TRATHH and other science fiction stories
UK USA CDN AU
Trathh and Other Stories is a very unassuming title of which this collection of stories is most definitely not.
Author David Scholes, a long time BMU contributor serves up some tried and true and a lot that is new, and it is a great mixture. read more on Beam Me Up…
Excerpt of Review: By Paul Cole (Editor of Beam Me Up Pod Cast site)
About the Book
The book comprises a collection of 21 fast paced, action packed science
fiction short stories.
The main story Trathh is based on a story arc pod cast on the Beam Me Up Pod
cast site during 2012 and 2013. A powerful alien prisoner, innocent of all
charges against him, survives the crash landing of his prison star ship on Earth
only to be hunted by the Earth military.
In The Young Old War the ineffectual middles passively tolerate a world wide
trend of increasing violence against the elderly by roaming feral youthpaks. In
Nerdforce the meetings behind closed doors of a small group of nerds can have
consequences beyond our Earth.
In The Streamers, aliens detectable only by their manipulation of human
emotions and their ability to stream have our best interests at heart. Or do
they? A Multiverse war pitting the gods and mystical powers against the cosmic
powers has led to no winners and few survivors, yet somehow life finds a way.
In Treldron an enigmatic alien from an unknowable alternate reality shows
that humans don’t have a mortgage on courage and nobility. In Forgotten Soldier,
an alien soldier programmed for zero tolerance to crime gets accidentally left
on Earth.
About the Author
In the 7 years I have been writing speculative fiction I have written more
than 120 speculative fiction short stories.
My publications include six collections of short stories and two novellas.
All of which are on Amazon. My most recent publication is “Daughter of the High
Lords and other Speculative Fiction Stories.” Published in July 2014.
I have been a regular contributor to both the Antipodean SF and the Beam Me
Up Pod cast sites and am fast becoming a regular to the Farther Stars Than These
site. I have also been published on a variety of other sci-fi sites including
Bewildering Stories, 365 Tomorrows sites, and the former Golden Visions
magazine.
I have written two sci-fi series: the 12 part “Alien Hunter” series for then
Golden Visions Magazine in 2011/12 and the “Trathh” series for the Beam Me Up
Pod Cast site in 2012/13.
I am currently writing a new (as yet unnamed) collection of speculative
fiction short stories and also a “Human Hunter” series (the first four stories
in the arc have been published) for the Beam Me Up Pod Cast site.
TRATHH and other science fiction
stories
UK USA CDN AU
Excerpt from Trathh
Our Earth
Some time in the future
“We think it was a prison ship,” said the computer analyst “we are not sure
for how many. Maybe just a few.”
“Tell us something we don’t know,” was the impatient response.
“We’ve had some success in translating the computer records and among them
were a list of what has to be criminal charges,” was the reply.
“Go on …,” insisted the Navy Seals Officer.
“It’s a pretty horrific list,” continued the computer analyst.
* * *
The physicists and the engineers had been among the first on board the
crashed star ship. They had reported it badly damaged but not, apparently, from
external attack or from its rapid uncontrolled descent into Earth’s atmosphere.
Rather the damage had been administered internally.
Whoever, or whatever, beings had been held here, their restraint had only
been achieved by the most formidable of internal prisons. Heavily re-inforced
internal walls and bulkheads, heavy duty manacles and other forms of constraint
and evidence of machineries that may have powered stasis fields. A number of
such prisons were located about the ship. None of them close together. “Looks
like they were all in solitary confinement,” concluded one of the engineers. The
military had agreed. Though they realized not all of the prisons may have had
inmates. Also some prisons looked as though they would have been much more
formidable than others.
The contorted, twisted, at times even shredded, star ship metal was clear
evidence that some of the prisons had ultimately proven inadequate. Later the
chemists detected evidence of what may have been very hard drugs. Though this
was hard to say. There was a variety of damaged portable items aboard. Some of
it appeared to be disabled weaponry and there was speculation that some of it
may have been instruments of casual and not so casual torture.
Even to the most hardened of Earth military that saw it, the inside of this
star ship had been a grim and grisly place indeed.
* * *
Why go to such trouble? pondered the Navy Seal
if those aboard had
been as evil as indicated in the list of crimes, why not just kill them?
Why go to the trouble of transporting them from lord knows where to lord only
knows where, across the depths of interstellar space?
