INSIDE THE DARKSIDE (eBook)

Les Clark (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2023 | 1. Auflage
318 Seiten
Bookbaby (Verlag)
979-8-3509-1224-1 (ISBN)

Infos

The 12 near-future stories of INSIDE THE DARKSIDE are about purposeful, but fallible, men and women who never mastered the rules of Murphy's Law. Some have the means to blindly miscalculate their good intentions or be inattentive to warning signs or have the potential to succeed. Can they find their way to overcome unseen odds? Can they cope with the results? Introspection may not always be balanced with 'what was I thinking?' You will meet heroes, the misguided, a buffoon, rubberneckers, primitives and the oblivious. I think you'll have a good time figuring who's who.

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INSIDE THE DARKSIDE is a collection of 12 dissimilar stories inhabiting the near future. A long-winded, umbrella-like philosophical long story description might be more appropriate if you, my readers, are presented with story clues. Here they are in order:GREY - A hotshot pilot, attempting to follow in his father's galactic shoes, finds even his own whining is grey-ting. MISTY JOURNEY - The way out is unclear, even with help. THE LONGSHOT - What chances do a ragtag band of mismatched survivors have against victors holding a flush short one club?TRESPASSERS - He's a gun for hire; she's an event coordinator with an agenda. Who's on who's side?GRAMPS - Yours may have taken you for ice cream and celebratory fireworks. This one doesn't do those things...because he has strange "e;friends."e;TWILIGHT IN THE GARDEN - A young girl with a backyard hobby has hopes to feed the world. Why does the military want to weaponize her research?THERE ONCE WAS A LADY NAMED BRIGHT - What happens when established theories are put to the test?BEWARE THE CHAIR - Sometimes "e;creating"e; a bargain has unearthly consequences. MYOFB! - Our characters are busybodies. How will this work out when their eavesdropping is uncovered?THE WARNING - Some experiments are never meant to see the light of day. WHAT PRICE PROGRESS - "e;Finders Keepers"e; has unforeseen consequences. PITTED DATES - There's one born every minute. A fool and his money are soon parted. You get what you paid for. They all apply to our guy. I hope there's enough intrigue for your further pursuit.

Textauszug

GREY

1.

This time, completely out of character, Captain Meltzer hesitated.

Years earlier, however, he had little hesitation volunteering for any mission in the United States Space Service, a successfully achieved goal motivated by his father’s disappearance while evaluating a first generation light speed jump ship.

His father, Major Marvin Meltzer, was of the old breed, violating the credo of old pilots and bold pilots, and dismissive of his teammates gossip and snarky comments. He thought ‘you supercilious snot’ coming from a British pilot didn’t sound so bad with an English accent. His service related exploits, and those off duty, were either the source of free drinks or avoidance by the coconspirators. None of his squadron-mates took up his challenge of a race beyond the Jovian moons at half-light speed. “Run you rats! Who needs you?” was the last thing his squadron-mates heard on the morning of his disappearance.

He constantly admonished both his son and his astronaut classmates if they didn’t meet his unreasonable standards. It’s either USSS or them, he’d scribbled on the classroom white board. His wife, taking a hint from his actions and tired of the lectures, scribbled her goodbye in lipstick on the headboard of their bed. It’s them or me, she wrote.

He led by strenuous example, however, clinging to his ship, (it was, after all, his baby), sleeping in his ship, memorizing every aspect its capabilities. The ship’s designers couldn’t keep up with his engineering changes. And no, you can’t have racing stripes. Classmates called him Sticky; they knew where he could be found. The Ponce de Leon was his to light jump wherever the USSS sent him.

Gone were the excruciatingly long trips of months and years to Mars, the moons of Jupiter and beyond. The invention of the light speed engine, combining both the ion drive and magnetic attraction of celestial bodies meant exploration of the Milky Way was reduced to weeks, if not days.

As a teen, his son, Creighton Meltzer, knew his father set a new Jovian speed record and then reengaged the drive out near Pluto. I’ll show them, thought the bold pilot who would never be an old pilot. The signal winked out as expected. When Major Meltzer reappeared somewhere in the Andromeda system, the test team’s automatic program fired light speed missiles back to Earth, signaling Meltzer’s successful arrival. Further, he’d found an earth-like star and used the lifeboat to circumnavigate, sending back photos and spectrographic analysis. After an Earth month, he reset the drive for the return trip. In their haste to beat other nations developing the same technology, and with the Southern Alliance off searching for worm holes, the USSS had not anticipated the Ponce de Leon might end up in the middle of a planet. Worse still, its sun. What were the chances, with the vast emptiness of space, a ship could bury itself in flame or basalt?

It took microseconds for a rogue star to convert the Ponce into a briquette.

In the sobering mission debriefing, one scientist thought adding a collision avoidance system, like the standard equipment in his EV, would be advisable in the next build. “You think?” the team facilitator offered with her best death stare.

As the years passed, this modification allowed exploratory ships to jump anywhere without sending out scouting drones. The military, ever the creator of acronyms, started calling them DOOFUS or, Don’t Forget Us. No further ships were lost.

