Holiday Shorts Read online

  Book Description

  This holiday season special edition from Quincy J. Allen contains two fun-filled science fiction short stories. The first story is entitled "17," a distant future yarn about what ol' St. Nick might look like in a few hundred years when he is "not of this earth." The second story is an alternate history action adventure where a young engineering genius takes on rebel airships and must save his home town from annihilation. It's called "Jimmy Krinklepot and the White Rebels of Hayberry," and it's bound to leave you dreaming of a white Christmas.

  HOLIDAY SHORTS

  Copyright © 2016 Quincy J. Allen

  “17”

  Copyright © by RuneWright LLC 2016

  “Jimmy Krinklepot and the White Rebels of Hayberry”

  Copyright © by RuneWright LLC 2016

  Originally published by WordFire Press in “A Fantastic Holiday Season: The Gift of Stories” 2014

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the express written permission of the copyright holder, except where permitted by law. This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination, or, if real, used fictitiously.

  Edited by Lisa Allen Rayne and Quincy J. Allen

  Book Design by RuneWright, LLC

  www.RuneWright.com

  Published by

  RuneWright, LLC

  www.RuneWright.com

  Contents

  Book Description

  Title Page

  17

  Jimmy Krinklepot and the White Rebels of Hayberry

  About the Author

  If You Liked …

  17

  “Rudy! Port shield’s gonna glitch! One more blammo on it and boss-man will need to dopple me!”

  17’s fingers danced over the nav-console causing the heavily modified transport ship the Baboushka to heave violently to starboard. It nosed towards the Korami space station, only a glimmering speck in the ship’s main view screen. His fingers danced some more, and the heavily-laden cargo-carrier slid to the right, going into a tight spiral towards Korami. His eyes flicked to a side-screen showing what was aft, and the Baboushka lurched as several blasts from one of the fighters on his tail hit home. A stream of blaster fire dotted past him in the front view-screen, sailing away into space as he maneuvered out of its path with another violent turn.

  “Port shield stabilized,” Rudy said, his high-pitched artificial voice sounding very much like a small, overly happy boy. “Getting to work on the aft shield, chief.”

  17 reversed the spiraling decent towards Korami as two more streams of blaster-fire traced past his view screens. “Gotta trim these jerks, Rudy. Dump juice to the gravplates and switch all shield ergs to the forward array on my mark!”

  “Wilco, chief… on your mark.”

  “NOW!” 17’s fingers hit a maneuvering macro, the star field spinning wildly and shifting 180 degrees in the blink of an eye. Simma Prime—the cosmop world he’d just left and also one of his solemn charges—flashed in the view screen, then there was nothing but stars and his HUD acquiring rapidly shifting target locks on the inbound fighters.

  17’s senses blurred for a few seconds as his mass, caught by its own inertia, struggled to rip itself free the ship’s gravity field and fling him around inside the cockpit. The HUD locked onto and highlighted three small planetary corsairs whose rate of gain doubled then tripled as the Baboushka’s drive took a bite out of the space behind the ship and started a rapid deceleration. 17 hit two more macros, popping open the missile-bays dotting the nose of the ship and spewing a hailstorm of guided missiles while turrets above the command deck erupted in a blaze of intense red and green pulsar fire.

  All three fighters opened up on the Baboushka’s inbound missiles, but it was too little too late. 17 watched with a satisfied grin as their blaster-fire caught only a handful of the missiles locked onto their hulls. The dimmers on his screen dulled the flowering explosions, and the remainder of his volley, along with his pulsar fire, hit home. All three corsairs blossomed simultaneously in magnificent explosions. His drive-system had finally stopped his momentum, and the ship began accelerating towards the expanding field of debris. He made a quick course correction, veering off to starboard and heading out towards deeper space beyond the gravity well of Simma Prime.

  Rudy spat out the coordinates for home and 17 hit the shift generator.

