Not every hero wears a cape, some wear rubber gloves.

Corey Naylor only wanted a quiet shift, a working mop, and for people to stop leaving impossible stains in places that were clearly marked as restricted access.

Unfortunately, the galaxy had other plans.

When armed pirates seize a diplomatic starship, the sensible thing to do would be to hide, wait for security, and avoid becoming the sort of person mentioned in an incident report. Corey is very much in favour of all three options. The problem is that security has failed, the pirates know the official systems better than the crew do, and Corey has access to the one part of the ship nobody important ever bothers to understand.

Maintenance.

With a cornered officer, a bucket full of suspicious cleaning supplies, and an unidentified sanitation organism called Gloop, Corey finds himself fighting back with blocked corridors, false alerts, wet floors, waste systems, and the kind of human problem-solving that makes alien risk assessors update their files in a hurry.

The pirates came prepared for soldiers, security codes, and heroic resistance.

They did not come prepared for a janitor.

Perfect for readers who...

Enjoy comic sci-fi adventures with unlikely heroes, dangerous incompetence, and ordinary people doing extraordinary things mostly because nobody else is available.

Like stories where the maintenance staff know more than command, the mop may be mightier than the blaster, and the phrase “that cannot officially override security” is really just the beginning of the plan.

Prefer their space adventures funny, fast-moving, warmly absurd, and full of the sort of chaos that starts with one small bad decision and ends with an entire pirate crew regretting its career choices.