Hello Lovelies, 
I have an exciting new sample story to share with you. Not one of mine, but a sample of fellow author Jared J. Fleming. He is a somewhat new writer, having been posting and published as an author for only a few months now. What he lacks in experience, he makes up for in enthusiasm and passion. He’s 17 years old, and lives in Canada, writing mainly science fiction and fantasy stories.
He was kind enough to share the first chapter of his new story Dulled Minds with us. I LOVED it. 

DULLED MIND – CHAPTER 1 

“Welcome to the greatest hive of scum and villainy in this entire damned sector,” Bulat chuckled as he landed the cruiser in the spaceport of the most aptly named Avarice Quartus. “Now, let’s get fucked up, shall we?”​​

Naomi leapt off the ship, going through the bubble of contained air after their ship had been maglocked to the port. They landed on the surface of the spaceport, and walked inside. The artificial gravity kicked in, and Naomi’s feet planted firmly on the ground. She brushed the clinging static of the containment field off her black shirt and waited for Kate to get off the ship.

Kate’s long hair stood up in messy strands from the static electricity, levitating in the air. When she straightened her hair and let it hang down again, Naomi decided to have a little fun. Kate’s hair floated back up, suspended high in the air like some sort of creature that had taken up residence on her head. Kate flattened it down again, shrugging it off as just some electricity that hadn’t quite gone away.

Naomi made it rise up again. Kate caught on, glaring at Naomi, who responded with a smug smile. The hair came to life under her influence, moving and twisting around to form a false mustache around Kate’s mouth.

“Hey, stop!” Kate pushed the hair away, trying and failing to hide an amused smirk. “That tickled.” 

Naomi blew a kiss over in her direction.

“Love you, babe,” she said. Kate linked arms with her, and they waited for the captain to get off the ship. It always took him somewhat longer, given that he had to check every one of the countless systems that kept him alive. Make sure the musculature was charged and nothing was frayed, check that his internal organs were still all where they needed to be and none of the adapters had gotten loose. Plus, he may have decided to change out his liver, save the real one from himself. They were in port after all, and that meant that any sapient being on that vessel would probably do everything that a doctor would have a conniption over.

The spaceport was full of cheap bars and brothels, the kinds you went to if you wanted to play Rashun Roulette with STDs. Of course, these were the among the most successful, given that it was rare to see anyone there who wasn’t, for lack of a better term, occupied. Bright neon signs glared over, with every one of the major languages of the Galaxy spelling out the name of the establishments. One that caught Naomi’s eye, if only for the bizarre name, was called Hecatoncheires. Naomi tapped her auglenses to make sure that they were working properly. They were. Every language translated into the exact same word.

Naomi made a mental note to figure out what the hell it meant, but she passed by the place without even considering going in. She had been to a lot of different, seedy places before, but the ones here were enough to make her skin crawl. It wasn’t just that they were dirty, or that unsavoury things happened in them. Those, she could handle. Those, she had partaken in. It couldn’t be fully described. If asked, she would chalk it up to a sort of preternatural sense of dread, a natural side-effect of being a psion.

The space elevators were always something impressive. Massive spires, nearly a kilometer around and many, many kilometers high, extending all the way up to the spaceport. Dozens of floors that all had massive structures attached to them, from the thermoelectric generators that hung in in low orbit to the city-sized aerodocks to the arms companies who advertised their zero-g-manufactured firearms as if every other company hadn’t already taken full advantage of the benefits of space when it came to making products.

The captain plodded on behind them, the whirr of mechanical parts a familiar, if not slightly disconcerting, sound. Naomi could never place it, but even after 15 years of service, she still felt a little…unnerved by him. Maybe it was because when she joined his crew, he was still relatively human. Now, she couldn’t think of a single part of him that hadn’t been touched by machines, either completely and totally replaced, or heavily modified. He was a good man, of course, and had given a brand new life to Naomi, but that feeling still persisted. She had never told him, and suspected she never would.

“Alrigh’,” he said, crossing his arms. “I’s gotta go an’ get our stocks refilled. Damn near outta gauss shells and Silakor’s been complainin’ that ‘is nutrient bath’s feelin’ a lil’ thin. Think he’d like me to get a new sensory chip fer ‘is automaton too?”