  * * *

  “Prime, I’m not sure I approve of 17’s behavior or his appearance,” 2 said sourly as he powered down the replication console and stepped out of the holoterm. The faint blue cylinder displaying bio-readings, cranial pressures, inputs, outputs, theta waves, REM sequences and other miscellaneous data pertaining to the newly manufactured 22 flickered out of existence, and Prime could now clearly see 22 suspended in the support-tank that held it… the it soon to be a him. Both men—identical in appearance except for a 2 tattooed on 2’s neck—wore red, bulging environment suits minus helmets and gloves. In the event of an emergency depressurization, temporary force fields would encase their heads and hands, allowing them to get either to a pressurized chamber of the station or to a storage locker where standard equipment could be found. Both had thick, white flowing hair and long white beards.

  The rotund body suspended in the tank before them twitched once within the synthiotic fluid, and the shroud of filaments that fed its tissues from head to toe sustaining life and data-feeds looked like a giant, translucent cocoon waiting to be split open by the new life that was almost fully grown within. There were still a few days till his birth, so no hair had yet formed across his ruddy, wrinkled, bulging epidermis.

  “You’re just jealous, 2,” Prime accused, but there was no malice in his voice. He tried not to smile as he pushed spectacles back from the tip of his rosy, bulbous nose to rest more usefully on its bridge. He examined some logistical data on a holopad held in the pudgy fingers of his other hand. Based on the numbers he was convinced that they would need one more clone to make this year’s deliveries to two more of Earth’s latest colony worlds.

  “I most certainly am not,” 2 said defensively.

  Ever since humanity’s efforts to reach the stars had come to fruition and evolved into growing populations across the galaxy, they’d been just barely able to keep up with demand, in no small part due to the utilization of Prime’s clones. The maintenance personnel even had support-tanks of their own to fashion new workers and administrators as needed to keep up with humanity’s needs.

  Prime pressed his fingers into a sequence of displayed commands suspended in the holopad field to request maintenance on the next tank to be used. Keeping his eyes on the newly adjusted logistical data that included another clone, he addressed 2 with a fatherly tone. “I know that deep down you always wanted to be a rabble-rouser.” Prime was certain this wasn’t the case, but it was fun to yank 2’s chain. “You take this job way too seriously, you know. We’re supposed to be jolly.”

  Prime ran through all the numbers and saw that with the advent of an additional carrier they would meet quota. They’d never missed a delivery in the eight-hundred years he’d run the operation, and they never would, not on his watch anyway.

  “But sir…” 2 started, his rosy cheeks going crimson more with frustration than traditional cheeriness. He turned his back on Prime and stared out through one of the clear shielding panels that separated them from the cold vacuum of space. The space station SW3 maintained a 1200 AU orbit around Dhruva Tara, also known as Polaris and more formally referred to as UMi A. The station was consistently in oppositional orbit from UM
i B, Polaris’ sister star. Even with the best image enhancing satellites, neither Earth nor any of its colonies would ever be able to detect the station in the bright halo of Ursae Minoris.

  “Stuff it, 2. Keep this up and I’ll force you to go on a vacation!” Prima threatened, punctuating it with a hearty, staccato laugh. “How about one of those Vegas worlds with nothing to do but gamble, drink, steal fire trucks and fend off hookers? Frankly, you could learn a thing or two from 17. He knows the job, knows the populace of each of his charges, and they love him as a result of his behavior and appearance, not in spite of it.”

  Prime and 2 turned their collective gaze towards the chamber door that cycled open like a great iris. Having received Prime’s summons through the station-net and displayed on their internal HUDs, three small humanoids wearing green environment suits entered the replication chamber and started doing some maintenance on the second of the three support-tanks. They were preparing it for the imminent creation of 23’s protogenome and had been directed by Prime to make all necessary preparations. One of the three technicians opened the tank and began cleaning the inside with a sterilizer. He followed that up with a clear synthetic protein that would serve as the placenta for 23. The other two humanoids ran through a complex series of diagnostics to make sure that once impregnated, the support-chamber would be a suitable womb for the new addition to the family.

