Junker Blues: Mars: Junker Blues series

by Lon E. Varnadore

  Junker Blues: Mars

  Junker Blues series

  Lon E Varnadore

  Copyright © 2020 by Lon E Varnadore

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  Email list and cover guy…

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Also by Lon E Varnadore

  About the Author

  To my mother who helped to kindle the inspiration to set pen to paper.

  Email list and cover guy…

  Want to keep up on the next release and get a free story?

  Check out the link to get Junker Blues: Phobos and get on my mailing list to hear about the next in series, coming soon!

  The cover of this, and all of the Junker Blues series is done by the amazing cover artist Ryan Schwarz, here is his Facebook link: https://www.facebook.com/ryanschwarz0634

  Chapter One

  “I’m just gonna kiss the hull, Lash,” Marcus Redding said with a small smirk. “Promise.” Marcus then gave the control sticks a little twist, and the Junker’s thruster moved the craft closer to the derelict pre-Crawl spaceship, rotating in the void of the Belt. Fifth ship this week. This one has to have something, Marcus thought.

  “I don’t like this, Marcus”. There is something wrong here, Lash said in Marcus’ head.

  Freaking mind speech. Again? “Lash, relax. I know what I’m doing. Get in position for docking procedure.” He let a touch of irritation slip into his voice; he hated when Lash spoke in his head. Still, she was a hybrid, an Ilas, and it was one of their faults as a created race. He imagined her yellow eyes staring down at him from the two-and-a-half-meter lanky frame, a sneer across her mouth of her bulbous head.

  “Yes, Captain,” Lash said through the comms, her robotic voice box tinny through the link.

  Even though it was a digitized voice, Marcus sensed the sarcasm. After having lived with her for over a year out in the void inside the cramped Junker, it made sense. She felt like this even before the last two docking with other derelicts. He knew she thought that this one would be like the other pre-Crawl hulks, filled with dead bodies, well picked-over storage, and nothing for them.

  “It feels strange is all,” she sent to him.

  I wasn’t talking to you, Marcus thought back before flinging up his mind worm.

  He could feel her shiver as she asked, “Really, Marcus?” Lash called out. “Again with the—”

  “Yes, Lash. Really,” he said while twisting his wrist a half a degree to move closer still to the ship once called Shelby. The Junker slipped closer to the old pre-Crawl ship, which spun in a slow and lazy circle while rotating on its horizontal axis. Marcus eyed the instruments in the cockpit, watching each indicator flare up green, one after another, each of the sensors confirming Junker matched the speed and rotation of Shelby. To start the coupling process, he had to get a touch closer for Lash to start the coupling with the umbilicus. It wasn’t easy, but Marcus had made it on his first approach. They only had one shot at this. There were not many patrols of the MDF, the Mars Defense Force, in this sector of the Belt, but that wasn’t the only thing he worried about. He took a shaking breath, better get there, Spider, he thought, his arms starting to burn with the effort to concentrate and keep his ship moving at the same speed as the derelict.

  It was at least a century old, so a prime candidate for junkologists like himself and Lash. Part of his mind wondered what the thing used to haul. It was a stock Sacorci-class XR-0200 ship. Though it looked like it had been retrofitted and upgraded with a few extra engine pods and a secondary turret for maser defense. Both of which were a little odd.

  However, Lash was the one who pointed out this one out as having potential for more goodies than the other half-dozen she had chosen that floated within a few hundred thousand klicks.

  “I heard that.”

  Damn, Marcus growled back. Get out of my head. He realized he’d lost his concentration on the mind-worm. On the mic, he finished, “Better be in position to—”

  Before he finished, there was a soft hiss that trickled up from the lower section of Junker through Lash’s comm line. Yes! Marcus felt victorious. With a smile, he let the control yoke go, and the Junker started to move with the same, slow spin of the abandoned pre-Crawl ship. Letting loose a long breath to release the worry from his body, he rubbed at his forearms and wrists, hands skimming over the faint scars of lased-off tattoos of ownership. He rubbed at the spot on the top of his thumb, though it wasn’t visible. The tattoo could appear if he let his guard down. Good, still dormant. He shook himself from his thoughts, reminding himself to look for ordinum in the ship’s stores. It was the key to keeping his tattoo dormant. It was the best place to find it outside of the vendors on Mars or Europa, where it was heavily regulated.

  “Gideon, I leave the rest of the flying in your capable hands.”

  “I have no hands, Marcus, but I will endeavor to—”

  “You know what I mean,” Marcus said with a roll of his eyes. Slagging AI.

  “Yes, Captain,” the voice of Gideon said in a deadpan voice.

  He unbuckled himself from his restraints and pushed himself towards the “down” of the deck. The pilot’s chair was a raised half-circle a half meter from the deck proper. It was tilted at an angle on a moveable arm that gave a pilot freedom from the deck of the ship yet allowed them to feel anything with sensor feedback. The Junker’s engines kept the deck plating at a 0.7 G, which did leech some power. It was more effective than redesigning the entire ship to work in zero-G. And that wasn’t something people wanted with the advent of artificial gravity systems. His eyes drifted to the Shelby that the Junker had docked to. The older model Albatross-class transport would have such a design. Much had been lost since the Crawl, yet that was why he was out here. As a junkologist, he was here looking for the best of the stuff left behind. Most people called him a scrapper or scavenger. It wasn’t a name he liked, but he tried to shrug it off. Most of the time, it worked.

