perimeter as the excavators and dump trucks roared to life and rolled off the carrier vehicles.

Whitney ambled up alongside Madison, ear to her radio, and the others joined her in short order, followed by the burly security officers. "Alright," Whitney announced, yelling over the noise of the machines, "Team One – that's us – and Team Two have been ordered to head inside the ship and raid it. Research decks are the priority. We recover everything we can. Meanwhile, Teams Three, Four and Five are pulling excavation duty. They're digging an access route to the main cargo lock so we can get everything out."

Madison looked back to the wreck. Judging from what she knew of a ship of that class – it looked like an Ox-class orbital, from what she could see – the excavation teams would be digging for some time.

"So, we get to nose round the innards," Milan yipped, a big grin on his muzzle. "Nice."

Whitney nodded, her own muzzle twitching eagerly, her paws twitching as well. She looked every bit the Raccoon she was at that point, eager to root around and find stuff. "Let's get to it."

Madison grunted as she scaled the steeply tilted hull of the wreck, the magnetic soles of her boots keeping her standing at an impossible angle to the ground. The sonorous footsteps echoing in her ears kept her going. For a moment, she was back home, climbing a trash heap, and the sun suddenly became blinding, toasting her fur.

But she blinked and reminded herself of where she was in reality, and felt calmer, making the rest of her way to a smallish access hatch set into the hull. Whitney was already there, and was using her MultiTorch to slice into the lock. As Madison neared, the hatch fell away into the murk inside the ship, landing somewhere blow with a distant clang. "Safety lines out, everyone," Whitney announced, standing up.

Madison found hers on her belt-mounted equipment pack, and unspooled it a little. Whitney had already done so, and was hooking the piton on the end to a rail on the edge of the lock. She whooped and dropped into the unknown.

Madison decided to go next, copying Whitney and stepping off the edge into nothing. With that, she was plummeting, her stomach rising into her throat as the hatchway shrunk to a pinpoint.

It seemed to go on forever before her safety line's spool bleeped an alarm and applied a brake to the line, slowing her down before she hit something hard.

That something hard was a large section of grilled deck plating, where Whitney was already unclipping herself. Madison lowered herself to the floor and detached herself from her line. Above, the others were coming down, limned by the narrow beam of sunlight strobing into the wreck.

Brewster landed next to her and blew out his breath in satisfaction. "Love me a good ride down the line," he enthused.

Madison smiled. Milan, Henriette and lastly Maizy hit the ground, and above, the members of Team Two were preparing to make their descent.

"Okay," Whitney announced breezily to the assembled team. "Let's get a head start on those guys. We are Team One, after all, so we go first." She consulted her radio. "The scan says the research decks are at least level, so we won't be doing too many acrobatics. Till then, though, watch where you step." She strolled to the edge of the truncated walkway and off it, her magnetic boots adhering to the edge and taking her through a ninety-degree adjustment.

"Shall we?" Brewster asked Madison.

Madison waggled her ears. "Well, I could do with some exercise anyway."

With that, they headed out.