Tag: militarysf

SPACE BATTLES Author Profile: Meet Author Matthew Cook

Published on by Bryan1 Comment

The seventh story in the anthology by Matthew Cook offers a unique take on the theme, much like Dana Bell‘s did.  Cook lives and works in central Ohio, in a city known forits mad cows, microbrews, and a sports team named for a poisonous nut of no commercial value. He is the author of the Kirin Widowmaker series (2007’s Blood Magic, and 2008’s Nights of Sin), as well as several science fiction stories. His debut science fiction story, “The Shoe Factory”, was nominated by the British Science Fiction Association for “Year’s Best” consideration in 2010, as was his next story, “Insha’Allah” in 2011. His most recent work, “Railriders”—a prequel tale of the Seventeen Systems universe where “The Book of Enoch” is also set—appeared in March of 2012 in Interzone Magazine #239. When not writing about ray guns, alien invasions, or undead apocalypses, Matt works as an online security specialist and Product Manager for a Silicone Valley startup. He blogs (occasionally) at: http://bloodmagicbooks.blogspot.com/, encouraged by his loving wife, Amy, as well as a supporting cast of eternally-patient family and friends.

BTS: How did you find out about the Space Battles anthology and what made you decide to submit?

Matthew Cook: I heard about the anthology through fellow writer Mike Resnick and, after hearing the idea behind the collection, decided to rework an old story of mine for submission.  I was so thrilled to be accepted into a collection featuring so many talented writers!

BTS: This is your first anthology sale, correct? Tell us a little about “The Book Of Enoch.” What’s it about? Where’d this particular idea come from?

MC: The initial story idea, a civilian space freighter crew-member who has to fend off an alien attack using her ship as an improvised weapon, came from a piece I did several years ago that never really came together and which I never submitted. When I learned about Space Battles, I dusted the old piece off and worked in some ideas I’d been batting around in my head for an Amish space trucker named Enoch. The idea of putting a character sworn by his faith to nonviolence into the middle of a space war was the centerpiece of the story more than the actual battle itself, since it let me show the character’s internal struggle alongside the external conflict raging all around him.

BTS: Another story set in this universe came out in Interzone. Which came first and how do they tie together?

MC: “Insha’Allah” appeared in Interzone #235 in July of 2011. Like “The Book of Enoch”, it’s set in my Seventeen Systems universe, a future world where humanity has spread out through the galaxy and has established many different colonies. Each colony is loosely based on different cultures and religions that exist today.  In “Insha’Allah” (which is set roughly concurrent with “The Book of Enoch”), a world settled primarily by Muslims watches the battle raging at the edge of their world’s atmosphere, then zooms in to focus on the life of Shaomi, who is a Washer of the Dead (a woman tasked with preparing bodies for proper Muslim burial).  When another woman, an offworld pilot, is brought to her, badly wounded and desperately in need of medical attention, Shaomi must choose between the dogma of her religion and the core beliefs of her true faith.  Like “The Book of Enoch”, matters of faith and hope in the midst of war play a central role, albeit with a different outcome.  Another story of the Seventeen Systems, “Railriders”, was published in March of 2012, also in Interzone.

BTS: What’s the second story about?

MC: “Railriders” is a prequel story that follows the lives of a band of intergalactic hobos as they move from cargo ship to livestock hauler, evading the agents of the shipping companies, all the while praying that their air isn’t cut off by accident (or malice).  It’s very much a character story, one intended to show that even in the future, when humanity has accomplished so much and has started truly reaching the stars, for the most underprivileged, some things, unfortunately, never change.

BTS: You’ve also had a couple of novels published. Please tell us a little about those.

MC: My first novel, the dark fantasy Blood Magic, was published by Juno Books in 2007. A sequel, Nights of Sin, followed in 2008. Both books follow the life of Kirin, a woman who, after the murder of her twin sister, seeks out the power of necromancy to bring back the dead as her unliving champions.  The true tragedy, however, lies in the fact that Kirin thinks that she cannot ever have children, a misconception that leads her to view her terrible zombie-like minions as her “sweetling” children. When Kirin’s society is attacked by the Mor, a subterranean race that humans had thought long-defeated, Kirin must use her powers in defense of a society that thinks of her as a monster.  Both books recently went out of print in mass-market paperback but a few copies exist here and there, both in the new and second-hand markets, and a shift to e-book will hopefully see them back in print for Kindle, Nook, and other e-readers soon.  A third book is also outlined and may one day be released…

BTS: You recently got married and went on a honeymoon. Congrats. Did you find the cross cultural experience inspiring creatively? Will those experiences influence your work?  

MC: Definitely.  We honeymooned in Budapest and Prague, and already those cities, with their centuries-old cathedrals and cobbled streets, have begun creeping into my work.  I’ve already finished the first draft of a novella, tentatively titled “Tej” (the Hungarian word for “Milk”), which can only be described as a “post-apocalyptic zombie story… without the zombies”.  It’s definitely a strange piece, but then again so are most of them…

BTS: How’d you get started as a writer?

MC: I’ve told stories for as long as I can remember. My grandfather, Roy Durling, was my first official “fan”, and always read my grade-school and jr. high efforts, followed by encouragement to “always keep writing!”.  In high school I published a few stories in the school literary magazine, including “On The Bottom” (my first, stumbling attempt at sci-fi).  High school is also where I discovered role-playing games, and for years I fed my storytelling jag with endless hours of Dungeons and Dragons, Vampire: The Masquerade, and a host of others. In college I did a little work for FASA (the game company responsible for Battletech, Shadowrun, and a number of other great games) – just a little fill-in flavor text writing and stuff, but it definitely gave me the desire to tell stories for a living one day. While I still haven’t reached that goal (most writers, unfortunately, never do and even authors with many, many published books still usually have to keep their “day jobs” to pay the rent), I feel like I’m getting closer every day.

BTS: Do you have plans to do any more with this universe?

MC: I definitely have more stories to tell in the Seventeen Systems – they are in the middle of an intersteller war with the E’k, after all…

BTS: What other projects do you have in the works that we can look forward to?

MC: I’m currently working on a series of linked novella-length pieces set in the Middle East and Africa of the near-future. It’s inspired by the research I’ve been doing on reach-back and drone technology, artificial limb development, recent advances in cyber security and cyber fraud, and the impact of all these technologies on society.  No publisher yet, but I’m hopeful.  I also am almost finished with the initial draft of a contemporary fantasy novel, tentatively titled “The Circus of Night”.  No publisher for either yet, but I’m almost ready to begin my search – wish me luck!

 Here’s an excerpt from Matt’s tale of Amish truckers in space:

 

The Book of Enoch

Matthew Cook

He blinks and his tears drift free, floating in the stale, moist air inside the helmet, saltwater spheres glittering in the starlight. One strikes the faceplate, smears itself flat, blurring the graceless lines of the ship and the pinpoints of diamond-chip stars. Only the black, all around and in-between, the color of deepest mourning, is unchanged.

Enoch can’t feel his feet. The cold’s gotten into them, thanks to the busted suit-heater coil he’s been meaning to fix. Soon he’ll need to go back inside and warm up, before the black claims another piece of him. Soon, but not just yet.

At his feet, fixer-bots scurry around the open access cover, tools probing, lights swiveling. They can probably do the job without him, but supervising them gives him a convenient excuse to go outside. To be away from the endless, well-meaning condolences. From bible verse and assurances that they’re in a better place, now. With Him.

He shakes his head and peers out through the smeared visor. The Lancaster’s not a pretty ship, God knows. Built neither for comfort nor for speed, but for the grueling unglamorous job of hauling cargo between the worlds of the Seventeen Systems. From Enoch’s vantage, the ship is a miniature world. A tiny, close-horizoned landscape of ducts and struts overlayed with slabs of pitted radiation shielding. It’s not much, but it’s all he has.

The lead ’bot, a lime-and-orange HG0-790 that he calls “Hugo”, withdraws its armature from the hole, the busted fitting clasped in its claw. Enoch glances up and left at the menu painted in laser light on the inside of the faceplate, opening a comms channel to the bridge. “Got it, Cap,” he says. “Can’t fix it out here. I’ll need to bring it back inside, so’s I can fab up a replacement.”

“What about the heat exchanger?” Cap asks.

“Backup’s’ll cover the load for another day,” Enoch reassures
him. Cap’s competent, and always looks out for them, but sometimes
he’s such a hen.

“Whatever’s best,” the captain replies. “Nice job. First round’s on
me tonight.”

It’s an old joke, not really meant to be funny, almost scandalous,
really, but Cap’s like that. Full of little bits and pieces from the life he
lived before his conversion. All Enoch had was six months of misery
during his brief rumspringa, confused and dazzled by the lights and
noise and baffling speed of everything around him as he wandered
through sprawling port cities on Prospero and New Constantinople.
Six months of struggle, leading to that terrible, drunken night. The
alley behind the nameless bar, blood on his hands and police lights in
his eyes. Cages after that, each one worse than the last.

Enoch grunts and closes the channel. He orders the ’bots back
inside and clomps off across the hull, towards the airlock. By the
time the whistle of returning pressure fades, Enoch is ready to face
the crew.