The younger, more focused Meltzer never held back in Basic Training, even when his drill instructors unleashed captured scaboids from a jungle planet near Ursa Major. He dismembered these berserk six-legged monsters with blinding thrusts from his laser sword. His bravado was legendary. No one wanted to hear him complain his uniform was running out of medal space. Or that his helmet was tight because of his lustrous blond mane. Along with his picture, often upside down and used as a dartboard, classmates plastered the walls of their rooms with posters of real aces from past wars: Rickenbacker, Boyington, Jabara. Meltzer’s tireless bragging drew frequent groans and requests to STFU.

“If my daddy was ‘Sticky,’ you can call me ‘Slick,’” Meltzer announced to anyone who might be within earshot. Or not wearing a helmet. Behind his back, however, the young Meltzer was bequeathed with other, less complimentary names. They frequently wished he took after the classic TV show, Lost in Space. And now, when Captain Meltzer was offered an exploratory mission to a solar system with a yellow Earth-like sun somewhere in the constellation Apus, he enthusiastically assented. It was rumored money changed hands between the rank and file officers and senior officials to facilitate Meltzer’s mission. However, the sudden appearance of a high speed anti-grav racer in the squadron commander’s garage was a mere coincidence.

Meltzer was not invited to his own going-away party.

2.

On launch morning, for which Meltzer had grown a pencil mustache in protest of a regulatory haircut of his locks, he performed an extensive pre-flight checklist for interior controls, months of supplies, survival materials and the ubiquitous arms cabinet. This was a mandatory requirement since the crew of the Antarctic had to fight their way off Arcturus 6. Unfortunately, some escapees left limbs behind for the teething monster young.

Meltzer had been part of all the meetings where exploratory flight assignments were handed out to others. He had so irritated USSS officials that the worst job was waiting for him. In a closed senior officer session, the universal opinion was, “It’s either USSS or him.”

Meltzer’s ego competitor, Randall F. Berwick (F for Flash), the hotshot explorer with two previous discoveries of habitable worlds to his credit, orbited the Copernicus over a water planet near Cassiopeia. Curved clusters of Hawaiian-like islands, white caps lapping their irregular shores, surrounded dozens of colossal land masses. Berwick noted ice at both poles. His great circle flyovers found clear inland lakes teeming with life. Everything seemed ideal for this self-styled Columbus. When Berwick’s communications ceased, a drone automatically detached from the Copernicus and recorded the island’s flora had a liking for warm-blooded fauna. During his initial on-foot exploration, Flash had innocently dipped his sample cup into a small pool of thin, sweet syrup his sensors evaluated as healthy and safe to drink. When sticky leaves snapped closed around him, Randall provided a full meal for the planet’s version of a Venus flytrap.

The first USSS couple, Captains Trudy and Herbert Bassett, discoverers of asteroids loaded with rare metals, were given an unusual research assignment: only circumnavigate the binary star system Beta Aurigae. But eager for another payday, they ventured too close to the hypersonic velocity of the stars. Their light speed ship, the Magellan, was sliced and diced into metal and flesh confetti. “Good enough for them,” was overheard by an unidentified attendee of the USSS Court of Inquiry. It was determined the wholesome pair had jealously guarded their profits from secretly processed tons of gold and platinum from their towed cargo. Wholesome pairs were discouraged after that.

Creighton Meltzer, the least liked, received the last Bingo ball, a planet jokingly called Dusty. “What’s there?” he bleated aloud. In his head he moaned, Why me? I deserve better! Everyone else, alive or dead, had been given, allegedly, exciting assignments. At the time, no one knew what had happened to Randal and the Bassets or if they did know—-secrecy prevailed. Why scare the troops?

Were there successes? Of course. Intelligent sea life was found on Ceti 3. Breathable air allowed exploration of an ice planet in the Rigel system. Potable water made for spectacular geysers as its molten core drove subterranean seas miles into the air.

Best of all, intelligent humanoids with a sophisticated society engaging in sciences similar to Earth’s fossil fuel age, welcomed a multi-national exploration team. And promptly ate them. The John Cabot declared Beta Centauri 6 off limits until equatorial drones detected enormous deposits of rare earths along with silver, gold, molybdenum, and copper. A well-armed diplomatic (Marines) detachment made landfall, signed an acceptable peace treaty establishing trade and the rules of engagement. Eating ambassadors was mutually declared unethical.

3.

Descending 100,000 meters into clouds as grey as week-old snow, the Vasco da Gama shuddered briefly, as if the clouds had structure. Captain Creighton Meltzer, unconcerned, made note of the tremor. With the anticipation of a previously unknown world occupying his thoughts, the detail mattered little. Dad would be proud. Observing the new landscape through his filtered visor, Meltzer viewed the same monotonous grey up close, recorded from high orbit before his screen protectors covered the ports from the blinding flames of reentry.

The auto lander sent...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 28.7.2023
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Romane / Erzählungen
• ISBN-13: 979-8-3509-1224-1 / 9798350912241