PRODIGAL HEIRESS

Prologue

"A flag is all the proof you will ever need that any government is up the pole." - Christina Engela.

PRODIGAL SUN

Imagine if you will:

Life is a cheap thing in the cold of space, out here in the black – a place where the only witness is space.

And space is silent.

It is here – far from home, in the fiery face of an alien star which burned bright with the light of loneliness – that a small ship from far away now found itself through a peculiar combination of unfortunate circumstance, coincidence, timing and a large helping of terribly, incredibly bad luck.

It was said, by some, that space is like an ocean. Never turn your back on it, they said – it'll kill you! Go into it unprepared, and it will chew you up and spit you out like leftover Martian Quail stew. Whether it's radiation poisoning or a micro-meteorite punching through the hull of your ship, space is a very perilous place. Treat it lightly – or play with it, and it will kill you when you least expect it.

As a panting Tracy Ferris scrambled into the life-pod, this thought was precisely what was running through her already agitated mind. From the very beginning of their association, she'd had a bad feeling about Brandon Carver. Something about that guy just never seemed to fit. Sure, he was good looking – but so were many of the other out of work space bums hitch-hiking from place to place she'd also had the misfortune to meet.

Carver claimed to be a bounty hunter down on his luck – and having been in that position more than once herself, Tracey felt empathy for him. That was her first mistake. Her second was to take so him on as a member of her crew against her better judgment – just for the trip – one way. That was all he needed to get back on his feet again, or so his story went. Both added up to a disaster on such a grandiose scale that it had almost cost her, her life!

It seemed in retrospect that Carver had been a very bad call on Tracey Ferris's part – because twelve hours out of Aldus Prime, he got into an argument with the crew over dinner. Well, not over dinner itself – dinner was chicken ala king – it was at dinner, but the argument was about vampires. That's right – all this drama and inconvenience was the result of an argument at the dinner table – about fiction and fantasy! The guy actually believed vampires were real, and claimed to be a bona fide vampire hunter!

Idiot! She cursed mentally. Carver lost his cool when he got laughed at – and started a heck of a fracas by shoving Mak around in the ships tiny diner. The fist fight escalated into a full-blown melee' with guns and blasters – and somewhere along the way, someone shot the nav-computer and they dropped out of light-speed here – wherever here was!

Both Mak and Splinter, the other two members of her crew, were killed in the shootout with Carver – leaving her to fight for her survival alone against the raging madman! One thing led to another as they say, and now the whole inside of the small starship was a blazing inferno! She paused to grin tensely to herself – a rather naughty grin, because – well, at least Carver was still in it, somewhere.

Tracey hurriedly shut the door behind her to prevent the flames that had been licking hungrily at her caboose all the way down the corridor, from following her inside. Then, almost falling into one of the gravity couches, she hurriedly strapped herself into it before punching the emergency release. She hoped the escape system still worked. It did. The explosive dead-bolts fired, shaking the pod loose, dislodging it from the rapidly disintegrating wreck, just about shaking the crap out of her on its bone-jarring way into the great wide open.

As soon as she could make out just one of everything around her again, she toggled the nav-system. A small display on the control console less than a foot away from the tip of her pointy little nose showed her the state of her largest and only possession, which was rapidly receding in the rear view. Flames were starting to sear through the hull plating, fuelled by the escaping oxygen and fuel, and licking the void like angry demonic tongues. From there, she couldn't tell if the other life-pod had been launched, but she certainly hoped not. She hoped she'd seen the last of Brandon fucking Carver – after what he'd done!

Tracey noted that they seemed to have dropped out of hyperspace in the middle of a planetary system. The blazing wreck was drifting towards a small planet nearby and, seeing as the small engine of the life-pod hadn't fired yet, so was she. A quick check of the system proved that it wasn't going to either. She cursed. It was quite a foul curse to come from such a pretty mouth, but who aside from her and any gods who might be listening, would hear it anyway?

The main motor was offline, but the landing thrusters seemed to be okay. They were online at least, so after re-entry she could make a controlled descent, or at the very least, a hole in the ground at the location of her choice.