The red vac-warning light cycles to green, automatically releasing
the clamps on his helmet seal. He pulls off the plastic dome and scrubs
at his face with his bandanna, like he’s just wiping away good, honest
sweat, obliterating any last trace of his sorrow.

He combs this thin, sandy-blond hair away from his face with
stubby fingers, smoothing it down over the stumps where his ears
once were. That was his first trip out, the time his helmet seal failed
because he’d neglected to check it. He’d almost died, and counted the
loss as a useful reminder to always double-check.

It’s not for my vanity, Lord, he thinks, the same way he does every
time. It’s for everyone else who has to look at me.

When everything is stowed, he shuffles off, eyes fixed on the deck,
hands clasped over the hard swell of his belly. He does not meet the
eyes of his fellow shipmates, nor speak on the infrequent occasions
when others call his name.

By the time he reaches the machine shop his shoulders and neck
are trembling. Hugo’s waiting for him, patient, amber ready light
glowing like an ember. It says nothing, offers no words of awkward
sympathy. It, like Enoch, is all work, all the time, just the way he likes
it. The way he needs it to be.

He dogs the hatch shut, spinning the manual wheel around and
around until the green light goes on. It’s supposed to seal and unseal
all by itself, but he doesn’t have the parts he needs to fix the finicky
pressure sensor. The Captain is a frugal man. He makes do, and asks
them all to do the same.

The wheel stops turning. Enoch is locked in. Finally. This is one
place, other than outside, that he can be alone. His parole says he’s to
be monitored at all times by the captain or another flight officer, but
Cap gave him the tiny room for his use alone. He trusts him.

He looks at his tiny cell: metal cot bolted to the wall, thin
blanket stretched drumhead tight; steel workbench hung with an
array of well-worn tools. Everything in the room is brown and
black and gray, the only colors Hugo’s garish, striped carapace
and a small picture clipped to the air cycling grille above the bed.
He forces himself not too look at the photo.

Enoch sighs and strokes his beard, tugging it gently. He was so
proud when he’d stopped shaving on the day after his wedding night.
Now it’s just another reminder of all the things he’s lost.

Enoch bends and removes the broken fitting from Hugo’s claw.
Behind him, the woman and the child in the photo smile in brilliant
sunshine, unaware of the future calamity that awaits them.

***
“We can’t afford to play hide-and seek any more!” one of the
passengers says, a thin man, dressed in the snug-fitting jumpsuit of
the aerospace lancer corps. “The E’k took out Port Saint Arthur and
Havonskaal, then they bombed New Mecca. And we all remember
what happened on Solace.”

Many voices mumble agreement as Enoch twitches, the word
stinging, sharp as a slap. He hunches over his tray, eyes downcast,
hoping that nobody has seen his reaction.

“Now I just heard that scout ships been spotted coming through
the jump gate near Mathura-quila,” the pilot continues. “How many
more have to die before we hit back? I say we should take the fight
to them!”

“Damn right,” one of the others says, a female heavy-worlder
Marine in wrinkled gray battle dress. The uniform stretches tight
across her bulging biceps and flat, man-like chest as she hammers
a ham-sized fist on the table. “Straight-up fight, say me. Crush ’em.
Shoot ’em. Blow alien asses to hell!”

The mess echoes with agreement as pilots and soldiers and
scattered support personnel call out agreement. Enoch watches
from his seat at the last table as men and women raise clenched
fists and shout for blood. The call stirs something in him, a hot, red
pulse that he can feel behind his eyes.

The animal. He’d thought it was gone, asleep or dead. But that
was before Solace. Now it’s awake, all the time, pacing in his head.
Making his heart pound and his hands clench.

He takes a deep breath, eyes fixed on his food, struggling to ignore
it. Wrath, his own personal devil, has been God’s test of his faith for as
long as he can remember.

“I’m certainly no soldier,” Cap says from his place at the high
table, “but facing the enemy directly seems like a rash choice.
Doesn’t it, Major?”

The question, asked lightly, cuts through the din. The officers and
soldiers fall silent, heads turning as one to look at their commanding
officer.

Major la Romano raises his cup and takes a long swallow. His
black eyes twinkle with amusement as he dabs at the corner of his thin
lips with a napkin. He has the pencil-thin beard and pale facial scars—
legacy of the honor duels they fight in the streets over the smallest
insult, Enoch’s heard—that all men from Paradiso seem to have.
Now his narrow shoulders rise and fall in an elegant shrug. “It is
true,” la Romano says, “that the enemy has, so far at least, defeated
us in every stand-up fight. The Concordance navy is in tatters. Our
ground forces are badly shaken, and demoralized.”

The silence in the room thickens. Enoch looks up from beneath
lowered brows and sees the scowls of disappointment, the far-away
looks of remembered defeats. The Major puts his cup down on the table.
“However,” he continues, “that does not mean that we will not
fight back. That’s why we’re here shipmates, on this fine, fine ship.
Why we’re traveling in secret, like cargo, without our proud flags or
insignia. To assemble where the enemy won’t find us. To rebuild our
strength, and share our stories, and, of course, to plan our revenge.”
Mutters of agreement ripple through the room. “We must do all we
can to throw back this shameful and unprovoked attack,” la Romano
continues, his voice ringing now, full of almost sermon-like intensity.

He stares out at the assembled officers and crew, his black eyes hard
as obsidian. “And we will, comrades, rest assured. We will show them
that humanity does not bend the knee. We will fight. We will resist.
And we will win.”

All around, scowls turn to grim smiles. The captain nods, but
Enoch can see the tension in the set of his shoulders, the stiffness in
his neck. “As I said, I’m no soldier,” Cap replies. “But doesn’t God tell
us to not take our own revenge, but to leave room for His wrath?”

“Oh, there’s plenty of room, sir,” la Romano replies with a
chuckle. “Room enough for those who have lost family and friends
to help Him with this great task, yes?”

Cap frowns, his disagreement plain for all to see. He scowls into
his cup, and says nothing.

The Major chuckles again, and rests a slender hand on the Cap’s
shoulder. “You’re Amish, are you not, sir?”

“Neo-anabaptist. As are most of my crew.”

“And God… He’s sworn you to pursue a path of nonviolence, yes?”

“It’s so.”

“That’s honorable, truly,” la Romano says, his tone giving lie to
the polite words. “I, however, follow a different code, laid down by an
altogether different interpretation of God’s holy scripture.

“I am a soldier, you see,” the Major continues, addressing the
soldiers and officers. “A warrior of God, commissioned by the Holy
Church and dedicated to His service. I am His sword, and His shield,
as are all these brave men and women you see here. We do what must
be done to honor that charge. For as Samson said: ‘Though ye have
done this, yet I will be avenged of you.’ And we will be avenged,
won’t we shipmates? Won’t we?”

The room explodes with shouts and cheers, not just the soldiers,
but some of the crew this time as well. Enoch feels his breath catch in
his chest as the red hunger swells, the desire to hit, to cut, to lash out.
He thinks of the picture back in his cell, the image of Ruth and Miriam
that he holds in his heart when the animal bays for blood.

Usually the memory of his family is a cooling rain, soothing his
rage, but this time the vision serves only to inflame him further, feeding
his fury like gasoline poured onto still-glowing embers. Enoch
hunches in his seat, fists clenched beneath the table, shoulders shaking
as raucous shouts echo through the room, fading slowly as the soldiers
file out, returning to the improvised bunks set up in the cargo hold.

The Major nods to his host and joins the officers, no doubt headed
for one of the staterooms, there to drink toasts of contraband spirits to
their inevitable success.

He’s still sitting there, food forgotten, when the room finally
empties. A few scattered soldiers, in groups of two or three, sit and
chat quietly. Luke, the skinny mess attendant, clears dishes and
wipes tables.

“What you doing there, say me?” someone asks, cutting through
Enoch’s haze of pain. “Praying, you?”

He looks up, into the heavy-worlder’s wide face. The Marine’s
eyes are close-set, brown and orange like a dog’s, framed with a scattering
of freckles. Her dark hair is shaved close to the scalp, short
enough that he can see the lines and swirls of old tattoos, murky blue
and brown. They cut off all their hair, he thinks, so it will not interfere
with the armor and machines they wear to war.

Enoch shrugs, and returns his gaze to the metal table.

“Praying no good,” the big woman says emphatically. “God don’t
care, say me. Wants people to stand and fight. Respects strength. Don’t
want begging for help, Him. Yar!”

He hears her come up behind him, rocks in his seat as she slaps her
hand down on his shoulder.

“Remind me of someone, you. Big hands, honest grease under
nails, yar. Likes, me does.” She bends, thrusting her moon face into
his, lips split in a broad, gap-toothed smile, all pale pink gums and
yellowed teeth. The hand strokes, trails up along his neck and over his
stubbled cheek. Her rough-nailed fingers stir his hair, lifting it away
from his amputated ears. He flinches away. “It not look bad. No worry,
you. Like some scars, me.

