The Kiss Of Venus

By Alex Markham

28 short stories with humour, irony and at times, absurdness.
The title story sees a Star Force captain on the Venus to Mars supply run on his last trip before retirement. He can't wait to leave. Nothing has happened for the past 28 years and this trip will be no different, surely. Think again.
In the other short stories, there is a range of genres, from music and war to travel to Westerns. In Ambush, we meet a cowboy who comes across the aftermath of an ambush. But something isn't quite right. We then meet a man in Finders Keepers who finds half a million pounds. Or does he? We also see The Mutinous Mule who won't do as he's told, then a dog who can talk and an alien scientist arriving on Earth and getting himself confused with the locals. Plus a whole lot more.

Each story is prefaced by a light-hearted prologue giving the background and thinking behind each story. The stories are fun and often informative. Just don't take everything too seriously.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Alex Markham
• Release date: Jul 18, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223137542

Book preview

The Kiss of Venus

Not everyone can be a hero

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Prologue

Not everyone can be a good-looking hero although you wouldn’t think that by watching films and TV series.

We saw the handsome square-jawed Captain Kirk exploring new worlds, defeating the baddies, saving the universe and getting all the beautiful women.

Or how about James Bond? He’s suave, good looking and drives fantastic cars no matter who the actor playing him. Bond saves the world time and time again against impossible odds and also ends up with beautiful women.

Or how about Ellen Ripley from the Alien films? She single-handedly takes on deadly murderous aliens and wins out every time, even after the Marines have failed.

All these heroes had great looks and loved doing what they did. But most of us are not like that, I know I’m not. My long career in a multinational corporation was not too bad, I didn’t hate it and even enjoyed it at times. However, I’d have preferred to have been a cool rock star or a Premier League footballer. The last two years of my corporate career were spent focused on finding ways to get redundancy. Sometimes things got in the way of my focus but in the end, I succeeded.

The first story in Kiss Of Venus is the title story for this collection and considers the situation where someone in a mundane job, counting down the days to retirement, suddenly had to face an unexpected and deadly situation.

We have a situation

The silence woke him. Captain Maxwell S. Hammer opened his eyes with a sleepy struggle. He roused himself from deep warm golden slumbers. The unnatural quiet was broken only by the tinnitus in his left ear from the fistfight with a renegade android on Agelis IV. Or was it Anton VII? His memory wasn’t what it used to be.

Where was the hum of the engines? That drone pervaded every moment of his and the crew’s life on the spacecraft and now there was nothing. Not a sound. The ship was supposed to be powering them onto Mars although powering was possibly the wrong word he reminded himself.

He glanced at the holographic digital watch face hovering above his left wrist. But what was night and day in space? Every day was a hard day’s night on this ancient Star Force freighter, especially one called HMS Buttercup. Star Force didn’t need to rub it in. Most captains get a ship with a robust name like The Defiant, The Scimitar or The Enterprise. Hammer got The Buttercup.

The intercom speaker buzzed, Captain to the bridge. His No.1, Commander L N R Rigby’s shrill voice ground through his brain smashing his need for time to wake up like vocal caffeine. We have a situation, she said.

Oh no, what does she want now? Hammer mumbled to himself as he checked the intercom was on mute in a momentary fluster. Couldn’t she ever leave him to get a nap without having a crisis? It was bad enough she had three first names that no one knew apart from the initials but she was also a first-class pain in a Silenian rat’s rectum. The only skill she seemed to have was the astonishing ability to spout management clichés. It’s why she’d been transferred to the Buttercup from a real starship by Star Force three years ago, back in 2256. They thought she couldn’t do any damage on his ship. Apart from to his sanity.

This was Hammer’s final mission. The task, as it had been for the past twenty years, was to deliver supplies between the terraformed Venus and Mars. Then he will step down and let Rigby take over. He wouldn’t miss the constant tug of war between them. Some days were better than others but she was impatient for his job and didn’t hide it.

He removed the mute. Coming up, No.1. No.1? She was No.1 on his list of least favourite people. And there were a few. He flicked the intercom back on mute, clenched his teeth and balled his fists. That woman drives me crazier than a Bilachian bat on heat.

Hammer slid to the side of his bunk and sat up. He placed his bare feet on the cool floor; the arthritis in his big toes ached. He wiped rheumy eyes with the back of a hand and looked for his spectacles. He ran a hand over his pillow-sized paunch and grimaced at the pain in his back. That he’d let himself go was an understatement but twenty years on the same supply run in the same ship would do that to anyone.

Once upon a long ago, he’d wanted to be a starship captain on a battle-class cruiser. After twenty years captaining this piece of space junk on Star Force’s least glamorous posting, he was never going to become a starship hero. He was just another average person doing another average job. Star Force was only glamorous when you were exploring new worlds, meeting new civilisations and boldly going where no one has gone before. It was not when your role was to ferry supplies between two of Earth’s nearest colonies where plenty of people had gone before.

