Finders Keepers
Chapter One
1
The Careless Venture's intruder alarm erupted through the cavern with a harsh wail. Trilby Elliot shot to her feet, knocking over the makeshift repair table. Sonic welder and integrator cables clattered against the cavern floor.
She bolted for her freighter's rampway. Overhead, a nest of sleeping bloodbats burst out of the rocky crevices like small, leathery missiles. The panicked bats spiraled in front of her. Screeching, they fled through the wide mouth of the cavern into the lavender twilight.
She reached her rampway just as a silver object flashed across the sky behind them.
"Damn. Double damn." Another ship here meant big trouble. And even a little trouble was more than she could handle right now.
She sprinted through the air lock.
Coils of black conduit snaked down the freighter's corridor, humped over the hatch tread into the bridge. She sidestepped the cables and reached for the alarm, slapping it into silence. A flick of her thumb activated the intraship. "Dezi, we got incoming! Take the bridge."
"On my way, Captain." A reassuring reply came from three decks below in maintenance.
But then, Dezi c ... read full excerpt from: Finders Keepers ebook