“Come,” she says, low and soft, her breath warm against the ruin
where his ear once was. “Go someplace private, we. Make some noise.
Understand? Be gentle, me. Yar!”

“No,” he mumbles. “…m-married.”

“Married don’t matter. Not here, she. Needs have we. Come. Make
noise. God understand.” The hand is grasping now, insistent, pulling
with a heavy-worlder’s unsubtle strength.

“Stop,” he whispers, all his effort focused on controlling his anger.

“Don’t worry,” the Marine laughs. “Know good tricks, me. Make
you forget all about her.”

Enoch closes his eyes, the red rage uncoiling at the sound of
the Marine’s braying laughter. Blossoming, huge, more than he can
hold onto.

Then he’s on his feet, not sure how he got there, hand stinging,
knuckles burning. The Marine lies sprawled on the deck, bright blood
on her lips. Echoes of her clattering fall chase themselves through the
mess. The steward and the remaining soldiers stare, eyes wide.

“Leave. Me. Alone,” Enoch says softly, holding onto the beast’s
tail with all his will, refusing to let it lead him into further temptation.
He turns on his heel and stomps off, fists clenching hard enough
to cramp, but not before he hears her ask the mess attendant, “What
wrong, he?”

“His wife and daughter were on Solace,” Luke says.

Enoch does not wait to hear her reply.

The klaxon shrieks, splitting the stillness of third watch.

Continued in Space Battles: Full Throttle Space Tales #6 which you can purchase here.


SPACE BATTLES Author Profile: Meet David Lee Summers

Published on by Bryan4 Comments

The anthology’s fourth tale comes from the man who edited two others in the Full Throttle Space Tales series and helped launch it: Professional astronomer David Lee Summers. He spends his nights assisting scientists on staff bi-weekly at Kitt Peak Observatory near Tucson, Arizona. On his off weeks and daylight hours, he edits and publishes Tales Of The Talisman, a quarterly print magazine of SF, F and Horror. He´s also edited anthologies like Space Pirates and Space Horrorsfor Flying Pen Press. His seven novels include Owl Dance, The Solar Sea and Vampires Of The Scarlet Order. His short fiction has appeared in anthologies and magazines such as Realms Of Fantasy, Human Tales and 2020 Visions, along with the Full Throttle Space Tales anthology series. He also was the editor who gave me my [Bryan’s] first story sale. His lives with his wife and two daughters in Las Cruces, New Mexico. Find David online at http://t.co/CLubgQwm and http://t.co/7ZFubl99 , also on Facebook and Twitter as @davidleesummers. You can also  follow his blogs:  http://davidleesummers.wordpress.com, a general fiction blog, and  http://dlsummers.wordpress.com, a vampire fiction blog.  My novel The Pirates of Sufiro is available absolutely free as an ebook from both Barnes and Noble and Amazon.com

BTS: David, you helped start the Full Throttle Space Tales series and have edited two of the anthologies so far. How did all of that come about?

David Lee Summers: Author David Boop and publisher David Rozansky had been meeting during the summer of 2007 and came up with the idea of putting together an anthology about space pirates.  David Boop told me about the idea at CopperCon in Phoenix that year and asked if I’d like to be the editor.  I gave it some thought and I started talking to David Rozansky.  Both Davids live in Denver and I met with them at MileHiCon about two months after that.  That was the point where Space Pirates was formalized.  Over dinner with some other authors, we came up with the idea that Space Pirates would be the first of a series of anthologies.  That was the birth of the Full-Throttle Space Tales series.

BTS: You’ve also had stories in most of the anthologies related to Captain Firebrandt and his pirates. Did that concept develop for FTST or out of the novels you’ve done with the same characters and settings?

DLS: Captain Firebrandt is a character that’s been kicking around my brain since about 1987.  He was the protagonist of my first novel, The Pirates of Sufiro.  That novel opens with Firebrandt, and his crewmembers Suki Mori and Carter Roberts being marooned on a distant planet.  They end up civilizing the planet and then getting involved in a conflict that shifts the whole galaxy’s balance of power.  That story is played out in the novels Children of the Old Stars and Heirs of the New Earth.  My stories in the FTST series are all set before The Pirates of Sufiro and tell the story of Firebrandt’s career in piracy before he was marooned  I’m hoping to collect Captain Firebrandt’s pirate stories into one volume sometime in the next couple of years.

BTS: Tell us a little about “Jump Point Blockade.” What’s it about? Where’d this particular idea come from?

DLS: In the Old Star/New Earth universe, jump points are the places where gravitational currents come together and allow space vessels to jump from system to system.  In this story, one Earth colony has blockaded another Earth colony’s jump point.  Meanwhile Ellison Firebrandt and his crew are taking advantage of this fact and raiding a mining facility operated by one of the governments.  The problem is they’re caught and some of Firebrandt’s crew are trapped in the mining facility.  Firebrandt makes a bargain to join the blockade rather than allow his crew to perish.  The story was inspired by Jean Lafitte’s role in the Battle of New Orleans.

BTS: Do the shorts follow a storyline tied to the novels or are they standalones?

DLS: Although each of the stories is a standalone, “Jump Point Blockade” pits Firebrandt and his crew against Captain William R. Stewart who they first met in the story “Hijacking the Legacy” that appears in Full-Throttle Space Tales #2: Space Sirens. 

BTS: How many novels have you written about these characters?

DLS: Ellison Firebrandt and Carter Roberts appear in three novels: The Pirates of Sufiro, Children of the Old Stars, and Heirs of the New Earth.  There is one more novel in the Old Star/New Earth universe called The Solar Sea, but that one is set before they’re born.   At this point, I have five prequel stories featuring Firebrandt and his crew—about 23,000 words of material in all.

BTS: You also edit Tales Of The Talisman and have written a number of novels. How did you get started as an editor?

DLS: In many ways my beginnings as an editor are tied to The Pirates of Sufiro.  When I first wrote the novel, my wife was in graduate school and was looking for a master’s project.  What she decided was to create an audio small press called Hadrosaur Productions.  The Pirates of Sufiro was to be the first book published.  We had started talking to some other authors and created a small anthology called Hadrosaur Tales as a way to showcase those people plus a few others who we hoped to lure to the press.  Eventually, the audio press went by the wayside and Hadrosaur Tales became a magazine in its own right.  After editing the magazine for ten years, we went through some format changes and renamed it Tales of the Talisman.  After starting the magazine, other publishers I worked with saw that I was an editor and have contracted my services and I’ve done some novel editing.  In addition to Hadrosaur Tales/Tales of the Talisman, I’ve edited a small literary magazine called Voces and I was layout designer for El Paso Community College’s magazine Chrysalis.

BTS: Has the FTST series been a success? What do you think is the appeal of these anthologies?

DLS: The books have attracted some “name” authors such as Neal Asher, Robert E. Vardeman, Sarah and Dan Hoyt, Selina Rosen, Dayton Ward and, of course, Mike Resnick.  Also, reviews have been generally positive, and the books seem to sell well for me and the other contributing authors I’ve spoken to.  That and the fact we’re on volume 6 all speak to the success of the books.  I think the appeal is the premise, these are meant to be fun, action-packed collections of science fiction tales.  Even within that definition, there is room for everything from serious, thoughtful stories to humor.  I think the variety of stories, the variety of authors, and the variety of themes all appeal to readers.

BTS: Who would you recommend them to as readers?

DLS: I would recommend them to anyone who likes a good, fun action-oriented science fiction tale.  The stories have humor, romance, strong science fiction ideas and fun.  If you like science fiction at all, it’s worth trying out this series.  I’m betting you’ll find several stories you like and maybe even some new favorite authors.

BTS: What other projects do you have in the works that we can look forward to?

DLS: My story “The Pirates of Baja” will be in the anthology Gears and Levers, due at the beginning of April from Sky Warrior Publishing.  My story “The Vrykolakas and the Cobbler’s Wife” is in Cemetery Dance Issue 66 which is hitting the newsstands as we speak.  Further down the road, look for my novel Dragon’s Fall: Rise of the Scarlet Order from Lachesis Publishing.  This novel tells about the formation of a band of vampire mercenaries.  In the meantime, I’m working on Wolf Posse, the sequel to my Wild West/Steampunk novel Owl Dance which is currently out from Flying Pen Press.

Here’s an excerpt from “Jump Point Blockade:” 

Jump Point Blockade

David Lee Summers

The privateer Legacy hung a short distance away from the asteroid designated MX-271. The asteroid was home to an automated mining operation owned by the Xerolith Corporation based on New Earth. The Legacy’s first mate, a sinewy, bald man named Carter Roberts, led the landing party. Roberts hacked into the mine’s computer network and unleashed a virus he hoped would knock out the defense grid.

A sturdy woman with close-cropped hair called Nicole Lowry piloted the craft. She checked the scanners. “The asteroid’s shields are disabled. I
see no indication of weapons being powered up.”

Roberts nodded, acknowledging the report, but he did not relax. Instead, he double-checked the readings himself. When he was satisfied,
he looked over at the pilot. “Take us in, but be careful.”

Lowry pulled back on the joystick and activated the landing rockets. “Your virus programs haven’t let us down yet. I’m not worried.”