Today, however, was a great day. After 6,128 trips to Mars and back, journey number 6,129 was the final mission before his retirement. Maybe mission was not the right word for shuttling supplies but it sounded important. But now he had a ‘situation’ and it was annoying that Commander L N R Rigby could not handle it without him holding her hand. A situation. On the Venus to Mars run? Please. It could hardly be a life or death situation like being in the Neutral Zone facing blood-thirsty Rochlans like proper Star Force captains do. Those without a paunch, a touch of sciatica and a penchant for too much wine.

All he now wanted was to retire to live under the calico skies of his London home, read books and drink great wine. He got up, got dressed and ambled reluctantly to the bridge grumbling to himself about Rigby’s situations.

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Captain on the bridge

The lift doors swished open. Partially. They hadn’t worked properly since last year but the maintenance crews were busy with real starships. Hammer slid sideways through the jammed doors, catching his paunch on the way, and out onto the room. Bridge was pushing it as a description of the cramped space before him but officially, that is what it was. The sign on the door saying ‘Bridge’ swung back and forth every time it opened. Partially. One of the screws had fallen out and no one had a screwdriver. Or cared.

Rigby was sitting in the captain’s chair, covering the role while he napped. She made a show of lifting herself from the seat and moved to stand to one side. Her eyes narrowed at seeing him. Hammer straightened himself and marched to his seat but didn’t sit. He rested a hand on the chair’s wide arm and stared at the viewscreen along the wall in front of him. Venus should have filled the screen, they’d only just left its orbiting space dock.

Venus was not there. He looked at the empty view screen for a few moments as its absence failed to register in his musty sleepy brain. The bridge crew stared at him in serious doubt he’d have any wisdom or leadership to offer them.

Hammer turned to his Visgon Science Officer. "Mrs Vander Bilt. What’s the situation? Where the hell are we?" He’d once heard a starship battle cruiser captain say, ‘The hell’, and it sounded tough and direct. It was the first time he’d ever had the chance to use it as nothing usually happened. They went to Mars, unloaded and returned to Venus. Repeat. 6,128 times.

I’ll recheck my sensors as this makes no sense, Captain, said Bilt raising one eyebrow, the extent of her Visgon emotions. Her large pointed ears protruded through short straight dark hair. She stared down at a small screen, the green light reflected on her long face angular. Without looking up, she said, I can confirm we are approximately 10.3189672134 light years from where we should be.

Blood filled Hammer’s cheeks and his stomach ulcer groaned. Maybe that huge slug of Elysian brandy before turning in had been a mistake. He’d not had time to sleep it off before the idiot Rigby had woken him.

He glared at his No.1."How the hell did this happen, No.1? I leave you in charge for ten minutes and we end up 10.318, and whatever Bilt said, light-years from home?" He threw in a ‘the hell’ again, it not only sounded great but he also wanted to pin the blame on Rigby. Nonetheless, things were looking bad whoever was to blame. He narrowed his eyes at her. "We don’t have warp speed; we’re a freight vessel. How the hell could we travel 10 light-years in a few seconds?" He was pleased to get to say ‘the hell’ a third time inside five minutes. This sounded like he was assertive, he assumed, and in charge even though he didn’t have the slightest idea what he was doing.

He watched Mrs Bilt straighten and shuffle on her feet. Sir, she said managing to make ‘sir’ sound more like ‘you stupid old goat.’ As you know, we recently discovered the Kiss of Venus phenomenon near Venus. It’s a small tear in the Space-Time Continuum. It seemed stable and wasn’t moving so vessels simply avoided the area.

Yes, yes, Mrs B. He waved a dismissive hand in the air. We’re all aware of that.

Bilt raised one eyebrow. The Kiss of Venus moved.

Hammer swung to face her too fast and a muscle in his lower back pinged. He tried to stand straight to hide his discomfort. He pulled his double chin against his neck. Explain. He said staring at Mrs Bilt to make sure Rigby didn’t answer with a banality. He thought about adding a ‘the hell’ in somewhere for a moment but he didn’t want to overdo things. Less is more, sometimes a one word order works. Maybe. He didn’t really know.

Mrs Bilt’s eyes swirled over him for a few moments as if she wanted to say something she might regret but swallowed it. There was a solar storm. Captain. She made the word captain stretch out as if she’d pulled it screaming and fighting from her mouth. The storm pushed the Kiss of Venus 125 million miles and into our path seconds before we arrived there. We hit the phenomenon and jumped 10 light years.

Hammer sighed. Tomorrow he’d have been at home, retired and with a glass of wine in his hand and overlooking the River Thames from his apartment on the 10th floor without a care in the world. He’d wanted the penthouse but his pension wouldn’t stretch to it. There were captains and then there were captains in Star Force. The captain of a thirty-year-old freighter that never left the solar system was nowhere near the same pay level as someone running a starship.

