Scrapyard Ship 4 Realms of Time by Mark Wayne McGinnis Read Free Book Online

die.”
    “ Okay, so you didn’t die, obviously. How did you end up here?”
    “ I told you already. I have no fucking idea. One moment I was jumping to my death, the next I was sprawled out on this vessel.”
    “ Where exactly?”
    “ Engineering. I was dangling half-off of a catwalk. I almost fell over the edge, but I swung my legs over it and was safe.”
    “ Nobody saw you there?”
    “ That’s the strange thing. Other than me the ship was pretty much deserted—like a ghost ship.”
    “ Pretty much deserted, so there were others?”
    “ I’m just assuming there were. Like on the bridge. But no, I never saw anyone else.”
    “ So, what have you been doing for the last four days?”
    “ Staying out of sight. The AI was hostile and took shots at me from several defensive locations. Twice it tried to vent me out to space,” Bristol added. “That’s when I went to work at one of the Engineering consoles. I was familiar with the basics of the ship’s programming, although this ship is far more advanced than The Lilly. But in time I was able to hack the core and grant myself administrator rights.”
    “ You’re a smart kid; too bad you’ve wasted it on being a pirate,” Jason told him.
    “ We don’t get to pick our families. My brother’s a dick, but he’s my brother.”
    Billy looked over to Jason, then back to Bristol. “Well, kid, hate to be the one to break the news, but your brother’s dead.”
    Bristol nodded and smiled, “Uh huh, sure he is.”
    “ Flattened to the size of my hand,” Billy said. “That’s what happens when a fifty thousand pound bin lift falls on your head.”
    Bristol stared at Billy with the same sardonic smile, then his face registered shock. His shoulders sank and his eyes filled with tears. He folded, dropping to the deck, and cried out loud, burying his head in his hands.
    Coming down the row of Zip accelerators, both Orion and Dira heard most of the conversation with the young pirate. Dira went to Bristol’s side and sat down next to him. Orion, now standing next to Billy, said, “Nice, real nice Billy.”
    Dira had an arm around Bristol’s shoulders and pulled him close to her as he continued to cry. “I’m so sorry, Bristol. Let it out … let it all out.”
    Jason held up a finger—unable to speak. He felt his rage build, increasing tenfold. “You do know what he and his brother have done, right? You know that Nan would still be alive if—”
    “ My brother didn’t kill her, she died in the MediPod—”
    Furious, Jason took a step in closer. Restraining himself, he turned and glared at Dira, turned, and walked in the opposite direction. “I’ll be on The Lilly. Keep him off my ship.”
     
    * * *
     
    Jason had called for an 0600 staff meeting in his ready room. Standing at his cabin’s expansive porthole, he looked out at Earth. Looking bright and beautiful, it belied the reality of what was sure to come. How much time was there before individual time realms crossed into one another? Eventually the ensuing conflict and turmoil would progress on a massive scale. With hundreds, if not thousands, of different time references merging, the upheaval, deaths, and mass suffering on Earth would be in astronomical numbers. He needed to get down there and destroy those drones; every second wasted, lives most certainly will be lost. And what if the Caldurians returned before he had the chance to deactivate them? A scenario where the Caldurians took back the Minian and disrupted their attempts to remove the drones was unthinkable. Frustrated, Jason had to get down there today, right now. He heard people filing into the ready room and pulled himself away from the porthole. He entered the conference room and took his place at the head of the table.
    “ Some of you will be heading back to Allied space with The Lilly; others will be staying here as part of the assault team to deactivate the five Caldurian transmitter drones.”
    “ Ricket, what’s the status of