  Marcus moved with some speed towards the Junker’s belly, thanks to the artificial gravity. “Hope you are in position, Lash.”

  “You know I’m here.” The voice in his head was exasperated. “If not, would you have been able to—”

  He shook his head and pushed the mind-worm into his head again. “Can’t even try the thing I gave you from the last ship?” Marcus asked as he slipped down the ladder to drop right into the magnetic boots waiting for him. Thank you, Lashiel, I appreciate it, he thought, knowing she wouldn’t hear it with his mind-worm going. The boots activated, and he twisted his head to the side to look at his apprentice. “You must trust your teacher, grasshopper.” A sly grin tweaked one side of his face

  “I am not your apprentice,” Lash slammed the thought into his head. He jerked back, stunned.

  He held his hands up, grimacing in pain for a moment. “Sorry, geez. Bit of a joke to cut the tension.” He looked at the tall, la
nky Ilas and smiled. “I am sorry, Lashiel. You’re a partner, not an apprentice.”

  “It wasn’t funny.” She sent back, turning her head away with a sniff.

  Marcus coughed. Lash turned her bulbous head—made even bigger with her helmet on—towards Marcus with a glare in her yellow pupils and a sneer on her face. Sneering down at him, she waited for him to say something. Marcus himself was a shade under two meters tall, while Lash was closer to two and half. Plus, she was a complete albino. Even though her kind had specially tailored space suits with a helmet on, her short-cropped, milk-pale hair was evident. He thought he spotted the needle-sized tendrils laced through her hair; conduits that allowed her kind to read minds. The conduits were glowing in the dark reaches of her helmet, moving like small worms. He redoubled the mind-worm in his head, adding a round to it to keep her at bay. “Try it, please. I love it when you spider around in my brain like that,” he said with acrimony.

  She gave a sigh and flicked at an object on her chest. There was a small squawk of static in Marcus’ commlink. In a very robotic voice, he heard, “This is embarrassing.”

  “At least you’re out of here,” Marcus said, tapping his temple before balancing the helmet on his head. It wasn’t anchored yet, since the suit itself wasn’t “hardened” as of yet. He pulled on the space suit he’d “liberated” from a pre-Crawl ship when he first teamed up with Lash. It was loose, and he couldn’t even get his arms completely through the too-long sleeves. With a touch to his solar plexus from his own covered finger, the suit conformed to his body. The helmet he had on, though not pre-Crawl, locked on without an issue. Damn—

  the pre-Crawl humans knew what they were doing, he thought. He still marveled at how the pre-Crawl humans had guessed how the helm designs might look or what forms they would take. Even something from those long-ago days when man struggled with solid-state fuel rockets would connect with the suit he wore three centuries later.

  “Then, why are they dead?” Lash asked, her faceplate showing her sneering, flat face.

  “Funny coming from a species that only has about sixty members,” Marcus shot back.

  “And fewer by the year with the way we are hunted,” Lash countered deadpan.

  There was a beat of silence between them. Marcus didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to. It was an old wound for Lash and all surviving Ilas. He knew she didn’t ask to be created by mad scientists on Mars, along with the slagging Eridani. They had made Lashiel and her kind. Marcus tried to push the sudden anger that pulsed through him away. More than half had died when the complex on Mars was destroyed in a massive fire. Marcus knew about two thousand escaped. The bounties on them in some sectors of the Sol system were too good for some to pass up, and that two thousand had dwindled down to less than a hundred in the short span of five years.

  Marcus knew he couldn’t turn her over, even for the reward. He knew what it was like to be under the thumb of another and on the run. She’d also saved him from a Crawl drone after they’d met up on Phobos. He pushed the thought aside. Focus on the here and now. His eyes looked at his left thumb, thinking he felt a phantom itch there. It’s not real. It’s not real... For a moment, he wanted to tear off the gauntlet of the suit and check. No, he thought, forcing his hand away from his other hand. Before he thought that, he put up his little mind-worm to keep Lash from listening. Been trained long ago as a way to keep the Spider out of his head. He started to hum a little song, the little mind-worm that continued in his head over and over again. He knew she, an Ilas, would balk at touching his mind, risking having it in hers without the ability to stop it. It was the one thing he did to keep her out when he needed to be truly alone. There was something about a mind-worm that devastated the Ilas.

  It was also his one defense against her probing his mind and his memories. She was also on Junker for another reason. She detected Crawl drones and the like. At least twice in the past month, she’d saved them both from exploring a hulk that had drones of the Crawl climbing around. Seeing the one-time human-like things climbing around, and on the outside of the hulls exposed to hard vacuum—without the need of spacesuits—filled him with terror. He didn’t know how they got off Earth or through the defense screen of the slagging Eridani, yet the Crawl were out in the Void as well. He didn’t know if drones were looking for something or trying to spread the vile Crawl to other planets. Like they’d done to Earth.