He had to get home all the same; there had to be a way. There always was although most captains had a competent team to find the way. He had what he had so leant down and hit the intercom button on the arm of his captain’s chair. Chief Engineer Mac McKenzie.

Aye Cap’n, McKenzie here. The engineer’s Scottish brogue was strong.

Hammer tugged on his tunic. It had become much tighter as he wound down to retirement. This was strange because the recycled artificial breathable fabric wasn’t supposed to shrink. It just goes to show how you can’t trust anything these days to be what it claims. How long to get back to Earth on full impulse power, Mac?

Maybe he’d also been letting himself go a bit. He’d cut back on the extra portions of apple pie he’d been having, that should help compensate for the fabric shrinkage that shouldn’t shrink. And he’d forgo the double cream. And the chocolate bars. Not to mention the wine. Maybe not the wine now he thought about it.

The intercom speaker clicked. "Cap’n, I will look for solutions here there and everywhere but by my rough calculations, it will take us aboot 20 years at full impulse speed to get home. And I need to warn ye, the engines cannae take it Cap’n. Not 20 years on full power."

He frowned and spoke to no one in particular. "We need a senior officers’ meeting: to my ready room, people." He was pleased to have used the word ‘people’. Leaders always referred to their team as ‘people’, it gave off a casual control vibe as well as show them who was boss and who were the ‘people’. He pressed the intercom, Mac, drop whatever you’re doing and get here. He thought for a moment and pressed the intercom again. And Dr Gore, I want you here too.

The intercom clicked. Dammit, Captain, I’m a doctor, not an elevator. The doctor clicked off. The staff on the bridge glanced at their instruments, pretending to be busy.

Hammer looked to the ceiling. His irascible friend was a pain but a fine doctor with a great mind. Although, he reflected, Gore kept it well hidden. Hammer pressed the intercom button on his chair arm again. Doc, get here now. We have an emergency and I need all my senior officers to help find a way to get us home.

Dammit, I’m a doctor, not a mechanic. You need McKenzie and her monkey wrenches for that. They heard the doctor grumbling for a few moments with the intercom still on. "OK, coming up.

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We can work it in or out

Hammer, Bilt, McKenzie and Rigby sat around the small oval table in the Captain’s ready room. Dr Gore rushed in a few minutes later, wiping his forehead. Dammit, Maxwell, I’m a doctor, not a minute taker. He sat, mouth turned down like an arch.

"I need everyone’s mind on this conundrum, people. I want solutions that get us the hell outta here." He thought for a moment as wasn’t too sure, ‘The hell’ worked there but no one seem to notice. We have no warp speed, no deep space comms and no way to navigate back to Earth this far out. We don’t have the star charts for outside the solar system in the computer database as no one expected us to leave the solar system. We’re alone.

His senior officers looked back in silence. How he wished for a starship’s top team rather than this bunch of failed misfits. Hammer slapped a hand on the tabletop and they all jumped, including him as he’d not meant to be so forceful. I don’t want to spend my retirement cruising for 20 years on a ship where the replicator spits out bad Pinot Noir.

Captain. It was Commander Rigby.

The Captain fought against the urge to roll his eyes. He nodded for her to continue, she may have something useful to say. For once.

We need to think outside the box, said said. Step up to the plate and take it to the next level.

Nope, nothing useful there. Hammer wondered whether to make a sarcastic comment but left the team to wait for her to expand on what she’d said. Rigby sat back and folded her arms, convinced she’d contributed something.

Chief Engineer McKenzie stood, frustration etched across her face. She glared at Rigby, fingertips pressed onto the tabletop. "That’s all well and good for you te say, lassie, but we have no warp speed. You tell me the answer rather than make bland statements of the bloody obvious. I cannae change the laws of physics just like that, I’ve got to have thirty minutes." She sat back down again and folded her arms. Hammer was certain he’d heard that line before.

This was degenerating into an excuse for everyone to blame someone else when all Hammer wanted was to blame Rigby. But he knew they needed leadership, even his. "OK, people, this is what the hell we’ll do."

Everyone looked surprised at his assertiveness and sat in silence waiting for words of wisdom. His assertiveness surprised him too so he needed to come up with something quick.

If in doubt, get others to do stuff. Mac, you’ll lead a team looking at how to increase engine speed. He turned to Bilt. "And you, Mrs B, will investigate how to build deep space comms to try to communicate with Star Force HQ back on Earth. I’m sure with some of that famous Star Force ingenuity, we will find a hell the way. Let’s do this, people." He sat back. That was a pretty good speech, he thought, two ‘peoples’ and a ‘hell’.

The others looked back at him. They were as conscious as Hammer that the famous Star Force ingenuity was lacking in this particular crew hence their posting to the Venus and Mars supply run.

McKenzie slid her seat back, got up and strode to the door, determined not to let that hold her back. She turned. "OK, Cap’n. I’m on my way to run calculations for the engine improvements. I’m sure I can find something extra in the old girl." She left.

At least someone was going to give it a go, even if it was unlikely she’d have any success.