Excerpt: Gadzooks!

Captain Oru Fonturu looked at the box that the strange little man had given her. This was what the big fuss had been about. All of the secrecy and special instructions and the box wasn’t any bigger than her head. It was going to be a big journey to deliver such a small box but it paid well and she wanted to make a few upgrades to the ship so they wouldn’t have to spend so much charging up the aging Mackalade Cells. The gondarii implants on her head wriggled, betraying her concern. She grimaced and forced them to be still. If she had known the damn things were mood activated she would have chosen another way to hide her identity.

Tucking the box under her arm she stepped out of her office to be treated to a new mural on the wall directly opposite. Lucius had been busy while she had been in the meeting with the client and the slightly acrid smell of fresh paint still hung in the air. The painting was a giant image of the galaxy with the Gadzooks looking small in the upper right corner. Instead of labeling the regions like a map he had depicted the personality of the regions with pictures. There were pirate ships and monsters, crooks and saints and people of every race imaginable. The less charted regions had more abstract images, not his usual style but beautiful nonetheless. Their final destination in the lower left corner was marked with an anxious looking question mark. She wasn’t sure if that referred to what they would find there or whether or not they would make it.