To Honor Her Father

By C. C. Blake

"Tonight, Father, I shall avenge you."

Far from the Galactic Core, law is a business like any other. Justice is another matter. When her Father is murdered and his corpse desecrated, Ling-Ling Pang will not let the murder walk away. Not a simple farmer's daughter, Ling-Ling is a former CORE Intelligence agent, and she will use every resource necessary to have her satisfaction. It's a matter of honor.

With "To Honor Her Father," C. C. Blake turns his thrilling talents to a moving tale of revenge set in the far future. The result is an unforgettable story that only Blake could write, starring one of his strongest female protagonists, yet.

This edition also includes a bonus story, "A Special Set of Skills," which continues Ling-Ling Pang's adventures!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Twice Told Tales II
• Release date: Nov 12, 2012
• ISBN: 9781301921447

C. C. Blake

C.C. Blake has lived across the United States, starting in the suburbs of Detroit, to Massachusetts’ second largest city (Worcester) to the country’s seventh largest city (San Antonio, Texas, that is). He’s has a variety of jobs, working as a substitute teacher, the graveyard shift dishwasher at a haunted Denny’s, lab research monkey and teaching assistant at a second tier college. Currently, he works as an automation consultant for a chemical company on the Northeast side of SAtown (which isn’t as Hellish as it sounds). Blake’s most popular character, irrepressible adventurer Chuck Cave, has appeared in over two dozen stories, including the 2005 Man’s Story 2 Story of the Year Award winner “Chuck Cave and the Vanishing Vixen.” The character’s supernatural thriller stories (which began with the seminal “Cave and the Vamp”) are all being released as a part of Vampires2.com’s initial foray into e-books. These new versions are presented in expanded and revised versions, all are the author’s preferred texts. Be sure to collect them all! In addition to his pulp stories for the 2-Empire (Man’s Story 2, Vampires 2, Androids 2 and Paranormal Romance 2), Blake’s fiction has appeared in several anthologies, including Unparalleled Journeys II (from Journey Books Publishing) and Fearology: Terrifying Tales of Phobias (from Library of Horror Press).

Book preview

To Honor Her Father

A Science Fiction Revenge Story

C. C. Blake

Dedicated

with love

to

Trista and Kara,

who kick much ass.

To Honor Her Father

The boys in the booze cafeteria packed blasters, but Ling-Ling Pang would take a scattergun any day. Blasters were like scalpels, noiseless tools useful for pinpoint excision of malignant tissue. A shotgun, on the other hand, was messy. It filled the air with thunder and steel rain and sent people scurrying for cover.

Ling-Ling Pang cracked open the sawed-off shotgun's breach and slipped a pair of red pills into the barrels. The sound of the weapon breach clacking shut brought her a thin smile. Trustworthy, reliable, and only speaking briefly: these were the qualities of a good weapon. She slipped the piece into the inside pocket of her duster.

The mirror revealed a fit, middle-aged Chinese woman made all the more tiny by the very large, brown leather coat. The broad brimmed hat atop her head shaded her dark, almond-shaped eyes, and her hair, cut into a bob, only just brushed across the raised collar of the coat. Underneath, she wore her favorite dress, a blue satin dragon-lady special that clung to her modest curves from throat to knee. Below this, knee high black leather boots protected her feet, while hidden steel reinforcements protected her shins and knees.

The coat revealed no telltale bulges. The weapon inside remained secret. She practiced turning it out a few times. Nothing for it to get caught on.

So equipped, Ling-Ling dumped the burning incense cones into a glass of water. The last traces of sandalwood scented smoke whirled through the air. In the shrine, a holographic image of a stern faced, fifty year old, Chinese man watched her depart, frowning and impatient.

As she closed the door behind her, she met the holograph's eyes and silently promised: Tonight, father, I shall avenge you.

#

Outside the Hotel, Ling-Ling watched a couple of Far Zone bound hover wagons sputter and hum along the street, packed to the gills with hopeful colonists and the modest collections of trade goods, foodstuffs, and memorabilia from their Old World lives. A few of the men glanced her way, wide-eyed and interested in perhaps staking a claim along her borders, but not a one of them could hold her eyes. She did not smile to them, did not entreat their interests or reply in any way. This would not keep them from dreaming about her, she knew. A man needed only one glimpse of a woman to evoke untold numbers of dark fantasies.

This much, she knew for certain.

The good men, they tried to find something more than flesh and earth. There were good men in the galaxy, she knew that much.

However, on a frontier rock like Kuttner's Folly, third planet out from Cherryh's Star, good men were in short supply. The ones that did come along, well, a town like this, a world like this, it chewed a man up or it made him hard.

She paused a moment longer, recalling Father's sometimes cruel, sometimes soft, always loving face. Recalled the way he looked after he made the acquaintance of Lawrence Webley—how he looked in the pine box, a blaster hole in his forehead, and knife cuts on his face. They had made a hideous clown of him.

Not content with simply taking his life, Lawrence Webley and his gang stole Father's dignity. For a man with little in the way of possessions, dignity was all he had. Mother had passed from the wasting sickness, older brother Mako died fighting in that rout on Getts, the bloodiest battle world of the Core Wars, while Ling-Ling had been delivering coded messages and performing assassinations for Core Intelligence's Sattup Underground. Father had stayed on the farm, alone and trying to keep things going.

Until Lawrence Webley came along. . .

Ling-Ling strode across the street, stepping over filthy emulsion puddles trickling from passing hover wagons,