by George Ellis
I looked at two of those things that were passed out on the kitchen floor.
* * *
Batista woke up first, which was good. I wanted to talk to her before Edgar anyway. She groggily opened her eyes and rubbed her temples, trying to get her bearings. I watched her through the window and touched the intercom button.
“Have a nice nap?” I asked.
She realized where she was and turned toward me, pissed. “Get me out of here.”
“Be careful what you wish for,” I warned.
She was in the airlock. I’d loaded her onto a utility cart and rolled her in there, then did the same with Edgar. He was still passed out about 10 feet away from her. The guy was too damn heavy to move again, so I let him sleep it off on the metal cart. My shoulders still ached from dragging him onto the cart in the first place.
“You’re not gonna space us, so you may as well let us out of here,” said Batista.
I knew she’d say that. And she was right…but she didn’t have to know that. It was time for some tough love.
“Let me guess, you think I’d space him but not you?” I asked.
“No, I think you’re not a killer, so you wouldn’t hit that red button with either of us in here.”
I glanced at the large red button. It was covered with a protective plastic shield so it didn’t accidentally get bumped. You had to lift the plastic, then press the button.
“You’re right. I’m not. Even though you lied to me about my brother and got me mixed up in something that will probably get me killed, I’m not the kind of captain that spaces his crew. But any minute now, that big guy over there is gonna wake up. Maybe he doesn’t try to kill you, or maybe he does. Cause he knows the only way I’d be able to stop him is by spacing you both. And he’s smarter than he looks, so he probably knows I’m not a killer too.”
Now she looked over at Edgar, who was beginning to twitch. As tough as she was, she knew it was a losing fight for her in an enclosed area with the guy.
“So, the way I see it, you either convince him I am capable of spacing you both, or you take your chances in close quarters.”
Edgar opened his eyes slowly, then lifted his face off the metal cart. He was bleeding from his cheek – I must have cut his face when I heaped him onto the cart. Oops. The big man wiped the blood as he sat up and appraised the situation. He quickly came to the same conclusion Batista did. He grunted out a laugh.
“You’re bluffing,” he said, eyeing me through the glass.
“You’re bluffing, Captain,” I corrected, doing my best to sound serious. “I tried being nice. But that just made you think you could ignore my orders on my ship. Well guess what? There’s a reason I don’t have crew on the Stang. I don’t like my orders being ignored. It doesn’t work for me. So either you two start doing what I say, when I say it, or I go back to having no crew.”
Edgar sighed. “Blah, blah, blah, open the door or she pays for it.”
“Bite me,” Batista replied.
“I just might,” he countered.
“Batista, why don’t you tell Edgar here how it came to be that I don’t have a crew anymore.”
She looked at me for a few moments. Then she realized I was leaving it up to her to figure out a good story. I smiled. You’re so good at lying, I thought, go ahead and lie. She nodded and turned to Edgar. “He wants me to convince you he’s a killer like us, but we both know that’s not true.”
Edgar spread his arms wide. “Should we finish what we started, or should we see what he does first?”
“Let’s give him a few seconds to plan his next move. When he’s done pissing his pants,” she said.
The two killers in the air lock looked at me. I shook my head, knowing what I was about to do would just prove they were right about me.
“If you’ll both look at the screen, please.” I pressed my handheld to the glass and Desmond’s face appeared on it. He looked at Edgar and Batista in turn. They regarded him with more respect than they ever gave me, that’s for sure.
“Edgar,” he said. “Miss Batista. Nice to meet you, though I regret it’s under these circumstances. I’m speaking to you because you’re both under the impression that Mr. Boyd here isn’t in charge of what goes on aboard his ship. While I don’t know or care what normally passes for chain of command on the Mustang, I will say that until we achieve our objective, Mr. Boyd is in my employ. As crew members of his ship, you report to him, which in effect means you report to me. He may not be a killer but I assure you, if your insubordination causes this mission harm in any way, I will not hesitate to lay the blame at your feet. In other words, he’s in charge. Understood?”
