Sunday, May 14, 2017

A sale on two of my E-books-both fun to read gifts Great price Very good tales.


        A series of birthdays are coming up, as well as graduation. A good gift for either are books one and two of my Vibration universe series. Both E-books are now on sale for $2.99 each. From May 15th to May 19th. Great deals for good, fun reads, with excitement suspense and action. 
      NA, a young woman with a special ability to manipulate the very basic Vibrations that make up matter, helps those who need it. But now she is over her head-twice-and must face a griffin, zombies, wizard traps, while trying to figure out who is harming others with the same ability and stopping his plans to kill more, starting with her. In the second books she goes up against a unicorn, half orcs, a lost bridge Troll and other dangers, while trying to understand who is changing the weather in Boulder Col and calling dozens of new mythos, some of which are hungry. In the end she has to face something worse than all of that, something easily able to kill her and her friends.  

Amazon and Barnes & Noble online have the paper versions too but those are not on sale even though both might discount them. 



Both books can be found at Amazon, Barnes and Noble online, Kobo, iTunes and other sites. 

Here are links for Amazon and Barnes and Noble online. 






Saturday, May 13, 2017

Four Free Fun Flash Science Fiction tales

Posted May 13 Happy Mother’s Day to those who are. You deserve a day-at least. Hmm, maybe I should have had a mother’s day story but I am not sure I have any. The last story here could be one though, come to think of it.


Again I decided to do some flash tales, four Science Fiction this time. These were originally posted on Google Plus in one of either two places. I have revised them once. 

Each one was inspired by a picture. I tried to describe the scene in the picture, so you can see it in the setting even though you won’t be able to see the pic itself. With one exception. The third one or the TRAPPIST-1 tale, was more a chart that showed the planets than a true pic. But you should be able to get the idea. Three are form one group of pics posted to inspire people and the other one is from another set. TRAPPIST-1 is a real solar system evidently recently discovered even though obviously we know it only from a great distance.

Okay Enjoy:


The Monument

There it stood, in the soil of one of Mars’ moons. The monument. With Mars framed behind it just like in the famous picture. The suit looked larger than life size even though of course it had to be just life size, but than again life size suits back then were larger than today’s.
Even from here Mars looked red and the moon gray. Tiny rocks lay here and there mixed in with the dust. But the monument looked clean. I could easily make out the CCCD below the red star. The faceplate reflected Deimos’ surface just like the pics of our astronauts on the Earth’s moon. I didn’t know if that cleanness was natural or if they had a regular maintenance schedule. There was no wind here nor were people allowed close enough to damage the suit, so it might just stay pristine on its own.
I noticed that I had begun to sweat, but it’s not because of my suit. It’s from my excitement. To be here. This is a tourist spot, lots of people come here, but at the same time it is so good to stand here.
There’s even a radio channel with all of his messages spoken in vaious translations.
We had made it first to the moon but Russia wouldn’t be outdone so they sent someone to Mars. He didn’t quite make it though. Still everyone celebrated when he landed on Deimos and walked on it, claimed it for the Soviet Union of course. The Russians still take pride in it and are still here. It started the new space race to Mars. This one ended in a tie of all things. A few Historians think the two teams of astronauts somehow planed it that way, along the way. But none of them admitted it.
I breathed in, glad my suit had a bit of mint in the air storied in its tanks and that it had better protections than his. No one knows for sure what killed him. Some historians listen to recordings of his messages and think he was in pain. Some accident injured him on the way and it was only his determination and pride that got him into the suit and onto the surface of this moon for the Soviet Union. After all his ship did have a malfunction which is why he landed here and not Mars. So there are stories, poems and songs made up of his heroism. Others think a micro meteorite punctured his suit and let his air out, which they say doesn’t downplay his determination and gut force. One of these days they may allow someone close enough to take x-rays or CT scan of him. For now though the mystery reminds. And if some have their way the reason will always be unknown.
Now there are colonies here and on Mars. Half a dozen countries are on Mars since no one could clam it. Another country was on their way here to join the others.
I take my own pictures using the lens in my helmet. There were a lot of heroes in the very long space race which is still going on even though out further. I was named after one, a great grandfather. I wanted to visit the sights were heroes, like my name sake, did their great deeds. This was my first stop. After more sight seeing and a day for rest I will head for where my grandfather died on Mars. In one way that will be a better sight, even though it will be sad and full of pathos too.

