Starflake Rides with the Galactic Bikers

By Nicola Cuti

An expedition to the planet Kafka by Deep Space Ranger Cadets turns deadly when their minds are taken over by a mad computer known as ALIEC. An expedition to the planet Kafka by Deep Space Ranger Cadets turns deadly when their minds are taken over by a mad computer known as ALIEC. Only four of the cadets manage to escape, using homemade rocket cycles. They vow to return, but their only chance to carry out their mission lies in the abilities of a young Starbabe named Starflake. She is tiny enough to maneuver the twisting tunnels leading to ALIEC and has the ability to withstand the deadly gases around him.
But will Starflake be able to stay focused enough to help the cadets with their mission, or will the distractions of the universe prove to be too much for the young Starbabe to handle?
This is the third volume of the adventures of Starflake the Starbabe, the girl who can live in space without any need of a space suit.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Nicola Cuti
• Release date: Jan 19, 2018
• ISBN: 9781370453054

Nicola Cuti

Nicola Cuti worked as editor, artist and writer for such distinguished comic book companies as DC, Marvel, Charlton and Warren(publisher of "Creepy" and "Vampirella" comics). He created numerous characters including superhero "E-Man", still being published today and the underground classic, "Moonie", which has appeared in men's magazines in full color and in fine collections as Mark Estren's scholarly book "A History of the Underground Comics". He is a two-time winner of the Ray Bradbury Award for writing excellence and a 2009 Inkpot Award winner for his work in Comic Art. Later, Nick moved his wife and daughter to California where he began a new career in animation as a background designer. Such studios as Disney, Universal, Warner Brothers, Marvel Films, Graz Entertainment, Sunbow and Sony Pictures employed him on the following projects “Conan”, “Gargoyles”, “Jungle Cubs”, “Dilbert”, “Biker Mice From Mars”, “Exo-Squad”, “101 Dalmatians” and “Starship Troopers” and others. For the past decade his interests have turned to live action and screen writing where he has been developing a live action series "Captain Cosmos, the Last STARveyer" a science fiction/science fact adventure program for children. "Cosmos" has won the KIDS FIRST! Seal of Approval for excellence in children's video and has been selected for the Kids First! Film Festival. He worked with an independent movie company, Creature Productions, where he produced and wrote three movies for them, "The Gray Ghosts" "Planet of the Reptiles" and "Grub" and has written several screenplays for their future productions. In 2010 Nick started his own company, Ni-Cola Entertainment LLC, where he wrote and produced a sci-fi movie “Tagged!” and three illustrated novels, “Moonie and the Spider Queen”, “Moonie in the Slave Market of Opuul” and “Moonie in Too Many Moons”. For more information please see his listing in Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicola_Cuti or on IMDB http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0193881/

Book preview

STARFLAKE rides with the GALACTIC BIKERS

By Nicola Cuti

STARFLAKE rides with the Galactic Bikers

© Nicola Cuti 2016

First printed in North America.

Photography … KAYE TERRELONGE

Cover Design … NICOLA CUTI

Cover Models … ALICIA SAGE and TROY WILLIAMS

The work contained in this book is fiction. All characters are a product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

INTRODUCTION

Starflake’s universe isn’t the real universe. In the real universe distant planets (not the ones in our Solar System) and stars are so far apart it would take hundreds, maybe thousands of years to get from place to place even in the fastest starships. In Starflake’s Universe, trips only takes a few hours. Also, most of our universe is dark and cold, but in Starflake’s Universe the darkness is filled with bright and colorful nebulas, star clusters and spinning galaxies.

So, Mr. Bill Nye and Neil deGrasse Tyson, two of our most prominent scientists and educators, there is no need to get headaches wondering how I can have my little heroine take a left at Orion’s belt and head toward the star Vega. It’s because I do not write Science Fiction, I write Science Fantasy.

Therefore, do you conclude that Starflake’s world doesn’t exist? It certainly does. It’s located above Oz, Neverland, Wonderland, Candyland and Middle Earth. They certainly exist. There are atlases showing where the streets, buildings, roads and rivers are laid out. They just exist in other realms, other dimensions, not in this one.

Maybe one day someone will map Starflake’s Universe, astonished by all the wonders Starflake has seen. They can spend a week on Thrill World at the marvelous attractions, or on Zephyr enjoying the great humanoid birds, or on Silver Valley riding the jellies.