Edgar and Batista couldn’t believe I had tattled on them. I didn’t care. I mean, I was a little embarrassed but whatever.
“I’m a busy man, do you understand? I should also mention I have been granted access to the ship’s control system during this transmission, so if you don’t understand please let me know and I’ll space you both right now.”
“Fine, the kid’s in charge,” Edgar said.
“What he said,” Batista agreed.
Desmond grimaced, annoyed with having to step in. “Good,” he simply said before cutting the transmission.
I waited a beat, then unlocked the door and opened it. Edgar and Batista stood, then he motioned for her to go ahead. “Ladies first.” She obliged. As they passed me, I somehow felt even less in charge than I did before. But neither of them killed me or killed the other, so I’d achieved my main goal of crew unity, even if they were now mostly united against me. It was a temporary situation anyway, and if I was lucky enough to survive it, I’d be back to having a cat as my only insubordinate crew member in no time.
It made me think back to when I first became part of my uncle’s crew…
Chapter 9
I slid my empty glass further across the faux wood table and coughed loudly, hoping to catch the attention of the waitress. She had been ignoring me for a half hour, probably because I was already six pints down of their cheapest beer and starting to get belligerent. I also didn’t smell great, if I had to guess, based on the way nobody seemed interested in sitting within 10 feet of the drunk 17-year-old. The legal drinking age in most places in the verse was 15, but I still looked younger than that, so I often got the looks.
The Duck & Crown was one of the nicer bars on Chelsea Station, and two pints ago the owner had come by to remind me I could go right down the corridor to the Union Jack if I wanted to get messy. They’d have no problem with me starting a fight or throwing up on other patrons. They also didn’t care if people hadn’t showered in weeks over there, he made sure to add. But I didn’t feel like moving. I was fine where I was.
A few days earlier, I’d had a fight with my father aboard his ship, The Sheffield. Things were said. Punches were thrown. And it was agreed I should find a new job. After two years working for him, it was time to move on. In fact, I had probably overstayed my welcome by about a year. He and I didn’t get along, and we were never going to get along. Part of me assumed it would be the last time I ever spoke to my dad.
I wasn’t quite ready to crawl home to my mom and admit she was right about my father and half-brother, so I called the only other person I could think of. It was less humiliating than begging mom for some credits.
My Uncle Erwin sat down across the table from me, a scowl on his bearded face. His dark brown hair was flecked with gray, and he looked older than I remembered him, which made sense: I hadn’t seen him in nearly five years. My mom’s brother was a tall man with broad shoulders and a booming voice. When he walked into a room, it didn’t go unnoticed. But looks can be deceiving. As imposing as his physical presence was, it was his mind that truly set him apart. Simply put, he was brilliant. One of the most gifted engineers in the world, in my opinion. His ship, the Mustang 1, backed that up. He had designed and built it from the ground up. And he had flown here from his usual home port on the Earth’s moon to make sure I was okay.
/>
“Your mother would never say I told you so,” he said. “So I’ll do it for her. I’m just sad it took you so long to figure it out. Thought you had more smarts than that.”
“Go ahead, kick me when I’m down,” I slurred back. I held up my empty pint glass for another, but Erwin removed it from my hand. He smelled it and was disappointed in whatever I’d been drinking. It was swill. He had very specific taste in beer. He leaned in and his nostrils flared.
“When I’m kicking you, son, you’ll know it,” he replied. “What I’m doing right now is simply telling you how it is because your mother is too nice to do it. Your dad’s not worth the trouble. Maybe your brother is. I don’t know him well enough. But I know Rick Boyd is better out of your damn life than he is in it.”
I nodded. I was upset, but I knew he was right. He always was.
“So what’s your plan?” he asked.
“Don’t have one.”
“Drink yourself into the ground. Is that it?”
“Hey, that’s not half bad.”
