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

chair just in time. The solution worked and the rail guns missed. That time.

“Nice one, but that won’t work again,” Edgar warned.

“I’m aware.”

I hit the intercom and checked to make sure everybody had survived the hard bank. Some of them were shaken up, but no worse for the wear. “Strap in or strap down,” I advised them and then turned my attention back to the Rox. The long ship was jockeying for another good position to fire.

Edgar bought me 10 or 15 seconds by sending a pair of missiles and a rail volley at the Rox, but the ship launched countermeasures for the missiles and just ate the rail fire like it was candy. I might have put a hole in a compartment or two if I was lucky.

We were starting to move at a good clip and the Rox was still disabled, but it was going to take a miracle for the Stang to get out of the sniper-ship’s firing range before they landed a direct hit. I didn’t need a miracle, though. I just needed Slay to play her part.

“Where is she?!” I screamed. The scanner still showed no sign of the Burnett.

“If you’re asking me, I haven’t seen her,” Gary said. “Judging by the look on your face and the way you howled at the console, I’m guessing the question was rhetorical. But I did alert Admiral Slay the moment we had the device. She didn’t even say thank you. I actually wanted to talk to you about that…”

“Not now,” I snapped.

The Rox’s rail guns were glowing hot again. Then they were just…gone. They had been sheared off the ship by a precision strike by the Burnett, which had arrived and fired at the exact same time.

“Yes!” I exclaimed, realizing I had just cheered for the federation for the first time in my life. “Floor it, Gary.”

“It is already being floored,” he said. “But I really think we should talk about the Burnett. Something isn’t right about it.”

I looked at the monitor and saw the Burnett decimating the Rox with rail and missile volleys. It was quite a show. Even Edgar was slack-jawed as he looked on. The baton for the most dangerous ship in the verse was being handed off from the Rox to the Burnett as the latter destroyed the former. The Rox began ejecting personal escape pods.

Gary’s words suddenly struck me.

“I know, Gary. Something definitely isn’t right about being saved by a fed ship. But I’ll take what I can get at the moment.”

“That’s the thing, Denver. I don’t think it’s a fed ship.”

I turned toward the nearest camera. “Say what?”

Edgar looked too.

“First, Slay says she can’t lift the warrant on us until after we complete the job,” explained Gary. “A job so secret that nobody else in the federation knows about it. Fine. Whatever. But then the bounty on us goes up the next day? Considering she has the most advanced ship in the fed fleet, you would think she’d have enough juice with the top brass to at least freeze the warrant price, if not rescind it altogether. I mean, if some other fed ship gets lucky and takes us out, Slay’s entire plan is ruined.”

“Sure, but there could be an explanation,” I protested.

“I’m just saying it got me curious,” Gary continued. “So while I was supposed to be sleeping because you were having a hissy fit, I did some digging and there’s no admiral named Slay in any official fed archives or bulletins. In the last five years, this so-called admiral has never issued a warrant or engaged in any official fed activity.”

I was starting to get a bad feeling. Gary had nothing but conjecture, but I’d told myself a dozen times since I first met Slay that she was too smart to be a fed and her ship too advanced to be military.

On the monitor, the Burnett was navigating away from the Rox wreckage and heading on the same course as us to our designated rendezvous point.

“Then the other day Romy said the Burnett had the warp prototype installed,” Gary said. “Well how did they get it? It took me a while to dig it up, but I found scattered reports of the prototype being stolen by a ship matching the Burnett’s description, only it was under a different call sign: the Mariner 2.”

“The Mariner?” I asked. “Why does that sound familiar?”

“Because the Mariner 1 is a private ship owned by a citizen you happen to know. Jack Largent.”

The Burnett was actually a Silver Star ship. Largent had played me.

A light flashed on the console. Slay was hailing us.

“Speak of the devil,” Gary said.

“Good work, Gary,” I told him with as much sincerity as I’d ever afforded him. “I’m glad you weren’t sleeping that whole time. I’ll handle Slay. You make sure Batista gets Avery patched up.”

“Will do!” Gary replied, proud of himself.

The hail was waiting for me to accept it. I looked at Edgar. He had no idea how to respond. The news had blindsided him, too.

I pressed the button and Slay’s smiling face filled the screen.

“Good work, Denver,” she said by way of a greeting.

I smiled back. “Actually, Slay, it looks like we have a slight problem.”

Chapter 23

As I considered how to proceed with Slay, I thought of my brother. He was in the cargo bay getting patched up. I pushed the idea that he might never walk again out of my mind and remembered the days on my father’s ship when he taught me how to play cards. The lessons started with me at a severe disadvantage. The first few weeks, I didn’t beat him a single time. And to ensure I understood the consequences of losing, he forced me to place actual bets each game. Or maybe he just wanted all my credits.

He also made me play against other members of the crew, who had even less regard for my credits, gobbling them up hand after hand. They laughed as they did it, offering