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

Chapter 27

We had already done a fly-by of every planet in the solar system this side of Mars. Saturn was as spectacular as I hoped it would be, but for sheer awe-inspiring size, Jupiter was my favorite. It was bigger than all the other planets combined, by a magnitude of two. Saturn had the rings, sure, and Neptune was like a purple marble, but for my credits, Jupiter was where it was at.

We’d been traveling for two months when we finally ventured beyond Pluto, and then the Kuiper Belt. Nobody in history had ever come close to this far into deep space. Before making our maiden warp voyage, we’d made a daring run back to Morin, the most remote manned station in the verse, located a few hundred thousand miles past Mars. We had stocked up on six months of supplies, not wanting to return to the land of the Tracers and the federation any sooner than we had to. Then we set off, alternating warp speed with traditional velocity based on the scenery.

I’d always heard it said that space was the great equalizer. It made you understand just how insignificant you were in the grand scheme of things. If that was true for the areas around the inner planets, it was even more poignant the further out you got.

We all knew if we had one problem with the warp drive, we were dead. Nobody would be coming to get us. Marcum had theorized that we might be able to get a signal back to someone on Mars, but it was a moot point. Any ship without our drive would take a lifetime to reach us. Even the Burnett, if it had survived the engagement with the Tracers, would take years to reach us with their semi-warp capabilities.

The Burnett.

I looked down at the failsafe on the floor near my feet. I didn’t dare try to disable it, even though Edgar wanted to make a go at it. He was convinced he could bypass the trigger in time to disconnect the power supply. Personally, I gave him a 50-50 chance of being right – the guy was pretty handy with weapons and bombs. But I wasn’t really looking to gamble on a 50 percent chance.

It was only a problem if we got within a couple hundred thousand miles of the Burnett anyway, assuming that ship still existed. I hoped I’d never have to find out.

I glanced over my shoulder to see Pirate snoozing on the stool next to Edgar, the traitor. One of the dynamics of having a fully crewed ship is that alliances form (and falter) over time. Once, Pirate had been mine and mine alone. These days, I was lucky if he hung out with me for a few minutes a day. More annoying was that he’d chosen Edgar as his new patron. The guy had obviously softened a bit over the last few months, no doubt a byproduct of his entertainment consumption, as he had been going through a real romantic comedy phase of late. But he also gave Pirate a ridiculous amount of snacks. The little dude had ballooned at least three pounds in the last month alone. I was beginning to worry about his health.

I checked the scans and saw nothing but nothing, as was the case 99% of the time out in the deep.

“I was thinking pizza for dinner,” I said to Edgar.

He nodded in agreement. I’d been trying to ration out the frozen pizzas to once per week. They were a treat, and it was important for morale to enjoy such luxuries from time to time. That’s what life had become for us as explorers. The battles were gone and now it was all about deciding what sights to see and what freeze-dried food to reconstitute.

“Shall I do the honors, Captain Boyd?” Gary asked.

“Go for it.”

“Attention crew of the Mustang Enterprise,” he began.

Oh, yeah, we’d added a fun little addition to our call sign to honor our new warp capabilities. It was Marcum’s idea, as he too was getting deep into the ship’s entertainment library. Romy had argued for the Millennium Mustang, but that didn’t roll off the tongue the same way, and I was just more of a Star Trek fan, to be honest.

“Today’s dinner for the explorers will be pizza! We have cheese or…cheese. Choose wisely! This has been your XO talking. Thank you.” Gary announced.

“You don’t have to state your damn title every time,” Edgar reminded him.

“Obligation has nothing to do with it, Weapons Analyst Frostweather,” Gary replied. Edgar’s last name wasn’t Frostweather. In fact, we didn’t know his last name. But ever since he’d been given the position of executive officer, Gary liked to address everyone by their title and last name. So he made a different one up for Edgar each time he talked to him. With an infinite supply of options, I still hadn’t caught him using the same one twice. It had become something of a fun game and you could always tell Gary’s mood by the names he gave to Edgar and Romy (whose surname also wasn’t public knowledge).

As Gary and Edgar bickered, I wiped a smudge off the radar screen.

Well, I tried to.

Turns out it wasn’t a smudge.

It was a tiny dot.

“Um…Gary?”

“I’m busy right now, Captain.”

“Well get un-busy and analyze this dot on the radar,” I said.

“It’s just a ship. You’ve seen thousands of them before –” Gary cut himself off. “Oh, uh, right.”

I bolted upright in my chair and told Gary to get everyone to battle stations, just in case. We hadn’t seen a ship in…well, since we left Morin Station. There were only two possibilities: someone else had warp drive capabilities, or we were about to make first contact.

“The drive signature doesn’t match anything in my databases,” Gary said, notably concerned.

Avery rolled into the cabin in his motorized wheelchair. As he cruised to a stop in the open space next to me, automatic clamps came up from