Deadly Cargo: Junkyard Dog Series, #3

By Charley Marsh

Rita King cannot let a mystery go unsolved.

 

Forced to hide from the law agency she dedicated her life to, she heads to the colorful planet Weegan for ship repairs.

 

The master mechanic Weegans love nothing more than tearing into the guts of a ship. But her friend warns Rita off. Refuses to let her land near his village. Rita's unerring nose for trouble won't let her move on until she discovers the reason behind this unusual behavior. 

 

A gripping tale of high stakes on a distant planet in the galaxy, Deadly Cargo delivers another action adventure with space pilot Margarita King.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Timberdoodle Press
• Release date: Aug 26, 2018
• ISBN: 9781945856211

Charley Marsh

In her younger days Charley Marsh’s curiosity drove her to climb mountains, canoe rivers, and explore caves and wilderness areas from Maine to California. She's been shot at, caught in a desert flash flood, and almost drowned off the Maine coast. Once she tobogganed down a 5,000+ foot mountain.  Life is always an adventure if you have the right attitude. Charley never set out to be a storyteller, but looking back on the elaborate lies she made up as a troubled teen she can see that she always had the makings. Now, in the immortal words of Lawrence Block, she happily “makes up lies for fun and profit.” If you would like information regarding Charley’s new releases or simply want to contact Charley visit: https://charleymarshbooks.com/

Book preview

1

Margarita King placed her ship, the Junkyard Dog, in low orbit and set the controls to auto. Beneath them Weegan’s rainbow landscape slowly flashed by. Orange deserts, blue water, green jungles, purple, red, and white mountains made Weegan the most colorful planet in the galaxy. Weegan’s population mirrored that color in every way and always put a smile on her face.

She wasn’t smiling now.

Rita had not set out to visit Weegan after a frightening—and almost deadly—encounter with some unusual creatures on the planet Harmos, but the Junkyard Dog wasn’t working up to her exacting standards and needed some tender loving care. She knew no one better than the ship repair crews on the planet beneath them.

She hated to admit it, but she could use a little TLC herself. She didn’t bounce back quite as quickly at thirty-one as she had at twenty years of age. Years of dance and martial arts classes followed by more than a decade of intense physical training kept her body conditioned and her reflexes sharp, but once depleted, her reserves now needed an extra day or two to recover.

That irritated her to no end. She was the oldest, and the best, pilot in the Mars-based Red Barons elite force—ex-Red Baron—Rita reminded herself bitterly as she looked down at the snow-capped red peaks of Weegan’s southern mountain range. She had worked hard to keep on top of not only her physical condition but also the changes in technology in order to stay at the top.

Unfortunately some of her co-workers, and possibly a superior or two, had resented her hold on the position as top pilot, and one of them—more than one?—had sabotaged her ship right before she went out on a dangerous mission, fully expecting her to die.

Fortunately for Rita they had failed. But her ship had sustained damage and it was time to see to getting it repaired.

She stood in the clear nosecone of the Dog and stroked Darwin’s wiry fur. Darwin, a young shadow-creature who had adopted her after her ship crashed on a desolate planet, watched the landscape passing beneath their feet with avid curiosity.

Until Darwin, Rita had believed that shadow-creatures existed only in myth. They were rarely seen, and consequently very little was known about them.

To Rita they resembled a botched evolutionary experiment. With his chunky dog-body, two tails, and the triangular cat face of an Old Earth tiger, Darwin looked like a mad scientist had taken two very different animals and smashed them together into one odd creature.

Over the past few months she had learned that the shadow-creatures were the most docile and harmless of animals—until you riled one up. Then you’d better run for your life. She had seen Darwin in full attack mode several times now and had been relieved to have him fighting at her side and not against her.

On rare occasions a shadow-creature befriended another species the same way Darwin had befriended her. Only then did you learn about their hidden power, the power to communicate without words through telepathy.

We should have heard from Trax by now, Darwin. Rita turned away from the planet passing beneath the ship and returned to her console. She frowned down at the silent communicator as she set Darwin on the deck.

He scampered over to his open drawer, one of many cleverly built into the Dog’s interior, and leaped into it. The drawer had been converted to a berth for Darwin when Rita realized he intended to stay with her.

After a few circles and rearranging of bedding, Darwin lay down with his head and one paw resting over the edge so he could keep an eye on Rita.

Rita slid into her gel pilot’s chair. The chair instantly molded to her body. She had taken an active role in designing the Viking-class ship’s interior, basing most of it on Old Earth sailing ships. The clever use of space employed by the old ship builders fascinated her. Not an inch of interior space was wasted with everything neatly tucked together like pieces of a puzzle.

She accessed the communication panel and keyed in Trax’s frequency. A small worry tugged gently at the back of her neck. She had contacted Trax three days before and was told he had plenty of room in his schedule to repair the Junkyard Dog.

But when they spoke upon her arrival at Weegan he had hemmed and hawed and tried to make her leave.

That was very unlike Trax. Hell, it was very un-Weeganlike. The inhabitants of Weegan were an unusually friendly and easy-going race. They welcomed strangers as if they were family and bent over backwards to give their guests what they wanted and needed. To be turned away was unprecedented.

Rita could easily leave orbit and head for the next repair station, but that niggling worry squeezing the back of her neck wouldn’t let her. She had a soft spot for the people of Weegan and if they had a problem she would do her best to help them deal with it. She flipped open the comm.

Trax, are you there? Rita here. I need a berth and repairs. I cannot make it to the next repair station. Repeat, cannot leave Weegan without repairs.

Several moments slid by. She was about to repeat her message when Trax’s whispery voice came through.

"Rita. I-I can’t take the Dog into my repair shop. Do you remember the old landing field? Hide your ship inside the far end hangar and wait for me. I’ll meet you there as soon as I can. Do not come into the village."

The transmission cut off.

Trax? Blast it, Trax, what’s going on? There was no answer.

Trax had whispered. That alone sent alarm bells ringing in Rita’s brain. Trax had a booming voice that could blast someone out of their boots with no effort. Whispering for him would be like expecting a gatorsnake to chew their prey slowly and gently instead of shredding them to gory bits.

We’re going down, Darwin. Something is definitely wrong. Where the devil is that landing field? Rita pulled up the charts for Weegan on the big display screen and searched for the abandoned base.

If Trax hadn’t taken her there on an earlier visit she never would have found it. The landing field had been built by an alien race that had left their mark on the Milky Way galaxy tens of thousands of years before and then disappeared without a trace.

No one knew where the aliens came from or why they vanished. Other than small outposts like the abandoned base on Weegan, nobody knew anything about them at all.

The base was invisible in the thick jungle unless you knew to look for it. She located a short, thin, silver line on the chart—the old alien runway—and keyed in the coordinates.

She strapped herself into her chair and lowered all the screens so she could watch their descent through the nosecone. Deep blue water flashed by followed by orange desert.

Two minutes later they were skimming along the brilliant green tree tops of the jungle.

The Dog glided along on autopilot until Rita switched the flight controls to manual and gently set the ship into a slow decent when she spied an opening in the jungle ahead.

The trees became more distinct beneath them: the monstrous mallow trees with their puffy, mushroom-like white fruit, the fat-leaved, banana-like spectar trees, and the deadly magdalenas with their emerald green leaves and beautiful but poisonous cherry red berries.

Cautious because of Trax’s strange behavior, Rita hovered over the landing base and looked for signs of life. The base appeared to be deserted and the ship’s scans picked up no life forms other