Uncle Erwin scowled again and probably wanted to hit me upside the head. Instead, his eyes softened and he motioned for the waitress so he could pay the bill with his handheld.
* * *
I spotted the chrome at the end of the dock. Uncle Erwin’s ship was hard to miss and he liked it that way. He once told me if you’re gonna fly around the universe, you might as well do it in style. I later learned that was a reference from a classic movie called Back To The Future.
He liked to say ships were like planets – no two of them were exactly alike. I wasn’t so sure. A lot of the ships in the verse had similar looks and models. They were all fairly ugly if you asked me. Designed mostly with function in mind. My uncle had created the Mustang to be both functional and cool. There was no other way to say it, really. The ship was cool.
It had huge plates of chrome. A sleek, tubelike body. And those X-wings? Add to all that the matte black finish everywhere it wasn’t chrome, and there wasn’t anything else like it in the world. Under the hood, it was just as impressive. It could outrun nearly every ship in the federation fleet and tow 50 times its own weight. Plus, for the final touch, my uncle had hand-painted a 20-foot-tall, muscular stallion on the front panel.
Overkill? Sure.
Badass? You bet it was.
He may have been in his 40’s already, but Uncle Erwin was just a big kid at heart, and the Mustang was his biggest toy yet.
Inside the Stang, he led me directly to the engine room. I’d been on his ship a few times before and was already familiar with the impressive engineering that went into the quad-turbine engine that powered the Mustang.
“Did you see that water transport ship a few bays down?” he asked.
I had. It was about twice the size of my uncle’s ship and was rust-colored. I wasn’t sure if that was the original color or just time and radiation catching up with it.
“I need to tow it to Mars for repairs,” he explained. “Got the call the second I stepped on the station. No shortage of work for an independent wrecker, even with Silver Star running the galaxy.”
Despite being different from my dad in nearly every way, my uncle was also a wrecker by trade. He always said that’s where the similarities between him and his brother-in-law started and ended. That’s actually how my parents met – my uncle introduced them. He had never forgiven himself for what he called the biggest regret of his life.
“I could use a spare mechanic to help me keep the Stang running smoothly,” he said.
He was lying about needing a mechanic, of course. He’d built this ship and knew every inch of it like the back of his hand. What he was really doing was offering to help me.
“I dunno, Uncle E,” I said, suddenly feeling guilty about putting him in this position. In the back of my mind, I’d hoped he would offer me a job on his ship, but when the moment came, it seemed like I was just taking advantage of his generous nature.
“You don’t think you can handle the work?” he asked, ignoring my real trepidation. “When you sober up, that is.”
“Of course I can handle it. That’s not the point.”
“Oh, I see. You’re waiting for a better offer to come along. Good luck with that.”
My uncle was nothing if not consistent. He wasn’t going to baby me or sugarcoat things. I had messed up. I’d spent the most important years of a young man’s life working for my dad. I hadn’t gone to university. I hadn’t made any good connections outside the wrecker world. And I had a record with the federation, which would do me no favors if I tried to straighten things out and get a regular job. Unless I wanted to join up with Silver Star, my options were limited.
“I don’t even have a real nose, but I can smell the booze on him,” my uncle’s AI navigator Gary said.
I looked up at the nearest camera and narrowed my eyes. I never liked Gary. In fact, I thought he was the one part of the Stang I’d change if it was mine. The concept was solid: an AI with a fun personality based on an amalgam of characters from classic entertainment. But Gary was just a curmudgeon. Uncle E could’ve at least gone with someone cheerier.
“Now Gary, we’ve all had our moments,” my uncle replied.
“I haven’t,” Gary claimed. “I’ve never once been drunk.”
My uncle conceded the point but added, “You’re perfectly capable of having your moments while sober. Trust me.”
After a cup of coffee in the galley, my head was starting to clear and I realized the opportunity that laid before me. I would be able to learn the trade from my uncle, who I had always admired, and I’d be able to enjoy the Stang’s on-board entertainment system, which was unique in the galaxy. My uncle had spent a lifetime collecting classic TV programs and movies from around the verse. On the Sheffield, my only entertainment were the scant options on my handheld, or cards with the rest of the crew.
