Lucinda Sisco and the Buckthorn Hyperdrive Gambit

Lucinda Sisco, a tangle of dark hair, long eyelashes and chrome spurs, slammed her cybernetic fist on the dented hull of the Bessie-Sue, her trusty rustbucket of a spaceship.

She was cobbled together with spit, bailing wire, and enough illegal modifications to make a space marshal blush, and she was sputtering like a holographic rattler with a belly full of bad salsa.

Lucinda grinned, a glint of mischief in her eyes. Outgunned by space pirates again? Maybe. But Lucinda never played by the rules, not when the casino on Neon Mesa was offering a payout the size of a neutron star and the only thing standing between her and that sweet moolah was a crew of misfits more at home in a jazz bar brawl than piloting a hunk of junk through an asteroid field.

The odds were stacked higher than a ten-gallon Stetson on a mechanical bull, just how she liked it. She kicked on the prototype hyperdrive and blasted into ludicrous speed.

Time to roll the dice and let it ride, straight to payday.