The Mercurian Endeavor: A Slab Steele Prequel

By Ron Starke

It was supposed to be a simple job, a quick stink and dink before the playoff match then back to work. Unfortunately, a certain Robotic Bathroom Attendant may have hit the mark a little too hard.

Chet and Whizz are life partners in the most platonic sense of the word. Bound together by a fanatical love for the Venus Flytrap craterball team, the duo is suddenly stuck with a chair full of dead weight—about 250 pounds of it, to be precise. On the eve of one of the biggest craterball matches of the season, Chet and Whizz must figure out a way to get their job done before they get caught not doing their, uh... duty.

Follow along on a wild adventure through the catacombs of the Mercury Craterbats home craterdome as Chet and Whizz try to get themselves out of hot water—again. As luck would have it, they just might encounter one of the greatest craterballers to ever play the game—in their opinion, of course.

The Mercurian Endeavor is a short prequel story about the events leading up to Slab Steele and the Venusian Exchange.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ron Starke
• Release date: Jan 11, 2021
• ISBN: 9780463374191

Book preview

The Mercurian Endeavor: A Slab Steele Prequel

By Ron Starke

Copyright 2020 Ron Starke

Smashwords Edition

Thank you for downloading this free ebook. Although this is a free book, it remains the copyrighted property of the author, and may not be reproduced, copied and distributed for commercial or non-commercial purposes. The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

If you enjoyed this book, please encourage your friends to download their own copy at Smashwords.com, or check out my other available works by visiting my website:

www.ronstarkebooks.com

Again, thanks for taking a whack at my work.

For my sons, Dec and Gray. You're both way too young to read this def now, but I hope you don't think your old man is weird once you do.

Potty words can always be funny, no matter how old you are. Write that down.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

The short story you are about to digest follows two of the oddest characters you may ever read about. In this work they sit front and center in all their bizarre glory, but are just part of the main gang in the rest of my Worlds of Craterball series. I don't want to spoil it for you if you don't know anything about them, but please know this work is not meant to be taken seriously in any way, shape, or form. I haven't exactly aimed for high-brow literature, if you know what I mean.

If you like what you’ve read when you're done, please take a moment to leave a review or rating. I would greatly appreciate it.

CHAPTER ONE

Frick, Whizzer! said the sinewy orange skinned man as he finished wrapping a band of silver tape around an armrest of a chair. An armrest that not quite coincidentally had a thick, limp forearm sitting on top of it. The man’s voice reverberated with the tones of rural Appalachia, if the once mountainous region hadn’t been overrun by coastal folk after rising seas levels swallowed their own lakefront property hundreds of years prior. Why did y’all go and hit him so hard, thunder mug?!

Master Chet, replied the only other conscious person in the room. Although, he wasn’t technically a person, nor conscious in the biological sense. He was synthetic, really, and he was more like... self-aware. Speaking of awareness, those who had the pleasure of meeting him became instantly aware of his pompous way of speaking. He sounded like a butler, or something. It is impossible that I struck him with the degree of force you are alleging, sir. I barely applied five Newtons! The human tolerance for cranial impact is nearer to ten. For shame, Master Chet!

Chet, a vat-grown protohuman and not technically a man either, whined, Then why is he all limp and unconscious-like, thunder mug?

The synth twisted his shiny chrome head to look down at the enormous figure strapped to the chair. Even though the man wasn’t struggling against his bounds, the android could see rope-like tendons twitch underneath