I Stole a Battleship

About the Book

I wasn't trying to steal a battleship. I was trying to make a living.

Out on the edges of civilized space, there are easier ways to get rich than salvage work.

Probably.

I just never found one.

Salvage is supposed to be simple. Find something abandoned, dead, drifting, or forgotten. Get there before anyone else. Make sure it isn't going to explode, irradiate you, vent you into vacuum, or wake up and decide it still has an owner. Then claim it, tow it, strip it, sell it, and argue with the authorities about exactly which part of the process technically made it yours.

Most of the time, the prize is an old freighter, a burned-out engine section, a cargo container someone lost three systems ago, or enough usable machinery to pay the bills and keep the ship flying.

Then I found the battleship.

Not a patrol boat. Not an escort. Not some retired military transport with the weapons removed and the hull sold cheap.

A real battleship.

Enormous. Armed. Valuable beyond anything I had ever laid claim to, and sitting there waiting for somebody foolish enough to board her.

That somebody turned out to be me.

In my defense, there are moments in a person's life when common sense and opportunity stand on opposite sides of a doorway. Common sense tells you to walk away.

Opportunity tells you what the ship is worth.

I listened to opportunity.

That was mistake number one.

The moment I claimed the ship, every problem I had before suddenly became very small. Governments wanted answers. Military officers wanted their battleship back. Other salvagers wanted a piece of the prize. Criminals wanted the ship, the weapons, or me, preferably in whatever order produced the largest profit.

And somewhere in the middle of all of it, I acquired a crew.

Not the disciplined military crew a battleship was designed to carry.

My crew.

People who had their own reasons for being aboard, their own histories, their own talents, and in several cases a relationship with authority best described as complicated.

What should have been the greatest salvage score of my life became something much larger. The battleship was carrying secrets, history, and unfinished business that I had no intention of inheriting.

Unfortunately, possession has consequences.

And the farther we traveled, the clearer it became that keeping the ship might require more than a clever salvage claim and a good lawyer.

It might require surviving everyone who wanted to take it from us.

I Stole a Battleship is the first novel in The Salvage Rights Series, a fast-moving science-fiction adventure about salvage crews, stolen warships, questionable decisions, dangerous enemies, unlikely friendships, and one man discovering that the universe has a terrible sense of humor when it comes to rewarding ambition.

It is a story about finding something far more valuable than you were looking for and discovering, just a little too late, why nobody else had claimed it first.

There are battles.

There are bad plans.

There are worse plans that somehow work.

There are people who insist I stole a battleship.

I continue to maintain that I salvaged it.

The distinction is important.

At least to me.