End

*************************

Ready for Patrol


Lt. Gary Wheelhite walked out on the armored tarmac, his black flight suit looked a bit too big for him but it was suppose to. It had room to become an emergency ETA suit.
The reddish and tan sand had covered most of the tarmac again, so it looked like just a dusty and dry sward near some tall, narrow crags. They looked almost like wind worn and scared buildings, but the real buildings were underground.
He carried his smart helmet which was against the regs. No one usually said anything though. Right now the excuse would be that they couldn’t see him through the dust thrown up by the transport landing behind his craft.
Gary sighed, another assignment where he would patrol the outer reaches of this system used as a relay for a long term freighter, transport and warrior route. He piloted a Q3-5D8 or QuThree, the most advanced warship man has made so far. Black belly with a tan, reddish, shiny blue top. But that last was deceiving. The top hull really reflected what light came its way, so it looked like what ever color surrounded it. So it now looked the same as the dust and dirt it sat atop.
Both singularity drives looked ready. Their disk like appearance under each double leveled wing showed easily. The door in the side of the hawk like nose had opened already even though he hadn’t turned in that direction yet. The ship’s AI knew where he was headed though. He had been on it enough for it to get to know him; all of his readings, so it knew who he was at 100 meters at least.
He sighed again. This would be his fourth four month patrol with just that AI as company. He was healed of his injuries and didn’t need a rest anymore. Not that QuThree was a bad personality, or fought him, it’s just that he would like a different person to talk to. The ship had VR movies, games and training, almost instantaneous communications, and a real gym, even a space to run around the inside hull, but it still felt more like a punishment. It might help if they were attacked but that hadn’t happened for over a decade.
The intense compacted, energy reflective hull was proof against all lasers, grassers, X-razers, even the rad of a close nuke. Anti-matter was a different matter but it still took a direct hit. His electronic magnetic-temporal shields made him even stronger. Even an impact at near the speed of light would barely dent it. His weapons packed enough power to go up against a battle cruiser. So far, since his injuries, though he had only fought in sims. And those were designed by Admiral Harrington to make sure he lost. She thought that made trainees work harder how to think out of the box and to figure out how not to die. Her philosophy may have saved his life during the battle for Omagron Eight.
He had been hurt badly. For the first time he had even heard of a QuThree’s weapons console blew up. They must have been feeding him enough power to lit a sun after his drives failed-also for the first time ever. The whole rear panel had disintegrated on him. QuThrees had been holed but not on that level. If his command center’s door had been open he would have been blown out. The AI had made it to an asteroid and backed into it. For two months its repair nanos had transformed the ore of the space rock into a workable patch over that whole rear panel. Not as good as the intense compacted, energy reflective hull, but it made the ship space worthy again. He had been in the med unit the whole time. He had been bleeding from half a dozen places, with internal injuries, a sliced arm almost all the way through and a dented skull, plus a couple of broken bones, ribs and more bruises than he wanted to count. Somehow he had gotten himself into to it far enough for the ship to take over. It still took a full med center three weeks to get him back to complete wholeness. His ship was ready a week later. Not only totally repaired but with updates and upgrades.
Gary turned toward the opened door. He was ready for combat again even though next time he wouldn’t take on three enemy double cruisers. Even though as he lost consciousness he had seen one Double Cruiser blow up, knew that a second was a drifting hulk. He hadn’t learned what damage the third had taken but it was significant. But never again.

