Wreckers: A Denver Boyd Novel by George Ellis (ebook reader ink .TXT) 📕

in three to make it to Jasper now,” I told Batista as I entered the cabin.

“I’m going with one in eight,” chirped Gary.

Batista smirked. “I’m gonna have to go with Gary on this one.”

I pulled up the long range scanner and found nothing within 50,000 clicks. A clean scan like that can lull you into a false sense of security. While it’s true space is big and endless and infinite and all the other words we use to describe a concept most of us really can’t wrap our heads around, it’s also somewhat crowded thanks to the finite technology we humans have to work with. Without one of those cool warp drives from the old movies, we have to account for massive amounts of fuel, meaning on any given day, there are probably half a million ships on float between the sun and Jupiter.

“Quiet,” I said, looking at the scanner again.

“Don’t say it,” Batista warned.

I couldn’t help myself. “Almost too quiet.”

She rolled her eyes and looked at Pirate. “I’m sorry you’ve been subjected to this for so long.”

“What am I, chopped liver?” Gary whined. “I’ve been listening to his jokes for years!”

Blip.

And just like that, the scanner wasn’t clean anymore. An orange light flashed at the outer edge of the perimeter. I turned to Batista with my best told-you-so eyebrow raise. She wasn’t impressed. The truth is, I’d expected the blip. Maybe not at that exact moment, but we were venturing into Tracer territory, so we were bound to run across another vessel eventually.

“What kind of ship?” Batista asked.

“J Series, double propulsion,” I answered, pulling up the specs. “Lightly armed but heavily armored.”

“Tracers,” she hissed.

Tracers were a loosely formed band of, well, pirate ships, for lack of a better description. The cat burglars of the universe. That’s actually where my cat’s name came from – I’d won him in a bet with a Tracer I’d crossed paths with about a year back. It just so happened he’d also been born with one eye missing, so the Pirate moniker made even more sense.

“And not just any Tracers. That ship’s the Golden Bear,” I said, my tone flat.

Batista stiffened at the mention of the call sign. “How do you know?”

“I’ve color-coded certain vessels just so I don’t mix them up with far less dangerous ships. Orange means Tracer. And that little outline on it means the Golden Bear,” I answered.

Gary decided to chime in to break the tension.

“On the bright side, maybe it’ll give you a chance to double-cross them again!” he mused. “Though I doubt even a mind as clever as yours could fool Desmond twice.”

I glared at the camera, not appreciating Gary’s sarcasm. Batista was caught somewhere between concern and, I thought, a hint of approval at the idea I might’ve bested the most nefarious pirate in space.

“Again?” she asked.

The Golden Bear was nearly 40 years old and had been helmed by just three different captains. The original was a cutthroat named Artemis, after the Greek goddess of the hunt. The Golden Bear terrorized the galaxy under her rule, stealing anything that could return a profit. Weapons. Food. People. But it wasn’t until she formed an alliance with a dozen other like-minded vessels that the Tracers were born. For the better part of three decades, she brought more pirates into the Tracer fold, until they became a ruthless army comprised of the most vicious, clever and colorful people ever to float the verse. At various points in Artemis’ reign, the Tracers were more formidable and feared than the federation itself. Engagements between the two forces were fairly common, and it was a coin-flip on who would win any particular fight.

Unfortunately for Artemis, there was one person even more cunning than herself aboard the Golden Bear, and that was her commanding officer, Titus The Gray, who stabbed her in the back – literally – to assume command of the ship. Titus was a man of great ambition. His lust for power and fame stretched the Tracer alliance nearly to its breaking point, as he instituted a “tribute” system under which all other ships paid a portion of their earnings to the Golden Bear. It was a tax. And everybody knew it. Including a young captain who had earned fame for fleecing a federation ship of its entire arsenal at the tender age of 22. Two years later, he captured the Golden Bear and spaced Titus, much to the delight of Tracers everywhere. For the last decade, Desmond had been the face and soul of the Tracer alliance. Hated by the federation. Feared by every captain in space. And loved by his people.

And 11 months ago, I’d got the better of him.

“It’s kind of a long story,” I said to Batista, who merely spread her arms wide and motioned to the windows looking out into the vast sea of stars.

“I’ve got all the time in the world,” she said, genuinely interested in hearing how a wrecker double-crossed the greatest criminal of our time.

“I guess I should start at the beginning, then,” I thought aloud. “Gary, cover your ears.”

“No! I deserve to hear this story,” he barked. “Why does she get to hear it and not me?”

“Because she isn’t recording it,” I pointed out. “And she can’t be hacked. Also, I like keeping secrets from you. It’s fun. Now, sleep.”

If Gary could’ve issued a shipwide grunt, he would have. Instead he simply shut himself off. Batista eyed me, judging. “You two have a weird relationship.”

“Shotgun wedding,” I said. The truth was I didn’t usually have people on the ship, so it was typically pretty easy to keep secrets from Gary. I just didn’t talk about them out loud. An on-board AI can be extremely helpful in a variety of situations – hell, Batista was only alive because of Gary’s ability to guide me through an emergency medical procedure – but a data-collecting machine with a big mouth is also a liability. Which is one of the reasons a lot of ships don’t even