“Neither am I, but that’s no excuse to let our guard down.” The first mate kept his eyes on the scanner readouts.

A few minutes later, the pilot pushed the joystick forward and shut off the rockets.

“So far, so good,” said Roberts. He commanded the station’s docking tunnel to extend and mate with the launch’s airlock. Unbuckling his harness,
he turned around and faced the landing party. “Let’s see what goodies the New Earthers have left us.” He drew his sidearm and opened the hatch.
Cautiously, Roberts moved forward into the docking tunnel. His nose wrinkled at the still, stale air. The only sounds he heard were the footsteps of the landing party behind him.

When he entered the mine complex itself, he saw a lone defense robot, its weapons pointed impotently at the floor. The first mate remained silent, while his eyes roved the room. Occasionally mining complexes left a few defense robots unjacked from the network, to keep them immune from viruses. Such robots were usually sound
activated. Satisfied nothing was moving, Roberts indicated a door at the far end of the room with his hepler pistol. Nicole Lowry crept beside him
and peered down the corridor, then activated a handheld computer.

She nodded and gave a thumbs-up—the signal that the path was clear and that they were heading in the right direction. They proceeded down the corridor until they came to a gaping door that led into a vast, darkened space.

Lowry activated a button just inside the door and banks of overhead lights flickered to life revealing a warehouse-like space containing processed bars of erdonium ore neatly stacked on anti-graviton carts. Roberts looked around to make sure there were no defense robots in sight. Finally, he relaxed and holstered his hepler pistol. Turning to face the landing party, he smiled. “This should pay our salaries for a few months.”

“All right, you swabs,” called Lowry. “Start moving those anti-grav carts to the launch. Step to!”

Just as the Legacy’s crewmembers began to fan out, the door to the storeroom slammed shut.
***
On Legacy’s battle deck, a pale man with stringy hair called Computer stood against one wall. His eyes roved back and forth as he communicated with the ship’s computer revealed by the metal grating beneath his feet. A moment later, his eyes ceased their near-constant motion and he turned to face the ship’s captain, Ellison Firebrandt.
“A New Earth battleship has just entered the system,” reported Computer.

The captain—a tall man dressed all in black with long, red hair worn loose about his shoulders—spat a curse. “Contact Roberts. Tell him to get back to the ship as fast as he can.”

Computer’s eyes roved back and forth for a moment. “Sir, Mr. Roberts is calling us.”

“Put him on,” ordered the captain.

“Captain, something’s gone wrong.” Roberts’s voice came through the intercom. “We just located the processed erdonium when the doors
to the storage facility closed behind us. We’re locked in. I’ve double checked the computer here. The virus is still active and defense systems
are shut down.”

“Could they have been commanded from outside?” asked Firebrandt.

“I suppose it’s possible.” Roberts sounded uncertain.

“A New Earth battleship just jumped into the system.” Firebrandt stepped toward the front of the battle deck and looked into the holographic tank. He saw a three-dimensional representation of a nondescript black cylinder hovering near a gray potato-shaped rock—the Legacy next to the mining asteroid. Some distance away, a marble-sized blue sphere that indicated the position of the New Earth battleship moved toward them.

“How could they know about us?”

“I don’t know,” said the captain. “Hang tight. We’ll find a way to get you out of there.”

“Captain, you should leave. We’ll be okay till you get back.”

“I’m not leaving you, Mr. Roberts.”

A new voice cut in on the transmission. “This is Captain William R. Stewart of the Battleship New New Jersey calling the unidentified ship at MX-271. State your purpose in this sector.” In the holographic tank, the blue sphere morphed into a menacing black cylinder bristling with gun ports. Legacy’s scanners had obtained a clear reading of the ship.

Firebrandt took a deep breath and let it out slowly. He had tangled with Captain Stewart of the New New Jersey before. He looked at Computer
and instructed him to open a channel. A moment later, Computer nodded.

“This is the Earth vessel Dragonfly. We’ve sustained micrometeorite damage and sent a party down to the asteroid to look for repair parts.”
Firebrandt’s transmission was greeted with silence. He stepped back toward Computer and made a slashing motion across his throat,
then looked at the helmsman, Kheir el-Din who stood at an upright console in the center of the battle deck—the ship’s wheel. “What are
they up to?”

“Scanning us, I’ll wager,” said the helmsman. “Checking to see if we really are the good ship Dragonfly.”

“What are they even doing here?” Firebrandt’s eyebrows came together. “I thought the New Earthers were tied up with that stupid blockade of Alpha Coma Berenices’s jump point to Rd’dyggia.”

“The New Earthers say the Rd’dyggians are making weapons for the Alpha Comans.” Kheir el-Din toyed with a short string of beads strung in his long, black beard. “I thought you would support the blockade.”

The captain shrugged. “The Rd’dyggians make weapons for everyone. I have no objection to the blockade. I just don’t see how it will do any good.”

“MX-271 is on the jump path from the New New Jersey’s patrol sector to the blockaded jump point,” reported Computer.

The captain rubbed his bare chin. “They must have been summoned to the blockade.”

“The New New Jersey is powering up weapons,” said Computer.

In the holographic viewer, a translucent sphere appeared around the battleship indicating the range of its guns. Legacy was nearly within that sphere.

The captain pointed to the helmsman. “Prepare for emergency intrasystem jump.”

“Powering up the engines,” reported el-Din.

“This is Captain Stewart of the New New Jersey. We have scanned your vessel and determined that you are, in fact, the fugitive Gaean Privateer Legacy. Captain Firebrandt, I am authorized to destroy your vessel.”

Continued in Space Battles: Full Throttle Space Tales #6 which you can purchase here starting now (preorders end April 17).

Preorder SPACE BATTLES & Get My Other Davi Rhii Short Story Free

Published on by Bryan11 Comments

To celebrate the release of Space Battles: Full Throttle Space Tales #6, my first anthology as editor, I am giving away Rivalry On A Sky Course free at smashwords. If you preorder Space Battles and send me your order number via email or here, I’ll send you a code to download Rivalry for free. Rivalry and my Space Battles story “The Hand Of God” are the only current short stories set in the universe of my Davi Rhii novels, The Worker Prince and The Returning (forthcoming this June). For info on Space Battles , Rivalry On A Sky Course and The Worker Prince, click the links below the pics.

https://bryanthomasschmidt.net/the-worker-prince/ - Read about my debut novel here

 

 


 

 

Read about my debut novel here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Read about Rivalry here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Read more about Space Battles here. Through April 17, Flying Pen Press has it at 40% off on preorders!

 

 

SPACE BATTLES Author Profile: Meet Simon C. Larter

Published on by Bryan5 Comments

The third story in Space Battles is the third anthology sale for Author Simon C. Larter. A construction worker by day, who describes himself better than I ever could as: “Flash fiction specialist and writer of short stories that range from depressing to violent and depressing. Not a poet. Novelist-in-the-making. Tragic aesthete and lover of martinis. A tad ornery, most days.” He’s also a respected expert (at least in his own mind) on Vodka, of which he is an unabashed fan. Larter’s other stories can be found in the anthologies Notes From The Underground and Short Story America, Volume 1. A husband and father based in New Jersey, Larter can be found on Twitter as @simonclarter, at Facebook or via his blog/website at www.simonclarter.com.

BTS: How did you find out about the Space Battles anthology and what made you decide to submit?

Simon C. Larter: I found out about the Space Battles anthology through some guy I met on Twitter and then at World Fantasy Convention in 2010. He turned out to be the editor. Win!

 BTS: This is your first science fiction anthology sale, correct? Tell us a little about “Like So Much Refuse.” What’s it about? Where’d this particular idea come from?

SCL: Yes. “Like So Much Refuse” started out as a much longer story, but was mercilessly hacked down to meet the word count requirements of the antho. I’d wanted to tell a multiple-POV story that highlighted the senseless slaughter of war while avoiding the traditional “good” protagonist and “bad” antagonist trope. I lost a lot of dead bodies in the editing process, but still tried to maintain a kind of moral ambiguity when it came to the two main characters. Rarely is war about moral absolutes, and I wanted to explore that idea in a futuristic setting. Also, I just liked the idea of guerilla warfare in space.

BTS: How’d you get started as a writer?

SCL: I wrote for most of my life, up through high school, but got all practical in my first run of college and decided to get an engineering degree. (Something about being able to make a decent living really appealed to me, I guess.) It took a helluva long time, during which I wrote next to nothing, but I eventually got that degree. The last liberal arts class I took before graduating, though, was a fiction writing course. It lit the fire in me again, and I’ve been writing ever since.

BTS: Do you have plans to do any more with this universe?

SCL: Nah. This was a one-shot deal. The Outworlders are just going to fall to squabbling amongst themselves after the fall of the Confederation anyway, and how much fun is it to write about squabbles?

BTS: Where’d your love of SF come from?

SCL: I would read anything and everything as a child, if it looked even remotely like fantasy or science fiction. Probably the first sci-fi I ever read was Lewis’s Out of the Silent Planet, but I’ve devoured everything from Brian Aldiss’s Helliconia series to Tad Williams’ Otherland books since then. Anything that lets me escape into another world for a while is okay in my book.

