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A story about lost love, second chances, and revenge…
When Jeani crash lands on a backwater world, she knows she’s in trouble. The slave trader Hothi is looking for her, and her bosses are going to eat her alive if she screws up another mission.
Discovering she’s half a world away from the planet’s only space port is a blow – but it doesn’t rock her nearly as much as her reunion with a man she barely remembers, from a past she wants to forget. Can she do the right thing, and leave him again?
Fey Lights
Dark water writhed over the ship’s deck, a living thing hunting for prey, stinging like acid where it touched bare skin. Jeani stumbled over the guts of her ship, swearing in every language she knew. Her foot fell through a hole in the deck created by the crash. Hot metal gouged her leg as tears ran down her cheeks.
I don’t want to die like this. There has to be a way out.
There is a way out. The same way the water is coming in.
Running was out of the question. Half-limping, half-swimming through the rising water, Jeani forced herself back to the rear of the ship, navigating by touch and the weak glow of the emergency lights that hadn’t burst, back to the gaping wound that was once the engine room and secondary hold. Pressure from the rapid descent into the gravity well and the gushing water warped the frame, creating a strong current. Jeani grabbed the free-fall handle near the emergency door and pressed her free hand to the glowing lock.
Nothing.
She tried yanking the override.
Nothing.
She kicked the door with her good leg.
Pressure sent the door flying inwards at the head of a tidal wave. Jeani gasped for air and went under. Seconds ticked away as she grappled blindly for the next free-fall handle, the current tugging at her.
The hand-hold slipped out of her grip. She pushed up once, bumping her head against the high ceiling of the engine room as she gasped for air. The current swirled under her, pulling her down into the darkness. Saltwater stung her face. She shuddered as something nipped at her bleeding leg. Ignoring the pain, she clawed at the water until she broke through and gasped in the alien atmosphere. Water crashed over her in the darkness.
Rough, warm sand rubbed against her skin. Sucking in a lungful of the oxygen-rich air, Jeani flipped onto her stomach and pulled herself away from the water. It lapped at her legs, a wayward lover begging her to return.
She laughed as she looked at the strange stars overhead. Her lungs burned, her leg ached, she was shaking with delayed shock, but she was alive. “See, Hothi, I told you I wasn’t going to die that easy.”