Uranium

Thanks for the word, Mark. And thank you, oh gods of the internet, for giving me access to high speed internet once more!

*

Twenty packs of uranium in my hold were enough to get me killed. The Scranters scrounged this DMZ for hot ships. Twenty more hours and I'd be free and clear.

Then the warning siren started wailing. Two ships, intercept course, class seventeen Artrops with double armour--the perfect pillaging machines.

So I backed my engines, buying me about a second of time and purged my logs. They'd steal the packs but they couldn't report the incident. Whatever rumours they'd start about the origin of their windfall wouldn't have my ID plastered through them. And with any luck, they'd take the decoys and leave my cargo undisturbed.

Most smugglers have their tricks--secret compartments, shielding devices, or big ass guns. I'm a decoy woman, always have been. No matter how big a gun I get, they always have a bigger one. And secret compartments are old-school, besides most high end pirates have better scanners than the military, let alone freelance shippers. Whenever I trade in uranium, I shield the packs with multiple appliances, but radiation has a funny way of sneaking through the best of containment options.

So I crossed my fingers, bit my lip and waited for whoever would come aboard.

The ships clanked, startling me. Space is pretty quiet and I knew they were coming, but I covered my out-of-practice ears and shrieked.

They deactivated my hull safeties and stormed in, shockers at the ready. Three Umfels skittered along the deck, stopping in front of me. If they were wearing translators, they didn't use them. Two grunts and a gun up my nose and I can figure out what they want. They shifted their weight around in circles, from flange to flange, like spiders stuck in molasses. Gave me the creeps to watch them. Still we stared at each other.

Then boots clanked through the hatch. Not the smoother patter of Umfels, but the unmistakable steel-boots-on-a-steel-floor of a Pukq. The worst kind of malicious ass-riders in the galaxy. This one was a female; her third antennae stuck out of her shiv-suit like a scorpion's tail, arched above her head and ready to strike.