The Sorceror's Ghost - by: Sean Ellis

"The Sorceror's Ghost"

by: Sean Ellis

as published in

PRO SE PRESENTS Peculiar Adventures #2 

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Excerpt:

       I — A Bad Day

       The Wolfpack was having a bad day.

       It had started off all right. They had left the airfield at Issoudon just as dawn’s light was breaking in the East, and were eager to get back to their home base at Chaumont. The first part of the mission, providing escort for Brigadier General Sanders’ DH.4 had been thankfully uneventful. The aces were always eager to prove their mettle in combat, but drawing fire for the more cumbersome de Havilland two-seater and risking their boss’ hide in the process, was not their idea of a good time in the air. Today however, returning home without the General, they were fairly spoiling for a fight. Captain Colby Wyatt, the intrepid leader of the squadron, had suggested a route that took their gray SPAD XIII’s close to where the action usually was, and neither the older and wiser Lieutenant Jimmy Styles, nor the pugnacious Robert “Bull” Caine had demurred. They felt ready to take on the world.

       Then everything had gone to Hell.

       They had been lucky in that first engagement. Bull had spied the pair of Albatros D.III biplanes before the enemy saw them, and after a signal to Captain Wyatt, had drawn first blood. An expert marksman—possibly the best in the service—Bull had torn one of the Boche planes apart in mid air with a single burst from his Vickers guns. Wyatt had taken the second plane, raking its tail with a relentless torrent of .303 rounds, but somehow the canny Kraut had peeled off, and then to everyone’s surprise, turned into them. The three Spad pilots all whipped their heads around at almost exactly the same instant that the Albatros speared right through the center of their V-formation.

"Godslayers" by: Van Plexico

"Godslayers"

by: Van Plexico

as published in

PRO SE PRESENTS 

Peculiar Adventures #1 

BUY YOURS TODAY AT

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Excerpt

I felt my body ripping itself apart even as the spacecraft disintegrated around me.

Not a pleasant experience, that. It makes one grateful for the human capacity to quickly forget pain. Lacking that ability, women might never give birth to more than one child—and Zanos knows we need all the new recruits we can get. And speaking of soldiers, the wounded might never jump back into combat, without that short memory for suffering.

That’s what I am, of course. A soldier.

No surprise there, right? That’s pretty much all anyone on the Five Worlds has been for the past nine hundred years.

After all, the War Gods had decreed it: There will be war. The five inhabited planets of our star system would contend with one another until the bitter end, they had said, and only one would emerge victorious. Only one would survive.

Thus they had spoken. And, for all the years since, we had indeed contended, till our five worlds had beaten one another down into ruins. We moved our cities underground, abandoning the surfaces and the sunlight; and still we bombed one another, and invaded, and poisoned, and killed. Our worlds, now five anthills, churned the dead soil above one another’s heads, over and over, year after bloody year.

Now, though, with one another’s help, if not that of the gods, the nightmare would end.

Our spacecraft, the Godslayer, roared down through the atmosphere of Olympus, flames engulfing it, lasers from the grim Tower playing over its hull.

We had anticipated this, and the experimental shielding held, at least long enough for our shuttle to eject.

"THE SECRET WHISPERS OF EACH OTHER’S WATCH" by Derrick Ferguson

THE SECRET WHISPERS OF EACH OTHER’S WATCH

as transcribed from Ramsey Long’s notes by Derrick Ferguson

as published in

PRO SE PRESENTS 

Peculiar Adventures #1 

BUY YOURS TODAY AT

http://stores.lulu.com/proseproductions

 

Excerpt

 

New York City, 1929

The clack-clack-clack of high heels upon the black and white marble floor got the attention of every male ear in the City Room of The New York Paladin and every male head swiveled to cast at least one eye upon the person making said clacks. These being newspapermen and rather a direct and somewhat coarse bunch, the sounds of appreciative wolf-whistles were not a surprise. The secretaries who worked in The City Room were used to hearing this masculine din and grinned good-naturedly, but the current recipient of this crude praise threw a furiously angry glare around the room. She searched nameplates on each and every desk until she found the one she wanted, walking up and down the rows of desks occupied either by gum-cracking secretaries or cigar-smoking men barking into telephones or pounding away at their battered black Underwood typewriters. The large circular windows looked out on the New York skyline, bright early morning sunshine streaming in, cutting though the cigar and cigarette smoke that seemed to inhabit the spacious room like a permanent fog, despite the best efforts of the perpetually turning ceiling fans.

The nameplate read Archibald Bodine and the man who sat with his feet up on the desk and talking into the phone looked more like a boxer or soldier than a reporter. A two-day stubble of beard covered his cheeks and chin. His tan double-breasted suit was well-cut and of good style but looked as if he’d slept in it for a week. A fedora pushed back his close-cropped auburn hair.

“Look, Gummy, how long y’know me? Six years, about, right? In all that time, I ever stiff you on a wager?“ Archibald Bodine grew quiet, listening to the angry torrent of words that gobbled out of the receiver. “Okay, okay, that was just the one time! An’ you know why I hadda stiff you that time. The missus was-”

‘so you are Archie Bodine?“

"In the House of Mercury" by: Tommy Hancock

"In the House of Mercury"

by: Tommy Hancock

as published in

PRO SE PRESENTS 

Peculiar Adventures #1 

BUY YOURS TODAY AT http://stores.lulu.com/proseproductions

Excerpt

New York City, Today

Benton Klesky watched the repetitive, monotonous waltz begin yet again from his hiding place on the other side of the two-way mirror. His partner leaned across the rickety table, his hammy hands nearly toppling it, and asked their subject the same question he’d asked her for the last 19 hours.

