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

It didn’t matter if they were feds who were trying to kill me, it just wasn’t something I’d ever done before.

The older guy piloting the shuttle yelled over his shoulder that we were almost back to the quad six bay where the Stang was docked. He checked his scans and confirmed we hadn’t been detected. I felt a sense of relief.

“Benefits of not leaving any witnesses,” Edgar said.

The relief was quickly replaced by anger again.

“We’ll talk about that later,” I told him, sitting up, despite Jiang’s protest. Edgar was nonplussed. What was there to talk about, really? It was done. Just over a week ago, I was a wrecker with a few dings on my record and about the same number of blemishes on my conscience. Now I was associating with Tracers and killers, which made me as bad as them, in my book. I wanted to turn back the clock and simply ignore that distress call from the Graymore. Instead, I was hurtling toward a fight I didn’t want, leaving all kinds of carnage in my wake.

“Better hurry,” Jiang said when the shuttle landed next to the Stang. He opened the door and checked the area first. It was quiet. The only person there was the woman he’d tasked with refueling my ship. They exchanged a few words in Chinese and then Jiang nodded, satisfied.

The transfer to the Stang was surprisingly uneventful. Jiang informed me the ship was refueled and he’d even put some of his own food reserves in the kitchen to tide us over until Jasper Station. That was assuming we made it that far, of course.

“What about the other request?” I asked.

Jiang nodded. Good. I would need all the help I could get.

Edgar and Batista were already aboard the Stang and I was halfway up the gangway, with Jiang helping me every step, when he stopped for a moment and turned toward me.

“You’re a good man,” he said.

It was meant to make me feel better, but it hit a different way. It just made me question myself even more. Jiang didn’t know half of what I’d done.

“Am I, though?” I asked.

“You are,” Jiang said, with even more conviction. “You’re a good man in a bad situation. Don’t lose sight of that. Safe travels, friend.”

* * *

Pirate was sitting in my lap as we navigated out of the bay. Jiang’s words were still echoing in my head. I wanted to believe them. It reminded me of something my mom used to say: speak with your actions, and when your actions say the wrong thing, make sure you don’t repeat the lie ever again. I don’t know if it applied to situations like this, though.

I looked over at Edgar, who was standing at the weapon station, not a care in the world. I wondered whether his conscience had been altered or his lack of compassion was simply the foundation the people who enhanced him built upon. As we prepped the ship to take off, he had calmly informed me that he never felt remorse over a life he’d taken. “They were all just,” he had said. Apparently, if someone was trying to do him harm, he felt they had crossed a line that could result in his death, so he had no reservations about killing them. If everything was black and white, sure, that is one way to look at things. But it’s a very dark, very messed up way to live. It definitely didn’t make me feel any better about having him on my ship. He could decide any number of my decisions were bad for him, and then suddenly I was the dispensable one.

Then there was Batista. She was in the co-pilot chair, oddly silent at the moment. She had finished Jiang’s work of stitching and bandaging me up, though we hadn’t exchanged a single word during the entire ad-hoc procedure. She simply took Gary’s directions and with cold eyes and mechanical hands, repaired my shoulder. It still hurt like hell, but the pain killers had kicked in and Gary was reasonably sure they’d missed any vital parts. I just wouldn’t be able to use my right arm anytime in the next week or so without a whole lot of white-hot pain.

“It’s a shame,” Gary said.

“Which part?”

“That was a great parking spot. We’ll never get one like that on Jasper Station.”

“Just keep your eyes on the scans,” I told him. It was a good sitcom reference, but I’d long since learned not to feed the beast.

“Will do, boss. I’m actually surprised it was such a clean getaway. Almost too easy if you ask me,” Gary said.

I paused my hands in mid-air, trying not to move a muscle and create a disturbance in the force. I glanced at Batista and Edgar and they too were motionless.

In general, I wasn’t particularly superstitious. I didn’t get the impression Batista or Mr. Kills-A-Lot were either.

But Gary had broken the cardinal rule when making a getaway: saying it was too easy. Because in all likelihood, it was too easy, and giving voice to that reality was only a step removed from hoping something went wrong.

Gary noticed we all stopped moving at the same time, and snickered. “What did I say?”

Beep. Beep. Beep.

My eyes locked onto the scanner and suddenly, as if it appeared out of nowhere, there was a ship about 50 miles from our position. Weapons armed and locked. We were dead in the atmo if they wanted us.

“You had to open your big mouth,” Edgar said to the ceiling.

“It’s the Burnett,” I said, not surprised. “She’s hailing us.”

I didn’t answer. My mind raced for some way out of this. Some hidden advantage we had, or a trick I could pull. I drew a complete blank. I looked at Batista and she just shrugged. No ideas there. Edgar wasn’t even bothering to plug in a counter-attack into the system.

Not that it mattered much, but I couldn’t figure out how the Burnett was doing it. It had to be some new