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

excellent alcohol among them. Acquiring those products in space wasn’t hard. Just expensive. And even for a guy like me, who prioritized things like a quality brew and corn syrup-based snacks, the cost was steep. I never had enough credits. Obviously Desmond didn’t have that problem.

The first sip went down like butter and tasted like hoppy perfection.

“I hope you aren’t trying to recruit me,” I said warily. “But if you are, this is a good start.”

Desmond grinned. “Perhaps we’ll eventually come to an arrangement like that, but right now, I just need your assistance fixing something. The reason I told you to leave your tools is that it’s not a ship that requires repairs.”

I looked at him, confused.

“It’s a relationship,” he said. “With Silver Star.”

I continued looking at him, confused. Some of it was for effect. Some wasn’t.

“Are you trying to make your relationship worse? That’s the only reason you’d want me involved. I might be their least favorite indie wrecker.” Silver Star had approached me when my uncle died, hoping I would join their ranks. I politely declined. They responded by sicking the federation on me, telling them all manner of lies about me and my family. So it was safe to say they were on my shit list, too.

“Our contract with them is up in a few months, and I’m looking for negotiating leverage,” Desmond explained. “When you have one ship, you either have a capable crew of mechanics on board, or you simply hire a freelancer such as yourself when there’s a problem. But when you have 113 ships, it becomes necessary to outsource.”

“So…you share the same engineering vendor as the federation? Isn’t that a pretty big conflict of interest?” I asked.

Desmond spread his hands wide, palms up. “The world is full of conflicts of interest.”

I nodded. “Cool. Sure. Still don’t see how I can help.”

“Currently, Silver Star is something of a monopoly. I’m sure you can understand that a man like me doesn’t like when one entity has all the leverage. So I’m asking you to expand your operation.”

I settled back in my chair and finished my drink. Desmond flashed a gesture and the kid fetched me another. I made sure I received the new can before I broke the bad news.

“I don’t know what you’ve heard about me, but that’s the last thing I’d ever do. I work alone.”

“And it’s very impressive. I don’t know of any captains at your age that haven’t flamed out in spectacular fashion. You’re an oddity, Denver. I’m not asking you to actually join Silver Star. I’m simply asking you to…play the part,” he said. “I’d like you to approach a few of Silver Star’s captains and give them the impression you’re forming a rival organization based on a potential deal with the Tracers. Once word gets back to Jack Largent, I’ll take it from there.”

If Desmond was known as one of the most clever men in the universe, Jack Largent was known (rightly) as one of the slimiest. The Silver Star CEO also happened to be one of my family’s biggest rivals from back in the day. I despised the man, but I also didn’t want to punch him in the nose.

“This seems like a lot of work to save a few credits,” I said.

Desmond sighed and for the first time seemed annoyed with me. “Of course we’re talking about a few million credits per year, not just a few of them. And I’d pay you what you’d normally make in six months, all for just getting in touch with a few of Silver Star’s people.”

He placed his can down and calmly stared into my soul. At least that’s what it felt like. He’d been friendly thus far. And he was even a gracious host. But his current posture indicated he wasn’t really asking me to do this for him. He was telling me.

“And if I refuse?” I asked, because I’m just hardwired to be difficult.

* * *

“We’re gonna what?” Gary asked. I didn’t bother giving him the details. I also didn’t tell him Desmond explained that he would see it as a personal insult if I decided not to help him in this matter. Even though he liked me, he’d spaced people he liked far more. I had found that to be a compelling argument.

On the bright side, Desmond paid half the credits up front, so I was suddenly a few thousand credits wealthier. “Set a course for Titan Station,” I told Gary. “And don’t skimp on the speed.”

Four days later, I stepped off the Stang and into the hangar of the largest commercial station this side of Mars atmo. I looked down the row and saw a few dozen ships lined up in the bay. And that was just one of the station’s six hangars.

Titan was 30 years old and had taken half that long to construct. It featured a hotel, restaurants, bars, a provisions market and even a soccer stadium. Nearly 2,000 people lived on the station, which spanned two miles. Most of the full-time inhabitants worked on Titan, but a handful merely liked living on the closest thing to solid ground that wasn’t actually dirt and rock. The structure was a vast sphere constructed of concentric rings, like a giant silver marble floating in space. Thanks to a gravity-spun core, the innermost rings of the station featured about 9 meters per second of gravity, just a touch less than Earth’s average level.

I hated the place. It had been built with blood credits. The federation had squeezed the people of both Earth and space with unreasonable tariffs to pay for the endeavor. The result was that for about a decade, the feds got their piece of every transaction and shipment in the verse. In the end, I’d guess about 10% of the revenue collected actually went to Titan Station, as impressive and expensive as it was. The rest fortified the federation fleet and lined politicians’ pockets.

Still, Titan had its moments. For example, immediately upon passing through