Star Noir Read online

  Star Noir

  A Science Fiction Anthology

  Gary Phillips

  O’Neil Du Noux

  Richard Prosch

  Jean Rabe

  Douglas Hirt

  Eric Beetner

  Mike Baron

  Michael Black

  Tyler Dann

  Tim Tressler

  Paul Bishop

  Contents

  Foreword

  GARY PHILLIPS

  THE ANTI-GRAVITY STEAL

  O’NEIL DE NOUX

  Escape From Tyrannosaur Valley

  Richard Prosch

  Timestamp

  Jean Rabe

  Tracks

  Douglas Hirt

  A Nice Century For Dying

  A note from the Editor

  Michael A Black

  The Hybrid

  Tyler Dann

  Blood Flurry

  MIKE BARON

  Blue Ivory

  TIM TRESSLER

  Too Much Time

  Eric Beetner

  Nightclub At The End of the World

  The Crew

  Foreword—Paul Bishop

  The Anti-Gravity Steal—Gary Phillips

  Escape From Tyrannosaur Valley—O’Neil Du Noux

  Time Stamp—Richard Prosch

  Tracks—Jean Rabe

  A Nice Century For Dying—Douglas Hirt

  STORIES FROM THE BIODOME

  Hybrid—Michael Black

  Blood Flurry—Tyler Dann

  Blue Ivory—Mike Baron

  Too Much Time—Tim Tresslar

  BONUS STORY FOR HORROR FANS

  Nightclub At the End of the World—Eric Beetner

  Foreword

  by Paul Bishop

  Stars are wherever you find them—the sky, the galaxy, or in the eyes of a lover. They are the streetlights of eternity. You can shoot for the stars, hitch your wagon to a star, or be born under a lucky star. You can see stars like a concussed cartoon character, you can thank your lucky stars, or be a rising star. Caught off-guard, you might blurt out, bless my stars. You can even be in love so deeply you believe your paramour hung the moon and the stars. Shakespeare quilled the line, It is not in the stars to hold our destiny but in ourselves. And while stars may not hold our destiny, they do represent the infinite reach of our imagination.

  This anthology is filled with stars of the science fiction genre—storytelling stars who possess the ability to seize our attention, fuel our imaginations, make our pulses pound, mystify us, entertain us, and—when they are at their best—make us think.

  Get ready to turn the pages at a whirlwind pace on a journey filled with thrills and danger you will positively enjoy...it is written in the stars.

  Paul Bishop

  North of Los Angeles 2019

  THE ANTI-GRAVITY STEAL

  By

  GARY PHILLIPS

  1

  Ned Brenner put the back of his hand to his mouth and yawned to hide a possible tell as he considered the flush he now possessed. They were playing TV poker—Texas Hold ʼEm—and the two of clubs had come up on the river, the last card. His high card was a Jack of Clubs. Mott, directly across from him at the table, tried to guess the hand Brenner had concluded. He was an investment banker and acted like he shit gold for the peasants to pick over. He’d upped the ante, the raise going to the third man left—Adam something, but Brenner couldn’t recall his last name at the moment.

  “I’ll see that and bump five hundred,” the one called Adam said. He tossed his chips onto the pile. The pot was sweet, a little over ten thousand. The raise was to Brenner who tented his fingers and tapped them lightly against each other. Consciously, he did this whether he had good or bad cards.

  “Interesting,” he said, reviewing the characteristics of these two men he’d observed during their now nearly all-night poker game. The evening had started off with seven of them but had effectively worn down to only three active players. Two others remained, an older man named Ted Hopper and a younger woman who only gave her name as Estelle. These two had coasted for the last forty minutes or so and folded early or, in Hopper’s case, his chips were low and he had no intention to buy more.