Naomi shrugged. “It’s your money. You’ve transferred our cuts to our accounts, right?”

The captain snorted. “‘Course I have! You think I’d cheat ya or somethin’?”

Naomi rolled her eyes. “Of course not, captain, I was just asking.”

The captain shooed them away. “Go on, we didn’t stop a’ port fer ya to jus’ stand around.”

Naomi shook her head, and walked to the elevator. She let Kate pick where to go first, and the two of them descended down. They stopped somewhere about four miles above the surface, where the buzz of generators was present, but faint, and where the arms manufacturers had decided to peddle their wares.

The signs here were more muted than above. Of course, that was hardly saying much. More muted, in these circumstances, meant that the lights didn’t flicker between colours project holograms, but instead they were high contrast, white and black, blue and yellow, red and green, all reflective to the point of being glossy. TDM Arms, Personal Defense Limited, Ebonspring, every single corporation who decided to sell a weapon could be found here. A few smaller booths, local gunsmiths, existed here and there, in stalls. Naomi didn’t have any interest in the local goods. Half the time they were scams, and the other half of the time they were some poor sod’s attempt at reinventing the wheel.

Naomi nudged Kate. “Hey, so…do you need to get more stingers?” Kate shrugged.

“Uh…I used…three mags in the mission to Tel-kalar, uh…two during that suppression we were a part of…and another four…yeah, I need to get a lot more. Ol’ girl’s nearly empty. Ebonspring normally carries that kinda stuff, right?”

Naomi nodded. “Yeah, Ebonspring has a lotta stuff.”

Ebonspring’s store itself was massive, at least a few acres. Robots, luckily not sentient ones, and customers interacted, exchanging weaponry ranging from the smallest palm pistol to artillery pieces you could mount on your arm. Kate went off to the back, where the larger stuff was. They even had a full gauss weapon on display, nearly fifteen meters long, shells proudly displayed alongside it. Each one was taller than Naomi.

Something, or rather, someone, picked up on her radar. An extrasensory thing that felt most akin to knowing someone is behind you, eyes fixed on your back. It got stronger as Naomi got closer, until she found some Teluric talking to a robot. A psion, she could tell. He was talking to the robot, trying to convince it to give him a lower price. The stream of consciousness, the manipulation of reality, it was more obvious than a shotgun going off beside one’s ear. Naomi just tapped him on shoulder, or rather what was most akin to a shoulder for a Teluric.

He turned around, beady eyes (all eight of them) staring up at Naomi intensely. The recognition between two psions was almost never verbal, but they both knew. A three fingered hand rubbed the thick, wrinkled jowl, carefully considering their words.

“You do know we can’t influence machines, right?” Naomi asked.

The Teluric closed four of its eyes, in what Naomi assumed to be an attempt at squinting.

“Is that so…?”

“Yes.” Naomi was blunt. “And don’t you go trying it on organics, either. That kind of shit’ll get you hung upside-down and used as target practice. Trust me, it happens.”

The Teluric shifted uncomfortably, and finally relented, skulking away as best it could. He didn’t do a very good job, after all, it’s rather hard to sneak away when your method of locomotion is scrunching up like an inchworm.

A few minutes later, as she was examining the bolt of a reproduction of some extremely old gun, made all the way back on Terra in the 20th century, she heard people coming down the aisle, stomping. They were either very large, or wearing something very heavy. Naomi turned around.

They were both. Various species, wearing heavy dragonscale armor. Overlapping plates of metal concealed their bodies. Their faces were obscured by darkened visors, and each of them held in their hands a weapon. The Teluric was behind them, trying to conceal themselves behind a rack of shotguns.

“You have been accused of breaking the Psion Code that exists on this world. You are charged with manipulation of others through psionic powers, illegal abuse of psionic powers for personal gain. Come with us.” Their tone made it absolutely clear that it was not a request. One of them tapped at the teeth on their Mutilators’ chain, as if taunting Naomi with her fate if she went.

 Naomi, instead, decided to run.

Are you loving what Jared’s laying down? Check out more on his Reddit Thread.

Until next time, 
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