Six Scifi Stories Volume Two E-Book

Robert Jeschonek

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

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

In these pages, Robert Jeschonek will take you on a tour of the wildest places and people you've never imagined. You've never met anyone quite like Nona Stiletto, the sexy cyborg exterminator who takes on a planet of alien monsters...Thal Simoleon, baseball player of the future, condemned to death for losing the world series...Cilla Franklin, an American teacher whose students are naked killer savages…Mike the Future Man, a high tech time traveler fighting to find a missing child...Vicky Dozen, the bioengineering genebilly whipping up rhinoporcupines in Best Virginia…or Philippa the cross-dressing Conquistadora of outer space. Don't miss these edgy, exciting, and surprising science fiction tales by a Star Trek and Doctor Who author. It’s the latest collection from award-winning storyteller Robert Jeschonek, a master of unique and unexpected science fiction that really packs a punch. This volume includes six scifi e-book stories and novelettes for one low price.

Leseprobe

Six Scifi Stories Volume Two

ROBERT JESCHONEK

Contents

Also by Robert Jeschonek

One Awake In All The World

Give The Hippo What He Wants

Teacher of The Century

Off The Face of The Earth

Something Borrowed, Something Doomed

The Cross-Dressing Cosmic Cortez Rubs Off

About the Author

Special Preview!

SIX SCIFI STORIES VOLUME TWO

Copyright © 2023 by Robert Jeschonek

www.robertjeschonek.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 0f Pie Press Publishing

411 Chancellor Street

Johnstown, Pennsylvania 15904

www.piepresspublishing.com

Also by Robert Jeschonek

Battlenaut Crucible

Beware the Black Battlenaut

Scifi Motherlode

Six Scifi Stories - Volume One

Six Scifi Stories Volume - Three

Six Scifi Stories - Volume Four

One Awake In All The World

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.

“Is that what the people’re called?” said Candle.

Luma nodded. “Sagrans.”

“You know where they are?” said Stiletto.

Luma shook her head. “There’s no one around except the Skilla.” As she said it, her voice dropped to a near whisper, and her skin shifted to deep purple again.

“The Skilla aren’t people like you, are they?” said Candle.

“No,” said Luma, shivering. “They’re scary. Everyone says the Skilla are holy, but I think they’re scary, too. I think they’re going to get me.”

Candle scooped the little girl up into his arms.

“Don’t worry, Luma,” he said, patting her back. “You’re not alone anymore. We’ll keep you safe.”

“You will?”

“Yeah. That’s why we came here. To help you.”

“Will you find my family, too?” Luma’s skin changed from purple back to deep blue.

“We’ll do our best.” Candle smiled and bounced her affectionately in his arms. “I promise.”

Stiletto’s heart beat faster, but not because of any impending danger. It was the sight of Candle with Luma, the way he held her and reassured her.

Stiletto wished he’d do that for her, too. She wished he’d love her the way that she loved him.

She hadn’t always felt this way. She’d been working with Candle since he’d freed her from the Squatter three years ago, and she’d only been sure she wanted him within the last six months.

She really didn’t know if he felt the same way, though, and frankly, she hadn’t been going out of her way to find out. The hardass routine that was so important to her job and just getting through the day was hard to push aside...plus which, her head was still a wreck from her time as a Wipeout. The Squatter was gone, but it had left behind a boatload of poison. Sometimes, Stiletto still felt echoes of the bastard swimming around in there, and she wondered if he was regenerating somehow.

That was what worried her the most and kept her from reaching out to Candle. What if she was still a danger to him, a sleeper agent with secret orders implanted at a deep level her deprogramming had missed?

Unfortunately, the more she tried to lock her feelings away, the stronger they grew.

And seeing Candle comforting Luma made them stronger still.

* * *

Candle put Luma down but held on to her tiny, green hand as he and Stiletto talked.

“Any ideas?” he said in a half-whisper.

Stiletto stared at the blinking lights on the flash-brain screen. “I’ve detected low-level mechanical vibrations.”

“Where abouts?” said Candle.

“Center of the city. Four kilometers that way.” Stiletto aimed her headlight into the murk.

“Where there’s working machinery, there might be people,” said Candle. “Shielded from sensors, maybe.”

“There’re a lot of non-humanoids between here and there.”

