The Star Traders: The Star Traders Series Volume One Read online

  Contents

  Title

  Dedication

  Copyright

  CHAPTER ONE Waiting at the Bar.

  CHAPTER TWO Going Home.

  CHAPTER THREE Blast Off!

  CHAPTER FOUR Working for the Family.

  CHAPTER FIVE Security Job Day One

  CHAPTER SIX Guinevere.

  CHAPTER SEVEN Settling In.

  CHAPTER EIGHT Meetings and Conferences.

  CHAPTER NINE Fight! Fight!

  CHAPTER TEN The Loss and the Search Begins.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN Where Am I?

  CHAPTER TWELVE Sold.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN The Clitoris.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN Launch!

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN The Alien Captain.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN Escape!

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN Prepare for a Journey.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN The Other City.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN Monsters!

  CHAPTER TWENTY Hide!

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE Alien Prison.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO Weird Questions.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE Confessions.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR Fight!

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE Getting Ready.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX Battle with Blasters and Mini-nukes!

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN Home.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT Paperwork.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE Amusement Park.

  CHAPTER THIRTY Conference.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE Talking to her daughter

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO Dirt Problems.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE Sleepless.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR Welcome to Weir.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE Checking Gifts.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX Going ahead.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN Unknown vessel

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT Fight or flee?

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE Being chased.

  CHAPTER FORTY Erica's idea.

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE Convincing mother.

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO Convincing wife.

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE Erica's operation.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR Welcome to Chumley.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE Still there.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX Disappointed Janet.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN Another operation.

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT Complications.

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE Waiting.

  CHAPTER FIFTY Post operation.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE Looking at space.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO Barhoping.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE Oceans of problems.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR Captured.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE The mothers that worry.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX Oscar Beaumont.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN Alberta and her mother.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT Fight?

  CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE Hostage negotiations.

  CHAPTER SIXTY Escaping!

  CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE Talking with local authorities.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO Bar and grill.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE Police problems.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR Hostages, what hostages?

  CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE Running from the police.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX Do you actually have hostages?

  CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN Where's Bubba?

  CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT Making a command choice.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE How to steal a shuttle.

  CHAPTER SEVENTY An unknown vessel in Collard.

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-ONE Beatdown.

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-TWO Meditation.

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-THREE Fight back!

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-FOUR Incoming missiles!

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-FIVE A family meal.

  Title 2

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-SIX Dancing on Caroline

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-SEVEN Healing and Hiding

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-EIGHT Mama Kat

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-NINE Sneaking into the Daughter

  CHAPTER EIGHTY Truth and Lies

  CHAPTER EIGHTY-ONE Losing Martha

  CHAPTER EIGHTY-TWO Getting help from her friends

  CHAPTER EIGHTY-THREE Saving Martha and the Consequences

  CHAPTER EIGHTY-FOUR Problems on Selene

  CHAPTER EIGHTY-FIVE Seeking trouble

  CHAPTER EIGHTY-SIX Enemy attacks

  CHAPTER EIGHTY-SEVEN Running!

  CHAPTER EIGHTY-EIGHT Kick butt time

  CHAPTER EIGHTY-NINE Judging mistakes

  CHAPTER NINETY Before the storm

  CHAPTER NINETY-ONE Martha! Martha!

  CHAPTER NINETY-TWO Demon gets a hostage

  CHAPTER NINETY-THREE Armor

  CHAPTER NINETY-FOUR Bad choices

  CHAPTER NINETY-FIVE Armor versus Ninja!

  CHAPTER NINETY-SIX Beginning of the end

  CHAPTER NINETY-SEVEN Bad date

  CHAPTER NINETY-EIGHT Run away!

  CHAPTER NINETY-NINE Candy

  CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED Getting ready for it

  CHAPTER ONE HUNDREDONE Spaceport battle

  CHAPTER ONE HUNDREDTWO Martha and Erica

  Title 3

  CHAPTER ONE HUNDREDTHREE The problems that sex brings us

  CHAPTER ONE HUNDREDFOUR Prison break

  CHAPTER ONE HUNDREDFIVE Erica gets caught

  CHAPTER ONE HUNDREDSIX Piper finds out about Ellie

  CHAPTER ONE HUNDREDSEVEN Alberta tells Ellie the truth

  CHAPTER ONE HUNDREDEIGHT Ellie attacks

  CHAPTER ONE HUNDREDNINE Keiko to the rescue!

