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- Herausgeber: Pie Press
- Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
- Sprache: Englisch
The bigger the bug, the bigger the gun! Exterminators Pass Candle and Nona Stiletto keep space safe for humanity by mowing down hostile alien lifeforms. Cyborg implants and badass attitudes make these warriors unstoppable, but a distress call lands them in the battle of a lifetime on a postapocalyptic alien world. Stalked by hordes of unimaginably savage creatures, Pass and Nona fight a war for survival against impossible odds. Their only hope: an abandoned alien child who might be the last of her species left alive, and the only key to a terrible secret that might end the carnage...if she can stay awake long enough to figure it out. This masterpiece of scifi horror will race you out to the edge of reality, blow your mind, and kick your ass. Don't miss the uncut version of this story, acclaimed as a "Standout selection..." in a Publishers Weekly starred review.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019
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One Awake In All The World
A SCIFI STORY
ROBERT JESCHONEK
Contents
Also by Robert Jeschonek
One Awake In All The World
About the Author
Special Preview: Six Scifi Stories Volume Four
ONE AWAKE IN ALL THE WORLD
Copyright © 2023 by Robert Jeschonek
www.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.
All rights reserved by the author.
Published by Blastoff Books
An Imprint of Pie Press
411 Chancellor Street
Johnstown, Pennsylvania 15904
www.piepresspublishing.com
Subscribe to the Blastoff Books Newsletter: http://newsletter.blastoffbooks.net
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
One Awake In All The World
Pass Candle could not see the creatures, except as winking blips of light on the flash-brain screen mounted in the flesh of his left arm. He didn’t need to look at the screen, however, to know that the creatures were all around him and his partner, Nona Stiletto.
He could feel their presence. Could feel their eyes upon him, staring from the shadows of the darkened and fog-shrouded city.
More than that, he swore he could feel their malevolence. Their savagery.
He stiffened his right arm as he swept it from side to side, covering an arc of the gray fog with the snout of the warflower dark energy gun peeping from under the skin behind his wrist. He followed the arc with the single beam from his headlight—the round, white disk mounted like a third eye in the middle of his forehead.
Candle narrowed his dark brown eyes and stared into the headlight’s beam, but he still saw nothing moving toward him in the fog. Maybe, his feelings were the product of his imagination, and the creatures in the shadows would turn out to be benevolent toward cybernetically enhanced humans like himself and Nona.
But somehow, he doubted it.
Stiletto said nothing to suggest she felt the same way, but the posture of her slender frame as she walked alongside him was as stiff and guarded as his. Her head ticked from side to side, flicking her golden ponytail to and fro in the darkness.
The retractable sleeves of her slick black form-fitting flowsuit were all the way up, like Candle’s, leaving her weapon-and-instrument-studded arms free for action. She aimed her warflower directly ahead, and Candle knew from experience that she was ready to whip it around in a heartbeat and use it.
“The humanoid’s twenty meters ahead,” said Candle, watching the readings on his flash-brain screen. “Distress signal’s strong and life signs’re steady. She’s surrounded by non-humanoid life-forms, like we are.”
Just then, Candle smelled an odor like strong vinegar and heard a sound like claws clacking on the pavement to his left. He and Stiletto swung in that direction simultaneously, lighting it up with the beams of their headlights. Candle saw nothing in the newly illuminated area but a building’s stone wall and a scattering of what looked like splintered bones at its base.
“Playing hard to get.” Candle nervously combed the fingers of his right hand through his wavy salt-and-pepper hair.
“Let’s hope they stay that way,” said Stiletto.
Candle started forward again, following the female humanoid’s life signs. “Seventeen meters to go,” he said. “Easy-peasy.”
The sound of breaking glass echoed in the distance. Claws or something like them clacked not far away.
“Guess again,” said Stiletto, sweeping her headlight toward the clacking, then forward again.
Candle thought Stiletto had a point. In the darkness and fog, it felt like they’d walked several kilometers rather than the half kilometer they’d actually traveled from their spacecraft, the Sun Ra, which was parked at the edge of the city.
Though Candle wasn’t the jumpy type, he was having his doubts about what a good idea it had been to walk away from the Sun Ra at all...or land on this planet in the first place. Trouble was, he just hated ignoring a distress signal like the one that’d brought him here; some of his best jobs had come via distress signal.
He and Stiletto were first-class spacefaring exterminators, specializing in extra-nasty pests known as Squatters. Squatters ran people like puppets, remote-controlling them from somewhere beyond the Milky Way galaxy. Squatters reached out with their ultra-powerful minds and bonded people to them with overwhelming love and pleasure. Then, the Squatters sent these zombies, known as Wipeouts, on horrifically barbaric killing sprees.
Rumor had it the Squatters and Wipeouts were building up to something big, and people were scared. Contractors like Candle could make a living hunting the bastards full-time. Wipeout hunting was pretty damned rewarding for a top pro like Candle, in fact...especially when he had a former Wipeout like Nona Stiletto for a partner.
Sure, Nona was still messed up from years of being possessed by the aliens. She had committed more violent crimes than she could remember, and she was marked forever by scars on the inside and outside.
But she knew everything about Wipeouts, and the Squatters had left her mean and strong. Just the fact that she had survived being separated from a Squatter showed what kind of a hardass she was. Candle had never heard of another Wipeout walking away from that ordeal alive.
And he couldn’t think of anyone he’d rather have by his side today.
“Fourteen meters,” he said, squinting into the ten-meter-deep cone of visibility that was the best his headlight could cut through the fog.
Candle and Stiletto pressed to within twelve meters of their target, then eleven. Finally, their headlights picked out a form in the gray soup.
At last, they got a look at the being they’d been seeking through the alien city...a being who, as far as they could tell, was the only remaining native humanoid on the planet.
In size and build, she resembled a human child, five or six years old...a little girl with glittering purple skin, multi-faceted red insect eyes, and not a hair on her head.
* * *
Candle and Stiletto lowered their arms so the beams of their headlights weren’t flashing right in the little girl’s face.
Candle told the girl his name, his flash-brain converting his speech into audio she could understand. “This is Nona,” he added, hiking a thumb at Stiletto. “What’s your name?”
“Luma,” said the little girl. She wore a simple white shift and sandals. As she spoke, she hugged a ragged doll tightly against her chest.
On one wrist, Luma wore a gold bracelet set with a blinking amber crystal. A glance at the flash-brain screen confirmed Stiletto’s suspicion that the bracelet was the source of the distress signal transmissions.
“Cool name,” said Candle. “Nice to meet you, Luma.”
Luma cocked her head to one side and narrowed her faceted eyes. “You look funny,” she said. “What’s wrong with you?”
Candle smirked at Stiletto. “There’s nothing wrong with us,” he said. “We’re just not from around here.”
“Okay,” said Luma.
“We want to help you,” said Candle. “Can you tell us why you’re all alone here?”
Luma dropped her chin against the head of her doll and twisted slowly from side to side. As Stiletto watched, the little girl’s skin changed color, shifting from dark purple to deep blue...signaling a mood change?
“I’m lost,” Luma said softly. “I can’t find my family. I woke up and went outside, and now I can’t find them.”
“Do you know where there’re more people like you?” said Candle. “People who look like you?”
“You mean Sagrans?” said Luma.