Perhaps it will be you.

DEDICATION

To my wonderful daughter, JAYMEE ROSE CUTI, who was the first Starflake, to my friend and editor, WALT WENTZ, both a fan and contributor to the Starbabe legend and to my friend, NIKOMA DeMITRO, who suggested I write a juvenile sci-fi adventure series for boys and girls.

CHAPTER ONE

I AM STARFLAKE

I am Starflake. I’m a little girl who lives on an asteroid. Asteroids are those big rocks floating in space.

Now, some of you may think, so what? Lots of kids live on asteroids with their parents, especially on the asteroid mining belt between Mars and Jupiter. But my asteroid belt circles the planet Silver Valley and there are a bunch of differences between the kids living on the Mars-Jupiter Belt and me, on my asteroid belt.

For one thing, those kids need to wear bulky space suits, with air tanks on their backs, and big helmets over their heads whenever they leave their air-sealed homes, because there isn’t any air on asteroids. I don’t have to wear anything, except for my jumper or leggings. That’s because I’m a Starbabe, and Starbabes can live anywhere in the universe they want to. Yep! That’s the advantage to being a Starbabe.

If you’d like to know what I look like, I’m a pretty little girl who appears to be an eleven-year-old human, but I don’t know my real age. When I visit Silver Valley all the boys want to be my friend, so that’s how I know I’m pretty. I have long white hair and pointed, pixie-shaped ears, very large eyes, and a cute little smile. And that’s me.

Now, you might think my world is awfully dull. I mean, it’s a rock and it’s a rock floating in the emptiness of space. Whew. Dullsville. But it’s actually a pretty strange place and it was about to get stranger.

First, there are some weird plants growing here. Yes, plants can grow on rocks with no air. They look like those bright coral bunches growing underwater, all knobby, and colored orange and red and purple. Then we have the forests of long floppy leaves and those maroon, bell-shaped flowers. Nice, right?

And if that’s not enough, we have valleys, mountains and craters. No water. No blue sky. But there are stars and star clusters and nebula, which are gas clouds colored green and red, and we have moons. The sky above an asteroid is one beautiful sight, all glowing and filled with color.

And if that’s not enough, we have jellies. I ride the jellies all the time. They’re a great way to get from place to place, if you’re not in any hurry to get there. The jellies are oozing blobs of goo, about the size of a small horse, with a pair of eyestalks and a bumpy ball inside them, which is their brain. My favorite jelly is a purple fellow I call Goosh. He takes me anywhere I want to go on my asteroid.

Then we have visitors. I’m not talking about the ships from Silver Valley. Those are frequent visitors. I’m talking about the ones who come here uninvited, like that biker who arrived a few hours ago. I watched her from a cluster of boulders.

There must have been something wrong with her rocket cycle, because the flame from the rear kept sputtering on and off. So, she landed to make some repairs. I don’t know how she could move in that bulky suit and bubble-shaped helmet she wore but she seemed determined to open up the tool kit in her saddle bags and fiddle around with the valves on her bike until the exhaust flame shot out clean and smooth.

Her suit was made of dark plastic, but I could see her through her helmet visor. She was young, not much older than me, in her early teens I’d say, and slim and pretty.

Near the saddle of her cycle, was her name, painted in fancy lettering. I could barely read it from where I was hiding, but I think it was Rage. Funny name. But it convinced me it was probably better for me to remain hidden behind the cluster of boulders, at least for a while.

I wondered what she was doing riding a cycle out in space all by herself, and then I thought, maybe she wasn’t by herself. Maybe there was a ship or a gang of other bikers nearby, and she was a scout. Ships often sent out scouts to check what was happening ahead, so the entire ship wouldn’t be heading into danger. Sure, she must be a scout.

A herd of jellies, known as a gobble of jellies, became curious about her and were moving toward her. She was armed with a blaster and I was afraid she might shoot at the jellies, thinking they were ganging up on her to attack her. They wouldn’t. They were just curious, but she might not realize it and open fire.

Then, a terrible thing happened.

One of the jellies split in two. That’s normal. Jellies make more jellies by splitting into two jellies, but this wasn’t an ordinary split. The brain didn’t divide they way it should, and the new jelly didn’t have a brain sphere inside it. The new jelly was a cancer cell.

