I finished “Slugs on a Space Transport” this afternoon at 4600 words. I will likely add about 500 words in the second draft.

It might be a little too dark of the anthology, but I am certain I will be able to resale it elsewhere.

This story has the Phoenix crew coming across a disabled slave ship and I was going to try for the light fantasy version ala Han Solo saving Chewie in Star Wars and somehow it turned into Amistad and commentary of debit collections. The problem is that the food on the slave ship has spoiled and the Phoenix doesn’t have enough food to feed three hundred people. So the Captain has the hard choice of being a good person and feeding the freed slaves her cargo of enhanced slugs which would get her into hot water with a gangster and either saddle her with a mound of crushing debt or a bullet between the eyes. Or she can make her run and let the slaves starve.

I resisted the urge to have any of them say “I’ve had it with these motherfucking Slugs on this motherfucking Space Transport.”

I still need to come up with a better name for the story.