end

**********************

TRAPPIST-1

I stood behind the navigator with my arms behind my back. There were four work stations in the middle of the deck, with little room between them, and four more around located along the walls. I may have looked like an old Fictional star ship captain on an old TV show or movie, but I was just bored. On this flight of my unit of Space Explorers-a step up for over achievers like me in the Boy Scouts-we didn’t have a captain. The ship only had a ten member crew with the AI comp as back up for everything. This was a class too. Our mission was to check out the TRAPPIST-1 solar system. Not that it hadn’t been checked out many times since its discovery back in 2015 and 2016. But as young Space Explorers we had things to learn.
The 40 or so light years took us forty days to cover. We don’t get the fastest ships either even though one light year a day wasn’t too bad. We had time to study, goof around and study some more. The rest of the crew didn’t goof around as much as me, but I am not a nerd only an overachiever.
So I read some of the new fiction stories-the ones about wizards on spaceships-Galactic Fantasy-were good. Once at TRAPPIST-1 we popped the temporal-matter ghost bubble and settled into a far orbit around the system. The radiation the red dwarf star puts out is dangerous any closer. Of course our ship has shields but we didn’t want to take chances. Our orbit still was close enough to allow the radiation to fry us if our shields went down but the chances increased dramatically if we got any closer.
We, I, sent out probes and used the ship’s far sensors. I man the probe launch station and a side science station. Both are at the same panel which I like. Jill and Fred had to run back and forth between stations and Hillary had three separate screens to watch.
The seven Earth-like planets, at least in size, gravity and matter were interesting. It took hours of study to find out things about the system as we acted like we were the first to be here and to study it.
On the fourth day though Harry picked up an anomaly on the third planet, one of the four in the habitable zone. Not that that meant much here with all the radiation the sun poured out. I borrowed his readouts and zeroed in on the strange patch on Three. Metal.
Metal? What?
And a power supply.
Laura’s probe zoomed in almost to the surface. A manmade something along with a ladar signal. The message was a SOS. Someone had crashed there, but had survived and needed help. The readings even there were strange though. The metal didn’t seem to correspond with any we had on record, though.
Another Space Explorer maybe? Or a one man freighter? The message didn’t say. But who ever it was, they had been able to get to the side always away from the sun. Which meant they were in shadow and mostly protected from the red sun. And their ship would give them more protection if it hadn’t been damaged too much.
I told everyone we needed to rescue him or her. But they argued that because of the radiation and the fact that he didn’t say who he was we shouldn’t. It could be a pirate trap Harry said.
I said, “Our emergency shields will hold long enough for us to get the surviver and get back out. We can do this. After all it could be a test.”
I didn’t think so but I thought that argument could influence one or two of the group.
There was still too much discussion going on, most seemed to be against it. These nerds thought up too many things that could wrong. Jill wondered, because if the strange metal, if it could be a ship from some lost colony of humans, or a new alien race.
John said, “It could be someone from an alternate dimension. The radiation here could weaken whatever separates the dimensions.”
I silently shook my head. I was the one who read Science Fiction and even though a popular novel had that idea in its plot it still surprised me he would consider it.
Finally though Mary said, “We could use the shuttle without a crew, move into Three’s shadow but stay far enough away to escape if we need to, if it was a trap or some form of interdimensional gate.”
The way she said the last I doubted she believed it. I nodded and said I could live with that.
We finally agreed and set out to make it so.
Thirteen hours later we had the surviver onboard and were homeward bound. It turned out that the strange readings came from the various forms of radiation that had affected the probe’s sensors and the outer layer of the hull of his ship. The surviver was an Intergalactic Force trainee whose ship malfunctioned at the worse possible moment

end

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The Level


I recall a day when my mother woke me early so we could go shopping. At that time we lived on the 111th level. My mom liked the number, but when you were just two steps above what was still called dirt poor, the level didn’t matter that much. They were all the same: wide walkways with one side was an edge where you would fall if you got too close and the other side were shops. He had been taught very early on to stay away from that edge no matter what.
The ship fronts were very colorful, those that sold different products were painted whatever color the owner of the shop wanted it to be. Or could get cheap. Sometimes the signs were in a different language like the Asian script above the one we walked by. And there were three shops above that one. Many shops had stairs that led to those upper shops. Most of the time you had to know the correct path of stairs to get to one of those shops.
He didn’t know why they had been designed that way. Whoever had made these Levels cities had been a lot taller maybe, so originally it had been one shop. That might explain the wide walkways and what could be very long steps every so often. How humans got into them a couple thousand years ago, he didn’t know. His mother claimed she didn’t either.
Each Level had five shops on top of each other. The fifth one was right below the next Level., You couldn’t get to the next level from any of those shops. Their roofs were the bottom of the walkway and harder than anything that could cut. Many had clients or sold products mother didn’t want me around, so we never went up there. There were stairs, up and down, to the next Level but they were very rare. Some shops on the walkway Level where no more than stalls with a dull colored, thick sheets above them. Those protected the stall owners and customers from rain and the sun.
I wore normal clothes bought at a better second hand store and she wore her usual one piece jump suit. She liked it for it reminded her of her ship days plus it had hidden pockets she kept a couple of simple weapons, just in case, plus what was used for money and security keys.
The wind that blew at us was bit chilly but not cold. I could smell the usual odors of this level-some I love, some were okay, others I hated. As we walked I made sure to stay next to her. She no longer felt like she needed to hold my hand for I knew the danger of the edge of or talking to strangers, but she still meant security for me. When we past one shop, the one beneath the Asian letters, I saw it was now closed with a painted front window. It had been opened just three days ago. Mother explained that sometimes a shop will just disappear like for a reason no one knew.
There were a few people out this early even though you could buy bread, vegetables, and sometimes meat and grains. Some shops had hand made weapons, or cooked meals or used E devices. As I thought on where we were I decided we were headed for a school. That could be what we were shopping for. There were not many on these levels but mother had found one near us. Not as good as some I have heard of but still I would learn how to read and to count and some history of the Levels, and of the human race off the Levels.
I didn’t want to go but it would free mother to work more hours and learning was good. She had taught me some reading and I had heard her talk about my need to learn more. Even at my age I knew she was doing what she could for me even while stuck here. School would help me as I grew up and she was responsible for me having a desire to learn new things. So I promised myself I wouldn’t make too big of a fuss over it.
And I didn’t.

end



Hope you enjoyed them. And remember I don’t mind comments as long as they are what I call real criticisms. Sometimes others see things I don’t. That doesn’t always feel good but it shows what I need to work on. Praise is good too for it shows my strengths :)