The Seals Officer knew that things probably hadn’t been looking too good for
the alien visitors anyway. Yet now, that sickening list of criminal charges all
but guaranteed how Earth authorities were going to react to those who survived
the crash. Especially since those who were in all probability their jailers were
very, very dead.
* * *
“The locals didn’t make any attempt to communicate with us,” telepathed Rull
to his two companions “just started shooting at us first from those slow moving
aerial drone things and then from everything else they could throw at us. From
the air and from the ground.”
“At least there was nothing from under the ground,” shuddered Yurrle, oldest
of the three recent prisoners, remembering when they had crashed on the more
militarily competent world of Rraldron 5, what seemed like a very long time ago.
One way or another we’ve been prisoners for a long time he thought.
“Have you ever known it to be any different?” replied the biggest of the
three aliens “anywhere that we have been? When it comes to unexpected alien
visitors the indigenous races usually shoot first and ask questions later. And
if the aliens are shown to be criminals, then they don’t even ask the questions
later.”
“They didn’t hang around for long once you started shooting back though,”
chuckled Rull. “Happy to dish it out, not so happy to receive it. I’m guessing
they’ve never come up against any one like you, hereabouts.”
Trathh didn’t respond to the intended compliment.
“It was kind of fun to watch them run though,” chuckled Rull persisting “I
guess right about now it’s dawning on them that they are not as tough as they
thought they were. Not that tough at all.”
“They’ll be back,” said Trathh somewhat resignedly “with everything they can
possibly dig up to use against us.”
“If they’ve got any sense they won’t,” replied Yurrle, “we smashed up a lot
of their crude equipment and we stunned a lot of their soldiers senseless, but,
despite the provocation, we didn’t actually kill any one. If they stop to think
about that for even just a moment then it should tell them something.
“It won’t make any difference,” responded Rull confidently. Then he fell
silent. All too conscious that he was the smallest, slowest and the weakest of
the three of them. Slower than Yurrle, much slower than Trathh. These two could
only move at his relatively pedestrian pace. Of course it was all relative. When
Trathh let him at a small group of the ground soldiers that had attacked them,
Rull had made short work of them. The locals seemed slow, soft, sort of flabby,
and their crude personal protections and transportation devices next to useless.
Yet their translators had picked up a reference to elite soldiery.
If that
was their best then the Universe help them thought Rull.
Still, unaided, Rull knew he could not outrun or otherwise evade the crude
aerial weaponry or the fastest of the ground transport that had already been
brought to bear against them. He knew though that the mighty Trathh would not
leave him in this place. Neither would the ageing Yurrle.
Trathh was resourceful and Rull knew he would soon repair the light body
armor, they had acquired from their former custodians. Then, utilizing the
armor’s exo-skeleton implants and other technology, they could move swiftly,
silently, and hopefully undetectably far away from this place.
* * *
Rull’s spirits were up as he looked across at Trathh. They were making good
speed across the harsh desert environment. The little alien smiled. Trathh had
gotten the light body armor operational. As fast as they were moving though, he
suspected that Trathh wasn’t even using the exo-skeleton implants in his light
armor. The big alien was just enjoying stretching out a little bit.
It felt good thought Rull. Like old times, when the three of them were star
troopers together, before their world was destroyed. Yet even this moment of
joy, this brief period of exhilaration, proved all too short.
* * *
The locals targeted them again with all manner of air and land launched
missilery and smaller explosive projectiles of all shapes and sizes. Which with
the light armour operational should have troubled them not at all. Except that
Rull had been slow to activate his light armour’s quasi shields and also that
just a few of the units, among the huge numbers of missiles and smaller
projectiles launched against them, were armed with fissionable materials.
The use of the extraordinarily crude fission weapons, what the locals
described as “theatre” or “tactical” “nukes” was an unexpected development.
What manner of race would use such devices on the surface of their own
world? Yurrle would later ask himself
and when their ground troops were
in the general vicinity.
Even Trathh with his capability to sense danger in advance had not
anticipated this form of attack. The big alien reasoned that the long period of
imprisonment with only the periodic temporary escapes had surely dulled this
capability.
The vaporization of Rull from an unthinkably crude near direct hit atomic
attack would be a watershed in the relationship between the alien prison ship
escapees and the world they had crash landed on. After that Trathh’s gloves were
definitely off. In fact the big alien went out of his way to take out anything
in the air or moving along the surface within the range of the just over the
horizon capabilities of his Tolden light energy rifle. When the superlative unit
ran low he finished the job with his own hands. Pieces of burning wreckage
thrown with the strength, speed, and unbelievable accuracy of Trathh’s hands
proved utterly deadly to anything in their way. Even high altitude was no
escape.