  Lash looked at him, pulling him from his morbid thoughts and giving a half-sneer through the face plate. “Alright, keep your secrets.” She looked at the airlock door and nodded towards it. “Green across the board. The walkway is fully extended, and the airlock is ready to go, but the airlock for the Shelby isn’t responding. As per usual,” she said, folding her long, gangly limbs. “I suppose you have some plan for that?”

  “Time for the skeleton key, then,” Marcus said with a nod and a wink.

  “Could you stop with the worm, please? I need to monitor you, and I like having the connection in your head as a backup in case the suit sensors don’t—”

  Marcus held his hand out to stop her. “Lash, this is pre-Crawl tech, and it’s a derelict ship in the middle of nowhere. What could possibly happen to me?” He asked, giving a shrug.

  “Suit gets a micro tear. The ‘wonderful’ pre-Crawl tech keeping environmentals steady in your suit could suddenly short out, stopping the air you are carrying. Your—”

  “Fine, fine,” Marcus said, waving her off her list, which he knew was a long, long list of possible issues that could occur. He even dropped the mind-worm. “Just try to use the comms as often as possible, please?”

  “As you say,” Lash said. She rolled her yellow irises, smirking. Then, Marcus saw a few pulses of light along the crown of her head and heard, “But, I will be here as well,” she sent and tapped his helmet before he could stop her.

  Marcus ducked away from her touch, clomping towards the airlock. “Open the damn airlock.”

  “Aye, Captain,” Lash said, her robotic voice dripping with mirth.

  Chapter Two

  Marcus looked out on the derelict transport Shelby through the Junker’s airlock viewport as it cycled open to reveal the stretched plastic and metal skeleton of the umbilicus leading to the Shelby. “This is going to be the big score,” he muttered to himself, feeling a smile spread on his face. He admired the pre-Crawl ship for what it represented. A lost age. Most of that eras’ ships had a robust beauty to them that spoke of form and function.

  Also, a prime target for people like me.

  The pre-Crawl ship looked mostly intact. Looking being the operative word. According to all of the Junker’s sensors and scanners, the Shelby had held up well for the past hundred years, but he knew appearances could be deceiving.

  “Looks like First Xer stock,” Lash commented through the comms.

  “You think?” Marcus asked, not able to hide the glee from his voice. A First Xer ship! Imagine what could be in a ship that old? “Something that was around taking the first wave offworld? I’m amazed it’s held up.” He had to push back how long ago the ship was built by at least seventy years. Pushing two hundred— that is crazy. He was amazed that this ship before him could have been taking the First Xers, the first wave of Exodus leaving Earth and still be held together so well before him now. “Looks like it could still work with a bit of elbow grease and new engines.”

  “Probably before the Crawl, it would have worked that way,” Lash said, pulling Marcus back from his thoughts. “Not so much, now.”

  Marcus tried and failed to repress a shiver. He was sure Lash did as well. Though the rumor was that the Ilas were created by the Eridani to help combat the Crawl, Lash had quashed that rumor. “We can sense them, nothing more,” she said one drunken night on salt for her. “Nothing can fully stop the Crawl.”

  “Think your key’ll work?” Lash asked, sounding unsure.

  “I paid for the best,” Marcus said. “If Gideon can get into the system and plug in the first part of the c
ode, then my ‘key’ will pop the hatch like she rolled off the assembly lines of Ceres-7 yesterday.” He rested his hand on the off-white hatch door, giving himself a smile. “Watch the magic work.” Please work, Marcus invoked in his head as he started out of the airlock.

  “You sure about that?” the voice coming over the commlink was robotic and tinny, but dripped with sarcasm.

  Marcus saw that Gideon had switched on his helmet vid and saw Lash’s as well. She was preparing the airlock and docking area, wheeling cargo crates closer to the airlock door, ready to cycle them through so Marcus could gain access to them. She couldn’t go for two reasons. First, he wanted to make sure there was someone on board the Junker at all times, even though he trusted Gideon. The other was that Lash’s lanky frame would be cramped in the umbilicus, and even the airlock of a First Xer ship was human-sized. Inside, she would and could fit easily, but he wanted to make sure he was able to open the door first.

  “Yes, Lash, I’m sure,” Marcus said, shaking his head at the doubt in his partner’s voice. “There is absolutely no way we can be anything but in the clear.”

  “If you say so,” the Ilas said. He heard the cocked eyebrow ridge in her voice.

  Marcus wasn’t sure how he’d allowed the Ilas to be part of his crew, he thought while hearing her doubtfulness. She was never this doubtful. The scavenger bars he frequented weren’t known to cater to the freaks, yet Lash had ended up at his table, wanting to learn from him. And then almost got killed by the Crawl leaving Phobos. He was one of the best scavengers on Mars, though he didn’t like to blow his own horn too much.