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

“I notice you didn’t get the food, either,” I said, unable to stop myself. I had every right to be upset, but for some reason I really wanted to push it. Jiang sensed the growing problem and stopped short.

“Look, you both need to shut up,” he said, in the sternest voice he could muster. He looked around. “If we’re lucky, I can get you to a friend who has access to every quad, meaning he could ferry us back to your ship on his transport skip. But if you’d rather argue and draw more attention to yourselves, I’ll leave you both right here. Your call.”

It took me a second to register that this was my normally mild-mannered friend talking to us like that. Batista and I glared at each other, deciding to leave the argument for later.

“Good,” Jiang said, noting the unspoken truce. “Now where’s the big guy.”

A loud crash caused us all to flinch. It was followed by the sound of rapid gunfire.

“I want to say that’s not him…” I said. “But something tells me I’d be wrong.”

I checked my handheld and at the same moment, I got a transmission from Edgar. He was driving a rover with one hand and tossing a fed soldier out onto the deck with the other. He was probably driving 40 miles per hour at the time. Wonderful.

“You guys at the docks yet?” he asked. He was so calm I thought he might yawn. The bullets whizzing by him didn’t seem to faze him much. He touched his shoulder and frowned.

“Are you hit?” I asked.

“Very perceptive, captain,” he replied.

The teens shared a look. They liked this guy.

“We’re close to the docks, but it would be better if you didn’t draw the entire EMG to us!” I barked.

Edgar rolled his eyes and turned the rover. “I’ll meet you there in five. Hasta la vista.”

The transmission ended. Jiang was confused. “Hasta la vista?”

“He’s going through a Terminator phase,” I explained. Jiang had no clue what I was talking about.

“I love that movie!” one of the teens blurted. Then he looked at Jiang and quieted himself again.

The sound of the gunfire seemed to be dissipating, meaning Edgar was drawing them away from us. How he was going to get back to the docks without a bunch of pissed off people on his ass, I had no idea. But that was his problem. Ours was getting to the transport skip.

We zig-zagged through the huge engines, missile tubes and various other parts strewn about the junkyard, doing our best to either avoid other people or appear as inconspicuous as possible when we crossed paths with someone. Half a dozen drones buzzed back and forth overhead, but we had the benefit of being just five people among hundreds in the quad.

When we reached the edge of the junkyard, the docks were a hundred yards away. Jiang turned to the teens. “Wait as long as you can,” he said. They understood. I didn’t. But they did. Guess that was enough. They disappeared among the parts.

Jiang led us toward a weathered, gray transport skip. It was maybe 20 feet long. A guy in his late 50s, balding with white tufts of hair sticking out of his temples, leaned against the side panel, eating a sandwich.

Chapter 15

They say being shot feels like being punched.

Well guess what? They’re idiots. Being shot feels like being shot.

About ten feet from the transport skip, my right shoulder exploded in pain. I don’t even think I felt the impact of the bullet, just the searing ball of fire that shook my entire right shoulder and arm, dropping me to my knees in agony. The sharp tendrils of white-hot pain reached all the way into my gut, making me woozy and a little nauseous.

As I tried to catch my breath, my left hand instinctively grabbed my shoulder. It was slick with blood. All around me, I heard little “pfft” noises as bullets flew by my ears. Someone scooped me up and dragged me the final few feet to the small transport shuttle. I stumbled inside it and collapsed to the floor.

I don’t think I blacked out. I just kinda went numb for a few moments. Shock can do that to you. Then the pain returned and I saw Jiang leaning over me, holding a rag to my shoulder to stem the bleeding.

“It feels worse than it is,” he said.

“How do you know how it feels?” I asked.

Jiang smiled a bit and looked at Batista and Edgar, who were safely in the shuttle with us. “He hasn’t lost his sense of humor,” Jiang said.

Edgar made a face. “Didn’t know he had one.”

“What happened?” I managed as I tried to sit up. Jiang gently pushed me back down, urging me to lay flat. He said they needed to dress the wound a bit more before I started moving.

Batista explained that we’d almost made it to the transport craft when a pair of feds came out of nowhere and started lighting us up. Luckily, I was the only one who got hit (lucky for who, I wondered). When I asked what happened to the feds, Edgar simply waved his hand.

“Dead?” I asked.

Batista nodded. Well, that certainly complicated matters.

“Don’t worry,” Edgar said. “I already put a couple others out of their misery before those two. We were on Slay’s bad side anyway. Shooting her men in the knees wouldn’t have made her feel any better about us.”

Things were spiraling out of control. It was bad enough Batista and I had maimed a bunch of feds escaping the Graymore, but now we were leaving bodies. Never mind the morality of it, that’s just something the federation would never forget – or forgive. I felt even sicker to my stomach than I did a few minutes earlier. Jiang could see the concern on my face and raised his eyebrows in agreement. He knew I was used to bending the rules, even breaking some of them, but killing people?