Free Finders Keepers by Linnea Sinclair

maybe he was wrong. Maybe she might like him, even if only a little bit.
    That worried him. Because he didn’t know what he’d do if she did.
    He tossed the jacket back onto the chair, thrust all thoughts of her from his mind. He had to remember who he was, why he was here.
    He set his alarm to wake him at 0130. He still had work to do.
             
    The first thing Trilby did when she stepped through the door of her quarters was to set the alarm for 0530. The second was to pull the comp around on its swivel arm so that it faced her bed. She sat on the faded purple quilt, legs crossed, elbows on her knees, and put the
Venture
through a little-used series of paces. Little-used because she’d not had to deal with an intruder on board before.
    The program was one she’d created with Shadow, one of their best. His young, lanky form floated into her mind. She could still see his unruly mop of muddy-brown hair, forever being pushed out of his eyes with long fingers. But his face blurred in her memory. It had been almost seventeen years since he was killed.
    She’d just turned sixteen when it happened. Shadow was about two years her senior. He’d picked up a skim job on a Herkoid long-hauler. Three months later, Trilby followed. Herkoid knew where to find cheap labor.
    Port Rumor. The junkyard of civilized space offered not only spare parts but spare bodies. Orphans, bastards, by-blows. Thousands of children, living in storage sheds, working illegally on transports and freighters. Jobs, food, clothing were snatched from discards and castoffs. First to see it owned it. Finders keepers.
    That was Port Rumor in those days.
    Now Shadow was gone. He’d been on the bridge when ’Sko lasers had sliced through the hulking freighter. Sliced first the bridge, then the drive room, aft.
    But the cargo holds were spared. Sacred. The ’Sko never damaged the cargo. Didn’t shit where they ate, as Shadow used to say.
    Trilby and three others had been in the holds. Two containers had unstrapped as they’d come out of jumpspace and shifted. Her stint on cleanup detail, and the arrival of a Conclave squadron, had saved her life.
    Trilby pinched the bridge of her nose with two fingers. Tiredness washed over her as the memory receded. She shook her head, stared at the data on the screen. Saw the patches Dezi had made and the ones Rhis had made. Everything within acceptable parameters. No wogs. No weemlies.
    She’d deliberately stopped staring over his shoulder just to see if he would try something. Because if he was going to, she wanted him to try it before they hit the lanes.
    Her fears, however, appeared to be unfounded. Looked like Rhis was being a good boy.
    She stripped off her green T-shirt and lay her utility belt, laser pistol attached, over the nightstand that jutted out from the wall. Her pants she balled up and tossed into the hamper in the corner. She’d have plenty of time to do laundry on the trike back to Rumor.
    Or maybe she’d assign that duty to Mister Friendly Lieutenant. In spite of his obvious helpfulness, she could tell he had no experience in the domestic end of shipboard duties. That tagged him as a career officer in her book. Career officers, especially Imperial ones, didn’t do their own laundry.
    Perhaps it was time someone filled in those gaps in his training.
    She fell asleep, a smile still on her lips.
             
    He woke a few minutes before the alarm chimed and lay in the darkness of the small cabin. It seemed unnatural to be on a ship and not moving, not feeling the thrumming of the drives through his body.
    He pulled on his clothes, then slipped into his jacket. The new white shirt would shine like a beacon in the
Venture
’s dim corridors, and he needed to be part of the shadows for a while. To do what he had to do. To work his “wogs-and-weemlies.” He heard Trilby Elliot’s voice say that in his head, a voice wary yet laced with sarcasm.
    Wogs-and-weemlies.
    He retraced his steps to