Free Scrapyard Ship 3 Space Vengeance by Mark Wayne McGinnis Page A

do, don’t they, little brother?” Stalls replied, with a quick glance and smile toward Bristol.
    “ I haven’t lived on or even visited Earth in years. I have no idea where Jason or his family would be living now.”
    “ So, let’s start with the last place you saw him. How about that?” Stalls asked.
    A virtual image of Earth hovered in the air close by. Brian watched as it slowly rotated. Stalls pointed a finger toward North America. “Let’s start with the continent and work our way down from there.”
    Stalls knelt down next to Brian and put an arm around his shoulder. Somewhere along the line Stalls had pulled a knife from his sleeve and now held it in front of Brian’s one remaining eye. “Remember this? Silly of me, of course you do. I imagine it was quite uncomfortable, losing an eye that way. Plucked from your head like a plum from a jar. You have plums on your planet, don’t you?”
    “ We have plums.”
    Now seated, Stalls used his hands to virtually expand North America. “Where?”
    Brian hesitated, then gestured his head toward the left. The western states of the U.S. magnified. The knife was back in front of his eye.
    “ San Bernardino. We grew up in San Bernardino, Central Valley Scrapyard. That’s the only place I know where he may still go.”
    Stalls got to his feet, then gave Brian several pats on his head. “Release him into the dunes. It’ll give the hoppers something to play with tonight.”
    “ Why don’t you just kill him? You’ve gotten everything you need from him,” Bristol asked, immediately regretting he’d opened his mouth.
    “ Oh, so now you want to tell me how to run my business? Perhaps you think you’re ready to lead the clan yourself? Be my guest … but be forewarned, it’s far more trouble than it is worth. You’ve seen it. Nary a day goes by without someone evoking the clan challenge, thinking they are strong enough or cunning enough to take my place at the top. It has not been easy, little brother. The many scars on my body are a testament to that, no?”
    “ I’m just saying it seems senseless to keep tormenting him. Why not just kill him and be done with it?”
    Stalls contemplated that for a moment, then shrugged. “No. Strip him down and deliver him out on the dunes. Do it now and let’s not speak of this again, understood?”
    “ Yes, okay, whatever.” Bristol watched as his brother rushed across the stone floor and ascended the long stairway.
    “ What are hoppers?” Brian asked, his one eye still on the stairway.
    “ Best if you don’t know ahead of time.”
    Chapter 10
    Chapter 10
     
    As of that morning, the modifications to The Lilly were finally completed and put through an exhaustive regimen of tests and virtual combat scenarios. Jason reluctantly said his goodbyes to Nan and Mollie and wondered if he was doing the right thing leaving them behind. But in the end, he’d left them with the droid, a healthy stock of energy weapons, and one of the older shuttles, parked in the cavern below the scrapyard. With luck, they would be fine and even have some semblance of a normal life again, at least for a while.
    The Lilly made her approach to the Allied outpost in the Chihuahuan Desert. Jason, who had been sitting at the desk in his ready room for the last two hours, needed to get his head back into the game. He’d been working and reworking a strategy to deal with the Craing fleet, but each plan of approach came up short. Simple math revealed the problem: fifteen hundred Craing vessels against eight or nine hundred Allied warships. Even with The Lilly’s advanced capabilities, the Craing fleet, with their three massive Dreadnaughts, would be nearly impossible to defeat in any kind of conventional space battle. Although no one had used the words, it was obvious the upcoming confrontation would be all or nothing. A defeat by the Craing fleet would certainly result in the total subjectification of all the Allied worlds, including Earth.
    As the