Wanderlust: Sci-Fi Sizzlers, #1

By Craig A. Falconer

 

Every night for the past four months, I've dreamed of being chosen for the trip to Calbora.

The others have grown comfortable in the safety of the station's bunks, praying their names won't be called.

Not me.

Every day since we got here, I've looked up and wondered.

Not anymore.

No one can know the real reason it matters so much, but one way or another... I'm getting on that ship.

Because I wasn't born to look up and wonder. I was born to get up and wander.

__________

Wanderlust is the first in a new series of Sci-Fi Sizzlers: standalone short stories from international bestselling author Craig A. Falconer

• Language: English
• Publisher: Craig A. Falconer
• Release date: Nov 16, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223680413

Craig A. Falconer

Craig A. Falconer is a sci-fi author from Edinburgh, Scotland.

Book preview

Wanderlust

WANDERLUST

CRAIG A. FALCONER

Wanderlust

© 2020 Craig A. Falconer

This edition published November 2023.

The characters and events herein are entirely fictional. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Contents

Books by Craig A. Falconer

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3

4

5

6

7

8

Sunset Stays Preview

Author’s Notes

Books by Craig A. Falconer

THE EARTHBURST SAGA

Last Man Standing

Into The Fire

Operation Starshot

The Anomaly

Reason To Fear

The Last Horizon

Echoes Of Destiny

The Reckoning

All Or Nothing

NOT ALONE SERIES

Not Alone: First Encounter (Prequel)

Not Alone

Not Alone: Second Contact

Not Alone: The Final Call

~ Contact Trilogy box set ~

Not Alone: Fractured Union

Not Alone: Leap of Destiny

Not Alone: Revelations

~ Discovery Trilogy box set ~

Not Alone: The Awakening

Not Alone: Hidden Wonder

Not Alone: Endgame

~ Evolution Trilogy box set ~

Not Alone: Origins

TERRADOX SERIES

Terradox Zero: Before The Crash (Prequel)

Terradox

The Fall of Terradox

Terradox Reborn

Terradox Beyond

~ Worlds Away collection ~

~ Terradox Quadrilogy box set ~

CYBER SEED SERIES

Sycamore

Sycamore 2

Sycamore X

Sycamore XL

~ Cyber Seed Compendium Box Set ~

SCI-FI SIZZLERS

Wanderlust

Bound For Glory

Sunset Stays

Arise With Us

Whence They Came

Replica

Megaton Murphy

A Scent Of Man

Yester Year

Too Good To Be True

Happy, Inc.

Pamela 2.0

Funscreen

Pumpkin Splice

When Santa Slays

~ Chasing Tomorrows 15-Book Box Set ~

Seedling

Empty Nesters

A Savage In The Future

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What you seek is seeking you.

Rumi

1

No one has ever made it back.

From what they tell us, no one has even made it there.

This training outpost started out with thirty candidates and there are twenty-one of us left. You could have cut the tension with a knife at last night’s final supper, because we all know this morning’s monthly nomination is the last one ever.

Today, one last candidate will be chosen.

Tonight, one last candidate will be tossed in a metal casket and flung towards Calbora — an uninhabited planet surrounded by the most hostile storm system we’ve ever encountered.

The other twenty? They go home.

There are no facades of toughness anymore, at least when the commanders aren’t looking. None of us are a day over nineteen but in the cafeteria last night I saw shaky hands gripping plates, beads of sweat running down foreheads, eyes closed in prayer.

My fellow candidates are shells of their former selves. All they want is to make it home. All they want is to survive.

I’ve learned a lot of things since I came here, but one now stands out above the rest: fear breaks men.

Psychology is a funny thing. At first, with thirty of us, there was a 33% chance that any individual would eventually be chosen as one of the ten nominees. Now, the chance of any remaining candidate being chosen is less than 5%. But if fear breaks men, emotion breaks reason.

Even as fear has become decreasingly justified in a rational sense, everything has grown increasingly amplified in an emotional sense. Rational or