Fierce winds whipped across the blood red desert of Dumar and its stormy scarlet skies were filled with soaring starships. A large city sparkled in the hellish light, safe from the storm behind flickering photonic forcefields. It was a volatile planet prone to storms and volcanoes.
In a crowded bar in the domed city’s speedy side, humanoids and aliens from dozens of different worlds drank and talked. Most of them sat on hovering gel cushions while life sized
3-d holograms of nude females danced above the crowd. The exotic music and verbal clamor was chaotic. But it quieted down in a sudden hush as a lone figure entered the establishment.
It was an Earth woman of captivating beauty that radiated an aura of danger in the doorway. Long golden hair fell in shimmering coils to her waist. The thick hair framing her face was accented by high cheekbones, bright blue eyes and pouting, thick lips. Clad all in skin hugging black, none could fail to note the perfection of her busty bosomed, waspish waisted, long legged figure. But the low slung plasma pistol at her hip and some body armor marked her as a fighter. Her name was Valeria Zimdars and her ship the Condor was well known among smugglers of the sectors.
A six legged, green, reptilian alien bumped into her, distracting her while another alien plucked her pistol from her holster. A pair of tall, pointy eared, albino skinned humanoids pulled electromagnetic stun guns on her. Valeria’s right leg lashed out in a snap kick, sending one foes weapon flying from his fingers. She slapped aside a stun gun that fired and accidentally hit an android that fell kicking. She was wearing an elegant bracelet that strobed out a blazing bolt that sheared through the reptilian’s skull in a shower of scarlet gore that spattered the floor. She fired again, flinging another foe off his feet to drop kicking with a charred chest where her laser beam drilled through his armor.
A zipping bolt bashed her back and she collapsed. The plasma lanced through her shoulder like a hot knife through butter with flesh sizzling and smoking after the blaster shriek. Valeria cursed, trying to move. Her first three foes were on the floor, dead or hurt, but now three red scaled, humanoids stood over her, pointing pistols with big smiles on their fang filled faces. They looked like demons out of hell with the short scarlet horns that bristled from their heads like bull horns.
“Let her go.” A deep voice ordered cutting sharply through the club. The aliens glanced at the speaker. He was a short human male with a lot of muscle and a black patch over his left eye with a thick old scar visible chiseled down his cheek. He wore a low-slung plasma pistol.
“We’re bounty hunters and she’s wanted by Thieme. This is our job. Go away or get hurt.” The nearest scarlet scaled demonic entity ordered while shifting his stance.
“Your job is gonna get you killed. What’s Thieme paying? I can match it.” the pirate looking man offered.
The aliens were impatient and tried to divide attention between Valeria and the man. They failed when they tried to point pistols his way. They were cut down instantly by the gunslinger’s blazing barrage of blaster bolts that butchered their bodies. The trio’s torsos were burnt through. It hurtled the hunters' helter-skelter into oblivion. They collapsed close to each other in bloody bundles, harshly hissing as their lacerated lungs cooked like flesh in a fryer. They couldn’t fight further, but the pirate pistoleer took no chances. His plasma pistol puffed in swift streaking strobes charring holes through the heads of all three fallen foes.
Wordlessly the pirate looking pistoleer walked across the room and helped Valeria up and handed her a fallen foe’s pistol. She moved with him, not questioning his actions yet. They dodged through the doorway out into the packed street full of pushing pedestrians and vehicles honking horns.
“Here.” He pulled a can of biofoam from his shoulder-pack and sprayed it on to her wound. The biofoam went to work, instantly feeding her pain medication while regenerating the damaged tissues.
“Thanks. What’s your angle?” Valeria asked wearily.
“I need a ride to Angola space base. Can you give me a ride quickly?” he asked her back.
“Sure. If we can escape. I just found out a former employer put a price on my head.” she explained.
“Lead the way.” He encouraged her.
Valeria moved through the mob and within a few blocks she discreetly studied the docking area where her ship stood. She was surprised to find no one waiting around it. Out of the sky four robot police droids dropped down from their jet packs. They were humanoid forms like seven tall bulky wrestlers with big police stars on their chests. They shouted her name, ordering her to surrender immediately.
The man didn’t hesitate. He pulled his pistol, broadcasting blaster bolts that flew low below the personal force fields the droids flickered on. With uncanny accuracy and celerity the gunslingers enfilade amputated two ankles of the nearer pair. The sudden shots spun the droids around and their own jet packs catapulted them through the window across the street in a crash of smashed glass.
The remaining pair returned fire with their rifles spewing a stream of beams that flashed past the gunslinger’s sudden prone position. He once again aimed low and his bolts banged into their ankles, amputating them, making their forcefields flicker on and off from the damage done. Mercilessly the man fired in both their faces, slinging shrapnel from their gravitonic brains all over the street. All that occurred in a couple of eye blinks.
“Where’s your ship?” He asked, looking worried.
“Over here!” she urged, up and running with him on her heels. Her DNA on the hand analyzer and retinal scan opened the hatch for them to rush into the saucer shaped ship called the Condor. They hopped in the cockpit and Valeria went to work adjusting the neural band on her brow for telepathic contact with her ship's AI identity. The Condor raised deflector shields. She plotted in their hyperspace wormhole to the Angola system.
The ship streaked skyward like a flung Frisbee and rocked under a battery of proton torpedoes tapping the aft shields. Valeria spun in 180, evading another torrent of torpedoes with a looping spiral drive and jettisoning drones that the torpedoes were fooled into impacting against. Valeria launched off a plasma cannonade and twister of torpedoes that slammed into the police ship. The Condor’s pulse turbolasers promptly picked off volleys of vectored missiles arching at them.
