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    Under Your Skin
    Under Your Skin
    Under Your Skin
    Ebook141 pages2 hours

    Under Your Skin

    By Louis Shalako

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    About this ebook

    Under Your Skin is a collection of short fiction. Nineteen of the edgiest stories from Louis Shalako.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherLouis Shalako
    Release dateMar 21, 2015
    ISBN9781927957707
    Under Your Skin
    Author

    Louis Shalako

    Louis Shalako is the founder of Long Cool One Books and the author of twenty-two novels, numerous novellas and other short stories. Louis studied Radio, Television and Journalism Arts at Lambton College of Applied Arts and Technology, later going on to study fine art. He began writing for community newspapers and industrial magazines over thirty years ago. His stories appear in publications including Perihelion Science Fiction, Bewildering Stories, Aurora Wolf, Ennea, Wonderwaan, Algernon, Nova Fantasia, and Danse Macabre. He lives in southern Ontario and writes full time. Louis enjoys cycling, swimming and good books.

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      Book preview

      Under Your Skin - Louis Shalako

      Under Your Skin

      Louis Shalako

      Copyright 2014 Louis Shalako and Long Cool One Books

      Design: J. Thornton

      ISBN 978-1-927957-70-7

      The following is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to any person living or deceased, or to any places or events, is purely coincidental. Names, places, settings, characters and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination.

      Sea of Sand originally appeared in Perihelion Science Fiction Magazine.

      The Trophy originally appeared in New Myths.

      Table of Contents

      Contact

      Armed Reconnaissance

      Bug Control

      The Trophy

      The Chemical Hockey League

      The Taking of Spuds Moynihan

      The Tailgater

      Presence

      Under Your Skin

      Waiting for God

      Blue, Man’s Best Friend

      The Martyr Charter

      Poetic Genes

      The Eternal City

      The Chase

      Psi-Ops 101

      Time in a Bottle

      The Island

      Sea of Sand

      About Louis Shalako

      Contact

      The only sound was their breathing and the whir of the cooling fans behind the instrument panels. U-1495 was deep into enemy space.

      Fully cloaked and with the latest in detection gear, they had glommed onto an enemy flight path.

      The disturbed space followed linear parameters. They were fortunate to have some good maps. The Conglomerate had been here centuries before. The path was still warm, and the convections were strong, and yet it was narrow. It had to be a very small ship, and this was confirmed by scope when it came in view. They spotted it when it came within a half trillion km. A bigger ship, they would have seen it farther away. All the data looked good.

      It was a difficult question, whether to trust the machine or to trust the eyes.

      There were said to be prime resources in the Alpha Eridani sector, but no one had seen fit to stake them.

      The original prospectors were long gone.

      Reed Farrell and Cameron Dowd were extremely fortunate to see this.

      They had lain doggo for three full days. They were just about to ease their way out of the system to go and look for trade somewhere else. They only had so much time on station and a lot of space to cover. Strategic interstellar reconnaissance was a new science, and that added just a touch of the willies to the lower abdomen when confronted face-to-face with the success of their technique. After studying seven other systems where there was nothing going, it was a bit of a shocker to actually see something.

      Never let it be forgotten... Reed Farrell muttered softly as he took a quick pull from a water bottle.

      ...that they were all volunteers... Dowd grinned, his face a satirical mask in the multi-coloured glow of the screens.

      The ship was parked in an asteroid belt between the fourth and fifth planet. They were just one of a known six hundred thousand inert objects. It was assumed, or possibly just suspected (military intelligence being what it was, a lot of guesswork) that the Breakaways didn’t know much about the sector. Hopefully they didn’t know anything about the U-class ships, but even the best-kept secrets didn’t last for long.

      With access to the databases of all the firms and companies acquired, merged with, or otherwise swallowed over the years, the Conglomerate perhaps better understood the commercial stakes in this system.

      Reed wondered what the Breakos were doing here.

      Look at him, Reed. Dowd pointed at the screen, where the enemy ship was doing the classic insertion into the thick, deep atmosphere of P-3, the third planet out from Eridani.

      I am.

      I ain’t ever seen such a lovely set-up. Dowd’s stomach rumbled; they’d have to eat something soon. Another thing. P-3 is said to have a habitable zone.

      His fingers busied themselves dragging up the info. Reed studied the pictures.

      Hmm. Not exactly a vacation paradise, but there was open water and greenery on a planet that seemed to have unusually large polar ice-caps and a cool, arid desert around the equator.

      Fresh water was all well and good, but getting it from the surface to where it was needed was another challenge. P-3 wasn’t populated as far as the database indicated.

      Hey, Reed.

      What?

      "What’s the most precious commodity in the universe?’