  CHAPTER ONE HUNDREDTEN Mutiny against the mutiny!

  CHAPTER ONE HUNDREDELEVEN Fighting for the engineering deck

  CHAPTER ONE HUNDREDTWELVE Mistakes she has made

  CHAPTER ONE HUNDREDTHIRTEEN Stealing Guinevere's Daughter

  CHAPTER ONE HUNDREDFOURTEEN Escape the Kansbar!

  CHAPTER ONE HUNDREDFIFTEEN Looking for help

  CHAPTER ONE HUNDREDSIXTEEN Space pirates!

  CHAPTER ONE HUNDREDSEVENTEEN Punch a pirate!

  CHAPTER ONE HUNDREDEIGHTEEN Panic

  CHAPTER ONE HUNDREDNINETEEN Williams HQ

  CHAPTER ONE HUNDREDTWENTY What do we do?

  CHAPTER ONE HUNDREDTWENTY-ONE More pirates!

  CHAPTER ONE HUNDREDTWENTY-TWO Jacob Musashi

  CHAPTER ONE HUNDREDTWENTY-THREE More problems!

  CHAPTER ONE HUNDREDTWENTY-FOUR Going to Buddha

  CHAPTER ONE HUNDREDTWENTY-FIVE Finding a safe place

  CHAPTER ONE HUNDREDTWENTY-SIX Running from the big one

  CHAPTER ONE HUNDREDTWENTY-SEVEN Attacked by the Yin Confederation

  CHAPTER ONE HUNDREDTWENTY-EIGHT Space fighters

  CHAPTER ONE HUNDREDTWENTY-NINE Surrender!

  CHAPTER ONE HUNDREDTHIRTY Getting the team ready to go

  CHAPTER ONE HUNDREDTHIRTY-ONE The Good Fight!

  CHAPTER ONE HUNDREDTHIRTY-TWO Liar!

  CHAPTER ONE HUNDREDTHIRTY-THREE Searching for Spirit

  Author's Note

  My books so far...

  Join Gary's email list.

  THE STAR TRADERS NOVELLA SERIES

  Gary W. Feather

  Dedicated to starships and space travelers.

  COPYRIGHT INFORMATION:

  The Star Traders Novella Series Volume one

  All Contents copyright 2017.

  Gary W. Feather

  Published by Interstellar Bushido Publishing.

  Boxset ebook cover by Yocla designs

  Starship Guinevere

  All Contents copyright 2016

  Starship Guinevere ebook cover by The Cover Collections.

  Space Assassins

  All Contents copyright 2017

  Space Assassi
ns ebook cover by Yocla Designs.

  Mutiny on the Guinevere

  All Contents copyright 2017

  Mutiny on the Guinevere ebook covers by Yocla designs.

  All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in the fiction in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental. This book, or parts there of, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

  Author website:

  www.garywfeatherauthor.com

  #

  STARSHIP GUINEVERE

  Gary W. Feather

  CHAPTER ONE

  Waiting at the Bar.

  Erica sipped her Jacobean tea. It was a mild relaxation drug made from a plant found on the planet Jacob in the Hungarian Monarchy.

  Erica looked around the bar again. She still didn't see her kinfolk that were to come pick her up. The bar was on the planet Caroline near the main spaceport, thus it catered to spacers.

  Erica's family—the Williams clan—were traders who hauled cargo from one star system to another for pay or sold their own cargo for profit. The Williams clan was from a minor interstellar nation called the Yin Confederation, though it was more advanced than Caroline.

  Erica had left her family to go live in a Zen Buddhist monastery on the planet Buddha. Buddha and its Sutra star system were another interstellar nation. Like Yins the Buddhists were once a part of the great Hungarian Empire before it fell apart after its wars with the Egyptian Stellar Empire.

  Unlike Erica's people, the Buddhists were mainly interested in spiritual pursuits, and not that of financial or territorial gain.

