An Extract From This Month's Release: The Ants of Helical 9

-

I've decided to celebrate each release with a series of extracts that run for the month it's released in. This month saw the second edition of 366 Days of Flash Fiction released. Links to the collection can be found at Books2Read at: https://books2read.com/u/b6MrN0. Today's extract is:


The Ants of Helical 9

Written on October 17, 2015, for the March 9 entry of 366 Days of Flash Fiction, this piece of science fiction explores another potential intelligent lifeform that might be encountered.

The ants of Helical 9 were the strangest creatures we’d ever seen. When I say ‘ants’, it was the closest we could come to what they were with their tri-segmented bodies, two antennae, and three sets of limbs. From what we could tell, they had the same spiracle system for breathing, augmented by pumps to drive the air deeper into their bodies than insects were able.

  Harriman’s Mining Consortium had entered into a bargain with them for asteroid mining, said they were the most reliable of employees and partners—until the Incident at Neva 357. The ants of Helical 9, it seemed, were not averse to the concept of a hostile takeover.

 


Cover art is by Jake at JCaleb Design, and links to 366 Days of Flash Fiction can be found on Books2 Read at: https://books2read.com/u/b6MrN0

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Australian Insects: An Unknown Caterpillar eating Grevillea flower buds

-
Image
So, this little guy nearly bought it when I caught it eating the still-forming buds on my Robyn grevillea, but then I thought I might like to see which particular butterfly was responsible, so I took some pictures and decided to keep an eye on it, so I knew when it pupated. The first shot - caterpillar happily nibbling on flower buds:  Yup - definitely nibbling: And here's another view. Note the little yellow lumps near its back end. Same day, but it was one of those cloudy days with variegated light. And it kept nibbling for quite some time: Stretching out to get the more tasty tidbits, and using its hind feet to keep a firm grip on the branch. Eventually it looped back on itself... ...and headed into denser foliage. It didn't always move in a straight line... How come caterpillars have more feet than butterflies? Eventually, it got into some much thicker growth (well, for a young grevillea, anyway), meaning it was somewhat prot
Read more

PokemonGo Tips - Earning the Berry Master Medal

-
Image
Another relatively easy one to earn, but it takes time. Main tip? Feed Them All. Well, okay, it's a bit more like this: Only the berries you feed to a pokemon in a gym count. You can only feed berries to pokemon in a gym that belongs to your team. You can feed up to a maximum of 10 berries to each pokemon. You can feed any pokemon that belongs to a team member, as well as your own. You can feed your team's pokemon from home, as long as you have a pokemon in the same gym - as last week's post showed. It's interesting, but really annoying if you accidentally feed a golden razzberry to a pokemon in a gym... just sayin'. Sometimes, not having a berry on hand to help catch a pokemon is also annoying - especially when you've just fed all yours to your team's pokemon - so think about that before you go all out stuffing their faces; the medal is pretty, but catching stuff is cool, too. Also, pokemon are little piggies when it comes to berries. And that&
Read more

NEW RELEASE: AUTUMNAL THREAT

-
Image
An alien autumn. An unseen predator. Deadly burrowers and an oncoming winter. And bugs big enough to ride. Joaquin only wants to warn his daughter of a new danger. To keep her safe. To make her understand her mother isn’t coming back, while keeping her alive. But what if he’s wrong? What if Mariam really did survive? What if, when everything looks like it’s going wrong, it’s really going right? Autumnal Threat is Joaquin's story. It is a father's story...and the story of a husband who misses his wife, and wants to keep his daughter safe from a new threat on their frontier world. It's a story of hope, and not giving up, and of family, as well as an exploration of what an alien eco-system might look like. It was a lot of fun to write. You can find links to this newly released, stand-alone, science-fiction short story on this Books2Read page: https://books2read.com/u/mgyopK or read an earlier version in A Collection of Lost Ships and Colonies .  
Read more