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    Questionable Empires: Collections, #12
    Questionable Empires: Collections, #12
    Questionable Empires: Collections, #12
    Ebook193 pages2 hours

    Questionable Empires: Collections, #12

    By Meyari McFarland

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    About this ebook

    Eight worlds. Eight adventures. Eight brushes with death, destiny and destruction.

    In Questionable Empires, Meyari McFarland collects together eight exciting stories of adventure, danger and discovery that are sure to grab you and not let go even after you're done reading.

    A Rainbow for Menally

    Mortal Stream of the Undead Sky

    Mods

    Ghost Black Spaceship

    Schrodinger's Choice

    Passage of the City

    Cradle of the Future

    Mutant Blue Eden

    Plus an excerpt of the Steampunk mystery Blood Worms!

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMeyari McFarland
    Release dateFeb 9, 2019
    ISBN9781386976226
    Questionable Empires: Collections, #12
    Author

    Meyari McFarland

    Meyari McFarland has been telling stories since she was a small child. Her stories range from SF and Fantasy adventures to Romances but they always feature strong characters who do what they think is right no matter what gets in their way. Her series range from Space Opera Romance in the Drath series to Epic Fantasy in the Mages of Tindiere world. Other series include Matriarchies of Muirin, the Clockwork Rift Steampunk mysteries, and the Tales of Unification urban fantasy stories, plus many more. You can find all of her work on MDR Publishing's website at www.MDR-Publishing.com.

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      Book preview

      Questionable Empires - Meyari McFarland

      Questionable Empires

      Questionable Empires

      Meyari McFarland

      MDR Publishing

      Special Offer

      The rainbow has infinite shades, just as this collection covers the spectrum of fictional possibilities.

      From contemporary romances like The Shores of Twilight Bay to dark fantasy like A Lone Red Tree and out to SF futures in Child of Spring, Iridescent covers the gamut of time, space and genre.

      Meyari McFarland shows her mastery in this first omnibus collection of her short fiction. Twenty-five amazing stories, all with queer characters going on adventures, solving mysteries, and falling in love are here in the first Rainbow Collection.

      And now you can get this massive collection of short queer fiction, all of it with the happy endings you love, for free!

      Sign up here for your free copy of Iridescent now!

      Contents

      Other Books by Meyari McFarland:

      Author's Note: A Rainbow for Menally

      A Rainbow for Menally

      Author's Note: Mortal Stream of the Undead Sky

      Mortal Stream of the Undead Sky

      Author's Note: Mods

      1. Customer

      2. Travel

      3. Stats

      4. Materials

      5. Testing

      6. Confrontation

      7. Breakup

      8. Delivery

      Author's Note: Ghost Black Spaceship

      Ghost Black Spaceship

      Author's Note: Schrodinger's Choice

      Schrodinger's Choice

      Author's Note: Passage of the City

      Passage of the City

      Author's Note: Cradle of the Future

      Cradle of the Future

      Author's Note: Mutant Blue Eden

      Mutant Blue Eden

      Author's Note: Blood Worms

      1. Kill Room

      2. Skywinder

      Other Books by Meyari McFarland:

      Afterword

      Author Bio

      Other Books by Meyari McFarland:

      Day Hunt on the Final Oblivion

      Day of Joy

      Immortal Sky

      A New Path

      Following the Trail

      Crafting Home

      Finding a Way

      Go Between

      Like Arrows of Fate

      Out of Disaster

      The Shores of Twilight Bay

      Coming Together

      Following the Beacon

      The Solace of Her Clan

      You can find these and many other books at www.MDR-Publishing.com. We are a small independent publisher focusing on LGBT content. Please sign up for our mailing list to get regular updates on the latest preorders and new releases and a free ebook!

      Copyright ©2019 by Mary Raichle

      Print ISBN: 978-1-64309-034-4

      Cover image

      ID 28387695 © SpinningAngel | Dreamstime.com

      All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

      Requests for permission to make copies of any part of the work should be emailed to publisher@mdr-publishing.com.

      This book is also available in TPB format from all major retailers.

      Created with Vellum Created with Vellum

      This collection is dedicated to Barbara Hambly, Andre Norton and Anne McCaffrey for giving me adventures when I needed them.

      Author's Note: A Rainbow for Menally

      Any collection centered on adventures had to have this story. A Rainbow for Menally has smart young women, creeps getting their balls busted and cops who don't let civilians take stupid risks just because they're the heroines of the story.

