(Backworlds Series Book #2)

Coming Summer 2012

In the far future humanity, bioengineered to deal with different environments, has spread out to other planets in the galaxy, called the Backworlds. Craze’s Tavern sits on the fringes of expansion. Last stop for one hundred fifteen light years.

The Lepper opens, bringing in a ship that should no longer exist. A battleship spoiling for a fight. Yet the war ended two generations ago. The vessel drops off a Water-breather, a type of Backworlder thought to be extinct. She claims one of Craze’s friends is a traitor who summoned the enemy to Pardeep Station. A betrayal so much like his father’s, if he lives to worry about it.

Anticipated release late 2011 / early 2012.

Story Trailer by: TruNeVar

Original Art by: Art by Retta / Loretta Stephenson

Extract:

CHAPTER 1

Orange lights with green tints fringing the worn tavern blinked and a low coo reverberated, ‘Incoming,’ through Craze’s sub hearing as vibration. The baritone thrum grew louder and louder until the floor shook, reducing him to a spec in the galaxy’s workings. A reminder that liked to crop up at least twice everyday when he wasn’t hibernating. Through the skylight above he saw the telltale flash, a cough of stark warmth disturbing the anemic blue sky. The brightness stung until moisture built up in his eyes and he sneezed. Ship!

His shoulders shrugged, shaking off the dregs of a nine day hibernation, and he cursed not being woken sooner. Whenever settling down into a dormant state, he listened to motivational recordings and faithfully chanted, as he drifted into low consciousness, the prescribed affirmations for prosperity and success. Nine days of not even pouring one drink was nobody’s definition of success and certainly not his.

“Forewerlds be damned.” He spat then stretched, pushing himself off the mat laid out in front of his tavern door so no one could sneak in without his knowing. Staggering until he got his feet under him, Craze tugged his suspenders up and the sleeves of his shirt down, readying for customers and the influx of chips, bright sheeny chips, which could transport him off this backworld’s backworld someday to a better port with greater opportunity. Some place that wasn’t the last stop for one hundred fifteen light years.

Rolling up the thickly woven filaments he used as a bed, he tucked it under the bar, then scooted behind the compressed fiber counter to make sure the residents of Pardeep Station not living inside the docking facility knew a ship came in. Not many backworlders, those bioengineered to take advantage of the scraggly planets the universe offered as less than ideal habitats, scrimped by here. Pardeep Station was rough and not fully formed, uninspiring and lacking in imagination, impersonating a stain. Craze had yet to think of it as home. It was just a place on the way to someplace else. Between the kegs of mead and malt brewed by his hand, he hit the summons—a simple intercom system crusted over with dust—“Lepper opened,” he yelled out to the other folks who earned a living off travelers as much as he did.

Craze’s courtesy to his friends and neighbors done, he sauntered to the plexiglass door to watch the landing. He wondered what class of vessel came out of the portal ripped into space by the lepper system, how many people were on board, and what sorts of people. A massive transport filled with the very rich kind of folks was what he dreamed of, knowing full well that was unlikely, as those kind rarely came to a place like Pardeep.

He shouldered into the door’s milky, scratched surface, which jerked with a scraping noise after a shove and a kick. The air bit on the inside of Craze’s outspread nostrils, a sharp twang making him rub at the side of his nose. The roar of approaching engines jostled the loose, gravelly soil, the granules jumping and skittering, sending up a dust storm of supergene proportion. His oily eyes, which could see as well in twilight as daylight, squinted through the tumult, making out a more densely packed column of dirt mingling amid the ship’s wake, adding to the coming tempest. The intensifying frenzy of dust sent a tremor of trepidation through Craze’s reasoning. Logic told him it was one of his fellow Pardeepans coming in to make a few sheeny chips off the tourists yet his emotions ran rampant, sensing portend, perhaps for no other reason than it was more interesting to think so than not.

Craze filled the doorframe he leaned against with muscle and height. The splayed placement of his cheeks, eyes, flat nose, and prominent mouth allowed him to live comfortably on hot worlds rife with organics, viruses and bacteria choking the air. His ability to hibernate let his kind thrive in places with extreme seasons, seasonal being the key. He didn’t flourish in the yearly changes on Pardeep, which went from cold to bitter. All year the climate stayed dry and this world had very little organic chemistry happening in the atmosphere. Craze managed though. Like the other hardy souls who worked this rock, he managed.

