Short Stories

 

My short stories are all on Smashwords and  free for the download.  I hope you all appreciate the hard work that went into making them. If you would like, you can also download them directly from my site.

Life 2.147 by Bill Parker
Life 2.147 by Bill Parker

The first is Life 2.147Free at Smashwords

Download the Life 2.147  ePub File Here
Download the Life 2.147 PDF file here

Life has an energy all its own. It thrives where no one would ever believe. It clings to the smallest toehold. It flourishes given any chance at all.

Jane Markett was an up-and-coming exo-archeologist when she first set foot on Zari-Kut-3 over a year ago. She was not about to let a bunch of stodgy, slow colleagues slow down her headlong search for Zat-Mat-Kut, an ancient alien religious site.

The best android on this planet, Zack was the key to it all for Jane. He was more than just a strong back, his sensors were second to none. He was the latest in artificial intelligence. He was the key to her fast-track career path to fame and glory. All she had to do was convince Chuck, the Head Researcher in charge of this dig.

What happened, though, was not what anybody expected.

Legend of the Crystal Dragon coverLegend of the Crystal DragonFree at Smashwords

Download Legend of the Crystal Dragon PDF file here

With the advent of the timequake ships, mankind spread so rapidly out into the galaxy that chaos and corruption soon became the order of the day. So Union Fleet was formed to defend and protect mankind from his worst enemy — himself. To keep the peace, Union Fleet enforced the laws on all of the planets of the Union. For the most part, the people of Union Fleet were good and decent folks. For the most part, this all worked just fine on all of the civilized planets, but in the outworlds … well, that was another story. In the outworlds, where civilization was thin, evil thrived. Pirates plied their ancient trade in the outworld spaceways.
Even so, the pirates were not the worst that mankind had to face. The Jatarian Alien Group was mankind’s worst nightmare. But there was one ship that fought them off and saved the people of Benara-3 — the Crystal Dragon. It defeated the whole Jatarian battle group and sent what was left of them back to their own with a message — don’t come back!
Created with alien technology, this ship single-handedly did what a whole fleet of Union starships could not. But that was a long time ago. The people of Benara-3 forgot and went on with their lives. Corrupt Union Admirals tried to confiscate the Crystal Dragon to steal its secrets. When it slipped their grasp, in spite, they declared it an outlaw ship. As time went on, everybody forgot the Crystal Dragon and got on with their lives.
But the Jatarians did not forget …

A Single Quantum of Time... A Single Quantum of Time at Amazon

You would think that in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man would be king, but you would be wrong. More often than not, he is burned at the stake as a heretic. Such was the story of Mike Farrell, a brilliant young professor of Quantum Physics. His totally new concept for faster-than-light travel was so brilliant, in fact, that none of his colleagues understood it. They all scoffed at him behind his back. In the end, they so thoroughly rubbished Mike’s work that the college dismissed him. After that, none of his big company sponsors would have anything to do with him. Broke and down on his luck, even his girlfriend left him.

So Mike started over. He got his starship engineer’s papers and went to work on a co-op ship. That is where he met young Anna and her mother Sarah. Little did Mike realize that, over the next days, he would be struggling just to keep them all alive

Then, you might ask, how did we end up the timequake starships? But you would have to read the story to find out.