At the moment of his death, Rull’s thoughts had been of Trathh.
Would it
have made any difference if the local savages knew Trathh was innocent? Innocent
of all charges manufactured against him? Probably not.
The current
situation was probably a dilemma of a type this world had never faced before.
How to deal with marooned convicted alien felons. There were protocols, of
sorts, among more advanced worlds. Though judged from their recent actions it
seemed unlikely the locals had heard of them.
Trathh and Yurrle finally left the area. By then there was nothing moving
along the ground or flying anywhere near them.
The two aliens surveyed the enormous destruction. They had picked up radio
transmissions and their light armour’s translators had interpreted some of it.
There had been various references to: Apaches, Raptors, JSF joint strike
fighters, A10 Thunderbolts, Marines and Special Forces soldiers, Abrams tanks,
Bradley AFV’s, MRLS systems and heavy artillery. There had also been the heavy
duty lasers. Trathh and Yurrle had given these priority.
With one last look around, then with suits in stealth mode, quasi shields at
full strength and with even the mighty Trathh using his light armours
exo-skeleton implants the two former prisoners departed the area of the battle
at blinding speed. Neither of them looked back.
* * *
Trathh and Yurrle ran deep into the night putting ever more distance under
their belts. Not from the field of battle but rather from the crashed starship.
Or perhaps from both. The darkness and altering terrain no impediment at all to
the technology of their light armor.
Yurrle realized their attackers had been lucky, catching Rull with his quasi
shields down.
Trathh was another matter,
had they really expected to
take out the best star trooper he had ever known, with that assortment of
antiques and garbage? Catching the essence of Yurrle’s thoughts, his
companion just shrugged.
Yurrle’s main concern now would be for the two of them to keep well away from
the locals. It seemed inconceivable to him that the savages would attack a third
time. At least any time soon. Even if they could locate their quarry.
Trathh thought dark thoughts. A very justified bitterness at all of the evil
and at times just plain bad luck that had befallen him over time.
Yurrle knew the two of them only needed to keep out of the way until the
recovery prison ship arrived and, distasteful as that was; it was their only way
off this world.
Quellers would be sent with the recovery ship in order to subdue Trathh and,
if they didn’t send enough, there was always the chance the two of them could
take over the ship.
Either way there was no doubting the recovery prison ship would come. Trathh
was far too important to be left here.
As they came finally to a halt both knew their run had been nearly
transcontinental taking them to the other side of the comparatively largish
continental mass. Trathh was much calmer. The long run had helped. They would
rest now, one asleep and the other on watch, for a while. During this time they
had an unexpected visitor that was in some distress.
* * *
Soon after daylight the three women on the remote farm watched the men
approach from a distance. Realizing, as they approached closer, that they
weren’t men at all. In fact the women knew exactly who the aliens were. There
had been more than enough coverage in the media.
One of the aliens, the big one, was carrying their family dog that they had
presumed dead, nursing it gently.
“The animal will be all right,” he said without ceremony. “I had to use a
part of my life force to heal it, but it will be well.”
As the women went to query this Trathh responded “Do not regard this as any
great thing that part which I gave of my life force, will renew quickly. A type
of healing power possessed by every member of my race.” He could have said by
every surviving member of his race, but that would have been unnecessary.
“Dearest God,” said the eldest of the three women as the aliens departed, “I
think we’ve made a very serious mistake. Your Dad and his colleagues, the
President, everyone.”
“We are going to regret it, aren’t we Mum?” said the woman’s daughter “if we
don’t leave them alone, especially the big one, we are really going to regret
it. We are all going to regret it, I can just tell.”
Trathh neither knew nor cared that happenstance had brought him to the home
of his enemy, in a manner of speaking. The eldest of the three females being the
wife of the greatest military commander on this World. The chairman of the
United States Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Trathh had other worries. Even this short period of freedom had revitalized
his ability to sense danger in advance and it wasn’t the locals. They were still
in the process of licking their wounds.
He turned to his ageing yet venerable companion. “They are nearly here, I can
feel them.”
He didn’t need to say more. Yurrle shivered at the thought of the recovery
ship and the Quellers.
TRATHH and other science fiction
stories
UK USA CDN AU
