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    The Positronic Pretty
    The Positronic Pretty
    The Positronic Pretty
    Ebook39 pages29 minutes

    The Positronic Pretty

    By C. C. Blake

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    About this ebook

    "No questions asked, Captain Cave."

    The backend of space is no place to get stuck without enough credits to fill the fuel tank on an interstellar frigate, but that's exactly where Captain Rick Cave finds himself. Stuck on a New Slav planet in the outer rings, waiting for the right opportunity to get back in action.

    When a scientist and his lovely assistant show up, requesting a ride, Cave agrees. Soon, he finds himself up to his neck in trouble with galactic gangsters and corrupt officials. "The Positronic Pretty" is action-packed space opera that harkens back to classic pulp sf. However, this is an adventure that only C. C. Blake could tell.

    This eBook edition includes a bonus story: "Trapped in the Star Sultan's Labyrinth of Doom."

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTwice Told Tales II
    Release dateNov 4, 2012
    ISBN9781301320288
    The Positronic Pretty
    Author

    C. C. Blake

    C.C. Blake has lived across the United States, starting in the suburbs of Detroit, to Massachusetts’ second largest city (Worcester) to the country’s seventh largest city (San Antonio, Texas, that is). He’s has a variety of jobs, working as a substitute teacher, the graveyard shift dishwasher at a haunted Denny’s, lab research monkey and teaching assistant at a second tier college. Currently, he works as an automation consultant for a chemical company on the Northeast side of SAtown (which isn’t as Hellish as it sounds). Blake’s most popular character, irrepressible adventurer Chuck Cave, has appeared in over two dozen stories, including the 2005 Man’s Story 2 Story of the Year Award winner “Chuck Cave and the Vanishing Vixen.” The character’s supernatural thriller stories (which began with the seminal “Cave and the Vamp”) are all being released as a part of Vampires2.com’s initial foray into e-books. These new versions are presented in expanded and revised versions, all are the author’s preferred texts. Be sure to collect them all! In addition to his pulp stories for the 2-Empire (Man’s Story 2, Vampires 2, Androids 2 and Paranormal Romance 2), Blake’s fiction has appeared in several anthologies, including Unparalleled Journeys II (from Journey Books Publishing) and Fearology: Terrifying Tales of Phobias (from Library of Horror Press).

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      Book preview

      The Positronic Pretty - C. C. Blake

      The Positronic Pretty

      Space Opera Adventures

      By: C. C. Blake

      This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

      The Positronic Pretty first appeared in slightly different form as Rick Cave and the Positronic Pretty in Androids 2 magazine.

      © 2012 by C. C. Blake

      Cover design © 2012 Twice Told Tales, includes art by Alexaldo| Dreamstime.com

      Smashwords Edition

      Published by Twice Told Tales

      All rights reserved.

      No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author's rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

      Table of Contents

      The Positronic Pretty

      Bonus Story:

      Trapped in the Star Sultan's Labyrinth of Doom

      For Further Reading

      About the Author

      The Positronic Pretty

      The spaceport authority gave me a wicked smile, showing off the stumps of his yellow teeth. Through a thick, New-Slav accent, he said, Captain Rick, sir, records indicate you need to pay for customs tax and stickers.

      Revealing that I already paid last week would accomplish nothing. When in Pioterburg, do as the New-Slavs. I handed over half the spoils of my latest job, three hundred smackers.

      He checked me off as an upstanding citizen, meaning it would be another two weeks before they hit me up, again.

      I needed the cash to leave planet for good. Hell, I needed quite a few things but didn’t expect much. Pioter’s World promises a lot, but seldom comes through.

      I dropped a third of my remaining petty cash at a couple of the local watering holes. They were dirty places where tourists showed up with their vacation dollars, expecting a brush with danger, but not so awful that a man would have his gizzards cut over a couple of smackers. Now that I had a space tug and a business, I avoided those kinds of places.

      Fuel expenses had gotten pretty bad since the ORPHEN world embargos. Still, I was a free trader in a galaxy of wage-slaves, and

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