It was colored red and, since it didn’t have a brain, all it wanted to do was eat. The other jellies in the herd spread out, fleeing for their lives from the cancer.

The biker continued to work on her bike without noticing the cancer jelly oozing its way toward her. Very soon it would be only a few feet away and then it would flow up her leg and begin to consume her as if she was a Thanksgiving turkey. I had to warn her.

I tried to send a mental alarm message, but she wasn’t paying attention. I was too far away to run up to her in time and so I picked up some loose pebbles and tossed them at her. On an asteroid, with weak gravity and hardly any air to push against the pebbles, they can really go a long way and very fast.

It worked! When the pebbles hit her she jumped up thinking they might be from a meteor shower. Then she saw the red jelly pouring toward her and drew her blaster and fired all in one quick move. The blast hit the cancer jelly squarely in the center. The cancer reared up in shock and tried to get away, but she kept a steady beam on it until it was fried into a solid, hard lump.

After she was sure the cancer was dead she searched for the source of the pebbles. She caught a glimpse me and I jumped behind the boulders. I peeked out between the boulders and saw her coming toward me. When she was close I heard a buzzing sound coming from a disk attached to her helmet. I had a tiny earphone in my ear. Bonoguro--I’ll tell you about him later-- used it to call me. I heard her speaking on my earphone.

This is Rage, go ahead, she said.

This is Striker, return to the group, right away. We have to move on.

I think I saw something, Striker. I want to see what it is.

No time to check out the local life forms, just get back to us as soon as possible.

Okay, I know where you are. I’ll be right there.

She walked back to her cycle and tested the flame. A bright, even flame shot from the exhaust. When she was satisfied with how steady it was, she shot off into space.

I watched as the glow from her rocket turned into a splinter of flame and then vanished. I thought I would probably never see her again, but I was wrong, in fact, I was never so wrong in all my life.

CHAPTER TWO

THE BIG JELLY

One place I go to visit to every day is the cave of the Big Jelly, Bonoguro. Bonoguro was once a human being who became a jelly, so he’s very, very intelligent and he’s always teaching me things. He teaches me about the stars and planets and he teaches me about people. I am a person, just not a human person, and I’ve got to be very careful because there are evil humans who want to learn how Starbabes can live in airless space. They would do anything to catch me and cut me open to find out my secret. I can’t allow those evil people to catch me.

It was time for me to visit with Bonoguro, and I was anxious to see him because he promised he would show me a new game I could play, called Asteroid Hop Scotch.

I got my best jumper and leggings from my trunk and put them on, and then I checked how I looked in my full-length mirror. I glanced around my little house for a minute and thought about how only a year ago I was living on the free range of my asteroid with the jellies, without a house or goods of any kind.

My friend from Silver Valley, Molly, made sure her parents had a house built for me, and provided the mirror and some chairs and a table. They also gave me clothing, along with the trunk to keep them in. I also have a bathroom so I can bathe whenever I get too dirty, and that’s all I use it for. Since I never eat, my teeth never need to be cleaned and because I don’t eat or drink, I have no use for a toilet. I just bathe. That’s all.

I love my house. I even have a coral garden and a fish tank full of fish. My house has the only water anywhere on my asteroid. I import it from Silver Valley whenever a ship comes to visit; however I have to keep the water in sealed tanks or else it will boil in the vacuum, become a gas and then instantly turn into snow. Even my bathtub and fish aquarium are sealed tanks.

The regular visitors from Silver Valley come to milk the jellies because jelly gel is very valuable, especially when it comes from wild jellies like the ones on my asteroid, but whenever they come, the nice people bring me things, like water for my fish and bathroom.

As soon as I was ready, I hopped on my rocket cycle and was off to Bonoguro’s cave. I used to travel on jellies, and sometimes I still do, but when I want to get somewhere fast, I take my cycle, also a present from Molly’s parents.

Molly isn’t on Silver Valley anymore; she now lives on a planet called Thrill World. She works in a hospital there, taking care of children from all parts of the galaxy who have contracted alien diseases. One day, I promised myself, I would visit with Molly again. We had become such close friends. I miss seeing her long, shiny red hair and all those freckles and her bright green eyes. Molly was the first person to give me a ride on a rocket cycle, and she introduced me to air.

People need air to live, but I hate air. It’s so uncomfortable. Imagine, everywhere you walk there is this invisible stuff holding you back and making trails after you.