Blackbeard’s Aliens E-Book

Robert Jeschonek

• Herausgeber: Pie Press
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

Cannonballs and laser beams fly as blazing battle rages between a fleet of pirate ships and a squadron of alien fighters. Demonic aliens board the ships and let loose high-tech ray beams on hardened pirates armed with pistols and cutlasses. In the heart of the flame and fury roars fearless Blackbeard himself, commanding his men in a last-ditch struggle to save all humankind from bloodthirsty conquerors from another world. Perhaps Blackbeard's own dark connection to the aliens will give him an edge against them, if his own closest ally, Stede Bonnet, does not mount a mutiny against him first. Can Blackbeard and the greatest pirates of his day use their seafaring savagery to win the war for the future of humanity? It all comes down to pirates versus aliens as the greatest battle ever to rock the seven seas rushes toward an explosive finale. Don't miss this exciting tale by award-winning storyteller Robert Jeschonek, a master of hard-hitting science fiction that really packs a punch.

Leseprobe

Blackbeard’s Aliens

A SCIFI STORY

ROBERT JESCHONEK

Contents

Also by Robert Jeschonek

Blackbeard’s Aliens

About the Author

Special Preview: Six Scifi Stories Volume Four

BLACKBEARD’S ALIENS

Copyright © 2023 by Robert Jeschonek

http://bobscribe.com/

Cover Art Copyright © 2023 by Ben Baldwin

www.benbaldwin.co.uk

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Published by Blastoff Books

An Imprint of Pie Press

411 Chancellor Street

Johnstown, Pennsylvania 15904

www.piepresspublishing.com

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Also by Robert Jeschonek

100th Power Book 1

100th Power Book 2

100th Power Book 3

Blastoff!

Cosmic Conflicts

Gray Lady Rising (with Annie Reed)

In a Green Dress, Surrounded by Exploding Clowns and Other Stories

In the Empire of Underpants and Other Stories

Battlenaut Crucible

Scifi Motherlode

Sticks and Stones: A Trek Novel

Blackbeard’s Aliens

"Fire!"  I have been called a Gentleman Pirate, and oft enough, the name suits.  But on a day like this, Stede Bonnet is all pirate and no gentleman.

No sooner has the order to fire left my lips than the port side guns of the Adventure blast out their loads in  clouds of roiling black smoke.  Five iron balls leap through the air, heading straight for their target--a huge silver disk hovering thirty feet above the water.

Twin beams of red light flash out from the rim of the disk, burning two of the cannonballs into wisps of steam.  But the other three make it through. They don't penetrate the hull of the silver disk as I had hoped, but they do make it rock in midair.

Take that, you hellspawn.  "Reload!" I shout, though I know the men have already done just that.  We are united in perfect rhythm after all our many battles as part of this fearsome flotilla.  Our leader, much as I despise him, has taught us that.

Even now, not half a league away, I hear the guns of his personal flagship, the Queen Anne's Revenge, pound away at a larger target--another hovering object, this one triangular in shape.  I don't have to look to know his banner yet flies from the mainmast, rippling in the Caribbean breeze.

There is no other flag like it:  a field of black, with a skeletal, horned demon raising a toast to Satan whilst piercing a heart with a spear.  All this time, I thought it was merely a symbol of evil designed to strike fear in the hearts of seagoing foes. And, for me, a personal symbol of a man I loathed, a pirate who'd taken everything from me and pressed me into service in his infamous fleet.

Little did I know it was a declaration of war on an unearthly enemy.  Little did I dream, until recently, that Blackbeard had much more on his mind than wealth and power.

"Fire!"  This time, the booms of the cannon begin before I cry out the word.  It's not insubordination; the men know we must press the attack hard and fast.

But not one single ball connects with the target.  This is because our one target has become many. The disk has split into twenty silver wedges, each leaping out of range of our guns.

And then streaking toward us like arrows from a brace of archers.