BTS: What are your writing goals? Full time? Novelist? Short story writer? All of the above?

SCL: I’d love to supplement the dayjob income with novel sales, and the occasional short story or flash fiction publication. Writing full time, of course, would be the ideal, but I’d be happy with enough extra money to keep me in vacations and vodka. You know how it is.

BTS: What other projects do you have in the works that we can look forward to?

SCL: I’ve a spec-fic novella in the works for a friend’s micropress, and a noir novella that’s almost submission-ready. After those are loose in the world, it’s back to the full-length novels, with occasional forays into shorter fiction when the mood strikes me. Which I’m sure will be often. Apparently the ideas don’t stop just because you don’t have time to write them all. Why is that, anyway?

Here’s an excerpt from “Like So Much Refuse,” Simon’s thrilling adventure about a saboteur taking on an experienced Admiral and her crew: 

Like So Much Refuse

Simon C. Larter

Engel left the airlock at a dead run and leaped outward, snapping his body rigid as he plunged into open space. He felt the vibration in his chest as he engaged the thrustpack, the shift in direction. Below him, the Galaxy gleamed dully in the light from the distant star at the center of the system. Its exhaust cones, black and mountainous, bulged from its aftsection: his destination. He triggered the thrusters again, briefly, then settled into the drop, the only sound in his ears the mild hiss of his rebreather and the crackle of the propaganda transmission from the distant command ship.

Behind him, his shuttle’s autopilot engaged—flames flared in Engel’s peripheral vision—and then shut off, the tiny
Mark IV shorthopper drifting out and away from the planet’s
gravitational field and the starcruiser’s light guns. He’d watched
several of his comrades’ ships strobe space with their atoms as he
made his approach run. Damn amateurs, he thought. Who trained
them, anyway?

But now there was nothing for him to do but plummet planetward,
watching as the Galaxy grew ever larger through the visor of his helmet.
His jaw tightened as he let his gaze glide across the gun batteries
and launch tubes ranked along the cruiser’s broad flanks. How many
lives had those weapons snuffed out? How many friends had tasted
vacuum because of them?

No more, he thought grimly. It ends tonight. If not me, another
will make it through.

Explosions winked in the darkness like static sparks as the Galaxy’s
flak guns opened fire in earnest. The city-sized exhaust cones loomed
closer. Engel grinned.

***
“It’s nothing but small craft, sir,” the scanner tech said. He turned
in his seat to regard the Admiral. “They come almost within flak range
then peel off or go adrift. Most of them are short-hop, single-man
shuttles, too. Not even interceptors.”

Admiral Johanna Stanche ran stiff fingers through her graying,
close-cropped hair and glared at the tactical projection at the far end
of the bridge. The threatening twinges that had been spiking the base
of her skull for the past two hours were coalescing into a serious headache.
She grimaced and kneaded the back of her neck. “Shuttles,” she
repeated.

“Yes, sir. The light cruisers and corvettes are keeping well back.”

“They’re testing our defenses,” Commander Martin Vandermeer
said. “Feeling us out.”

Stanche glanced toward him. A good man, she thought. Textbook
leader, but terminally lacking in imagination. For a moment, she
allowed herself to miss Marta’s sharp mind and ready grin, her
quiet support. But Vice-Admiral Marta Janowik had been killed three
months ago when the second to last remaining Confederation starcruiser
had been blasted to particles by the betrayers’ fusion bombs,
shredded and scattered like so much refuse. Now the Galaxy was the
last symbol of a dying dream, she the dream’s last line of defense.
Vandermeer’s stolid face was set in a scowl as he watched the
shuttles drifting in the TAC, an image winking out every so often as
the flak guns did their work. Beyond the swarm of small craft, hovering
at the edge of scanner range, the larger ships crouched, spider-like,
a promise of violence to come. And at the center of the projection,
the lifeless bulk of planet Arturus K-384 spun slowly on its axis, the
Galaxy a silver shard in its orbit.

“What’s the lower limit of our scanners?” the Admiral asked
suddenly.

“Sir?”

“Minimum energy signature. Craft size. What’s the smallest thing
they’re set to detect?”

The scanner tech turned to face her again. “Two meters, perhaps,
sir? Energy sig about half a kilowatt.”

“Dammit,” Stanche muttered. Then, “Dial it down. Fifty
centimeters and one hundred Watts. Do it now.” She turned to
Vandermeer. “And scramble the Falcons. All of them. Set the scanners
to rescue mode.”

“Admiral?”

“They’re jet-jockeying in, Vandermeer. Get those Falcons in the
mix, now!”

The Commander saluted crisply and turned to bark orders into the
nearest comm console. Stanche watched as the TAC image blurred,
then resolved into sharper focus once more. She clenched her jaw.
“There you are,” she said softly.

Between the ranks of light craft and the Galaxy, hundreds—perhaps
thousands—of small, humanoid shapes were closing on the starcruiser,
a diffuse, insidious wave.

“Recal the flak guns,” the Admiral said through her teeth. “Set the
bursts to go off closer. I want those jumpers vaporized.”

The bridge snapped into activity as her orders were relayed. On
the TAC, the slight, deadly shapes of the Falcon interceptors began
to appear, streaking out of the launch bays to chart a course for the
incoming enemy.

“Nice try, you sneaky bastards,” she said under her breath. “But
not good enough.”

***
Engel kept his arms tucked tight to his sides as he plummeted
toward the immense engine cowls at the rear of the cruiser—minimum
cross-section. Since his first jetbursts, he’d avoided using the
thrusters—minimum heat signature. With his right hand, he touched
the sleek bulk of the microfusion bomb strapped to his thigh and
grinned through gritted teeth—maximum damage.

The exhaust cones loomed large in his visor. The range numbers
in his HUD spun down so fast they blurred. He turned his head briefly
to watch pointillist flashes of strafe-fire rake through what he knew
was the main drop zone. The kill rate there had to be staggering. He
grimaced. “Requiem in pacem,” he murmured. “Poor bastards.” He
watched for a moment longer, then turned back to regard his target.
It expanded rapidly in front of him, a mountain of metal, coldwelded,
beaten and hardened to withstand the rigors of deep space and
warp travel. When the engines fired, the heat rippling from the metallic
skin would be enough to flash-fry human blood at a distance of a
quarter kilometer. But they were not firing now, and if all went well,
they would fire only once more: to end it. The technology that had enabled
the Confederation would be the means to its final destruction.

He engaged the thrusters, then executed a sustained burn that leadweighted
his body and sent him surging sideways. The blackened edge
of the exhaust cone shot past in his peripheral vision. Engel snapped
his torso forward, jackknifing to switch directions, and cranked the
thrustpack to full. The suddenness of the deceleration rattled his teeth
and tunneled his vision, but when the burn finished, he was floating
again, weightless, staring at a gigantic maw of blistered metal.
He feathered the thrusters once more, pushing himself into the
cavernous space. Tension he didn’t know he’d been retaining drained
from his shoulders as he drifted forward; there were no strafing batteries
in the exhausts. For the moment, he was safe—as safe as anyone could
be while hovering in front of something that produced sun-hot gas and
enough power to propel a million tons of metal death through space.
The deep dark of the exhaust cone swallowed Engel. He was a
glimmer, a speck against its immensity—a speck bearing death. The
bomb at his hip seemed to pulse with potential.

***
The muted buzz of proximity alarms and penetration alerts was
almost constant now, each one a spike in Admiral Stanche’s throbbing
skull. On the TAC, the rain of small craft and jumpers continued,
an unending wave of attackers. The Falcons were carving huge
swaths of destruction through the attack, wiping out jumpers in their
tens, hundreds, yet the assault continued.

And—more worrying—out beyond the thousand and one small
craft, the corvettes and light cruisers were beginning to edge closer.
It didn’t make sense, any way you cut it, she thought. The losses
were staggering on their part. Did they really have so many lives to
throw away? Even in the assault on the central planets they hadn’t
wasted soldiers like this. It was a distraction; it had to be. So what was
coming next?

“How many penetrations now?” she asked.

“One hundred and twelve,” Vandermeer responded without turning.

“All neutralized.”

“Check and recheck every error message in the system. Any other
anomalies, I want to know about them.”

The techs bent again to their work. The Admiral wiped the moisture
from the corners of her eyes with thumb and forefinger, wishing
her headache would subside. But the meds that took the edge off also
felt like they dulled her mind. She couldn’t afford that on a good day.
This was not a good day.

She walked over to lean down next to Vandermeer. “It’s a covering
maneuver,” she said, speaking for his ears alone. “Otherwise it’s
just throwing away lives.”

He glanced sideways at her. “Yes, sir.”

“I get the feeling we’re not going to like what they’re trying to
distract us from.”

“No, sir,” he said. Then, after a pause, “There’s some alerts from
the aft beam injectors. Channel integrity monitors are showing a break
or two. We get those regularly, though—those systems are touchy.”
Stanche didn’t hesitate. “Run a full scan anyway, and get teams on
the way there. Reroute the maintenance bots to those locations. I want
their camera feeds piped here directly.”

