Diane Burton: #WeWriWa ~ THE PILOT: Are The Pirates Still Following? #sfr

Each weekend, the Weekend Writing Warriors share an 8 - 10 sentence snippet. Be sure to visit the other authors. You can find them here.

Thanks to everyone who visited last week. I'm sharing snippets from The Pilot: An Outer Rim Novel. It's the 1st book in a series featuring strong women on the frontier of space. Celara's ship was hailed by one claiming to be Coalition Security. In this snippet, we're back with Celara and her copilot, Arjay, as she maneuvers through an asteroid field to escape.

Please excuse the creative punctuation, necessary to keep this within the guidelines. It's also edited a little from the original.

“Holy horse pucky that pilot has nerve.” Celara gave the pirate credit for audacity, if not sense, for following her into the asteroid field. Hauling cargo between Outer Rim colonies across three sectors brought her through this area often. Only the most foolhardy—or desperate—used the field as a shortcut. She’d been desperate before.

She skimmed beneath an asteroid that could have covered the entire metropolis of Eleganza, capital of Bricaldia. “Are the pirates still following?”

Arjay gave her a haughty look, his attempt along with his speech at imitating Bricaldian aristocracy. “You have asked that question every thirty-six secs. The answer has not changed.”

There's no place like home and he stole hers.

Life on the frontier of space is hard enough so when pirates stole Celara d'Enfaden's cargo, she vowed not to be tricked again.

Determined to make an example out of indie pilots who disobey orders, Coalition Administrator Trevarr Jovano impounds Celara’s starship and cargo. If he backs down, he’ll lose respect. If she can’t deliver her cargo, she’ll default on her loan and lose her only home—her ship.

More important than her ship, though, is her brother. To rescue him from a galactic gangster, she’ll even work with Jovano who is bent on avenging his wife’s murder.