  “There’s no need to discipline me, Prime. I’m only trying to express my concerns. He just doesn’t seem to maintain the spirit of the season.”

  “And you do? You sound like my wife with all that worrying.”

  “He doesn’t even wear the uniform when he works! And he’s lost all the weight. The last time I saw him he looked like a mercenary.” 2 stepped up to another console and fiddled with the filter levels of their shielding. He dialed it down ten percent to let in more of Polaris’ bright, blue light.

  “They don’t want the uniform on his route, and you know it. And those worlds abolished cellulite with the advent of artificial bodies. He gets all the cosmop worlds where the populations are mostly cyborgs, remember? Think about it, those folks have no more use for archaic symbolism than they do a combustion engine.” There was a clatter from within the second support-chamber that drew everyone’s attention. The technician, blurry behind the chamber’s cylinder, leaned down and picked up the protein-sprayer that had slipped from his hands. “Careful, son,” Prime admonished gently with a cheery smile. “We can’t afford any mistakes if we’re gonna make our deadlines.”

  The small technician bowed slightly within the cylinder, “Yes, Prime. I’m sorry, sir.” Both his voice and appearance were distorted by the curved plexi-shield in front of him.

  “It’s alright,” Prime said encouragingly just as a bright flash of light filled the chamber and a klaxon sounded three times throughout the station.

  An old woman’s voice, full of a palpable, cheery brightness, broke in over everyone’s implanted comm-links. “Attention all personnel. Prepare for docking with incoming vessel Baboushka. Teams seven and eight please stand by in bay twelve for cargo off-load.”

  “He’s here,” 2 said almost dejectedly. He stepped up to the window and stared out at the approaching starship. “And look at that rig of his… it looks like a sports-car.” There was clear disdain in 2’s muttered complaint.

  “What was that?” Prime asked. He’d heard 2, but he wanted to see if 2 would own up to the whining.

  “Oh… nothing,” 2 muttered. He hit the shade command on the panel before him and shut out the view of Polaris and the offending ship. The internal lighting of the replication pod compensated, bathing them in the soft, artificial light of the panels in the ceiling.

  “Come on 2. Let’s go meet 17 in the bay. I suspect he’s not staying long.”

  Prime and 2 left the replication pod and made their way to the central lift complex, cheerfully greeting the small passers-by in their tiny green suits. Everyone smiled, and most were whistling happy tunes full of cheer. The entire station was as busy as a kicked ant hill with everyone getting ready for the big night that was only two weeks away. As the lift door closed on Prime and 2, a jazzier version of one of Prime’s favorites came in over the speakers. It reminded him of a friend long-passed who had helped Prime find his way centuries before during a particularly nasty blizzard in the Arctic back on Earth. He couldn’t help but smile at the memory and took a moment to reminisce.

  2 looked at Prime and noticed the distant look on his face. “How long as it been since you lost him?”

  “Hmmmm…. must be about four hundred years now. I wish you could have met him. He had the purest heart I’ve ever met. You would have liked him. You two were a lot alike in some ways.”

  2’s face filled with pride. “Thank you, sir.”

  “No, I mean it. He was all about the mission. Dogged and relentless.”

  The lift came to an almost imperceptible stop, and the door cycled open. The two men stepped out into a massive bay, the curve of the outer hull of SW3 curving away to the left and right for hundreds of meters. Most of the bays were empty, but some held large, ungainly-looking cargo vessels tethered to the main hull via dozens of umbilicals. An array of these snaked their way out to latch onto the more streamlined and racier-looking Baboushka. Off-load crews were gathered around the still-closed cargo-hold door waiting for the umbilicals to finish latching on and equalize the pressure. The starboard passenger hatch of The Baboushka opened—against regulations, 2 thought to himself—and both Prime and 2 watched a trim figure in a black environment suit step out onto the still-extending platform that slid slowly out from beneath the hatch. He lifted his visor, placed his finger against the side of his nose and disappeared, quickly reappearing below the hatch on the deck-plates of the main bay. He lowered the visor again as he started walking over towards his brothers.

