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

“What did he want?” he asked.

“To congratulate me.”

“I bet. The old man’s a real dog,” he said. “I’m sure mom told you about it.”

My mother had alluded to my father’s affairs, but she never spoke of any of them specifically. Despite the clear issues between her and dad, she was content to take the high road and not talk too much trash about him. She knew no matter what happened, he would always be my dad. And she respected that. It didn’t hurt that she was happier without him. I didn’t know if the same could be said of my dad.

“That’s all you talked about?” my brother asked, trying to seem just as casual as my dad when mining for information. It struck me how similar they were. I knew I was more like my mom. “He didn’t want to know what else we were doing in New Chicago. What I was doing?”

“What were you doing, Avery? Other than hanging out with Silver Star captains.”

Avery wanted to smack me again, but it was too public a venue. He contained his anger and lowered his voice. “What did you say, Denny.”

“This time? I kept my mouth shut. But if you don’t tell me what’s going on, maybe I’ll be more honest next time.”

Avery studied my face for a moment, seeing if I was bluffing. I didn’t even know if I was, which meant it was a good bluff indeed. He nodded. “Not here. C’mon.”

We left the galley and headed to the cargo bay. It was deserted. It was also fairly empty, as we had dropped off a shipment of air recycler filters the day before. We weren’t usually a cargo hauler, as our bread and butter was as a wrecking vessel, fixing and towing other ships from around the verse. But on the long hauls, my dad liked to maximize his profits by transporting goods.

My brother checked to make sure nobody was around. Satisfied we were alone, he led me to the back of the bay, behind a few storage crates. Each of the crates were marked with numbers – codes to identify the goods inside. I was too new to the ship to know what the codes meant, but for someone who’d been on board, you could pretty much tell what was in a box before popping it just by looking at the first few letters and numbers. F22. X1A. Shorthand like that. Like I said, I didn’t know what they stood for.

Avery pointed to a crate marked F31.

“Anything with an F designation means Filters,” he said. “Pretty simple. 31 means it’s got three of one 1 type of filter. Understand?”

I nodded. I knew we weren’t there to talk about air filters, so I waited for him to proceed.

“So last night, when I gave you that nice present, do you think I paid for it with my salary on this ship?” he asked.

That had been bothering me. How could my brother afford his “present” as he called it?

“If the old man paid a fair wage, I wouldn’t do this,” he said. “But he doesn’t, so we all have some side hustles.”

“What’s yours?”

“Supply and demand, Denny. Supply and demand.”

I was lost. He smiled and put a hand on my shoulder.

“People need filters. Sure. But they also need other things,” he explained. “So when we hit a port like New Chicago, where I’ve got connections, I see what else they need and slip ‘em in with the filters.”

He was smuggling things. Why didn’t he just say that?

“I smuggle stuff,” he said, proudly. I shook my head.

“Like what?”

“Booze. Drugs. Hell, tube socks for all I care. Whatever they need that I can get my hands on. I pick up stuff from one port and take it to the next. Just like dad does. Only it’s my own little operation. Could be ours, actually, if you want in.”

He dangled the offer as a way to shut me up. I was young, but I wasn’t dumb. I knew he was trying to buy my silence.

“What does Silver Star have to do with it?” I asked.

Avery sighed. “We’re not the only ship in the verse with access to good stuff, Denny. There are dozens of Silver Star ships out there stopping at stations all over, and so sometimes I gotta make a deal with them. It’s not personal like it is with dad and Largent. It’s just business.”

“What did the Silver Star guy at the Red Desert have?”

“It doesn’t matter. The point is, I wanted it and now it’s in this box, along with those air filters. You in or you out?”

I looked at my brother and knew my answer would forever dictate the nature of our relationship.

Chapter 20

There were bodies everywhere.

Face down on the floor. Slumped at their stations. Strewn about the galley. Except for the sound of our boot heels clicking on the metal grates as we stepped over the still members of the crew, the Rox was silent.

I looked at the timer on my handheld and it said we had 12 minutes and 18 seconds before people started waking up from the Halothane I’d smuggled on board and fed into the ventilation system.

Romy followed closely behind me, looking even more hipster-punk than usual with a black gas mask covering her face. Her eyes were wide as she surveyed the bodies of the crew.

“They’ll be fine in a few minutes,” I assured her.

“That’s what I’m afraid of,” she said, her voice muffled from the mask.

I reminded her to flip on her comm link. She did and I heard her voice crisply in my earpiece. I whirled around quickly as more boots clicked in the corridor behind us.

I saw Edgar’s eyes smiling above his gas mask as he looked at the former members of his crew, laid out at his feet. “Nice work,” he said. Batista turned the corner.

“Alright, we have 11 minutes and 8 seconds to get back on the Stang,” I informed