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

I asked before catching a delicious whiff of whatever was in the container.

“They’re called egg rolls,” Jiang said. “You owe it to yourself to enjoy them while they’re hot. They just came out of the fryer.”

Eating my first egg roll wasn’t the most rewarding experience I’d ever had as a wrecker, but it was definitely top five. It was like a donut that wasn’t for dessert and was filled with meat and vegetables. As we sat in one of The Yunan’s cafeterias, Uncle Erwin and I looked at each other in disbelief.

“Have you ever had one of these?” I asked him.

“I’ve only heard of them,” he answered, taking another bite.

Jiang popped open a couple beers and sat down across the table from us. My uncle sternly explained that if he kept giving us home-cooked food and free beer, he might never get his ship towed.

“On some level, that would be fine with me,” Jiang said. “I always liked the idea of being completely independent. But with life comes change. Now I’ll get the chance to be part of something bigger.”

My uncle nodded. He understood the sentiment.

Then Jiang cleared his throat and prepared to say something. He just couldn’t quite spit it out.

“You okay, buddy?” Uncle E asked.

“Uh, yes. I just had a question about your ship. Well, first, I should say it’s probably the coolest looking spacecraft I’ve ever seen. But…”

I knew what was coming. “You’re wondering how the hell our little ship is going to be able to tow yours?” I asked.

Jiang nodded, relieved I had asked the question for him. My uncle told him the Mustang had once towed a federation battle cruiser from Titan Station to Earth. I’d heard about the tow when I was on The Sheffield. It was the buzz of the wrecker world and cemented the Stang as the top independent wrecker in the verse. My dad was depressed for weeks. Avery had confided in me that our dad had always been jealous of my uncle and his noteworthy ship. I often wondered what my dad and brother would think of me working on the Stang. We hadn’t spoken since I left the Sheffield.

“Oh. I guess we’re good then,” Jiang said, embarrassed.

“Yep,” Uncle E answered. Then he looked at me with a wry smile. “We’re gonna do this one a little differently. I want to see if my young apprentice here can figure it out, or if I have to tell him.”

I pulled up the schematic of The Yunan on my handheld. I could see what my uncle was talking about. There wasn’t a good anchor point on the “front” of the ship, because there was no real front. It was circular. Which meant there was no back, either. The propulsion system was mounted on the sides and the ship could go in any direction. Slowly, most likely.

I studied the schematic looking for an answer. We couldn’t pull it. We certainly couldn’t push it. For a moment, I considered that we might just fix the damn thing, but then I remembered the core had fried. We weren’t equipped to fix that.

Oh. It suddenly dawned on me.

“Don’t tell me we’re going in there?”

Uncle E nodded proudly. “That’s exactly what we’re gonna do. We are going to be the donut hole.”

* * *

I always got nervous floating in space. There’s just something about being a couple thin layers of fabric away from the never-ending vacuum of death that makes me think “Hmmm, maybe this wasn’t the best idea.”

I used my propulsion pack to navigate toward The Yunan. Uncle E had positioned the Stang in the middle of the empty area inside the circular ship. We had a few hundred yards to spare on all sides. The idea was to create a series of cable tethers from the Stang to The Yunan to keep us roughly in place as the donut hole. We would then use the jib at full tension to tow the larger ship from the interior support bar that was located on the inner ring.

Basically, we’d tow it from the inside. Which was a new one.

My job was to attach each of the 16 cable tethers to The Yunan. It was a laborious task that was going to take multiple days. I’d been in the suit for a few hours already and had only attached the first four tethers. The goal was to do four more before calling it a day. I had enough oxygen to last another six hours if needed, but being in the suit is hard work. And sweaty. I was already getting a ton of condensation on the visor, which made the work even more difficult due to the partially obscured vision.

“Code Black!” my uncle barked in my ear, giving me a jolt. I nearly dropped the power clamps I’d been using to fasten the cable tethers to The Yunan. “Get back to the Stang, now!”

I whirled and checked in all directions. Through the fog of my visor, I couldn’t see anything out there besides the Stang and The Yunan. Code Black meant that we were under attack from another ship, and my uncle didn’t throw that around lightly. I dropped the cable from my hands and began heading back to the Stang.

It was like an action move in slow motion. My heart was racing and my eyes darted back and forth, scanning for the enemy ship. But I was actually moving very slowly. The propulsion system on my suit used short bursts of compressed air to push me along in space. It was meant for precise movements and short walks. In other words, the top speed was around 10 miles per hour. Under normal circumstances, that felt pretty quick, considering a few wrong turns and I’d be headed off course for the next, oh, forever.

At the moment, I felt very exposed.

“What’s going on?” I asked my uncle.

“Tracers,” he hissed. “I know you can’t hurry…but hurry, Denver.”

If there was a Tracer ship in the area, the Stang was a sitting