Wreckers: A Denver Boyd Novel George Ellis (book series for 12 year olds .TXT) 📖

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