Excerpt: The Bounds of Freedom

System alarms and warning lights are just a part of my day-to-day life. When your ship is a rundown hunk of space tin with more broken parts than working ones, you get used to ignoring them. Power build-up in the synthesizer system? Hey, maybe it'll start heating the food again. Fuel intake ratio lower than regulation limits? Pff, the regs are for safety-obsessed clerks who've never taken a risk in their lives.

But there are some warnings you don't ignore, unless you're in a real hurry to start your next cycle of rebirth. When the life support system started beeping as soon as I initialized the systems, it didn't matter that it was only a yellow flag. You'd better believe I sat up and took notice.

A quick query to the computer, and it brought up a chart for me. I'm no engineer, but considering the problem area was flashing yellow and underlined, it wasn't hard to figure out what was going on. The circulation system in the cargo bay had noted an anomaly, a higher intake of carbon dioxide than there should've been.

"What the..." Leaning forward, I split the monitor and brought up the security footage of the bay. There was nothing visible but the stacks of crates and boxes I'd finished loading the day before, but that didn't mean nothing was there. I sent the record zipping along in reverse, and was rewarded by the sight of a pale little bipedal moving backwards into sight between two of the crates.

I had a stowaway.