Vandermeer saluted. The Admiral nodded a brief acknowledgement
and returned to her station once more. Over a hundred hull penetrations,
she thought. They were getting through. She was going to start losing
people soon, if this went on—a further fraying of the Confederation’s
last tattered shreds. And they had no choice left but to continue fighting.
Every man and woman aboard knew what the PLM did with survivors.
Every channel in the galaxy had broadcast the fate of the Constellation.
She’d had friends on that ship.

“Nav,” she said, still staring at the TAC, “prep the mains. I want
those engines hot and ready.” There was a surprise coming, she knew
it. Perhaps it would be better if they didn’t stick around to find out
what it was. Live to fight another day, she thought wearily.

***
The glow of melting metal hummed in Engel’s peripheral vision
as he floated, weightless, near an injection port at the rear of the blast
chamber. If he engaged the zoom lens on his helmetcam and squinted
back the way he’d come, he could just see the tiny case of the microfusion
bomb where it hung in the chamber’s center, anchored by several
thousand meters of now-invisible fiber. The setup had been painstaking,
but he’d taken more than the necessary time, checking and doublechecking
the location, the connections. To come so far and fail due to
a foolish mistake would be inexcusable. He turned back to watch the
white-hot metal cool to red, the last shreds of his thermocord graying
and flaking to dust.

A circular chunk of alloy loosened and drifted away from the
exhaust cone wall. Engel batted it aside and leaned close, flicking
his miniflood to life. A beam of light pierced the darkness, hazed
by residual gas from the vaporized metal, and gleamed on the walls
of the injection port beyond. He played the floodlight over the blank,
metalloid walls for a moment, then reached forward and pulled himself
through the hole.

Reaching for the second thermocord coiled at his waist, Engel laid
it in place on the wall and retreated into the immense dark once more.
White heat lit the tunnel and triggered the autodim on his visor. When
it had subsided, he placed his palms on the melted metal edge of the
hole and drifted into the port again. Now the miniflood illuminated a
ragged, empty circle in the polished perfection of the injector—beyond
it a near impenetrable tangle of ducts, wiring, coolant hoses. He
slipped through the hole, twisting to avoid the thin traces of sensor
wire, and reached for the floating disc of metal set loose by the thermocord
burn through.

Turning, he replaced the disc in its hole and began to weld it back
in place. Wouldn’t be a perfect repair, he thought, but Command had
been clear: it only needed to hold for a few seconds. Once the subatomic
stream hit the burn chamber, the bomb he’d planted would do
its work in short order. The major portion of his job was complete.

And should the bombs fail to work as designed? There was
always plan B.

Through the dark plastic of his visor he watched the spitting,
sparking light of his welding arc trace its slow circle, a countdown
clockface, measuring the minutes until the end of it all.

Continued in Space Battles: Full Throttle Space Tales #6 which you can purchase here starting now (preorders end April 17).

SPACE BATTLES Author Profile: Meet Author Gene Mederos

Published on by Bryan1 Comment

The second story in Space Battles: Full Throttle Space Tales #6 is by Gene Mederos. Born in Cuba and raised in Brooklyn, he wrote his first story in second grade. Mederos received a BFA in Theater from the University of Miami and has worked as an illustrator, graphic designer and various odd jobs including a seven year stretch at the The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in NewYork City. In 2007, he discovered filmmaking and currently teaches editing and filmmaking at the Santa Fe Community College. Most recent stories in print include the stories “Moons of Blood and Amber” in the Tangle XY anthology published by Blind Eye Press, and “A Touch of Frost” in the Space Horrors: Full-Throttle Space Tales #4 anthology published by Flying Pen Press. He can be found online at Facebook or via his website at http://lostsaints.com.

BTS: How did you find out about the Space Battles anthology and what made you decide to submit?

Gene Mederos: I was in the Space Horrors anthology and I like the imprint, it hearkens back to yesteryear.

BTS: Tell us a little about “The Thirteens.” What’s it about? Where’d this particular idea come from?

GM: At the core, the story is about tolerance for diversity, even toleration for the intolerant. It’s an old Sci-Fi trope, that the only thing that will unite warring parties is a bigger, badder alien or even the unknown.  As for the inspiration, I have friends from the extreme left to the extreme right, politically, so it wasn’t hard to craft the mindsets for the characters.

BTS: You’ve contributed to multiple anthologies in the Full Throttle Space Tales series. Are they tied to this story in any way?

GM: They nominally take place in the same universe, one where physics is not as abridged as on Star Trek and Star Wars, but faster than light travel is available, and about two hundred years in the future.

BTS: How’d you come to be involved with this series?

GM: My friend Trent Zelazny put me in touch with David Lee Summers who was putting together the Space Horrors anthology. It’s all about who you know…

BTS: How’d you get started as a writer?

GM: I’ve always loved stories, and am always telling stories.  It was a natural progression to start writing stories to share with others that way.

BTS: Where’d your interest in SFF come from?

GM: Comic books, the original Lost in Space and Star Trek, and the first musty hard cover edition of Dune I found at the local library.

BTS: Do you have plans to do any more with this universe?

GM: Yes, as a vehicle, or a common canvas, not necessarily with any of the characters already seen in print, but cameos are fun.

BTS: What other projects do you have in the works that we can look forward to?

GM: I have lots in the works, lol, most writers do. I’ve submitted a story to Bad Ass Fairies 4 which I hope they’ll publish, and am hunkering down to write an extreme planet story for another anthology, and I have the requisite novels.  But I believe mastery of the short story form is a prerequisite to a good novel, so I consider myself still in training.

Here’s an excerpt from “The Thirteens,” Gene’s exciting story from Space Battles:

The Thirteens

Gene Mederos

Nestled deeply in the foam mattress of the semi-luxurious hotel suite her rank afforded her, Captain Andromeda Sax was sound asleep when her com went off. The double pulse told her it was something important enough to warrant a secure connection. Even less than half awake her hand automatically flew to the spot on her jaw below her right ear. She pressed the small stud embedded there under her skin.

“Go ahead.”

“Captain, a bogey has entered the system,” the officer of the watch on board her ship, La Espada de la Libertad, informed her.
That could have been anywhere from four to six hours ago, depending on which of the outer system beacons had first detected
the incoming ship and transmitted the alert. A bogey was a ship that did not, or could not, transmit a valid ID code. It could be a smuggler, a legitimate freighter with a screwy comp—or it could be the enemy. Sax allowed herself a small smile; after all, there was no
one around to see it.

“Recall the crew, priority one.” That gave the crew ten minutes to
get back aboard the ship. She spared one last glance at her room. Aquarii
Station was on the frontier, but it still managed to offer most of the comforts
of the more cosmopolitan stations of the home-worlds. Accommodations
on La Espada were much more austere. She smiled again.
Five minutes later she strode onto the bridge. She hadn’t really had
time to dress, just comb her short-cropped jet-black hair and throw on
her officer’s greatcoat, but the voluminous garment covered her from
neck to ankles. And if anyone noticed she was wearing slippers instead
of boots, they wouldn’t dare comment on it. The guards at the
door snapped to attention. The crew on the bridge was all in uniform
and seated at their stations. She always kept a full watch on duty while
the rest of the crew took liberty.

“Inform the stationmaster we are launching to investigate,” she instructed
the com officer, then requested the general hail. “Emergency separation from
Aquarii station in T-minus four minutes.” That was sure to make the stragglers
scramble, for anyone left behind would have to fend for themselves out of
their own pocket. Stations were notorious for separating crew from their coin,
and the community service often imposed to pay off a debt was the most odious
of station maintenance work. Some of the crew would not return, for the
ship had its own share of odious duties as well as providing a greater chance
of getting killed. She’d deal with any of those persons when she returned. She
never thought ‘if’.

“Release hook-ups,” she ordered on the mark.

“Hook-ups released,” the officer at conn replied. She heard the
usual chorus of clicks as everyone strapped themselves in.

La Espada was now completely on its own power, air and water.
Sax strapped herself into her chair.

“Cast off.”

The station’s magnetic clamps released the ship and she imagined
the hiss of air as the powerful propellant tanks pushed them away
from the station and felt the familiar tug as the gravity provided by the
station’s rotation gave way to the gravity generated by the ship’s sudden
acceleration. She felt the weight ease an instant before the conn
announced they were standing clear of the station.

“Full sail,” she ordered. The most insane and courageous members
of her crew were the riggers. At her command they jetted out in EVA
suits along the masts and struts to unfurl the giant micro-thin solar sails.
The riggers claimed watching the golden sails catch the rays of the sun
was akin to a religious experience. She’d never seen the phenomenon
herself, but figured it must be quite a sight if it could induce one to hurl
oneself into the void to see it.

Acceleration under sail would increase slowly, but surely.

“Begin rotation,” she ordered.