The job offer came with rules, my uncle explained. While I was free to enjoy myself in my spare time, I was expected to be sober during my shifts. I knew this was the main reason he wanted me to sign on: to dry me out. I had been on a bender since leaving my dad’s ship, and was drinking pretty heavily the last couple months of my time on it. My uncle had no problems with enjoying a good beer from time to time, but he thought over-indulging was a tool of the weak-minded. In fairness, we were all weak-minded compared to him. I agreed to the stipulations.
Gary was not happy to have me on the crew. I told him he should hope I didn’t “accidentally” turn him off when I was working on the Stang to keep it in peak condition.
“You wouldn’t dare,” Gary said.
“I guess we’ll just see,” I shrugged.
My handheld dinged with an incoming transmission request. It was from my mom. Gary must have scanned the caller, as he chuckled. “Mommy’s calling. Better answer it, Denver, or you’ll be grounded.”
I considered whether to accept the beam. Despite the coffee, I was still pretty buzzed and didn’t want to face my mom at the moment. Then again, my uncle had likely filled her in already.
“Hi Den!” she said when I accepted her call. It had only been a few months since we’d spoken, but she too looked like she’d aged rapidly, more so than my uncle. Her face looked thinner, even gaunt, and her voice had a bit more gravel to it.
“Hey mom…”
She noticed my reaction to how she looked and sounded. She brushed it off. “I’ve been a little under the weather lately. Not that we have weather here on the moon…I guess it’s one of those things we used to say back on Earth.”
I was still concerned about her, but she quickly changed the subject.
“Erwin says you’re on the Stang with him and you’ve decided to take a job. I think that’s great!”
Wow, that was fast. Something told me the two of them had been scheming about the job offer all along.
“It’s just until Mars,” I said. For some reason, I felt the need to minimize the fact I would be working on my uncle’s ship.
/> My mom smiled and told me she understood. She also said she was sorry things didn’t work out on the Sheffield. She deliberately worded it that way so she didn’t mention my dad or brother. As if the general situation with the ship was the problem.
“It was time anyway,” I said, trying to play it off, but I didn’t go any further with my denials. There was no use lying to her. As good as I’d gotten at bluffing, my mom knew all my tells. Mothers were like that.
“I’ve always thought you and your uncle would make a good team,” she said. “When you were a kid, remember how much fun you’d have when he’d take you on his ship for a couple weeks?”
Those trips felt like a lifetime ago. It was a different ship and a different time, but I did remember them with affection. My mom coughed roughly and then paused to drink some water.
“You sure you’re okay? Have you been to the doctor?” I asked.
“Oh, Denny…” she said, before correcting herself. “Sorry, Denver. I know you don’t like that anymore. Yes, I’ve been to the doctor. I don’t want you to worry about it. I’ll be fine. Your uncle tells me after Mars, he plans to boomerang back home. Will you promise to at least make the trip back so I can see you?”
I promised her I would. She didn’t look well and it had been a while since I’d seen her in person. As we said our goodbyes, she told me that Uncle Erwin had a surprise for me, and that she was excited for me to hear about it, when the time was right.
A couple hours later, I settled into the co-pilot chair in the cabin of the Stang. As impressive as the ship was from a technical standpoint, its cabin was highly functional and compact. Enough room for a pilot, co-pilot, and three crew stations. My uncle didn’t have any crew (well, other than me), but he had built the ship to include the option of a small assortment of people. He looked over at me.
“I’m glad you took that beam,” he said, referring to the chat I’d had with my mom.
“She didn’t look good. What’s wrong with her?”
My uncle sighed. “She won’t tell me, either, and I’m not going to hazard a guess. Eleanor is a tough woman. Even if it’s something serious, she’ll fight like hell to beat it. You’ll see her soon enough and can ask her in person about it.”