  Brenner saw the raise but didn’t up the ante. He didn’t want to scare Mott off, who he assumed would raise again. He didn’t believe the man had the nuts or the right cards, but the one called Adam had been harder for him to read. During the game, he had, at times, demonstrated a cautious, meticulous approach given to little risk. Yet at other times, he bet like a riverboat gambler on a tear. The cards didn’t seem to dictate which way he’d play but rather appeared to respond as the mood struck him at any given moment.

  Sure enough, Mott doubled his previous raise and Adam dropped out. Brenner then saw the raise and upped it.

  “You can’t seriously believe you can top my straight flush,” his rival said. On deck were the three clubs in order—two, three, and four in suit.

  Did Mott actually have the ace-five or five-six also in suit? Brenner looked evenly at his serenely grinning opponent.

  The dealer—also their host, Devra Hamlish—regarded Mott solemnly, her eyelashes black and luminescent like a model’s. “Sir?”

  He remained stone-faced when he saw the bet.

  “Show gentlemen,” she said.

  Mott had a five and a six, but the latter card was a diamond. He had a straight but not a straight flush.

  Brenner turned his two clubs over and pulled the chips to him. He’d already climbed out of the hole he’d been in and with this win, he was some twenty-three thousand to the good.

  “I’m done,” Hopper said and stretched. He stood beside the built-in sideboard and sipped a Scotch he’d splashed over ice.

  Adam looked at his watch. It was expensive but not ostentatious. “Me too.”

  “And me. I’ve had enough fun for one night,” Estelle said dryly.

  “All right, then.” Hamlish signaled for the bank—held in a Rimowa Topas metal attaché case—to be brought over by one of the two guards who’d been on duty at the game. He was dressed in a dark suit with an open collar but wasn’t a bruiser of a man—although Brenner had noted the gun holstered on his belt beneath his jacket at one point.

  The money was counted out to those who were owed anything and Hamlish retained ten percent for the house.

  “You going to give me a rematch, right?” the competitive Mott said to Brenner.

  “Anytime,” he said as he snapped a rubber band around his twin stacks of fifties and hundreds. He put the divided bills in the inner pockets of his leather coat.

  “Would you care for Rolf to walk you to your car?” Hamlish asked him. The not unattractive woman was in her mid to late fifties, with a swimmer’s body and toned arms and legs. She wore designer outfits and there had been a little work done on her face but it had been with a subtle hand. At least she didn’t look like one of those ghastly apparitions with their mouths frozen in a sardonic grin like the Joker’s, the cheekbones moved to where the ears were.

  “I’m cool,” he said as he also walked out of the lady’s home, a three-story brick Victorian row house on an old street in an old section of Near North Side Chicago. Mott drove off in a Mercedes sedan and Adam paused to light a cigarette.

  “You did all right, huh?” He puffed smoke into the hazy gray light, dawn less than twenty minutes away.

  Brenner hunched a shoulder. “Sometimes yes and sometimes no. Tonight, okay.”

  “I hear you.” The other man nodded and began to walk away.

  Brenner headed in the opposite direction as a black Lincoln Town Car rolled past him. For a brief moment, he heard a disturbance over his shoulder and looked back to see two men grappling with a third one. He wasn’t sure, but he assumed it was the man named
Adam who they attempted to force into the Lincoln, its rear door open. The two were built like typical muscle—big torsos and planed shoulders evident under the material of their jackets.

  One of the kidnappers—in slacks and a zippered nylon windbreaker—shoved the upper body of their victim into the car’s ample rear seat area. The other man had Adam by his lower legs.

  “That’s got him. Let’s get out of here,” the one farther out of the car said.

  His talking covered the sound, what little there was of it, when Brenner raced forward to roundhouse kick him squarely on the side of the face. He dropped the captive’s legs and staggered away like a drunken man.

  The other one, who was partially in the car with his leg bent on the bench seat, turned and pushed out of the door of the car while he drew a gun from inside his sport coat.

