The Shock: Stories of Em-bot

By Nicky Penttila

As the Galactic Great War rages, Captain Rhysh's Victory takes on a mission to sneak deep into enemy territory.
Under their untested but cyber-enhanced captain, the crew succeeds beyond expectations.
At an agonizing cost.
A space opera short story of loss, friendship, and hope.
An Em-bot story

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wondrous Publishing
• Release date: Jul 29, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223661351

Nicky Penttila

Nicky Penttila wrote her first story, a Mayan murder mystery, in seventh grade. But then came gymnastics, math team, and boyfriends. Later came husband, car payments, and a sleep-depriving work schedule at newspapers across the country. But the writing kept trickling out, a story here, a novella there, and finally, a real live novel. And she hasn’t stopped.

Book preview

Most of us have strategies for staying grounded, and so do spaceship captains. Elders have built, over time, mental rooms—palaces—of calm, resilience, sanity. Younger ones make do with what they can.

Rhysh, the youngest wartime captain in recent memory, relied on her grid. A screen of smaller screens, cycling through, showing the many public areas onboard. The faces were sometimes hard to read but today the body language was unmistakable: everyone walking with a bounce, bumping fists as they passed one another. Three months behind enemy lines and no one the wiser. The new shield had cloaked them well, and would soon cloak the entire force. The Vir didn’t know what was coming.

Daring to smile, Rhysh changed the view to the outside cameras. Shuttle Two had pulled away from the asteroid, its ice-retrieval mission complete, and was heading back to main bay. The boxy craft crossed from the shadow of the asteroid into the lightwash of the dwarf star it orbited. Rhysh had tucked her ship into the asteroid’s superchilled shadow. Once the shuttle docked, with water enough for a month, they could turn for home.

She was already rising, headed for the bridge, when she felt the nudge in her mind, Em-bot reporting in. Ice retrieval crew approaching. One minute to dock. M-143 served as captain’s assistant; the round bot had been with the Victory for decades. It knew every detail of the ship and known space and could talk with both Ship and now Rhysh at the speed of thought. While the connection with Ship was standard, that with Rhysh was still experimental, through a chip embedded in her brain. This mission was also a test of their compatibility. But for the mental strain and occasional headaches, Rhysh