“Beginning rotation,” the engineering deck replied on the ship-wide
hail, the only warning the crew would get that up and down had to be
taken into account again. The sound of the engines that rotated the cylindrical
ship within its frame of struts and masts starting up did not need to
be imagined. It reverberated and shook throughout the ship. Fortunately,
once the ship began to spin at speed, inertia was maintained by magnetic
induction and the engines would be almost silent.

The captain felt herself sink ever so slightly into the cushioning. A
thought, via implant and wireless transmission, was all it took to make
the chair turn slightly on its horizontal axis. She, like the crew, enjoyed
the automated, computer guided functions on the ship while she
could. During battle, with the comp taken offline, everything had to
be done manually. The navigator’s station came into view and with it
the senior nav officer, Poole. This was the one crewmember she would
never leave behind. As she understood it, the ship ran on numbers, and
this was the man who crunched them when the comp was down.
Poole raised his head from his displays, as if he could feel her
scrutiny like a sensorite. Like all the human beings from his planet,
Cygni-I, his skin had a slight blue cast and his hair was colorless.
These obvious and innocuous signs of the genetic modifications
undertaken by his ancestors to survive on their relatively oxygenpoor
world were all that the Purists needed to hate Poole’s kind. Sax
thought them fools. If anything, the Cygni were far more dangerous
for what they had done to their minds.

“Have you correlated a course, Mr. Poole?”

“Yes, captain.”

“Let’s have it then.”

Immediately, a heads up display appeared before her, La Espada’s
course outlined against the current layout of the system in a bright
certain blue. Lines shaded from yellow to green showed the most
probable courses of the bogey, extrapolated second by second as more
sensor data came in from the beacons arrayed throughout the system.
She was pleased to see that the most probable vectors would intercept
with her ship well above the plane of the ecliptic, where there would
be plenty of fighting room, if necessary. She knew that the universe
was more empty space than matter, but to her the Aquarii system had
always seemed cluttered with asteroids, comets and other debris.

Debris that could damage her ship.

She willed La Espada to go faster, and closed her eyes to imagine
the nonexistent creaking of the rigging and masts as light pushed
the solar sails out against the star’s pull on the ship. She’d been on a
sailing ship once, on the oceans of Maravilla, before the Associated
Worlds lost the Lalande system to the Purists. Someday, she meant to
win that world back. But since the faster than light engine could not be
used anywhere near a star’s gravity well, the ship could go faster only
as they got farther from the star. She could order a burn, and kick the
ship up to her full speed of a hundred kilometers per second, roughly
a third the speed of light. But if she were headed for battle, she would
be wise to reserve all the fuel in the tanks for maneuvers.

It would take a little under thirty hours for the ships to meet, and
there was much to be done. “Steady as she goes,” she ordered Poole
as she turned her chair to line up with the exit from the bridge. This
brought Augusto Lo into view. His bronze-brown skin was a few
shades lighter than the captain’s, his eyes and tousled hair darker. He
was actually earth-born, yet had rejected the Purist philosophy and
immigrated to an Associate world as a youth. He was slouched at his
usual station at the rear of the bridge, his eyes half closed, his head
resting on his fist, his other hand fiddling idly with the buckles on his
disheveled jumpsuit. To all appearances he was oblivious to what was
going on around him. But it was all an act. The captain knew that the
‘State Liaison Officer’ never missed a thing that happened on the ship.
So she wasn’t the least bit surprised when he came up behind her in
the corridor as she waited for the lift. The guards wouldn’t stop him from
coming after her like that, after all, they ultimately answered to him.

“Odd, isn’t it?”

She raised an eyebrow in reply.

“If I’m not mistaken, that bogey is following the same trajectory
as the last Purist ship that attacked this system.”

The captain nodded. “Yes, I’d noticed that.”

“But that approach gives you, the defender, the weather gauge. The
bogey has to expend fuel to fight the same solar wind that La Espada
has at her back, filling our sails, leaving it less fuel to maneuver. These
were decisive factors in our victory against the last incursion.”
Again, the captain raised her brow.

“And your superior skill at command and tactics, of course,” he
amended with a small grin. Sax smiled in return, more because of his use of
the archaic term ‘weather gauge’ than his sardonic compliment. “Everything
means something,” he said in return.

“Then figure it out,” she said, after pausing for a moment to visualize
her deck number.

Lo nodded. “Nice slippers,” she heard him say as the lift doors
closed.

An hour before intercept the captain was touring her ship as she
was wont to do before a battle. And she had no doubt that there would be
a battle—the bogey’s course was lining up exactly with the last Purist
ship’s incursion. A statistical impossibility, Poole had assured her.
So this ship was using the last ship’s comp data, possibly retrieved
from the latter’s logs, which would have been downloaded into a locator
beacon before the ship went into battle. It made no sense to her,
but then, she thought the whole Purist agenda made little sense. She
entered the rigger’s loft in the core of the ship. Since the ship rotated
around the core, there was no gravity in the long, cold cylinder. It
was the perfect place to store cargo, house the ship’s engines and, of
course, the riggers.

A rigger spotted her and snapped to attention, his elongated
prehensile toes grasping a length of cable to steady himself. He
was blond and blue-eyed, not too bad looking, with a crooked nose
and a wry twist to his mouth that suggested he was always smiling.
He was tall and thin, his arms and legs of equal length, with all twenty
digits being equally dexterous. His name was Jaller. He’d served on
her ship for the past four years and she knew him to be brave, loyal,
and kind. And even though the rigger’s section of the core was only
partially heated, he was naked, as was their wont. Diversity. The idea
and the reality that the Purists condemned as unnatural.

She drifted among the riggers, male and females both, for no few
minutes, praising their courage, thanking them for their service and
exhorting them to battle. Despite her duty uniform and her boots, she
still managed to skillfully make her way in Zero G among the giant
web of cables that the riggers called home. Their ancestors had destroyed
their world in a paroxysm of industrialization that had seen the
world laid waste in just six generations after colonization. The riggers
had been forced to evacuate onto space stations and ships and had
during the centuries of the sundering, when all of humanity’s worlds
had lost contact with each other and faster than light travel had been
abandoned, modified themselves to live in micro-gravity.
Members of no fewer than five of the existing seven modified human
races served on her ship and of the remaining two, the Aquarii had inadvertently
made themselves highly susceptible to space sickness and the folk of
Twobit were devout pacifist.

Her last stop on her tour was always the medical deck. Doctor
Stures was a sensorite, his people hailed from the dust-cloaked planet
of Gliese 876, Umbra. The world was metal poor and had erratic
magnetic fields so technology had been difficult to maintain.

Without much artificial illumination, the people of that world had
modified their other senses to compensate for the gloom. His skin
was blue-black with raised oblong bumps that ran from his hairline
to his jaw. She knew them to be receptors, allowing the doctor
to feel minute changes in temperature, in air pressure and displacement,
even vibrations. His eyes were hidden behind a band of dark
glass, to protect them from the ship’s bright illumination. He greeted
her in his usual way.

“Ah, Captain, in excellent health I see.” And by see he actually
meant by smell, by feeling her body temperature and by hearing her
heart beat in her chest. “All is in readiness for the coming battle.”
She had expected no less. His people were sensitive by nature and
design, but they were also pragmatists. He wasn’t one of those medical
officers who questioned the need for battle.

“We don’t know that the bogey is hostile—” she began to say.

“Pshaw,” the doctor interjected. A liberty he could take here, on
his deck. “From what I’ve heard, how could it be anything else?”

“Indeed,” the captain said, raising her brow. News travelled fast
on a ship. She believed the ancient term was ‘scuttlebutt’. Satisfied
that her ship was in order, she headed for the bridge.

As the captain stepped onto the bridge, the ship’s executive officer,
Commander Ortencia, saluted and left. The XO’s station during battle
was located close to the core, half the ship’s length from the bridge, a
hopefully safe distance from anything that might happen to or on the
bridge. The commander would monitor all activities on the bridge from
there and issue orders in support of the captain’s activities during battle.
In exchange, Major Drummond, the Captain of the Guard, took a station
on the bridge. When ships sailed on oceans his troops would have been
called marines.

“We are coming to transmission and targeting range,” Poole said.

“Furl sails, retract masts,” she ordered the riggers. “Advise the
ship and begin viral transmission,” she ordered the com officer.
She waited until all decks had acknowledged.

“Take the computer network offline, Mr. Poole.”

A few seconds later she saw the board at the Armscomp station
light up.

“Bogey firing missiles!”

Continued in Space Battles: Full Throttle Space Tales #6 which you can purchase here starting now (preorders end April 17).

SPACE BATTLES Author Profile: Meet Author Anna Paradox

Published on by Bryan1 Comment

The author of the opening story for the anthology Space Battles: Full Throttle Space Tales #6, Anna Paradox enjoys writing, science fiction (sometimes the two combined) and poker. Her first novel, The Cracked Bell, is available as a free download. Her short fiction has been published in the award-winning anthology Polaris: A Celebration of Polar Science,  in the previous Full Throttle Space Tales anthologies Space Pirates: Full-Throttle Space Tales #1, Space Sirens: Full Throttle Space Tales #2 and Space Horrors: Full Throttle Space Tales #4, and in Tales of the Talisman. Her second novel Embers of Humanity is here Her workbook for writers, From Wishing to Writing is here. She can be found online at Facebook and via her website at www.annaparadox.com.

