Words from the Current Work-in-Progress: A Short Story for Tales from Odyssey and Miss Delight

I'm getting over a dose of the flu, so the writing has been going very slowly of late. However, words have been done, and here are a few from the short story I'm writing for the collection Tales from Odyssey and Miss Delight.

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“Your mission…” The words snapped her attention back to the briefing, and she realized just how much of Odyssey’s creature she’d become. The mission was all.

The briefer continued on oblivious. “Your mission is to find the flyer and find Penny Blackworth…and to do that before the corporations of Togaresh can.”

Delight frowned. What had she missed.

“And why is that?” Cutter asked.

Delight relaxed. If Cutter was asking then Mack’s apprentice had missed the same thing she had.

“Because the flyer found the child, rescued it, and vanished into the canyons.”

“But why would she do that?” Cutter continued.

“From what Penny could hack of her orders, the flyer was supposed to verify the wreckage and the absence of survivors. The flyer reached the crash site, then didn’t call back in.”

“And you think it was because she found the child.” Mack put in.

“And rescued it,” the briefer repeated, “which, if the parents were who their samples say they were would have signed the flyer’s death warrant, since the companies can’t afford for that kind of asset or information to get out.”

Tens sighed, sounding tired. “Perhaps if you’d tell us who the parents were?”

The briefer shook her head. “Their names would mean nothing to you…”

“Try me.” Tens delivered the instruction is tones that brooked no refusal.

The briefer glanced at Delight, and she nodded.

With this crew it was always best to give them the data. A, because it would stop them from going looking for it themselves, and both Tens and Cutter were more than capable of ripping into Odyssey’s databases if they thought it necessary; and B because they sometimes brought something to the party Odyssey didn’t know they needed.

“Professors Jamie McDonald and Anita Curtis-McDonald,” the briefer provided.

Delight saw when Tens stilled, but the briefer missed the cue.

“They were leading experts in—” she began, but Tens cut her off.

“The genetic heritage and legacy of psi, and crystal tech,” he provided.

“You knew of them?” The briefer sounded as astonished as Delight felt.

“I knew them,” Tens confirmed, his eyes bleak. “This is not the end I would have wished for them.”

It made Delight wonder who these people had been to him…and how far back in his past, because both Tens and Mack went back to when Odyssey had been Oberon and possibly before, and she’d never heard of the professors.

How much before? she wondered, but didn’t ask. There were more important matters afoot.

“Did the flyer know?” she asked

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And that's all, folks...at least for today. The cover is below, and this one should be complete and up for pre-order in a month or so. The cover below is by Jake at JCaleb Design - and it's a pretty accurate depiction of Delight.