Six Scifi Stories Volume Two

By Robert Jeschonek

In these pages, Robert T. 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 literally 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 T. 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:

"One Awake in All the World": Stalked by hordes of savage creatures, space exterminators Nona Stiletto and Pass Candle fight a war for survival against impossible odds. Their only hope: an abandoned alien child who might be the last of her species left alive.

"Give the Hippo What He Wants": In the baseball league of the future, losing the World Series will get you the death penalty. Anti-MVP Thal Simoleon chokes because of an opera-singing pink hippo that only he can see. But when he goes on the run, he can't escape that damn hippo, which just might be leading him toward the final inning of his life.

"Teacher of the Century": Welcome to the school of tomorrow, a nightmare of high-tech savagery. Tribes of genetically and cybernetically enhanced students rule the classroom. Weaponized parental A.I. drones terrorize teachers. One teacher stands alone against the insanity, but her old-school ways might be the death of her. Will she sacrifice everything to protect one perfect student?

"Off the Face of the Earth": When a little boy disappears off the face of the Earth, his good-for-nothing father turns over a new leaf and sets out to track him down...but it takes a strange visitor from the future to point him in the right direction. Has the little boy been swept into a horrifying hell on Earth, or is he bound for a miraculous world beyond forever?

"Something Borrowed, Something Doomed": The wildshiners of Best Virginia make bioengineering seem like magic. But the genebillies of the prank-loving Dozen family take it too far when they start out wrecking a wedding and end up bringing on the apocalypse. "Till death do us part" will come a lot sooner than expected—for the whole damn world—unless the bride, Vicky Dozen, can use her wildshiner skills to weave together what her whack-job brothers have torn asunder.

"The Cross-Dressing Cosmic Cortez Rubs Off": Philippa the cross-dressing space Conquistadora will do anything for ratings, but can an alien king change her heart with his mystical secrets?

Reviews

"...Robert Jeschonek is a towering talent..." – Mike Resnick, Hugo and Nebula Award-winning author

On "One Awake in All the World": A "Standout selection...," "an unlikely love story that pits two space-faring 'exterminators' against a horde of nightmarish monstrosities." – Publishers Weekly starred review

"Jeschonek ́s stories are delightfully insane, a pleasure to read..." – Fábio Fernandes, Fantasy Book Critic

On "Something Borrowed, Something Doomed": "... off the beaten track, written with an easy grace and skill..." –Mike Resnick, Hugo and Nebula Award-winning author of the Starship series

• Language: English
• Publisher: Robert Jeschonek
• Release date: Sep 20, 2011
• ISBN: 9781466086296

Book preview

Six Scifi Stories Volume Two

Six Scifi Stories Volume Two

Robert Jeschonek

IE Books

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

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Copyright © 2020 by Robert Jeschonek

www.robertjeschonek.com

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Cover Art Copyright © 2020 by Ben Baldwin

www.benbaldwin.co.uk

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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.

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Published in September 2011 by arrangement with the author.

All rights reserved by the author.

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One Awake In All The World originally appeared in Destination Future, Hadley Rille Books, 2010.

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Something Borrowed, Something Doomed originally appeared in Mad Scientist Meets Cannibal, PS Publishing, 2008.

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A Pie Press book

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Published by IE 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

The Spinach Can's Son

Universal Language – a Novel

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