Raising the spyglass to my eye, I see spots of glowing light flare to life on the point of each wedge.  The light is red, like the deadly beams that shot forth from the undivided disk a moment ago.

Their purpose is clear to me.

"Fight for your lives!"  I pocket the spyglass and swing up my saber and pistol as I call out over the noise on deck.  "Send 'em back to hell before they do the same to you!"

* * *

It's hard to believe there was ever a time when I'd not heard of these creatures.  But that time was three months ago, true enough.

It was just then that Blackbeard's strange behavior began to arouse suspicions among his pirate captains, myself included.  The way he started letting ships filled with goods from the West Indies pass without raiding them...the way he paced the decks at all hours, watching the inky darkness and muttering to himself...and then there were the treasure hunts.

I confronted him about it one night on Ocracoke Island, off the coast of Northern Carolina, as we watched the men dig.  We had marched inland some distance and stopped in the heart of a grove of cedar trees. It was there he had instructed the crew to sink the first spade and dig until they struck something solid.

"Why are we pulling up all your old hoards?"  I asked the question quietly under the rasp of sinking shovels and the grunting of the men.  "New Providence, Nassau, Barbados, Oak Island--now here. Have you some grand scheme in mind?"

Blackbeard turned his fierce countenance upon me.  It's true what they say about his fearsome appearance.  With those glittering dark eyes and pitch-black beard, he looks like something more than man, something divine in a hellish way.  "You'll know soon enough, Stede." He was a full head taller than me and had to look down to see my face. "And then you'll wish you didn't."

"Will you at least open this one?"  It was stifling hot that night.  I took off my broad-brimmed hat and wiped the sweat from my forehead with the back of my brown coat sleeve.  "Or will you leave this chest padlocked in the hold of the Revenge like all the rest?"

He smirked behind his thick, braided beard, his namesake.  "The ship's name is the Queen Anne's Revenge," he said.

I bristled, as he'd known I would.  That ship had once been my own, christened Revenge, until he'd taken it from me.  I despised him for it still, though I now served as captain of a smaller vessel in his fleet, the Adventure...waiting always for the day when I would regain what I had lost.  Working for that day, too, always plotting and preparing.  I was organizing a mutiny even then, taking advantage of Blackbeard's erratic behavior to sway key crewmen to my cause.

"Can you at least give me a hint, Edward?"  I kept my voice low so the men would not hear me call him by his given name, Edward Teach...or as close to a given name as he'd admit to.  "What plan do you have in mind for all that treasure?"

Blackbeard's broad face split in a pearly grin.  "Who said anything about treasure?"  He laughed and cuffed me on the side of my head.

Just then, the men struck something.  They were several feet down, up to their shoulders in the hole, when I heard the spades hit something solid.

"We have it, sir," said one of the men.  He hit it again. "I think it's a chest."

"Bring it up, then."  Blackbeard gestured impatiently.  "And make it double-quick, lads."

Suddenly, his head jerked up, and he looked around.  His hands found the butts of two of the six pistols stuffed into the bandoliers he wore across his belly.

"What is it?"  I listened and looked, sensing nothing...and then I glimpsed a faint red light glowing among the cedars.  It was steady, perhaps fifty yards distant--not flickering, not a torch, certainly.

"We must have been followed."  Blackbeard cocked the pistols. "You're about to get your answers, Stede."

I drew my own pistol and saber.  "Answers?"

Blackbeard spit on the ground and raised the guns.  "You won't like 'em." Then, he fired both weapons into the woods.

As the brimstone smell of gunpowder filled the air, I heard a terrible shriek in the distance like the cry of a banshee.  Suddenly, the red light flashed and divided, becoming three lights...and all three surged toward us.

"Stand your ground!"  Blackbeard dropped his first two guns and reached for another pair from his bandolier.  "Go for their middle heads!"

His words baffled me, but explanation came soon enough.  The lights were fast upon us, and with them, strange creatures unlike any I'd ever seen.