  The off-load teams cheered for 17 and as he walked through their numbers, and they raised hands to him that he slapped as he went by. Prime smiled at the sight and 2 frowned.

  17 strode jauntily across the deck heading straight for Prime and 2. As he approached, he lifted his hands and flipped the latches at the back of his neck. With a flourish he lifted off his helmet. 2 gasped in horror at the sight, but Prime only smiled. 17 had shaved the sides of his bushy, long, white hair, leaving a Mohawk that popped straight up once released from the confines of the helmet. He’d trimmed his beard into a bushy goatee, and he now looked more like a hard-core biker than he did Prime or 2. With his helmet tucked under his left arm, he used his right hand to free his long beard and then a long pony-tail that he’d tucked under the rim of his neck-ring. Additionally, he’d had his eyes replaced with cybernetic implants: small cylindrical lenses that glowed with an internal light. The left one was blood red and the right one bright emerald.

  “Cheeno, Pops! 2!” 17 said cheerfully as he walked up to them grinning. “Scans square?” All three men stepped into the still open lift and the door closed, shutting them in with a harsh, rhythmic version of Noel Blanc from the French colony world Versailles. 17 hit the actuator for the top level of the station.

  “I’m fine, 17. How about you?” Prime replied jovially. He could feel 2 next to him doing his best not to hyperventilate at the sight of 17.

  “Seven up… jump drive on the sleigh needs a tweeker or three. It’s been a bit glitch and hay-o the past week. I’m sure the techs’ll get it mashed before I gotta rescind.”

  “How’s your run looking?” 2 asked tersely.

  “Also seven up. With what I brought in, quota for all four cosmops should be square as long as I don’t run into too much trouble on the way back.”

  “Trouble?” Prime and 2 asked simultaneously.

  “Yeah. Tech pirates. Standard jackers around Simma Prime and Jericho. It’s nothing me and Rudy can’t blammo. You know Rudy. Dogged and Relentless.”

  “No doubt. I always liked the name you picked for your AI.” There was distant pride in Prime’s voice. “It’s
good luck. He’ll never let you down.”

  “He never has,” 17 agreed. “2, could you make sure they stack The Baboushka with those new seeker missiles.”

  “Of course, 17,” 2 replied with a dry, business-like tone.

  “Nice work on those, by the way.” 17 slapped 2 on the back heartily. “You’re a genius! They really pack smasho!”

  2 looked at 17 with a mildly surprised look on his face. He hadn’t expected a compliment from his so-very-untraditional younger brother. “Thank you, 17. That means a lot to me.”

  “You make ‘em, I break ‘em, right, 2?” 17 put a hand on 2’s shoulder and squeezed in a brotherly fashion.

  2 couldn’t help but smile. “I guess so, 17.”

  The lift doors opened and 17 stepped out. “I’m going to go see mother-hen, you guys coming? I bet I can convince her to make some Bûche de Noël for us. I know you want me to put on some weight, 2.” 17 winked with the green eye and smiled at them with rosy cheeks.

  “No thanks, 17.” 2 replied a bit more warmly. “We have to get back and make the world ready for 23’s arrival.”

  “Marv!” 17 blurted. “I can’t wait to meet him!” The lift doors started to close, but 17 stuck his hand out and it opened back up again.

  “Oh, and 2?”

  “Yes, 17?”

  A great big smile spread across 17’s face and he stared 2 dead in the eyes with those red and green oculars. He took a deep breath, held it and let out a huge belly-laugh, “HO HO HO ho ho ho…”

  It caught Prime and 2 totally by surprise, and they instantly started laughing themselves, adding their own heart-felt “HO-HO-HOs” to the mix. The laughter of all three echoed down the space-station hallway. Two of three bellies shook like bowls of jelly, and all three of them winked at each other at the same time, their cheeks practically glowing red. The lift doors closed and it started moving back to the deck with the replication pod.

  “You still worried about us making a run with couriers like 17?” Prime asked slyly.