Hang Tough

By Daniel R. Robichaud

Homecoming

Predator has been to combat zones around the world, and he has squared off against some of the toughest opponents in the free world. However, his biggest challenge awaits: going home to Detroit on leave.

Urban Blight

The house is normal, Mom is her same old self, but everything else has changed. The city is crumbling, and the gangs are getting bolder (though not smarter). Strangest of all, Predator's brother Montrell has turned over a new leaf. No longer the hellraiser he once was, Montrell has started up an urban farm and wine-making endeavor.

First Blood, Last Chances

However, when the gangs move on Montrell's farm, Predator finds himself staring at the fallout of past mistakes and trying to help his brother fend off an army intent on ruining the honest business. Predator must move fast and stand strong, if he doesn't want to buy the farm . . .

Kinetic Force Vignettes are short stories and novellas that target a single Kinetic Force or Skorpion character and provide a look into their lives and the drives that define them. These vignettes might build on elements from the thrilling Kinetic Force adventures Daniel Robichaud writes, but they are intended to provide satisfying standalone stories to give a clear look at what makes these individual characters tick.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Twice Told Tales II
• Release date: Nov 11, 2018
• ISBN: 9780463571538

Daniel R. Robichaud

Daniel R. Robichaud has lived in southeastern Michigan, central Massachusetts and southern Texas. He is a Rhysling Award nominated poet and the author of over one hundred stories, articles and poems, which have appeared in such markets as Shroud Magazine, Rogue Worlds, Goblin Fruit, Rage of the Behemoth, Green Prints, and WritersWeekly. Daniel holds degrees in both Physics and English, and his career path has reflected these passions. In addition to his numerous writing opportunities, he has been an Igor For Hire (aka a freelance research engineer), a substitute teacher, an automation engineer, and a neurophysiology lab manager. Daniel enjoys entertaining people with his words and stories. If you enjoy a good read, why not try one of his works? You might just love them.

Book preview

Predator: Hang Tough

A Kinetic Force Vignette

By: Daniel R. Robichaud

Chapter 1

Using his leave time to head on back home to Detroit had seemed like a great idea when Milo Predator White was miles away from the Motor City. He had no way to know the life or death trouble it would lead to.

Seeing Mom at the airport brought a bubble of emotion to Predator's chest, she sixty three and stoop shouldered but still smiling to see her boy coming down into baggage claim. He had to lean down to hug her, and he joked, You started growing in reverse?

Stop your mouth, Milo. She planted a kiss on his cheek that felt waxy from her lipstick. I'm sixty three years young. Old enough I'm allowed to shrink.

Predator glanced around, saw she was alone. I thought Montrell was going to be here, he said. Pick me up in one of his hot rods.

Montrell don't drive hot rods no more, Mom said. He's in business now. A respectable one, even. Farming.

Farming? Predator wondered if that was code for drugs and then kicked himself. Sure, Montrell had been a crazy kid when he was an actual, you know, kid. However, if Mom's letters were to be believed, the last few years he seen Predator's little brother cleaning up his act. He move to Emmit or something?

No he did not. He did that I'd never see him, Mom said. I'll let him tell you all about it. He's so proud. She eyed his ruck with suspicion. You got to get a bag or something?

Predator hefted the shoulder strap on his ruck. No, I got everything I need for a week right here. In some nations, like Sierra Inferma or Laos, there was more than a week's worth of gear in that ruck.

You going to dress all camouflage and uniforms, here? Mom's eyes were stern when she looked over the cats eye frames on her glasses. Or do you have some real clothes in that duffle?

I brought real clothes, Predator said. He had seen the stresses of combat, and yet her glare still bit him to the core.

The warmth flowed back into her features quickly, when she stopped looking over those glasses and her lips softened from a firm line into her natural smile. Glad to hear it. Let's go catch the shuttle bus.

Shuttle bus?

Mom had parked her Toyota Corolla–navy blue exterior, gray interior, just shy of 123,000 miles, with a check engine light that had just come on this trip–in one of the offsite parking lots. They waited at the shuttle station in the bright summer sunshine and swelter for a little over fifteen minutes, then rode the fifteen minutes over to the site, tootled around in the bus for another fifteen minutes while the bus driver dropped off the passengers closest to the front gate first, all so Mom could use a mailed flier for one free day of parking and therefore skip out on the $25 hourly garage fee. Mom in a nutshell.

She drove like a good Michigander, speeding conservatively. That meant keeping the cruise control set to five miles per hour above than the posted limit. Also, Mom in a nutshell.

Predator watched the scenery and wondered how long he had been away. Years, he realized. Too long. And the city was sure different than he remembered.

By the time they got to Lonyo Street off Six Mile Road, he realized that the war torn countryside in places like the Czech Republic or the bombed to hell cities he had seen in southeast Asia were close cousins to what Detroit had become.

It's a shame what's happening to the city. Mom clucked her tongue at the burnt out urban hell she drove through. Predator remembered this sound from when he lost his baby teeth and Mom had disparaged how fast he was growing. You maybe got out at the right time.

I think so, he agreed. I'm guessing gangs are more popular than ever.

He wondered if the faces of those he had run with when he was underage and stupid as hell were still walking the streets or maybe stuck inside some house of corrections in Pontiac or downtown. Thinking back on it now, they were all a bunch of wanna-be Tupacs, working toward some dream of street cred followed by spotlight popularity. People like him and Tre, the round faced banger with the dead eyes, or Cash-Money, the heavy headed boy with the bug eyes. They were all waiting for crowns to materialize on their heads.

"Well, they haven't gotten any less popular, she said. But I think they're getting stupider. I was listening to the radio? And I heard a group of these idiots stole a semi. You remember the beginning of Beverly Hills Cop? It was just like that but without