Shotguns and Spacesuits: Book Two of the History of Piracy in the 24th Century

By Nelson McKeeby

Shotguns and Spacesuits
(A Chronicle of the Pirates of the 24th Century)

Before she became 49, the whisper on every sealed corridor and smugglers' deck; before her name drifted across the black like a rumor wrapped in ion smoke, she was simply 349-a creche-born girl with no birthday, no possessions, and no future beyond the factory floor.

When the corporation chose her for Security training, it should have been a blessing. Instead, it became an ordeal that stripped her to bone and will. On a frozen plain beneath the shadow of Cincinnati Orbital, 349 and her fellow cadets are driven through exhaustion, ice, fire, and vacuum. Under the cold command of Senior Instructor Tercio, they learn to tread water in full gear, crawl through collapsing structures, fire shotguns in drifting half-gravity, and fall from orbit wrapped only in a shell of ablative ceramic. They learn to obey, to endure, to survive.

In this crucible she finds her first true comrades:221, steadfast and meticulous despite the scars she carries, and400, calm-eyed and perceptive, whose silence often says more than words.

Together they form a team-first by assignment, then by necessity, and finally by choice. The Academy demands everything, but it never asks who they were before. Only whether they will break. Or rise.

Yet inside 349 something else awakens: a sharpness she did not earn, a clarity she did not choose. The illicit compound forced on her back at the factory begins to unspool its long, quiet consequences. Her senses shift. Her instincts sharpen. Her awareness grows cold and precise. Whether this is gift or affliction is a question the Academy cannot answer-and one she must learn to hide.

Most who knew her then could not imagine what waited beyond these years.

The cadet who trudged through snow with a battered shotgun and a pack too heavy for her frame would one day vanish from the corporate rolls, reemerge in the dark lanes of the frontier, and shake loose the certainties of an age.
But that future belongs to the Pirates of the 24th Century.Here, in these pages, is the story of the girl she was before the legend: shivering on the tundra, drowning in her suit, learning to fire straight and think steadily, fighting not for glory but simply to live another day.

This is where the pirate called 49 began-long before anyone believed she might become anything other than 349.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0G2L26ZFN
• ISBN13: 9798274778053
• Release Date: November 2025
• Publisher: Independently Published
• Length: 114 Pages
• Weight: 0.36 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.2" x 6.0" x 9.0"