BTS: How did you find out about the Space Battles anthology and what made you decide to submit?

 Anna Paradox: I’ve been following the Full Throttle Space Tales series from the beginning. It has had a remarkably high percentage of stories I enjoy reading. So when I heard about Space Battles, I thought, there’s a theme I can do something with, and I was glad to submit a story.

BTS: Tell us a little about “Between The Rocks.” What’s it about? Where’d this particular idea come from?

AP: I’ve been thinking a lot about how people will expand into the solar system. There’s a lot of room out there—room enough for a variety of different approaches to colonization. Like the immigrants to the U.S., some may go seeking freedom they can’t have at home. “Between the Rocks” tells of one group fighting to preserve their homes and families built by hard work on an asteroid from another group that sees what they have and decides to steal it.

BTS: You’ve contributed to several anthologies in the Full Throttle Space Tales series. Are they tied to this story in any way?

AP: My stories all loosely fit into a future where humans are expanding into space. None of them share any characters. In my Space Pirates story, we’ve colonized the Moon. In the Space Horrors story, we make regular trips to Mars. In “Between the Rocks,” we are starting to colonize the asteroids and outer moons. My story in Space Sirens is set in the furthest future, since we’ve reached other solar systems and established trade with other intelligent species.

BTS: How’d you come to be involved with this series?

AP: I had the good fortune to share a panel at Coppercon with David Lee Summers, and he told me about the first anthology, Space Pirates. I was pleased to submit a story, and even happier to have it accepted!

BTS: How’d you get started as a writer?

AP: I started writing stories in grade school. One early piece was a satire about the sad state of the food in the school cafeteria. I’ve continued to write short stories ever since. I wrote one novel after college, and another for Nanowrimo in 2002 or 2003. My first sales were poker articles. Then I sold a story to Julie Czerneda for her anthology Polaris. Science fiction is where my writer’s heart yearns to play. However, most of my working time goes to helping other people write and, for the moment, to graduate school.

BTS: Do you have plans to do any more with this universe?

AP: I have several novels outlined, and a couple of them belong in this universe. To me, this looks like the shape of the future I’d want to live in. The best long run goal I can think of for humanity is to play so that future generations can have more choices. That means giving us more places to live as well as taking care of this planet—to me it makes no more sense to foul our nest than to never leave it. So if I have no reason to make a different assumption, my stories tend to fit in this universe.

BTS: What other projects do you have in the works that we can look forward to?

AP: The novel that I’m most excited about now is called A Game of Christmas. Just when humanity has worked out how to stop violence against each other—including some fairly draconian laws against any depiction of using force against another human, such as most of our current movies and video games—we are attacked by aliens who have no such compunctions. That leaves our only defense in the hands of a loose coalition of underground gamers and weapon collectors. I hope to reorganize my time so that I can have it out in 2014. Goodness, how time flies!

Here’s an excerpt from Anna’s fast paced action story “Between The Rocks” which opens the Space Battles anthology:

Between the Rocks

Anna Paradox

“I can’t wait to get home,” Xiao said, taking off his helmet.

We were all thinking it. Home was Old Lumpy, an asteroid hauled into Jupiter orbit and refining fuel for passing ships. In a decade of habitation, we’d slowly built ourselves comforts like hot showers and hydroponics parks. With our hold full of ore from another, less welcoming rock, it would be good to go wash the grit off ourselves and cook a few hot meals.

“Give me a flight check, then, and we’ll be on our way,” I said.

“Yes, Ma’am,” said Xiao with a wide grin.

Four of us ran The Courtly Vizier. Despite the tony name, our ship
was little more than a utility truck in space. We alternated scoop runs
on Jupiter’s atmosphere with mineral runs to other local rocks, to supply
the refinery on Old Lumpy. Faster, sleeker ships bought our fuel to
venture farther out in the solar system. The Viz turned slowly and accelerated
like a peashooter-propelled iceberg, and quarters were tight,
but she’d been built to last. I gave her bulkhead an affectionate pat
when we’d completed the flight check and lifted off for home.
With Xiao handling the engines, and Jackson keeping his eyes on
the monitor, I had time to revise my letter to Earth. It wasn’t going
well. If I sounded too needy, we might get dregs, and if I didn’t make
our case, we might get nothing at all—either could be a disaster. I’d
just about decided to join Nogal where she was taking her sleep shift
in the two-bunk closet we called the cabin when Jackson spoke up.

“That’s odd. Grandpa isn’t answering the hail.”

I glanced over to where he sat fiddling with the radio tuning.
“Loose wire?”

He shook his head. “I can read the buoys fine. Although…” He
flipped quickly through the frequencies. “Only the sunward buoys
are responding. The leeward ones—I’m not getting anything from
them.”

We had four buoys each leading and trailing the ore processing
center in Jupiter orbit. They gave us early warning of storms below
and visitors above. To have four go out at once—felt like more than
chance.

“Xiao, ease her down. Let’s come in quietly. We’ll get a look when
we come around Jupiter.”

I rose above my seat as Xiao cut the engines. The Courtly Vizier
continued over the horizon of Jupiter on momentum. I strained forward
against my restraining straps.

“Jackson, get me a magnified view of Old Lumpy.”

How many times had I returned home? This time, something had
changed. The monitor view zoomed in on the asteroid that held our
friends, our families, our food supply, and everything we needed to
refine our fuel and water … a black streak crossed the rise where the
communications tower should have gleamed.

“Helmets! Now!” I thumbed the intercom. “Stasia! Suit up! We
have an emergency.”

“What is that?” asked Xiao.

I pulled my helmet to me, started buckling it on. “It looks like a
burn. I can think of a handful of ways that could happen, and for all of
them, I want your helmet on. Move it, Len!”

Jackson finished sealing his helmet to his suit first. He left monitor
one on Old Lumpy, and on the other two began scans of the region.
Once I was sealed up, I tapped into the suit-to-suit system. “Nogal,
are you suited?”

“Getting there, Captain.” She sounded sleepy.

“Make it fast. Communications are down with home. We may
have trouble.”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

“Jackson, do you see anything moving out there?”

“Nothing yet. Scanning.”

Xiao hovered his hands over the engine controls. “Captain, what
happened? Was there a fuel explosion?”

“That … would be the most positive possibility. I don’t think it’s
likely though. Jackson, check my thinking. What do you make of that
black streak?”

“Like someone deliberately turned their engines on our communications
tower.”

“And that would be the worst possibility.” The black mark tapered
at each end. I could now make out the silvery slag that had been the
comm tower—fortunately unmanned—right in the center of the mark.

“But I think that’s it.”

Between us and home lay a few dozen large rocks. Big enough to
hide a ship? Would they know where we were coming from?
Jackson studied war, played battle games. I’d watched him arranging
the ships on the screen, maneuvering for position against a
computer opponent. “Which way will they expect us to dodge?”
He hesitated a moment. “New players tend to dodge straight right
or left. Up has tactical advantages, since we’re in Jupiter’s gravity
well. I’m not sure how much he’s thought about this.”

“Who would do this?” asked Xiao.

“Take us towards eight o’clock, full burn on my mark. Mark in
thirty seconds.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Nogal, are you suited and strapped in back there?”

Her voice came back over the suit system, no longer sleepy. “Yes,
all connected, Captain.”

“Good.” I watched the timer count down the seconds. “Mark,
Xiao. Now!”

The Viz shuddered as the engines pumped directly to full. The
acceleration pressed me into the seat, and I slid slightly to the right.
Only a little. The Viz was born on Luna, and our max acceleration
was three times Earth gravity. We could direct at most half of that laterally.
The rest was forward motion only. Fortunately, we had plenty
of fuel. We’d made it a habit since the refinery went live.

Xiao’s question still hung in the air. “Who? As far as I know,
there’s only a handful of ships nearby, and none of them have a reason
for this.”

“Right,” said Jackson. “The Feds have three cruisers—and they’d
send a diplomat if they had a problem with us. Our last customer headed
outward three weeks ago.”

“Aliens?” asked Xiao.

“This isn’t what I’d hope for first contact,” I said. “Keep your
mind on your driving, Xiao, and we may know who soon.”

Jackson flipped a rotating series of images onto the monitors.

I watched them go by. Xiao held our course. I thought about our
options. We had no guns. There were a couple small explosives we
used to loosen ore from asteroids. Our drive glowed brightly behind
us—and we could shift it thirty degrees to any side over the course
of a few seconds. We had a cargo hold full of ore. Unless they’d stay
put long enough for us to apply our jackhammer and shovels to their
hull, that was it.

Another image flipped away from the monitor. Then it flipped back.

“Do you see that, Captain?” asked Jackson.

I stared at the image. “What do you see?”

“That glint, underneath the asteroid, to the right.”

Then I spotted it—something shiny and metallic revealed where the rough contours of the asteroid left a gap.

Continued in Space Battles: Full Throttle Space Tales #6 which you can purchase here starting now (preorders end April 17).