Catching a Runaway Train
"Captain Bartholomew Quasar and the Runaway Train on Zeta Moon 3" is included in the June issue of Beyond Science Fiction. Here's how Quasar's latest misadventure opens:
In all his years as an intergalactic starfarer and awe-inspiring hero from Earth, Captain Bartholomew Quasar had experienced more than his share of fantastic, unique, and hard-to-classify situations, all of which he'd summarized dutifully in his log and ranked according to difficulty level. Yet nothing could compare to where he found himself on the Zeta 3 moon colony: atop a hyperspeed train filled with plasma explosives, rigged to blow as soon as it reached its unfortunate destination.
But unlike previous high-risk encounters, today Quasar did not face this perilous situation alone. When his pilot shuttled him down to the train in a transport pod, matching its speed kilometer for kilometer, and when Quasar climbed out into winds strong enough to blow the fur off a full-grown Carpethrian, his courageous ship's engineer stood right beside him.
Clad in the same wind-resistant, skintight body suits with magnetic hand grips and foot stirrups, they leapt onto the roof of the Zephyr—a kilometer-long turbotrain moving faster than the speed of sound, blasting across a single electromagnetic rail laid into the desert moon's dusty hardpan. Fully prepared to save the day, both men paused a moment to hold on for dear life.
Hard to believe, but this is the 4th Quasar tale published this year and the 19th published since that very first story appeared at Every Day Fiction in 2010. Where has the time gone? It's flown faster than a Carpethrian near-lightspeed cold fusion reactor, that's what. Holy cow.
I wrote a bunch of Quasar misadventures last summer in preparation for the novel's release, and it's been rewarding to see so many of them find good homes. Only four more to go!