Scrapyard Ship 7: Call to Battle Read Online Free PDF

down to the hub management station. The superintendent’s soft leather boots made little noise as his feet stepped from one rung to another. Thirty feet below the surface, he entered the clear, cube-like station. Opening the hatch, he was greeted by a familiar smell. Trancus was a Mollmol. And, as far as Gettling knew, all Mollmols smelled the same: like rotting fish. It was quite unpleasant until one got used to it.
    “Trancus! I’d forgotten you’d been assigned to these prisoners. Splendid!”
    Trancus was standing at one of the clear partitions, looking into one of the confinement pits. At close to eight-feet-tall, and an interesting mix of reptile-serpent, and perhaps some human, components, his muscular system, beneath black, always glistening, wet skin, evoked fear from virtually everyone he came in contact with. Add in his disgusting smell, and Trancus was the complete, fear-evoking, package.
    “Superintendent. I didn’t expect you for several more hours,” he said in a wet, lisping voice. “As I told you earlier, I have yet to retrieve any new information from her.”
    Gettling stood at Trancus’s side and watched the lone pit inhabitant trying to climb the sheer curved walls. It would be impossible for her, of course. Completely open thirty feet above, the top beckoned, seemingly reachable. But, as with the barge itself, the pits were totally secure.
    Gaddy, her clothes soiled and bloodied, continued to move in a circular direction around the base of the pit.
    “It’s always amazed me how prisoners think escape is possible … why they circle around and around as if that will make some kind of difference, evades me.”
    Trancus did not respond.
    Turning around, Gettling walked to the other clear partition. “And this one, the one called Nelmon Lim. What about him?”
    Trancus joined the superintendent and both peered across an identical-looking pit inhabited by a young-looking, unconscious, Craing male. Sprawled awkwardly in the middle of the floor, Ricket opened his eyes.

Chapter 5
     
     
     
    They’d phase-shifted from the subterranean base to two hundred feet above the scrapyard. Jason was on his feet and standing behind McBride. “Hold here a moment, Ensign.”
    Jason walked around the helm console, not taking his eyes from the overhead, 360-degree virtual display. The large scrapyard property sprawled hundreds of yards beneath them. The impressive newly built house, with its rectangular aqua-blue pool, stood like a sentinel. Perched on a raised hillside, it occupied the southern quadrant of the acreage. But what held Jason’s attention was the recently repaired turret gun. Series of bright blue bolts of plasma were spewing from its muzzle. That, in itself, was surprising. He’d instructed Teardrop to reconfigure the weapon to fire only when the peovils physically encroached onto his property. Obviously, the fence was not a determent to their advancement. No less than ten bodies, some still smoldering, lay prone within the confines of the scrapyard acreage. What would the scrapyard look like in a month from now … two months? How many bodies would be piled up here. Hell, he probably had known some of these people. This isn’t working.
    Jason put a hand up to his right ear and contacted Teardrop via his NanoCom. “Teardrop … is there a way you can disengage the scrapyard turret weapon remotely?”
    “Yes, Captain.”
    “Do so, now.”
    Jason watched the turret gun become still. He took one more glance at the house on the hill and turned away. He hoped it would still be there when they returned. “Take us out of here, Helm.”
     
    * * *
     
    The Lilly descended, flying above Washington, D.C. and right over the White House. There, too, a new encircling, steel fence had been constructed. Far more elaborate than the one at the scrapyard, this walled barrier was easily sixty or seventy feet in height and erected at an approximately thirty-degree angle. It seemed to be effective, since none of