Ship Chip

By Barbara Lund

Blast from the past...
Tal and Josue have survived the battle of their lifetime, but now someone from their past has come looking for them. The Desolate is broken. The client is a lying scoundrel. The pay is unbelievable. The job is a set-up.
But who is the trap baited for?
It’s up to Tal to find out, while she and her best friend take on a heist that will foil them at every turn... as long as it doesn’t get them killed.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Barbara Lund
• Release date: Jun 25, 2022
• ISBN: 9781944127381

Barbara Lund

Award-winning speculative fiction author Barbara Lund has several indie-published novels, dozens of short stories, and has been traditionally published in Daily Science Fiction and L. Ron Hubbard Presents Writers of the Future, Volume 37 (November 2021).She won the Writers of the Future Golden Pen (2021), along with a First Place, three Silver Honorable Mentions, and two Honorable Mentions. She won the 24th Annual Critters Best Magical Realism Short Story.She's always working on new novels and short stories.Add a husband, two kids, and a martial arts obsession, and she keeps pretty busy.

Book preview

Ship Chip

SHIP CHIP

DOOMSDAY SHIP #5

BARBARA LUND

LUND PUBLISHING

For the Desolate fans -

This one’s been a long time coming.

(Thanks, Pandemic.)

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

Ship Chip

About the Author

Also by Barbara Lund

Copyright © 2022 Barbara Lund

All rights reserved.

This book is a work of fiction. Any reference to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictionally. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or person, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

© Text Copyright 2022 Barbara Lund

© Cover Copyright 2021 Katharina Kolata, Independent Bookworm with:

Space Station by OpenClipart-Vectors, Pixabay (https://pixabay.com/de/vectors/raumstation-iss-161807/)

Universe Background by Chil Vera, Pixabay (https://pixabay.com/de/illustrations/das-universum-raum-astronomie-4605236/)

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This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for brief quotations in a book review.

Manufactured in the United States of America

First Printing, 2022

ISBN: 978-1-944127-38-1

www.barbaralund.com

Vellum flower icon Created with Vellum

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thanks to Adrien Raigne for The Desolate (ship art).

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Thanks to K.V. Moffet, Offworld Press for editing.

http://www.offworldpress.com

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Thanks to Katharina Kolata, Independant Bookworm for the cover.

Any mistakes left are mine.

The Desolate

SHIP CHIP

Despite the beauty of the Azeron Nebula, I was getting damned tired of the Bob system.

I’d heard all the Bob-the-Spacer jokes I’d ever wanted to hear—and some I couldn’t bleach out of my brain—from the miners who had helped us rescue Cara, I’d eaten delicacies from each of the fifteen planets in the system while buying, bargaining for, and outright begging for the parts to repair the Desolate—currently masquerading as the Ruina.

And for the Cara Mia, the Revenge, and Hunk of Junk.

At least enough to get us all out of the system before the residents of those fifteen worlds, associated space stations, and ships decided to encourage us out.

Which was why I was out here, in the black, jumping toward the damaged Pirate Song.

The pirates who had tried to kill us should have all died a week ago or more, with their engines jettisoned and life support dead. I’d waited this long in case