Dangerous Ideas

By Vincent Cleaver

A mission to rescue POWs goes wrong, and then right, and secrets are revealed.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Vincent Cleaver
• Release date: Feb 1, 2012
• ISBN: 9781465798763

Vincent Cleaver

Vincent L. Cleaver works in a factory in Clayton DE, as an assembler and electrician, and likes to write on the back of used paper at breaks and lunch-time (plus fold and blow up an occasional origami rabbit, or draw a planet map). He mostly writes sci-fi, with a little fantasy and horror.

Book preview

Dangerous Ideas

By Vincent L. Cleaver

Smashwords Edition, Copyright 2012

The plants of Othrig II were purple and green, like the uniforms of some of the Markov, the elite, the Autocrats' Own Immortals. That was irony for you, hard at work making the universe an interesting place to be. Her dad called them Jokers, for some reason that Karen could not fathom, and he promised to explain it, after the mission was over. But the mission was going to be over before it began, if Karen could not stop the lone Markov she had just come upon from sounding the alert. This Markov wore brown and orange, for garrison duty; a guard from the camp the Markov Imperium had placed in this northern jungle- for the comfort of the Markov and the discomfort of their Bluehorn detainees, probably. He was out here by himself, which was very un-Markov, for they were a gregarious species, always doing things together.

It was a good thing that he reached for his weapon; that gave her time to close with him. He looked at her, not afraid of a sixty-kilo human female. He was a half tonne of alien soldier, but the smallest adult Markov she had ever seen. In his curiosity, the Markov took too long, and she swept past the barrel of the blaster, knocking it aside. He turned it in his hands and used it to block her, but she was already climbing, using the barrel as if it was the rung of a ladder. Her broken left arm had almost healed, but she favored it and swung with her right, jabbing a knuckle at the nerve cluster under his ear.

The Markov staggered, and sat on his haunches. Karen winced as she fell to his left, and rolled; she had felt the weakness of her left arm and had let go rather than risk breaking it again. She looked up from the plants and mud she had landed in, and rolled as the soldier swung the butt of