      People were evenly divided between water and arable land, a kind of chicken-and-egg kind of reasoning.

      I don’t know...what?

      Women.

      Reed grinned.

      It was as good as any other theory. A Breako base seemed unlikely. As far as anyone knew, they didn’t have the resources. With no major markets of their own, the Breakos had one option: to break the Conglomerate.

      This situation implied attack rather than defense. Hence the urgent need for reconnaissance.

      Reed studied the numbers and watched the parabola as the enemy machine decelerated.

      Yeah, he’s all right.

      The guy got full points for precision. He watched the numbers carefully, comparing the possibilities with a ship-recognition manual. The enemy had some exceptional pilots. It was a good thing to know.

      Tapping away, he brought up the estimated vessel mass, the power output as observed, and then he looked at the three possibilities presented by the computer.

      It’s a runabout. A yacht, a yawl ... the ship’s cutter. Something like that.

      Dowd gave his head a quick shake.

      What were they doing way the hell out here?

      Here, referred to the sixth planet, which was in conjunction, way over on the other side of the star, and about a trillion km farther out in terms of its orbit.

      I don’t know, Buddy.

      Reed bit his lip.

      Shit.

      Yeah. I hear you.

      They had orders, and those orders, when it seemed very likely that nothing would happen, were fair enough. Observe the enemy, and don’t get caught. If you’re vastly stronger (it was hard to imagine a ship so small that a U-class scout could tackle it on such terms), take it out—but only if in your opinion, it will yield valuable intelligence. Otherwise. Don’t bother, as we’d prefer the enemy not to know about you guys just yet...it went on, of course, but that was the gist of it.

      Orders were all very well. You fulfilled your orders, you got paid. If you screwed up, you died, or if you were very lucky, switched sides or were paroled to the sidelines. The trouble with parole of course, was that you couldn’t make any money.

      They were lessons learned long ago.

      A simple proposition, and one the pair had met often enough. Those were all smaller jobs—much smaller, especially when first starting out in business. They’d had their disasters along the way.

      They had no real way of knowing just how un-crackable their signal might be, and while it was the tightest-ass beam that money and the full weight of the Conglomerate could buy, anybody who got between the U-1495 and the signal’s intended destination would see it for sure. Or anyways, they might.

      It wasn’t a very nice thought.

      Dowd looked over.

      What do you want me to do?

      Reed nodded.

      What the hell, Dowd. Might as well do it.

      He watched the ship descend into the atmosphere, and then something strange happened.

      Belay that. The bastard’s coming up again.

      What?

      Dowd’s hand hovered over the emergency start button.

      All right, all right. Let’s just watch ’em.

      The enemy was at the bottom of a deep gravity well, in a low-powered ship. The real consideration was entirely unknown—what the hell was out at P-6, or otherwise why did the guy come for way out here? The enemy ship climbed into another orbit. It disappeared around the backside and they waited.

      Dowd nodded in agreement, lost in his own thinking processes. The important thing was that they could get away and outrun the enemy if they must. If it was going to bust out, it would do it very soon.

      Reed wouldn’t mind knowing a bit more about P-6. For the moment, that one could sit on the back burner.

      The enemy ship did two or more orbits, and then it did it again. It disappeared into the atmosphere for a while, and they lost it. It popped back up a minute later and went around again, always coming back to its original insertion point...

      It was only when a couple more ships came in from the vicinity of P-6 that they began to get an idea of what was going on down there. It was a hairy moment when Reed looked over and realized they were already too close for comfort, and yet he could have sworn he and Cam were fully alert and not missing a thing ...a troubling prospect, but he didn’t have time.

      Reed studied the data and then had another look.

      That’s a frickin’ flight school.

      It was the only thing that sort of fit the observations, bearing in mind one of the new vessels was a slightly larger ship. The pair took careful shots with their best lens and sucked up as much EM as they could without actively searching. Much of that could be analyzed later, but the machine was chewing on it, albeit slowly. The way it was looking, the machine would call it inconclusive.

      What do we do now? Dowd had beads of sweat on his forehead and their ship, normally a bit chilly even on a good day, seemed downright warm inside for a change.

      Reed couldn’t help but notice beads of sweat rolling down his ribs and the insides of his arms.

      Well. I’m damned if I know.

      On the one hand, they could probably get a couple of quick kills and get out of there—

      Reed. Those boys came from P-6.

      True.

      They sat watching the activity on P-3, as the student pilots, all of them seeming fairly competent, practiced planetary insertions and re-boots. Dowd, ever attentive, swept the panels for cabin pressure, breathing mixture, air quality, and all other systems. With Reed, it was like he just didn’t care sometimes.

      "What are they practicing for, Reed? This was another good question. Is it just qualifications, or are

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