Candle nodded. “And we can’t take the Sun Ra in,” he said, “because there’s nowhere to land. Not even a flat rooftop.” He sighed. “We’ll have to keep going on foot.”

Candle heard a whooping cry like hysterical laughter in the distance. Luma’s hand fluttered, and he tightened his grip on it.

“Up for a hike?” he said to Stiletto.

She nodded. “I’m ready.”

“How about you?” Candle gave Luma’s hand a squeeze.

“Ready,” said Luma.

“Then let’s get going,” said Candle.

* * *

Though Stiletto wasn’t easily freaked, she felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand up way too often as she, Candle, and Luma trudged through the city.

She was being stalked. By something she couldn’t see.

But she could hear it. The Skilla raised a constant clamor through the city, their distant whoops and yowls accompanied by the sounds of smashing and thumping and shattering. Close by, their claws clacked along the pavement, moving when Stiletto, Candle, and Luma moved...stopping when they stopped. Always, when the creatures were near, Stiletto smelled their heavy, vinegar-like scent in the humid air.

And the number of them that were close-by was growing. Flash-brain scans of the surrounding area revealed that more Skilla were clustering near Stiletto, Candle, and Luma with each passing moment.

“We’re drawing a crowd,” Stiletto said to Candle, keeping her voice to a whisper for Luma’s sake. “Maybe a warning shot’ll drive them off.”

“Don’t provoke them,” said Candle. “Not yet. We’re so outnumbered, let’s put off a fight as long as we can.” With that, he turned his attention to Luma. “So,” he said, shifting his voice to a less serious tone. “What’s your friend’s name?”

Luma looked up at him, a puzzled expression on her glittering, deep blue face. She looked down at her doll then, and understood. “Her name is Gala,” she said.

“How long’ve you and Gala been together?” said Candle.

Luma raised the doll to her ear. “Gala says we’ve been together since I was a little girl.”

Candle smiled. “Cool.” He still held on to Luma with his left hand and continually scanned his warflower back and forth with his right. “And how did the two of you meet?”

“Mommy and Daddy gave her to me,” said Luma.

“The last time you saw your mommy and daddy, what were they doing?” said Candle.

“They were sleeping,” said Luma.

“For a long time?” said Stiletto.

“I think so,” said Luma. “I woke up and went for a walk. I wanted to go home to get my dreambook, but then I couldn’t find home.”

“So your family was somewhere other than home,” said Candle. “What did this place look like?”

“Big,” said Luma. “And dark.” She raised the doll to her ear and listened for a moment. “Gala says Mommy and Daddy will be mad at me.”

“Why is that?” said Stiletto.

“I wasn’t supposed to open the door,” said Luma. “I wasn’t supposed to go outside.”

“Because of the Skilla?” said Candle.

“Uh-huh,” said Luma. “They’re holy, but they can hurt you.” Again, she listened to the doll. “Gala says they’re going to hurt all of us, and it’ll be my fault because I opened the door.”

“Try to help Gala not worry so much,” said Candle. “Tell her we’re going to take good care of you.”

“Okay,” said Luma.

Just then, something heavy and hard hit the ground near Stiletto.

Everyone stopped in their tracks. Luma gasped and threw herself against Candle.

Spinning, Stiletto threw light in the direction of the noise. A block of stone, big as a human head, lay in the street barely three meters away.

Suddenly, Stiletto heard a clatter of approaching claws and caught the smell of vinegar in the air. A quick glance at her flash-brain screen confirmed the evidence of her ears, and she whirled around.

Two blips had disengaged from the unseen crowd of Skilla and were charging directly at Candle and Luma.

Without a word, Stiletto fired her warflower, shooting a crackling bolt of energy into the fog. Immediately, she heard a wailing screech, erupting loud and close enough to hurt her ears. Through a tunnel burned in the fog by the warflower’s beam, she glimpsed shining silver eyes like a pair of coins suspended in midair.

Stiletto lashed the warflower around, seeking the second oncoming Skilla. She was rewarded with another raging screech. Then, with a flurry of clattering claws, the creatures hurtled away, their cries receding in the distance.

“So much for putting off a fight,” said Candle.

“These creatures’re pretty smart,” said Stiletto. “They staged a diversion by throwing that stone, then came at us from the other direction.”

Luma tugged on Candle’s uniform then, and he and Stiletto looked down. The little girl’s face was pinched in an expression of pure anguish. Her glittering skin was so fiery red that it looked like it would be hot to the touch.

