Thursday comes before Friday...Friday means Jaydium!

Thanks to everyone for being patient with my paucity of posts here, although I hope you've been enjoying the unfolding adventure of Jaydium. The next chapter goes up tomorrow, but here's a teaser:

She stepped into the room, moving silently toward the bunk. Just as she cleared the party-opened door, she caught a flash of movement from the side. She couldn=t see it clearly, only an instant of looming shadow before the man-shaped figure burst from the corner and lunged at her. Without thinking, she whirled and brought her stungun up. A booted foot lashed out and collided with her forearm. It was a glancing blow, jerked short, enough to break her aim but not make her loosen her grip entirely. Her arm muscles went numb; she grabbed the stungun with the other hand--

Before she could fire, her assailant fell heavily to the floor beside a bunk that had been concealed by the door. If she=d opened it all the way, she would have seen him plainly. "Kithri?" The voice was slurred but recognizable.

Lennart!

He grinned crookedly up at her and said in a harsh whisper, "You are a welcome sight!"

The next instant, she=d tucked the stungun through her belt and was kneeling at Lennart=s side. A trickle of dried blood ran from his hairline down one cheek. Like Brianna, he was chained to the wall, so that another inch would have moved Kithri entirely out of his range. A quick glance around the room revealed no other hidden prisoners.

"What the hell is going on?" Kithri said in a low voice. "Where=s Eril?"

"Damned pirates took him back to the city."

"Pirates," Kithri muttered as she inspected his wrist cuffs. She didn=t recognize the mechanism, nor could she identify any mechanical hinge closure. "They found my jaydium--I saw."

"They must have been monitoring Brianna=s transmission," Lennart said. "They knew we had a cache, and that there=s a source somewhere in this planet."