From space, the planet’s defensive satellite network shifted attention down at the oncoming Condor. Brilliant beams shrieked from space and crisscrossing fusillades of fire flared on the Condor’s shields. Two more police ships swooped in at her. The Condor cut through the explosive maelstrom stream of beams and bombs battering at it. The Condor’s dark energy fusion core and dark matter hull was more advanced than the enemy armada after it. The Condor’s sudden salvo of dark matter missiles spiraled away, punching into two police ships in their path. The enemies’ shields’ buckled under the bombings, ballooning into a bubble of expanding energy. The explosion blossomed wide, sending the ships’ shards plunging into the planet in fireballs. The Condor’s dark energy thrusters engaged, making the vessel’s rear rockets become a distant dot disappearing into a swirling wormhole, leaving the planet far behind in an eye blink.
“Well all the things you’ll do to impress a girl are really something.” Valeria admitted as they shot through hyperspace. “Thanks for the assist. If you don’t mind me asking, what’s so important in the Angola system?”
“Have you heard of that new species called the Titans?” He asked.
“Yes. Strange new beings that resemble evolved grizzly bears. Their ships are killing everything and everyone they encounter. They are gradually going towards Earth. Rumors say their ships possess powers never seen before and a lot of fear is spreading.” Valeria repeated what she’d heard.
The gunslinger peeled back his eyepatch to reveal a silvery glowing artificial eye. “My eye has downloaded schematics that should be able to corrupt the Titans’ weaponry technology, if we get there fast enough to prepare. The Titans’ armada is massing about to cruise through our cosmos killing the Earth aligned worlds before reaching ours. The schematics in my eye could save trillions of sentient species. But only if we arrived in time.”
“Well, you’re on the right ship. Within eight hours we’ll be there.” Valeria bragged a bit.
The cyborg just nodded, preoccupied with worry over the Intel in his eye that could save trillions.
***
Valeria turned her attention to the console briefly before once again studying her passenger. From his back pack he pulled out a strange object. Suspiciously she watched him because the item could be a weapon. It was a two foot long silvery crystal club with an ivory sphere on the end. It resembled a medieval mace made of crystal. If her passenger made any aggressive moves her ship Al defense system would stun him and erect force fields around him
"What's your name?" She inquired.
"Victor Cain. I'm an agent with the Earth Interstellar Alliance."
"What's that thing?”
"It's part of a key that will activate an ancient station grid that can help us fight our new foes. The titans aren’t actually our worst threat. There's not a lot of titan’s left because their worlds were destroyed. But these surviving titans have reached an alliance with a species called the Rondors. There's billions of Rondors waiting to invade our space-time continuum. The titans are helping build a dimensional wormhole that will open a doorway between dimensions.
If the Rondors come through and join the titans they'll conquer every world they encounter. Both species are worshipping an alien entity claiming to be their God. In reality, this entity is a false Deity. She is a lone survivor of an ancient race that destroyed each other. She functions as an entity of pure energy with incredible power. She makes herself appear as a cross between the titans and Rondors. Both species believe she created them. She instills their minds with highly advanced technologies and energy source converters better than our technologies. That's why their ships' shields and weaponry are so much more powerful than ours. These creatures believe they are in a holy war and to die in battle is a glorious cause. They believe the worlds in our dimension will someday soon destroy all their worlds. There's no reasoning with them."
"Can they be stopped?” She questioned.
“If we move and succeed swift enough." Cain replied wishfully.
Valeria found him quite attractive, despite his scars and cyborg eye and limbs. He had blond hair and a blue eye off-setting the crystal cyborg eye in a scarred, but handsome face. He was about her height with a lean waist and major muscles. His speed and shooting accuracy beat anything she'd ever seen. He had saved her life.
If Thiemes had caught her he would have had her brain wiped and reprogrammed into a devoted whore of his. Thiemes had always desired her and she'd always kept it strictly business. But her last smuggling run resulted in her being forced to abandon the cargo halfway through loading due to an attack on her ship sitting there. She'd made it in the air and destroyed the trio of ships attacking her. Unfortunately one of those ships had Thieme's little brother aboard and he died. Themes couldn't believe his little brother would be trying to betray and rob him that way. He chose to believe that Valeria had tried to steal the rich illegal drugs shipment and killed his brother and the others when they offered to escort her where the shipment was headed.
She was sure Thiemes wanted revenge for his slain brother and small fortune lost in drugs. But he also hungered for Valeria and he would dearly love to brain wipe her mind and program her into his whore. Being brain wiped was a loss of self and slavery into what someone wanted you to be. Like the law often did with criminals of nonviolent offenses.
The cyborg had saved her from that. She owed him.
Bio:
Tom Kropp’s work has appeared in The Horror Zine, Chiron Review, J Journal, Short Story Me,
Churches, Children and Daddies, Down in the Dirt, Flash Phantoms, Blood Moon Rising, Dark
Harbor, The Listening Eye, Evening Street Review, Lowlife Lit, Conceit, Spontaneous Spirit,
Spotlight on Recovery, Muscle and Fitness, Outdoor Life, Woodworker’s Journal and many
other magazines. His play Jailhouse Confessions was performed at the Kennedy Center in 2019.
You can read more of his work at tomkropp.wordpress.com. He has numerous audiobooks and
eBooks available free at Google Play Books.
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