“Gala says you lied!” Inky, black tears streamed down her face. “She says the Skilla are going to get us!”

“Tell Gala it’s okay to be scared,” said Candle, “but things can turn out fine no matter how scary they seem.”

Luma shuddered with sobs. “Gala doesn’t believe you!”Stiletto searched her mind for a plan to calm the child, then crouched down beside her. “That’s because Gala hasn’t heard the story of the girl with the invisible friend,” said Stiletto. “Have you?”

Still sobbing, Luma shook her head. The inky tears rolled off her jaw and fell onto her white shift, staining it with spatters of black.

“You think Gala might like to hear the story?” said Stiletto, ignoring a whooping scream-laugh in the distance.

Luma shrugged.

Stiletto got to her feet and scooped up the child in one smooth motion. “Once upon a time,” she said, “there was a lonely little girl. She didn’t have any friends, because her parents kept moving from planet to planet all the time.”

Luma’s tears stopped flowing. “No friends at all?” she said, her skin shifting from bright red to maroon.

“None,” said Stiletto. “Then, one day, she heard a voice. It seemed to be coming from thin air. ‘I’ll be your friend,’ said the voice.”

Luma’s face relaxed from a frown to an expression of wide-eyed interest. Her skin went from maroon to violet.

“The girl couldn’t see who was talking,” said Stiletto. “She was scared, but she was so lonely that she said, ‘Sure, you can be my friend.’

“So from that day on, the girl had an invisible friend. There was just one problem.”

“What?” said Luma. “What problem?”

“The invisible friend was mean,” said Stiletto, “but the girl didn’t find out right away.”

“When did she find out?” said Luma.

Stiletto raised an eyebrow. “To be continued,” she said. “If you’re good, I’ll tell you the rest of the story later.”

“But I want to know now!” said Luma, scowling.

“I’ll tell you after we’ve gone a little further,” said Stiletto. She lowered the child to the pavement and held her hand.

“But I can’t wait!” said Luma.

“Later,” Stiletto said sternly.

“All right,” said Luma. Though she sounded unhappy, the dark green color of her skin revealed her true feelings. Her terrified panic was gone, replaced by a calmer composure.

Candle leaned close to Stiletto and whispered in her ear. “Way to handle the kid,” he said. “I didn’t know you had it in you.”

Stiletto nodded without smiling, but she felt a rush of warmth at what he’d said.

* * *

Candle thought it was a good thing that Luma became obsessed with pestering Stiletto to continue her story. The Skilla were growing bolder, and he was glad the little girl’s mind was on something else.

Again and again, the creatures raced close and bolted away. They dropped stones and bones and shingles from above, littering the route with debris.

And their numbers, according to the flash-brain, continued to grow. Candle wondered how many more of the creatures would join the pack over the kilometer and a half that he, Stiletto, and Luma had yet to walk. He wondered what other surprises the Skilla would spring.

Unfortunately, he didn’t have to wait long for the next one. It happened just as Stiletto was about to continue her story.

“All right,” she said, finally giving in to Luma’s repeated requests to know what happened next. “I’ll tell you a little more.”

Luma’s skin was pale green, which Candle knew by now meant the child felt at ease. “Tell me!” she said.

Before Stiletto could get out a word, the rocks started flying.

Candle felt something strike his arm with a stinging impact. As he whipped around, he felt another solid object collide with his kneecap.

A shower of rocks followed, hurtling straight toward him from out of the fog.

Candle opened fire with the warflower, punching the searing beam through the murk. “Get down!”

Behind him, he heard the whine of Stiletto’s warflower firing at the same time as his, lashing out at the other side of the street.

Another volley of rocks leaped out of the fog from a different spot. Candle spun and fired there, too, then combed the beam along the street to pick off any additional ambushers lying in wait.

The bombardment ended, giving way to a deafening chorus of shrieks and screams from all directions.

“Everybody all right?” said Candle.

Even as he said it, he could see the answer to his question.

Luma was sprawled on the pavement, eyes closed. Her skin was white as a bedsheet except for a blazing red welt above her left eye.

* * *

“How is she?” said Candle, standing guard while Stiletto scanned Luma’s head with her fingertip sensor pads.

“Lots of swelling in there,” said Stiletto. “She might have a concussion.”

“Can we treat her?”