  At that moment, Rolf was more than halfway down the outside steps and had aimed his Beretta at the thug with the gun. Brenner moved faster and lashed out with the edge of his hand. He cracked the wrist of the gunman’s hand and the man yelped and dropped the weapon, a dull-finished Glock. Two stiff fingers into the target’s chest followed rapidly and the would-be kidnapper twitched with spasms as if he’d been shocked by a stun gun. When he fell to the sidewalk on his face and lay still, Brenner kicked the Glock away.

  The first one he struck had recovered and now held a semi-auto shotgun in his hand, probably plucked from under the front seat.

  He fired it at the bodyguard and the backup who’d appeared behind him. Rolf, in front on the steps, was struck in his torso with the spray of buckshot. Gray dust kicked up around him when the pellets also blasted into a brick pillar of the porch. Hamlish’s other security man yelled in pain and fell.

  The hoodlum shifted his attention to Brenner. Both men stood beside the Lincoln. In the fraction of time it took for the man to fire his weapon again, his target had dropped below the blast. Like a runner sliding into a base, he used his legs to sweep the assailant off his feet. On the ground and still holding his weapon, the kidnapper tried to twist to use the shotgun. Brenner, also prone after his slide, rammed his heel twice in rapid fashion into the man’s stomach and thrust the air out of him.

  He got to one knee and yanked the shotgun away. Once back on his feet, he moved to the rear of the Lincoln and helped the dazed victim out of the back.

  “How do you feel?” he asked as he helped him over to the Hamlish house.

  “I’m okay,” Adam said. There was a lump at the base of his neck where one of the men had struck him to stun him and make him compliant.

  Rolf was on his feet, helped by the other bodyguard. Devra Hamlish was also outside and stood at the top of the stoop. Over at the Lincoln, the kidnapper who’d wielded the shotgun was now at the wheel of the car and his comrade had managed to crawl into the rear. Brenner turned to stop them, but the woman spoke quickly.

  “If you wouldn’t mind, Mr. Brenner, it would be better for me if you didn’t subdue them. If you do, we’d have to call the police, who tend to ask so many pesky questions.”

  Despite his natural inclination, he did as requested.

  The man he’d saved turned to his host. “And no press.”

  She smiled and nodded.

  With the back door still open, the town car roared away, the man’s feet protruding a little.

  “You some kind of Navy SEAL, man?” the injured Rolf asked Brenner as they all went inside. “I’ve never seen anyone with moves like yours.”

  “I practice a lot,” he replied.

  They sat the bodyguard on the couch, and Hamlish called a medical friend she said wouldn’t feel compelled to report the gunshot wound.

  “I can’t thank you enough for what you did, Mr. Brenner.” Adam put his hand out.

  Brenner returned the handshake. “Ned. And no worries, Adam, right?”

  “Yeah, Adam, Adam Damakas.”

  He grinned. “That’s why you’d like to keep this low key.”

  The other man nodded. “Exactly.”

  “But it looks like you might need to get yourself protected, huh? These dudes were for sure going to try to ransom you to your pops,” he observed.

  Damakas smiled crookedly. “You available for lessons?”

  Brenner shrugged, “I’m always up for a new experience.”

  The wounded bodyguard growled his irritation. “Well, I’ve had the new experience of getting peppered by a shotgun, so I’ve had enough excitement for the time being.” His shirt was off, and he pressed a bloody towel to his wound.

  Three days later, about an hour’s drive out of Las Vegas, Ned Brenner—wearing number nineteen—accelerated his Yamaha dirt bike as he took the final hill. Number thirty-four was ahead of him and his rear tire spun dirt and small pebbles into Brenner’s dark visor. Both lead riders gained the high ground while several others roared up the incline close behind. The two were side by side as they rocketed across the stretch of level ground. A third rider—number thirteen, in yellow-and-orange gear—began to close the gap.

