I ran toward the back of the hangar, scanning around me. Tall, dusty shelves full of wooden crates and blue plastic boxes made the hangar into a maze of corridors. I spotted simple steel doors with glowing red exit signs on the sides of the hangar as I ran toward the back. As we suspected, there were indeed other ways to get in here. We'd committed to our plan, however, and there was no going back.
"Jake, you'd better move. I'm hearing that reinforcements were dispatched from a nearby base to assist. A couple of Ospreys full of Marines that will be here in ten. Their guns will work," Marty said.
"Shit," I cursed.
The back-left corner of the hangar held our treasure. A massive pile of scrap metal and odd shapes. Mixed in were several blue plastic crates full of smaller pieces.
"I found the stuff. Checking it out now," I reported.
We had given some thought to how we were going to get our loot out of the hangar. It wasn't like we could just put it into our pockets, or carry it out piece by piece. We needed the doors open before we could do anything. But before we did anything, we needed to make sure that we weren’t just stealing a bunch of junk.
I activated my Engineering vision mode, and swept my eyes over the pile in front of me. Some of the pieces lit up, exposing Union components in amongst the scrap. A large number of them were empty. If they were Union material, they were unmodified.
I picked up the first piece of scrap on top, and looked it over. Using my salvage interface, I quickly encompassed the whole thing.
╠═╦╬╧╪
Salvage: Unknown materials
Cost: 177 Nanite Clusters
╠═╦╬╧╪
"Holy crap," I said. "The Interface is telling me it doesn't know what this material is."
"All of it is unknown?" Regar asked.
"No, not all of it," I replied. Abusing the salvage UI more, I scanned the pile. The Interface labeled quite a few pieces of Union material.
"If it's unknown, that means it's not Union material, but it's also not normal material. That's how the Interface labels Artifacts or advanced materials that aren't made with Union techniques," Regar said.
The blue plastic boxes full of tiny scrap pieces were a mix of Union metals, unknown material, and tier 2 and 3 exotics. Jackpot.
"Found a bunch of exotics here. Lots of unknowns too." I asked.
"Better take it all," Regar said.
"Fine by me," I replied.
"Found the controls. Hangar doors are opening now," Regar said.
That was followed by a flurry of more gunshots, fully automatic rifle fire echoing through the vast space.
"Stars, that's loud. Jake, there is a security force here. They came through one of the side doors. They're shooting at me. It's irritating."
I knew that Regar's armor was completely impervious to the 5.56mm rounds that the security forces had, but we couldn't just ignore them while we robbed them. Our lack of non-lethal weapons came back to bite us once again.
"I'm on my way. Disable them, but try not to kill them," I replied.
I turned and ran toward Regar and the ongoing sound of gunfire. They were really hosing him down—the fully automatic rifle fire had to be deafening in this enclosed space for those without ear protection. I almost pitied the guards.
The first squad of four I found crouched behind a row of large crates. They were unloading on Regar, who I couldn't see. Brass cascaded down around them as they fired. I was annoyed that our weapon disabling bugs hadn't gotten to everyone.
What I had to do was dangerous. I could kill these men without even meaning to. That was one of the big problems of being a superhero, or at least someone with superhero-level strength. What did you do when you had to fight normal humans? Even being gentle, I might accidentally kill one.
I reached out a massive gauntleted hand, pulling the far-left soldier back from the crate he had been leaning on. He squealed in surprise, attempting to bring his rifle around. I plucked it from his grasp, tossing it behind me. He tried to squirm free and I slapped him as gently as I could with my left hand. He lost consciousness and went limp in my grasp. I dropped him, just in time to prevent his three buddies filling him full of bullets. They saw me and panicked, turning their fire on me. The muzzle flashes would have been blinding, but the display inside my helmet dimmed them, making them just more information. The un-silenced report of the rifles would've been painful, but that was filtered as well. Simply more information.
I stepped forward, moving faster than a human should be able to. Each of my hands grabbed a rifle and jerked it free. I heard crunching as trigger fingers broke, but the rifles were mine. I flung them over my shoulders and stepped forward. The soldiers recoiled but weren't fast enough. Like clinking two beer glasses together, I gently slammed the soldier's heads together. Again, I could only hope that I hadn't been too rough. Their eyes rolled back and they slumped to the ground. I stepped over them toward the fourth member of the squad.
Terror filled his eyes. With a strangled cry he flung away his useless rifle and turned to run. I caught him in a few long steps and plucked him off his feet with one hand. His uniform tore and he fell to the ground, hard. The breath rushed out of the young soldier. He wheezed, looking up at me with wide eyes.
"Soldier, stay down. If you get back up, I might have to hurt you, and I don't want to do that."
He nodded, not speaking. His helmet had fallen off, and he really was young. Eighteen or nineteen at