His disheveled charcoal waves neatly rebraided themselves, then laid still. The living hair gave him some popularity with females and saved him time grooming, but he’d never figured out what advantage the hair gave him. Catching insects maybe?

Pardeep’s dust-laden air tasted of chalk and minerals, coating his tongue and plush lips. For the billionth time since moving here, he thought about inventing a perpetual watering system, a mist of constant wet through a hose in his mouth to make him feel whole again. That kind of use of water was for a rich man though. It’d be a long time before Craze could claim to be that. He spat out mud between his rows of teeth.

The incoming vessel swooped lower, gliding toward the docks rising above his tavern, casting a great shadow which darkened the landscape and Craze’s view of the world. Shaped like a dumbbell and colored in rust patches, the hull of the space craft clung to a brittle and aged patina. It showed little promise of fulfilling his ambitions for prosperity, but there at the tail blazoned a crisp logo. Freshly repainted, a white ring with red stripes dominated the aft, rekindling a little hope for something more than the arrival of destitute derelicts.

With the hulk of shade, the squall of dust sped closer, the billows rising ever higher with each triumphal advance, somersaulting and churning, turning darker and blacker, reaching up to swallow Pardeep, the docks, the bar and Craze whole. He backed inside, slamming the door, unable to peel his sights away from the storm roaring at him like a wall. He gulped, cursing the Pardeepan twit creating this monsoon. “Nobody’ll be able to take mer ‘n three steps from the docks, dumbass.”

Craze blinked as his words sank in. His tavern sat inside the docking facility at the base. Anyone who came in wouldn’t be able to leave. He didn’t want people wandering about, perhaps tempted into taking one of Pauder’s idiotic tours. Craze wanted them in his bar and staying put. “Oh!” His foul mood took a turn toward better. The blizzard of dust wasn’t the misfortune it appeared. Still, he braced himself for the onslaught and ground his teeth as pebbles scoured the exterior of his tavern and sliced fresh scratches into his door.

The typhoon of dust grew worse, a tumult of sound rumbling through the bar: engines, wind, whipped up soil. Then came a series of explosions, closer and more thunderous.

Weapons fire!

Craze ducked, covering his ears. On his knees he crawled away from the door, retreating farther into his tavern, heading for cover behind the bar. “Damn you backwerld reject of gene splicin’.” Now he knew who added to the uproar out there. The old fool Pauder, who believed the war hadn’t ended. Craze needed to get Pauder to stop before the tourists veered away opting for the next rest stop along the lepper system. Craze chanced nearing the door, inching his way over, cracking it open to shout through the slit. “If you scare off business, Pauder, I’ll come huntin’ you.”

Another volley of gunfire boomed followed by twangs of ordinance bouncing off the hull of the docking ship. Craze glanced up, because only a well armored space craft could ward off what Pauder threw at it, and that kind of vessel only existed in history files. Craze rubbed at the back of his neck as that trickle of uneasiness from earlier intensified.

“Get ‘em. Get the fo’wo’s,” Pauder said, his tones rattling with fury, punctuated by four more shots.

Craze wet his lips and swallowed. “The war’s over! You damned coot.”

In a skull hugging helmet of thick fabric, goggles and a gas mask, the worn, old man jumped down from his all terrainer jacked up high on treads which churned up more dust than the incoming ships and smaller dust storms. Pauder’s dark skin shone with moisture produced by his tough hide, comprised of boney shields and rings. His sharp fingers, engineered for hunting, gripped the trigger and leveled the bazooka at Craze. “I see yar piss ass ship, vermit. Die like a aviarman ‘n scream for me.” He cackled in an unforgiving manner, then finally lowered the barrel as big as Craze’s head. “Oh, it’s ya.”

Craze crossed his arms over his keg-shaped chest. “Yup, me, not a natu bred fo’wo, not that it matters. The war’s been over a hundred fifty years now.”

Trouble with Pauder, his kind lived too long. What passed two generations ago for most, played like yesterday in his recollection. And, he’d struggle through another century or more before letting the backworlds put the tired issue to rest. A taloned finger shook under Craze’s nose. “’N the good guys lost. Look at this hellhole.”

Craze couldn’t argue.