  "Erica!"

  She looked up from her thoughts and saw a teenaged girl waving at her. Erica didn't recognize her. Erica did recognize her female cousins, Lynna and Tea, who stood behind her. The three of them hurried to Erica's table. They were dressed in the coveralls worn by most civilian spaceship crews—blue and red with the Guinevere ship patch over the left breast.

  Erica stood to shake hands. She didn't recognize the girl, but she had the tiny pointed nose of the Williams' women. The clan probably patented it. Cousin? Very likely.

  The girl jumped on her with a hug. "Remember me?"

  "Huh?"

  "That's my little sister, Gwen," Lynna Williams said. "Hey, cuz."

  "Oh, hey kiddo," Erica said.

  "Kid?" Gwen said, with her arms crossed. "I'm seventeen. I'll be legally a woman in eight months."

  "Sorry, Gwen."

  "Careful, Gwen," Tea said. "You were probably legal on this planet five years ago. Of course, unlike Erica, you probably are more used to being around men.

  Erica looked at Tea, whom she’d never liked. She had the feeling that Tea felt the same way. Asshole! "Buddhist monasteries are not male or female only. Unlike in the past or like the Druid Monasteries in Victorian space, stupid."

  "Whatever, dork," Tea snapped.

  "Will you two stop it," Lynna said. "We need to get back to the ship as soon as pos—"

  A plasma bolt blasted through Lynna's left hip.

  "Lynna!" Gwen screamed.

  "Fuck!" Tea cursed.

  "Who?" Erica said.

  "Grab her, Erica." Tea drew her blaster.

  Gwen had a similar one in her hand.

  Why is someone trying to kill us? Erica thought.

  Erica half carried Lynna out of the bar as fast as she could. Most everyone in the bar had dropped behind tables and anything else safe. Tea and Gwen fired shots at someone as they left the bar.

  "Fuck! Fuck!" Tea pulled out her tablet to shout into it. "Lynna has been hit. We got Erica. Possibly just one attacker, but maybe more. She needs a doctor immediately. We could use some help."

  "We're on our way," a familiar voice announced from the tablet.

  Did Tea call the Daughter with her tablet?

  Erica helped Lynna down the steps outside of the bar. Lynna was bleeding; Erica tried to keep her hand on the bloody opening. Over twenty hovercars and groundcars were parked in the parking lot. A man jumped out of a nearby groundcar and tackled Erica and Lynna. Lynna yelped in pain.

  Erica got up and the man had a grip on her shoulders. A knee slammed into her ribs. She stopped the next knee strike with her own knee. She brought down a knife-hand strike to the man's collarbone. She kneed the guy in the stomach and tripped her attacker's leg. As her attacker went down she let her knee fall on the man's groin. She followed it up with a right and left punch to the throat.

  Erica saw Tea and Gwen in a firefight with the driver in the ground car. The driver slumped in the seat.

  "Who are these crazy people?" Erica said.

  "Long...story...Erica," Lynna said.

  "Our car is over here!" Gwen helped Erica get Lynna into the backseat of the hovercar.

  Gwen sprayed medic goop on both sides of the wound to stop the bleeding. Then she wrapped a bandage around the area. Tea started the engine. Gwen hopped in the front passenger seat and Erica got in with Lynna. The hovercar lifted and headed off through the streets.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Going Home.

  "Where's the ship?" Erica said.

  "Caroline's main spaceport, off course," Tea said.

  "I don't see anyone following us," Gwen said. "Maybe we lost them."

  "Oh we didn't get all of them," Tea said. "Just keep watching, Gwen."

  "Whatever," Gwen said.

  The spaceport wasn't too far from the town where the bars and brothels were located. Erica could see the spaceport in the distance, along with the various rocket ships along with the large control tower. Between them and the spaceport she could see a hovercar headed towards them.

  "I hope that's our people," Erica said and looked behind her. There was no one coming from that way.

  "Ugh!" Lynna mumbled and clutched her wound. "Me too."

  Gwen's tablet beeped at her.

  "Hello, this is Gwen."

  "Hello, Gwen. This is your Aunt Amy. You should see us coming. Is Lynna conscious?"

