Lady of the Star Wind Flash Fiction



For my cover translation flash fiction, I have the great good fortune of pulling Veronica Scott's cover for LADY OF THE STAR WIND

 

 

Someone groaned. His vocal chords burned, leading him to believe he'd uttered the sound. Good sign. He wasn't sucking vacuum. Yet. Forcing his eyes open cost him what felt like a laser cannon blast to the head, but when his vision twisted into focus, the worst of the pain retreated to a sullen, persistent thump in his left temple.

Blue-gray bulkheads surrounded him. Centuries of space travel and no one had found a way to create space-worthy building materials in anything other than grim. The depressing bit was that it wasn't his grim, blue-gray bulkheads.

"Oh good," a feminine voice said. "You lived." She'd propped a shoulder against the door frame. Lush. Blonde.

He shook off his body's interest. More pressing concerns. "Where am I?"

"Aboard the cruiser Star Wind."

"Star Wind. Solar wind," he said. What the hell had happened to his brain that he tripped over translating a poetic ship's name?

She smiled. "Something like."

Focusing on the weapons strapped to her waist, he said, "A destructive force of nature."

"Unless you're armored." She looked him up a down, brows slanted in amusement. "Very few are."

Star Wind. Destructive. He frowned. "My patrol skiff was under attack."

She nodded.

"You rescued me."

"Of course I did," she crooned. "Because the great big payday tucked away in the piece of space debris you patrol goons were guarding isn't the least bit necessary to keep the Star Wind competitive in this cruel universe."

He clenched his fists. "Pirates."

"I prefer 'force of nature.'"

"So I'm a prisoner."

She snorted and straightened. Stepping back, she tapped the doorframe. The distortion of a force field splintered her features. But not her words laced with bloodthirsty amusement. "Oh no captain. We don't take prisoners. We procure entertainment."

Flash Fiction based on A Murder of Mages

For the flash fiction we’re writing this week, I am riffing on Marshall Ryan Maresca’s cover for A Murder of Mages.

Legolas Mulder put his shoulder to the heavy bolt-bedecked door and grunted as he pushed. Once the weight of it cleared the threshold the hinges did their work and he straightened, bringing his crossbow into a ready position. Beside him, Tauriel Scully stepped lithely around him, her weapon already aimed into the room, following the door’s edge to cover the expanding space.

Before them appeared a room dark save for a ring of scarlet candles. All had burned nearly to the floor. Some had extinguished themselves but it was impossible to tell if they had run out of wick or if the flames had been drowned by the blood. Seeing no body from which the large puddle would have emanated, Mulder’s eyes scanned upward.

The chamber had a vaulted ceiling, about twenty feet up, a pale and too-slender figure hovered. Its enormous black eyes stared and its big head lagged to one side. The figure had large slits along its spindly limbs, and blood dripped from its toes.

Scully let her aim fall downward and she sighed.

“What?” Mulder asked.

“This isn’t what we’re looking for. It’s far too small to have built this place. The doors are twice our height and three times its height.”

“But we found one! It’s proof!” Mulder said.

At that moment the figure began to make a crackling sound. As they watched, its body disintegrated into dust. “So much for proof,” Scully said.

“Fuck,” Mulder murmured.

Cover Flash Fiction: FATAL CIRCLE by Linda Robertson

FATAL CIRCLE -- Flash Fiction based solely on the cover of Linda Robertson's Urban Fantasy.

Keys.

The keys were upstairs on the dresser. Seventy-eight steps. Seventy-eight steps from the foyer to the master bedroom and back. Seventy-eight opportunities for one of the babies to hear the slightest disturbance in the force and scream his puddin' head off.

Then his brother would hear. And his other brother. And the other. And the other. Then the unholy choir would sound and the babysitter would bolt. Ears bleeding.

She could do this.

Thirty-nine steps one way.  Five bedroom doors. Stealthy like a ninja. Like a ninja wearing thigh-high leather boots that creaked every time she bent her knees. Bending one's knees was a requirement for climbing stairs. Forty-five minutes to lace them up meant she couldn't just whip them off. Five-inch heels made her ass look great, but the ruckus they made on the steps would sound like the Charge of the Heavy Brigade.

They were just babies. She was a grown ass woman. With keys on the dresser. Keys that stood between her and an epic date night.

"Wish me luck, hon. I'm going up."