      It also has colonies on the moon, the problems of ventilation when you're surrounded by vacuum and one of my favorite ways to call the authorities that I've ever written.

      A Rainbow for Menally

      M enally's dead.

      The harsh whisper stopped Imani in her tracks. All around her, the other kids laughed, shouted, talked, walked just like normal. Like nothing had changed. Like nothing had happened. Other than Awotwi who was so pale that she looked like she was about to pass out. Against the navy blue of their school uniforms, her face looked almost grey.

      What?

      Menally's dead, Awotwi repeated. I stopped at her house this morning. Her parents said she was dead. In the night. They don't know what happened. They said they don't. They lied. I could tell.

      She didn't touch, didn't grab Imani's arm the way she normally would. On a normal day, Awotwi would have grabbed Imani's arm, shaken her until Imani was laughing and resisting. Not today. Awotwi stood still, slim and straight as a sword, the hem of her skirt barely moving as other kids brushed past the two of them.

      She can't be dead, Imani hissed. We were going to go out after school together.

      That cousin of hers, Ping, was there, Awotwi replied and now there was anger in her eyes if not on her pale, pale face. He smirked as he passed. There were bruises on his knuckles, Imani. It wasn't an accident.

      Ping.

      Ping Brivio who'd decided when he and Menally were just four that Menally had to marry him. Who followed her around and touched and hugged and kissed her no matter what Menally said about it. No matter how she fought him off. Who'd been thrown out of Menally's house more times than Imani could count because of his behavior.

      He was there and Menally wasn't here today. She wasn't at school like she should be.

      What about her parents? Imani hissed, grabbing Awotwi's arm. She squeezed too hard but it was important. Were they bruised? Frightened? Angry? What?

      Uh, Awotwi's eyes went wide as she gulped. They were… scared, I think? Her mom was hugging herself, kind of rocking side to side.

      Menally's not dead.

      Imani whirled and ran up the street, heading for the tube station that would take her out to Menally's dome. She heard a teacher shout, heard Awotwi reassure them, but no one tried to stop her as she ran off campus. Her parents would yell at her for this. Oh, she was going to be in so much trouble!

      But she wasn't going to risk letting Ping really hurt Menally during the day.

      And definitely, if he'd actually killed Menally, well.

      Imani was big enough and strong enough to beat down most anyone in jail. It'd be worth it to make Ping pay for hurting Menally. They hadn't been dating long. Or openly. It was just Awotwi and Imani's parents who knew that they were girlfriends. Menally's parents, Malak and Greer, kept acting like Menally was just a little girl when they were both grown up and in their final year of high school. Next year they'd be heading off the moon to one of the stations to go to college.

      If Menally was alive.

      The ride through the tube to Menally's dome and then on the monorail to her neighborhood took forever, at least twenty minutes. Imani sat on the tube and then stood on the monorail even though there were lots of seats. She couldn't sit still. Couldn't handle not knowing what was going on.

      All along, Imani thought about calling the cops.

      And then decided not to, over and over and over. Ping was a cop, in training anyway. He was two years older so he'd graduated already. Menally had said just last week that Ping was three months away from finishing his training. The cops were very interested in him. He already had job offers.

      She'd looked really frightened when she said it.

      Ping with a weapon, that was a scary thought. Really scary. But Ping was a head shorter than Imani. His arms were shorter. So where his legs. She could do this.

      Maybe.

      Imani slowed to a rapid walk once off the monorail. Then a slow walk as she neared Menally's home. Nothing looked out of place. At first. But Malak's flyer was still sitting on the roof instead of gone. He should be at work already. And the windows were all shut, curtains drawn. That was very odd. Greer hated having the windows closed. She claimed it made her house stuffy, as if any house connected to the central air processing units could have air different from the outside.

      Definitely something wrong.

      Imani turned around and went back about a block or so. The air conduits had nice big vents up by the monorail station but the control units weren't anywhere close to the vents. Kids would get at them and mess with them. Instead, the control units were small and inconspicuous, set several blocks away from the vents. Close enough to see the vents if you were up on a boom rig, too high for anyone to get to without a boom, and inconspicuous.

      Calling emergency services was a one-push on her pad.

