Free The Lost Starship by Vaughn Heppner

Noonan had lived with this all of her life. She attracted unwanted attention because men liked the way she looked. Her beauty should have been a blessing. Because of her circumstances, it had simply been one of the many hurdles to jump.
    She shook her head. She didn’t want his stinking flower.
    He continued to speak in a low voice while still extending the rose.
    “I don’t know French,” she said.
    “English,” the man said, speaking it better than he had the French. “You look lonely, and you’re lovely. Please, take this as a gift—from me to you.”
    “I don’t know you ,” she said.
    His lips parted. “We can change that easily enough.”
    She turned her back to him. In these matters, some men only understood rudeness.
    With a shock, she felt the weight of his hand on her left shoulder. The man had just violated her space. He must think he could intimidate her into doing what he wanted. He was about to get a surprise.
    Valerie reached up, grabbing his fingers. They were rough-skinned, indicating manual labor or close combat training. She whirled around, twisting his hand and arm. He cried out in pain, his body spun around so he bent low, facing the mall’s tiles, with his arm half way up behind him.
    “You don’t hear very well, do you?” she asked.
    “Let go,” he said in a flat voice.
    Something about that warned her—this man was more dangerous than she’d first suspected. Instead of releasing him and trying to run, she kept twisting.
    That’s when the heel of his boot crashed against her shin. It exploded with pain, and it made her angry. She twist ed his fingers even harder than before. His other arm reached up and slapped her wrist. A buzz of pain shocked her, a sizzling jolt through her entire arm. On their own accord, her traitorous fingers loosened their hold.
    The man with the shaven scalp and black leather jacket straightened , facing her. He hadn’t smiled before. He frowned now, an ugly thing. There was evil in his eyes.
    “That was a mistake,” he told her in a low voice.
    Valerie Noonan had grown up in the Prosperity Atoll of Greater Detroit in the old United States. In this case, what prosperity meant were survival credits from the government, what people had once called welfare. The atoll was its own world, surrounded by those who worked for a living, paid taxes and therefore had the right to vote.
    Val erie’s father had fought in his youth as a Beck & Loch corporate soldier. He’d lost his legs to a land mine and had been psychologically unable to take prosthetics. The corporation gave him a lump sum discharge and left him to his fate. Her dear old dad had gambled that away and soon found himself with a three-year-old daughter and very little to live on. He moved into Greater Detroit, accepting the government stipend and the lowering of status.
    Valerie’s mother had died in a car accident when she was ten. Her dad drank too much and didn’t have any ambition for himself. He became her drill instructor, making her study and often wheeling beside her as he guarded her way to school. The man had arms like no one could believe and an attitude and a knife that had cut anyone foolish enough to take on the crazy cripple. Most of the time, the gang members that prowled everywhere in Detroit left Valerie alone. The few times they’d tried something when her dad wasn’t around, his training had seen her through.
    She studied hard and aced everything. Finally, her dad’s endless filling out of forms got her admitted to a VA high school on the edge of the city. She went there, and discovered that the Prosperity schools had been a joke. She would have been better off reading fiction all the time.
    Instead of wilting, s he worked overtime to catch up. By graduation, her marks had become sterling. Even so, she barely made it into the North American Space Academy. There, she busted her tail once more. Despite her beauty and good grades, she was from Detroit. She’d lived on welfare