Final Breath: Evita Sánchez, #1

By Clint Lowe

Evita Sánchez wants a new life on a new planet. Her gangster fiancé wants her dead.

While aboard a spaceship traveling from Earth to Cerulean, Evita begins a plan to escape from her deadly betrothed, Dante, when a nosy engineer, Tanton, and an explosion in the ship's engine room shatters her plans.

As the space carrier burns, Evita flees with Tanton for an escape pod at the end of the giant craft. But when jealous Dante spots them, it becomes a breathless escape from the burning ship and the gangster, with time and air running out.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Heroes Press
• Release date: Sep 18, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393980049

Book preview

A Robbery

THE SPACESHIP’S ENGINEER lay unconscious at my feet, a state I had put him in.

We were in the engine room of the mighty Welkin, at the rear of the space-travelling craft. Before us were the source rods – spares in case the ship required more fuel. They might’ve been orange glow sticks held by a child, but, instead, they were one of the most expensive elements in the known universe, a power source running this ship all the way from Earth to Cerulean. The price that one rod could be illegally sold for would easily start a new life. Perfect for a broke, single young girl – well, technically a broke engaged girl, but I’d only fooled Dante into believing he had my heart so I could escape my horrible life. I’d leave that gangster behind on Cerulean.

I took a tense breath, then exhaled onto the foggy laserproof glass that protected the rods, preparing for my heist: steal the source rod. A simple procedure of cutting through the glass, grabbing the source rod, and scramming unseen – an important factor given the penalty for my crime would be death.

At least the sleeping engineer wouldn’t be telling any stories. The tiny nerve-neutralizer disc I had shot him with remained stuck upon his neck and glowing red. The boyish man was dressed in a white-buttoned shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his biceps, trying to show off his pathetic twig arms. It appeared he was attempting to grow a beard but had only managed a grassy, darkish-blonde stubble. His brown slacks were light-years out of fashion, and one of his bootlaces was left undone – talk about untidy.

Stop stalling, Evita, I whispered.

With great nerves twisting my stomach in more directions than the numerous pipes running along the walls, I used my heat cutter to begin slicing a hole through the glass, creating an opening big enough to reach through. Too scared to use my fiancé’s money card lest he discover the purchase, I’d been forced to use the small allowance on my card to purchase a cheap cutter – a Súper model from Mexico – but it failed to live up to its super name. It flicked and sparked as the red-hot beam lacerated the glass. My hat-sized circle was mere inches from being complete when bang! the worthless cutter sparked a crimson bloom that more resembled a laser gun. The instrument heated to furnace temperatures and I dropped it. It landed on my boots and skidded onto the ground, fiizzeed as it short-circuited. A puff of smoke signified the cutter’s days were zilch.

Like my days could be.

"Damn it."

My mother, who disappeared when I was seven, always told me You have a sweet singer’s voice, darling, but my cuss came out more like a miserable boss’s scolding. I stomped back and accidentally kicked the engineer in the head. A grunt escaped his lips, and after tiny nose twitches resembling a mouse sniffing cheese, he opened his eyes.

How could he wake?

I possibly have to kill the callow man, I thought. Could I even do that? Well, it will be him or me.

The engineer’s hazel eyes caught me for a moment, hazel and hazy as a Saudi sand storm. He didn’t appear to register me or even his own whereabouts and quickly slipped back into dreamland, blonde hair slipping over his eyes.

Okay, this is going bad, I told myself. But I haven’t survived for years with the mob only to quit my mission because a cheap dealer sold me a crummy cutter in Calexico.

I needed another plan.

Across the room lay a sturdy cross-wrench, the old kind used to undo sockets in case your core drill went flat or on some rare occasions, exploded. I hopscotched over the sleeping man and retrieved the wrench. The way to the rods lied before me: a small reach through the glass and then drill one from its socket. I tapped my already cut area of glass to check it for strength. It still felt sturdy, robust. It would take a good wrench whacking to bust it open, and the racket could arouse suspicion from the corridor. I glanced back at the closed door. I hope you’re sound proof, I whispered. Then I rammed the wrench into the glass.

The boom echoed around the engine room, but the glass did not break.

The door then took my attention, the handle in particular. It didn’t even twitch.

I returned to beating the glass, a boom boom of shattering ricochets, and after some muscle-tensioning pounds, the glass circle snapped with a loud crack, and the round piece popped through the room and tinged onto the floor as a near perfect circle.

I took my core drill from my hip pouch, then snuck it through the hole in the glass. The rods were attached to the wall with tiny silver screws, and I stuck my drill