      Yeah, um, I'm really sorry but um, I was on my way to school and yeah, I know I'm late, seriously, don't lecture me, Imani said in her best impression of Menally when she'd had way too much coffee. But um, I looked up on the way to the monorail and well, there's this thing.

      The person on the other end sighed. What's the nature of the emergency, miss?

      Well, see, the control unit for the air vents? Imani said, watching Menally's house instead of the control unit. It's kind of, you know, just a little bit, not too bad, um. Sparking. Off and on. I think, like, maybe something might be wrong? I don't know. There were some kids playing around at the base of it the other day. I yelled at them because my second cousin's sister's boyfriend works on the air systems and he says no one should do anything anywhere near the control units because we could all suffocate. I mean, I don't think he really means suffocate, exactly, but um, it sounded bad. Really bad. And well, my friend Menally, Menally Sorenson, her mom was commenting that her house was real stuffy? I mean, I didn't notice so much but hey, I had a head cold up until a day or two ago so I'm probably not the right one to ask about stuffiness, you know?

      The air vent control unit is sparking and there's reports of stuffiness? the emergency call person asked, way more interested now. Intent. Which was good.

      Oh yeah, Imani said. I mean, I could be wrong and I don't want to cause trouble or anything but man, my second cousin's sister's boyfriend made it sound like the end of the word if anything happened to the air vents and, well, Mrs. Sorenson was complaining a lot about how stuffy her house was. She insists on keeping all the windows open all the time.

      I'm sending a team right now, miss. Imani grinned. Please remain in the area.

      Oh, but I'm supposed to get to school, Imani complained. There's like tests today and I’m only waiting for my friend Menally to show up. She's late. Like, super late. It's weird. She's never late. But then her cousin is visiting and Ping's weird. He scares me. He's always talking about how Menally is going to marry him and she doesn't want to. Mr. and Mrs. Sorenson keep throwing him out and he keeps coming back. It's like, super-bad.

      …What was his name again?

      Ping, Imani said. Ping Brivio. He's supposed to be, I guess, a cop soon? He's in some training program or something. I don't know how he got in. He's always in trouble for doing stuff he shouldn't be. It's weird. I can't figure out why anyone would give him a gun when he keeps stalking Menally that way and threatening her family. Which, you know, has nothing to do with the air vent thing. I just worried about the sparking I saw. I think I saw it.

      She drew in a breath to babble some more but didn't have to because a flyer zoomed up. Then another and a second and a third heavy one with armor and guys in those thick riot helmets. Imani passed her phone over to the first riot cop, waiting as quietly as she could for the cop to murmur code words of some sort before turning her phone off and handing it back.

      Where? the riot cop asked as a team of people leaped out of the first flyer, all dressed in air quality uniforms.

      The control unit is up there, Imani said. Menally's house is up the street. Her mom actually does complain about the air flow there. And Menally is late. Her mom told my friend this morning that Menally was dead. Which… Ping was behind her looking smug. Neither Mr. Sorenson or Mrs. Sorensen have gone to work. Something's really wrong.

      Which made the air quality guys frown at the riot guys.

      We'll check the control unit, the air quality guy in charge, an older guy with iron grey hair and a nasty scar on his chin. Get into that house and save the family.

      I might be able to help, Imani said. And then kicked herself because all of them frowned at her. Same way I got you here. I run up and pound on the door yammering about the air control unit throwing off sparks and oh my god! We gotta do something quick! If I can get the door open it'll help, right?

      You are doing nothing of the sort, the riot cop snapped. That's our job. Good plan, wrong person to do it. Get your butt in the van and don't budge, got it?

      Imani wanted to object, opened her mouth to do it, but one of the riot cops grabbed her from behind and carried her right over to the van. She squawked and then shouted as they shut her in. Damn it! It was a plain old troop transport so there weren't any control panels or screens or even windows for her to look through to see what happened. And worse, the walls of the transport were thick so she couldn't hear anything other than her heart pounding in her ears and the occasional shout from outside.

      Until something went boom.

      That rocked her transport and dropped Imani to her knees as the echoes deafened her. She shoved at the back door, jumping when it opened. Imani didn't leap out. She peeked, then eased out because there were cops running around like crazy and air quality guys shouting while working frantically at something.

      Black smoke oozed upwards from Menally's house.

      Imani stared, her ears ringing so hard that she couldn't tell what anyone said. There were people lying out in front of Menally's house. Still, so still. Three riot cops. Two

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