  The racers maintained their furious pace and the rhythmic burr of their engines filled the dry, hot air. Brenner’s front tire hit a gopher hole and his motorcycle wobbled but he regained control quickly. Number thirty-four took advantage, though, and eased out ahead of him again. Number thirteen, a female rider, hadn’t lost any ground either and was tight behind him.

  The final leg of the race was a twenty-foot leap from the hill down to the path that would take them across the finish line. The three and their machines rose off the edge of the hill. They seemed momentarily frozen at the apex of their jump, stuck in a matrix of time before the racers descended to the earth again.

  As each of the riders leaned forward on their bikes and bore down, they imagined their flesh fusing with the metal of their machines. Brenner gained less than an inch ahead of number thirty-four. Number thirteen snuck through on his left and crossed the finish line first with him less than two seconds behind, and thirty-four took third place. The crowd cheered and applauded. The three shook hands, removed their helmets, and hugged one another. Thereafter, the awards were handed out while phones were held aloft to take pictures.

  Later, at a bar called the Busted Spoke, the motocross riders and their fans partied hard in the heat of the late afternoon. Brenner and Sela Wu, number thirteen, were at a table in a corner of the establishment.

  “Ha. Shit, Noc, you didn’t let me win, did you?” She sipped from a beer bottle and studied him as she did so.

  “You damn well know me better than that, Sela. I play to win in everything, exactly like you.” He clinked the top of his bottle against hers.

  She regarded him curiously and a serious look settled on her face. “Except you do sky diving, snowboarding, b-ballin’—and I know you won some golf tournaments, yeah? Then there was that time in the park when I was with you and you pocketed some serious cash playing chess with two guys at once.”

  “I’ve done that once or twice,” he said dismissively.

  “And that’s how you make a living? Bumming around, doing whatever it is that interests you?”

  “More or less.”

  She pursed her lips. “It all comes easy to you doesn’t it, Noc?”

  “You mean I don’t appreciate my…ah…” he gestured to finish his sentence.

  Wu said, “Whatever it is you got.”

  “I apply myself, that’s all.”

  “In everything?” she said.

  “In everything,” he replied evenly.

  “I’ll be the judge of that.” She stood and turned her head to fix him with a look that was part lascivious and part challenge.

  He followed the woman out. At the end of the standing bar was a wiry, pleasant-faced man with a vodka and tonic. His features reminded people of the late actor and game show host Richard Dawson. Brenner had noticed him at the race. He didn’t have a photographic memory. No one did. Some children and a handful of adults had what was called eidetic memory—they could call up clear sna
pshots of faces and incidents in their mind’s eye.

  Brenner didn’t possess that either, but he was observant and given that the man evoked a once-famous person’s features, his image had stuck with him. But he wasn’t concerned about him or any other motocross follower as he got on his Yamaha and followed Sela Wu to the motor court where some of the riders were staying.

  It was a good thing, he reflected a little later, that the other racers hadn’t yet made it back on this hazy afternoon. He and the athletic Ms Wu made loud sounds of pleasure like they auditioned for a porn epic while they made love in her room.

  “Shit,” Wu enthused afterward from beside him, a taut leg over his six-pack abs and his now limp member in her hand. “You sure have a luscious dick, Noc.” She decided not to feed his ego more and tell him she enjoyed having it in her mouth and other parts of her body.

  “That’s the sweetest thing a woman has ever said to me.”

  They laughed and let their sweat cool on their skin. After going at it again, the two stepped out and bought food at the Desert Rose diner two blocks over.

  The following morning at only a few minutes past dawn, Brenner left her room and slid onto his bike where it rested on its kickstand. He put his helmet on, started his machine, and rode quietly off the lot, his wheels crunching on the surface. Halfway down the block, he parked his motorcycle and walked back to the motor court.

  He deliberately didn’t cross the gravel but followed the thin concrete ribbon of a walkway to the rear of the establishment. From there, he went up the stairs to the second floor. He knocked lightly at a specific door and said, “Problem with your credit card, sir.”