  "Yes, she is," Gwen said.

  "Good. Slow down and we'll meet you."

  "Okay."

  Not soon after they stopped, the other hovercar arrived. Dr. Amy Menendez got out of it carrying her med bag. "Hello, Erica. You go ride with them and I'll get in back here."

  "Okay." Erica nodded.

  Erica found Amy's husband, Saul Menendez, in the driver's seat. Eric got into the empty seat beside him. In the back were her cousins, Isabelle Menendez and Cyma Williams. Erica gave them a nod, which they returned. The hover cars took off for the spaceport.

  They showed their IDs to the security guards before entering the spaceport. The large free trader rocketship loomed in front of them. Her name was Guinevere's Daughter. Erica had been born on her.

  "Did you miss her?" Isabelle asked Erica.

  Erica sighed for she realized for the first time that she had missed the ship.

  "It feels strange," Erica said. "But I did miss the old lady."

  As the two hovercars went up the ramp and into one of Daughter's cargo holds, Erica wondered if she had just killed a man. She had punched the guy twice in the throat. Real hard. Would he get medical care soon enough?

  Erica wiped her sweaty palms on her pant legs. She had never killed or seriously crippled anyone. Sure she had bloodied a nose and cracked someone's ribs, but nothing serious.

  "Shit!" Erica said.

  "What?" Saul parked the hovercar.

  "Nothing," Erica said.

  Some of Aunt Amy's medical team was waiting with an anti-grav gurney. Erica started to follow the others; somebody grabbed her arm. She turned to face her mom, Piper Williams, the security chief of Guinevere's second shift crew.

  Piper let go of Erica's arm, reached out to touch her head and stopped. All Buddhist monks and nuns at the monastery were bald. Erica had stopped shaving it once she left. It was still very short.

  "I'm glad you’re back, Erica," she said.

 
"Thanks, Mom.” She shifted her weight from one foot to the other. This is awkward. I feel like I'm nine years old again.

  "Your other mother is glad you're back too," she said.

  Oh, yea! Erica thought. I feel nine.

  Her mother looked away at something. Erica followed her gaze and saw her other mother: Junior Captain Alberta Williams, Guinevere's second shift crew's commanding officer. She walked like she owned the place. Beside her, and slightly behind, was Erica's other aunt, Janet Williams. She was Alberta's XO or second crew's next in command after the CO.

  "Hi, Erica," Alberta said.

  "Hi, Mother," Erica said and breathed.

  "Hi, Erica." Janet gently patted her on the arm. "I'm glad to see you're back with us."

  "Thanks.”

  "Did they teach you anything useful?" Alberta asked.

  Oh, crap! Here it comes.

  "Alberta, can't this wait for later?" Piper said. "She just got back and Lynna has been shot."

  "Okay, Piper," Alberta said. "Later. Let’s go check on Lynna. Then we get off this damn planet."

  Some of the crew were moving the hovercars into holding areas. Everything had to be put in its proper place, especially when you were about to launch off a planet. Erica supposed there were groundtrucks and hovertrucks in storage along with shuttles and haulers (large shuttles with tractor beam emitters).

  Erica followed her parents and her aunt out of the cargo hold. They got into an elevator that took them up to Deck 11 where sickbay was located.

  They found everyone in the waiting room. Dr. Amy Menendez returned and was the first to speak. "I put her in suspended animation. I'll need more time than we have to operate on her. I've heard we need to get off this planet."

  CHAPTER THREE

  Blast Off!

  "Thank you, Amy," said Captain Williams. "We do."

  "Captain, I just got a call from the bridge," Janet said. "There is a tank on its way. A ground tank. It’s moving slow, but will eventually get here."

  "Gee, I wonder who it’s after," Captain Williams said.

  Alberta sighed and rubbed her now-white hair. It had some brown in it when Erica had left for the Buddhist monastery. Captain Williams pulled out her tablet from a pocket in her coveralls. She tapped the screen.

  "All crew, listen up," Captain Williams said. "This is the captain speaking. Everyone, you need to seal up all loose objects and containers. We’re launching soon as possible. Seal things and get into a launch chair. They are after us. Repeat. This is the captain speaking. We need to launch."