When Cpl. M. J. Robeson of the United Earth Systems Marines comes to in her quarters aboard the starship Alliance, she discovers that she is the only member of the crew conscious while a lone unidentified intruder has invaded the ship. A brutal cat-and-mouse battle ensues between Robeson and the intruder for control over the starship, with the fate of hundreds of Robeson's crewmates hanging in the balance.
“Finders Keepers” was first published in Full-Throttle Space Tales #3: Space Grunts, edited by Dayton Ward. As you can tell from the title of the anthology, the theme was “military in space.” But my story was originally written for the Star Trek: Strange New Worlds contest and featured Tuvok aboard Voyager. Needless to say, it didn’t win the contest. I then reworked it into the B story of a pitch for the Starfleet Corps of Engineers series, this time with Commander Corsi, chief of security of the da Vinci, facing off with the hijacker. The pitch didn’t have much of a chance, because that book series was cancelled. Since there’s no other market for Star Trek short stories, it was a bit of an orphan until Space Grunts came along and gave me the inspiration to rewrite it (yet again). Space Grunts eventually went out of print when the publisher went out of business, and that’s when I first made the e-book available. But then the story reappeared in print in Maximum Velocity: The Best of Full-Throttle Space Tales from a new publisher, and now it’s included in my short story collection The Sad Rains of Mars, the latest developement for a story with quite a convoluted history. The excerpt below is the opening scene.
Finders Keepers
The security field shorted out with a blinding concussive wave, tossing Corporal M. J. Robeson backward, the flash overwhelming her still sensitive eyes. She hit the bulkhead shoulders first, then her head snapped back with enough force that she nearly lost consciousness. Head still spinning, she drew her smartgun, but it slipped from her hand, dangling from its coiled lanyard between handgrip and holster. She kept on her feet, blinking rapidly, hoping to regain enough sight to defend against the inevitable attack from the humanoid prisoner, but the whiteout was only slowly fading. Although Robeson’s ears were ringing from the explosion, she could hear the hostile intruder’s uneven footsteps lurching toward her from the brig. Robeson swung a roundhouse punch with her left arm
while she fumbled for her weapon with the other. The
punch was stopped by a hand catching her firmly by the wrist. Twisting her arm beneath and around to break the hold, she opened her fist and reached for his throat. He caught her arm again and grabbed her outstretched fingers with his other hand.
Unable to retrieve her sidearm during the blind
struggle, she took advantage of both of her enemy’s hands being occupied. She jerked her left arm upward, creating an opening as she curled the fingers of her right hand into a half fist. The leopard-paw punch she launched at his neck was potentially lethal, which would leave her without much information on the hostile, but if he killed her first, that would be a meaningless concern. Just as Robeson’s knuckles jabbed hard into his throat, she felt intense pain in her left fingers and cried out. She heard the loud pop of dislocating bones over the choking cough of the hostile. They reeled away from each other, Robeson still
blinded, just as she had been back in her quarters when all this had started. She ducked down and launched herself in the escaping prisoner’s direction. . . .
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