SHORT STORIES BY CHARLEY MARSH
The Zabolov Gambit
A stalled negotiation leaves a translator clone with only two options: succeed or be recalled and destroyed. Translator clone Thalia Blueheart can learn and speak any language in the known universe, but her skills aren’t doing her any good. Both the Motomaks and the Crenicians want total control over a new bio-energy source and are willing to annihilate anyone who gets in their way–namely, each other. The lone Zabolov at the negotiation table has yet to speak and offers her no help.
Translator clones live notoriously short lives. They either succeed at their assignments and live or they fail and are sent back to the lab to be destroyed. There are no second chances.
Thalia’s daring solution surprises everybody and changes her life in a way she never dreamed possible.
(First published in The Expanding Universe Volume 5)
eList Price $1.99
Alcatraz Moon
Alcatraz Moon. The most feared prison in the galaxy, located on a moon once known as Triton. Alcatraz Moon prison. No wardens. No workers. No communication. Only one way in. No way out. Not a single escape in five hundred years.
Brandon Wilkes, a captain in the elite Red Barons, realizes the odds of success are against him. His mission? Rescue the Barons’ commanding officer. Kidnapped and dumped inside the prison, Brandon doesn’t know if the Commander is even alive. A suicide mission if he ever saw one.
One way in. No way out. He has every intention of beating the odds. Join Brandon and his team as they attempt to conquer Alcatraz Moon.
eList Price $1.99
A Small Favor
How far would you go to get back what was rightfully yours? Rayne Rhymes worked hard to earn enough credits to buy her ship, the Bodicea. Unfortunately under Deneb law, all of a wife’s possessions belong to her husband, even after divorce. An unfair system, but the law’s the law.
Rayne wants her ship back.
Her scoundrel ex-husband makes her an offer: do him one small favor and he’ll return her ship. She should know by now that there’s always a catch.
eList Price $1.99
Cyborg Mermaid's Song
Sun Li’s dream of becoming a marine biologist falls by the wayside when she has to give it up to care for her sister and ailing mother. When their needs grow beyond what she can provide, Sun Li agrees to transfer her intelligence into a cyborg body in return for their lifetime care.
Now she works in one of the west coast’s best known aquariums caring for the bad-tempered giant Pacific octopus named Rod. What happens when a powerful earthquake strikes the aquarium and Rod’s life is threatened?
A short science fiction story with an unexpected twist.
eList Price $1.99
Pandora's Private Inquiries
Pandora Rhees needs new clients to save the private investigator business she inherited from her parents. When a stranger knocks on her door with a problem that needs immediate attention she jumps at the offer.
Now she thinks maybe she jumped too fast. The mining world is fraught with dangers, especially when there is something to hide.
Join Pandora as she digs into the disappearance of two men on Zeta II, a wild and dangerous mining frontier beyond the reach of galaxy law.
eList Price $1.99
Dream World
When dream becomes reality . . . Lucid Dreaming, the brain child of a computer nerd and Borden’s rich friend, needs a guinea pig. Someone who doesn’t mind having their brain probed, monitored, and analyzed.
Borden desperately needs the money and happily volunteers. But the money soon becomes unimportant and the dreaming all that matters. Dreaming that takes him wherever he wants to go. Until the day he goes too far.
A sci-fi short story that begs the question–What is real and what is the dream.
eList Price $1.99