David Walker Craven hauls freight for Red Star Haulage. He has done so for five long, lonely years with only a sarcastic, sexually deprived computer as company. Her name is Miranda, the bane of his existence, but the one he depends on the most as well.
Everything seems to be going along swimmingly. David’s plans of retiring on a desert island, once he has saved up enough money, looks to be in the bag. After each successful haul his dream moves one step closer to reality and all he left behind fades into memory.
Until Miranda detects a life form on board.
A stowaway.
David is soon embroiled in a series of events that involves a dead young man, a legendary being called a shifter and an alien race that scares the absolute shit out of him. Can he survive the events that unravel? Or will his past, present and future catch up with him in ways even he couldn’t have expected? In ways that will change everything…forever.
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Mouse in the Wainscoting
Copyright © 2011 Mark Alders
ISBN: 978-1-55487-866-6
Cover art by Martine Jardin
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Mouse in the Wainscoting
A Schism Universe Story
By
Mark Alders
Dedication
To my family
Chapter One
“Checkmate.”
“What? No way. Where, Miranda?” David Walker Craven examined the screen in front of him. There was no doubt. The ship’s computer had won again…for the three-thousandth time if David remembered right. He didn’t know why he played the computer at chess. Such a pastime didn’t serve any other purpose but to waste time. He had only won one game in the five years he’d been a long haul freighter pilot for Red Star Haulage, and he suspected even with that victory that Miranda gave it to him. She must have felt sorry for him that day because it was after a particularly long haul, one that sent him deep into the Orion system. Good thing the money was fantastic.