“So, what were you really doing in the middle of Park Avenue at the crack of dawn wearing nothing but the clothes you were born with?”

Klesky crumpled his twenty eighth cigarette on the window ledge in front of him as the prisoner parried into her next move. “You do not listen.” Her voice was distorted, not in any way he’d ever heard, but something he couldn’t quite describe, almost as if his ears were never intended to have heard it. “I have told you, I have warned you of the approaching carnage that brought me here. That put me there. I did not intentionally violate your ‘Park Avenue’. That was my point of arrival, where my B’y’nd run ended.”

“Yeah, yeah.” His bloated partner shook his sweat soaked head back and forth like a frustrated dog on a dead scent. “You are the last of a group of royal body damned guards from Mercury come to warn us of an invasion. You’ve read that line before, sister.” The fat man snatched his battered Styrofoam coffee cup off the table with an unexpected swiftness, and crushed it violently into shreds. As they fell in front of him, he screamed, “For God and Criminy Sakes, Lady, tell me the truth! You were disoriented, out of your head out in the street! Naked!”

“Not totally naked.” Talking aloud, Klesky turned halfway from the viewing window and reached behind him. A shiny new manila folder, lying wide open due to the disheveled pile of older, yellowing pages within it, wavered uneasily on the edge of a chair behind him. Klesky bent and caught the folder as it gave up and fell off the chair. Cursing, he juggled both hands to keep the clippings and reports all in their place. Shuffling it into some organization, he stood straight and pulled from it the one thing the alluring woman across the glass from him had on her body when she was found. The one thing that led Klesky to spend all night crawling through newspaper morgues and police files buried inthe bowels of the city.

Nineteen Hours Ago

“This,” George Redino waved a red and black scrap of something in Benton Klesky’s face, forcing Klesky to look up from his desk. “This,” Redino droned on in his whiskey riddled obese gargle of a voice, “Is all the dame had on her. Not a pair of panties. Not a bra. Not another stitch. Except for this.”

"Y-239" by: Lee Houtson, Junior

"Y-239"

by: Lee Houtson, Junior

as published in

PRO SE PRESENTS 

Peculiar Adventures #1 

 

BUY YOURS TODAY AT http://stores.lulu.com/proseproductions

 

 

 

 

Excerpt

There are more mysteries within the infinite universe than there are those who dare to discover their solutions. Yet some do brave the journey and take up the quest for that information. But in the end, whether they succeed or fail is a moot point. The thirst for knowledge will never be quenched, regardless of who does the searching.

Take for instance a time when, somewhere deep within that vast unexplored expanse, a ship sailed the starry sea. Traveling at an unimagined reality, faster than the speed of light itself, and reaching its destination quicker than a thought can be formed.

Within the darkness, there was now light, heralding what most believed to be an impossible arrival.

A spot once void, now occupied.

A virgin field now traversed.

Afloat within this uncharted section of that vast cosmic ocean known as the universe, a spaceship arrived. Its crew far from their natives lands, but prepared to embark upon their new explorative mission, as the gateway home closed behind them until needed again.

“Hyper Leap Transit concluded,” announced the computer’s synthesized voice.

“Acknowledged,” said the ship’s Captain, standing on its bridge.

“Status reports,” requested the computer.

“Engineering online,” responded a voice from somewhere else on board, carried to the bridge by the vessel’s intra-communication system. “All systems nominal.”

“Acknowledged Mech. SCI-Tech?”

“Operational,” replied the head analyst of that department, bending over a console near the Captain’s position, while checking the data displays of some instruments to confirm her report. “Correlating initial data with Astro-navaphysics now.”

“Good. Helm?” asked the Captain, moving on.

“We are maintaining a stationary position in respect to the outer edge of the next solar system scheduled on our survey expedition,” reported the Navigator, as it turned from its station to face the rest of the bridge personnel. “The initial monitoring of past reconnaissance probes revealed nine spheres, the probable remains of a tenth, and numerous satellites. All rotating in various, yet corresponding, orbital paths around a stellar yellow the computer designates as Y-239. At normal travel rate, we are one full crew rotation from orbiting the outer most sphere, now designated as Y-239.10.”

“It should be noted that our primary scan of the immediate area upon arrival also detected objects beyond the orbit of Ten,” added the SCI-Tech analyst. “Whether they should be added to the official planetary inventory of Y-239 will be dependent upon the results of further examination.”

As a peaceful vessel of scientific research, the ship had a small compliment for a crew, but every being performed their duties to the fullest. Their Captain was quite proud of this fact. “So noted. Program sync the navigation computer with the SCI-Tech department and plan the proper survey course to explore every object post Ten when we conclude our return to the departure point.”

“Affirmative,” the Navigator said, before turning to its new assignment.

“Meanwhile, all departments are to initiate phase one mapping, sensor recordings, and research procedures. Alert me when the ship either nears the outer orbital plot of Y-239.10, or if we discover anything beyond Bio-Level Five before then.” Nodding at the SCI-Tech analyst, the Captain added, “As my second, you have command until I return.”

The analyst returned the nod as the Captain left the bridge.