Page 14 of Found Treasure Bride

“What is happening?” Nancy asked, having ignored my instructions completely. She draped herself over the back of my chair, peering out.

I fastened myself in.

“You any good with a mounted photon cannon?’ I asked her.

“What?” “Our blue friends have caught up with us. That,” I jabbed a finger at the screen, “is a Jilnish freighter. Only it’s gotten hidden armaments that no legitimate freighter would possess, and I find it mighty convenient that you had Jilnish looting your dig site and the Jilnish stationmaster wanted me to offload some collectibles.”

She paled. “Yeah, that is a bit too coincidental.” Her brow furrowed. “Why did he want you to fly his cargo, anyway?”

“I’m not Jilnish, so less likely to raise suspicion, and I have a feeling he wanted me to use my contacts to help him unload the shit.”

“Why would you know were to offload stolen artifacts?” she asked, her voice gone hard.

“You meet a lot of interesting characters when you freelance like this. Now, I either need you to go man the cannon or take over for Grorsch so he can.”

“Nannngh!”

“I’d be better at navigation and sensors,” she said.

Grorsch unfastened himself and stood up, vacating his seat for her. She slid into his chair, and I reached over, tapping out a command for the display to read in Earthian.

“Thanks,” she said, fastening herself in, the straps adjusting to the difference in mass on their own.

“No problem.”

“Um, they appear to be changing course and heading right for us.

“Hraugkkkkkgh!” Grorsch roared.

“What did he say?” she whispered at me.

“Nothing. That was a battle cry.”

“Oh.”

“Scan for a nearby debris field or something we can lose them in.”

“Can’t we just open a hyperspace window?”

“We could if I’d known we needed to plot one with this as a starting point.”

Thankfully she didn’t try making any more helpful suggestions and simply got on with what I’d asked her to do.

“Five parsecs from here, there’s an asteroid belt. “

“Feed me the coordinates.”

Neither of us was surprised when the Jilnish shot abandoned its attempts at stealth and laid on speed, changing course to match us.

“Yeah, that is so not good,” I sighed.

“They will be in weapons range shortly,” she said. I could hear the fear she was keeping at bay. I had a feeling this was turning out to be a far bigger adventure than she had bargained for when she accepted the assignment.

The ship shuddered as they fired, our shields absorbing it. Grorsch roared angrily and could hear the clanking sound of the cannon as he rotated to track his prey and began to fire.

“Yup, though this was here,” I muttered.

“You knew this was here? Then why’d you ask me to look?”