“That decoration on the hull, ain’t no decoration, Mr. Barkeep. It’s trouble. Bold faced, all caps trouble. The symbol’s Foreworld. Fo’wo’s is here, smart ass, camed ta erase ya from existence. I’ll be waiting back there,” Pauder pointed at a closet. “When theys come in ‘n is about ta let yar brain matter loose onta the floor, I’ll jump out right then ta spring ya from theys clutches. Bam. Bam. Baaam!”

It’d been a war over territory, the foreworlds threatened by the adaptations they had given to the backworlders. Result of the war, the backworlders lost territory, scattering over the scraps left. After that, everyone minded their place and the foreworlds faded from memory. For the most part.

“You’s not shootin’ a bazooka in my bar. I don’t care how skeery you think Forewerlders is. They can’t be so terrible. They’s just like us.”

“Yar so damned ignorant, it hurts my teeth. Ooohh, the enemy is wily, Craze. Wilier than ya can ever imagine.” He crammed himself into the storage closet and slammed the door. Muffled words flitted past Craze’s flat, indistinct ears. “We should have some sort of signal.”

“Like, come out of the closet, Pauder?”

The door flew open and the coot jumped out waving the bazooka at the corners. “Where’s theys at? Where’s theys at?”

Craze rubbed his meaty palms over his face, his eyes itching from the kicked up dust. “Get back in the damned closet, you rejected pile of gene splicin’.”

Just in time. The bar shook and a siren blared. Pardeep’s docks joined with the incoming ship, snagging it fast to the tired moon, announced by loud grates, jarring Craze’s hair, then his lips. He stood with his legs wide and knees loose. The crocks and bottles rattled, but nothing fell or cracked.

To lure in the folks disembarking, Craze unlatched an enclosure under the bar and fished around inside for a handful ricklits. The plump insects screamed, “Rrrrickl’t, rrrickl’t.” Bright yellow with iridescent blue spots, the things thrashed their squat bodies around in his wide palms, antennae kicking around in the air. Craze threw all but one into a roaster and turned the appliance on. Within thirty seconds the delicious odor of cooking ricklits filled his place. Irresistible. His mouth watered. When his stomach bucked in a loud plea, he popped the one ricklit he left out between his lips, biting down on the tasty head, enjoying the crunch and burst of cream, much like perfectly deep fried chicken, so someone once said.

While chewing on the bit of protein, Craze wiped out some crocks with his cleanest cloth. His burly hands, which had put many a wayward patron out the door, washed the covers and sip spouts. Soon after, the jar parts got a rudimentary rinse in the basin of disinfecting gel. The yellow wasn’t the right shade of yellow, the gel glopping like gravel from being long past its prime.

The door scraped open. One person walked in. She stretched like the first rays of a moonrise. On her heels followed an entourage of breezy shadows, which seemed to close in on her, dimming her and her silver light.

Craze rubbed his eyes, wondering what went wrong with his vision. Did her shadow just move? And, where was everybody else? “That big, old ship just fer you?”

The shadows cleared, finding walls and corners to cling to. Silver shimmered over her hair and skin, flowing like her kaleidoscope dress. The tinkling pitter patter of falling beads of glass followed her onto the bar stool in front of Craze. She perched delicately, donned a forlorn smile and spread her empty hands. “Drink for a t’irsty traveler? It’s been a long journey from Bofeld. You know it?”

“No. Got any of them pretty, legal tender like chips?” He searched her top to toe, looking for something of value. Her empty hands and oily hair weren’t very promising. Craze sighed, hoping her ship would take off soon, not wanting to deal with her begging for hours on end. He feigned being very busy, washing crocks, wiping off kegs and bottles, stirring the cooking ricklits. He shook some spice into his palm and added it to the roaster, wiping the sticking granules of red powder off on his apron. His stomach rumbled as the fragrant aroma filled his nostrils, and he thought it a pity ricklits didn’t reproduce faster.

A shadow under his feet leapt, reaching toward his face. Craze jumped, dropping the stirrer in his hand. The she cackled. What crap was this? Dammit. He’d be more pissed if she’d caused him to drop a bottle. “Tricks’ll get you nowhere, Dearheart. Currency here’s chips.”

“I’m tapped out, I’m afraid. But have I got a story for you. It’s worth ten drinks, but I’ll tell it to you for one.”

If Craze had an air ration for every time he’d heard that, Pardeep would feel like a first-class Foreworld. But it wasn’t. “It won’t be nothin’ I haven’t heard befer.”

“You haven’t heard dis,” she said.