Grace

Grandstanding

^Above is a design for Grace's outfit.^

Grace was not what you'd call a good pilot.

She was a fast pilot, sure. And a show off.
That fact was very clear to anyone who'd ever had the 'honour' of taking a ride in her ship.
Apparently, in Grace's personal universe, to gain maximum speed, one had to forego general safety regulations, which she did a little over-enthusiastically.

In fact, it was a running joke that Gaz's catchphrase was; "Will you quit grandstanding, for God's sake, and make the delivery before you break our necks!"

Life outside the law with your permanently caffeinated friend was definitely... interesting, according to Gaz.
Not always fun, but definitely... interesting.

Smuggling technology was always going to have it's own dangers, without the pilot singing loudly at the top of her voice with only one eye on the horizon in the dead of night.

And the vehicle was known to bust at random moments. And if any law enforcers saw them, they were going down for sure.
And that was even before they found the illegal cargo.

The vehicle was... different from your average hover.
Mostly because it had once been at least seven different hovers, and not all of them the same kind.
And possibly a boat at one point, judging by the back body.

It had several nicknames, ranging from the 'demon machine' to the 'mutant hybrid monster thing', but to Gaz and Grace it would always be their baby.
Or 'Chip', as Grace fondly called it, getting odd looks from Gaz every time.
"You do realise it's not actually alive, right?"

Grace hummed loudly, bopping to a tune of her own creation and singing random lines. Gaz gave her a strange look, eyebrow raised. "Is that even a song?"

"Is now."
"Well, is... lovely... eyes ahead, woman!"
They swerved wildly to avoid collision.
"Bloody hell, Grace! That's it, I'm driving!"

What do you think?

Sorry it's late, but I'm still working my way through the actual series (halfway through Scarlet!) and I've got a lot of stuff on at the moment.

So, I'm not 100% sure where on the timeline this sits, I originally said alongside all of the books, so I could write it whilst reading them.
But then a friend said it would make a decent prequel, which does sound quite good, so now I'm not sure.
Your thoughts?

Also, does anyone want to be my 'brainstorm buddy', so basically I bounce ideas off of you and you tell me what you think and help me generate the story.
Not like a co-writer, but similar, and you would get a ton of credit, dedications and shout-outs.

If you actually bothered to read all that, I applaud you. XD