Author Archives: James Pyles

Gateway

ship

From one version of the cover of Andre Norton’s novel “Galactic Derelict”

The Ninth Story in the Time Travel Adventures of Ross Murdock

The very fact that Rossa woke up surprised him. The last thing he’d heard was a gunshot and then he felt an impact in the middle of his back. His back hurt, but not like a gunshot wound. Tranquilizer dart?

The room he found himself in was dimly lit and resembled the huts of the villagers. There was a crude wooden table in the center of the room and sitting on upended log on the other side of the table was a man.

The man was dressed similarly to the Axmen but his hair and complexion were darker. The man looked past where Rossa was lying on a loose collection of furs and nodded.  He felt himself being lifted to his feet by men on either side of him. The two other men, dressed the same as the first man, pulled him to a seat by the table facing the man who seemed to be in charge. He nodded again to the two men and they left.

The man spoke in the language of the Axmen and Rossa had spent enough time with them that he understood the basic question, “Who are you?”

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Where Did Daddy Come From?

path

© J.S. Brand

The sign post was all but unreadable as she stood staring at it from the foot of the path. Left pointed to the way she came and right to the Ranger station. The one pointing behind her was to the camp grounds. She couldn’t read the one pointing up the hill, but she’d heard stories.

No one walked up those steps anymore. People went up and never came down. The secret, at least Alise thought she knew it, came from her mother’s diary. Mommy went up and then came down three months pregnant. She never told Alise who her Daddy was. Now on her sixteenth birthday, she was going to find out.

She climbed the steps. Fog rolled in as she reached the top. It was longer than it looked from the bottom, like another world.

“Hello, Alise.”

“Daddy? But, you look so young, hardly older than me.”

“An incubus never ages, my dear. Here, let me show you my secrets.

When Alise descended the steps, her unborn baby was forming inside of her.

I wrote my wee tale for the FFfAW Challenge-Week of July 18, 2017 hosted by Priceless Joy. The idea is to use the image above as an inspiration to craft a piece of flash fiction between 100 and 175 words long, with 150 being the ideal. My word count is 174.

To read more stories based on the prompt, go to InLinkz.com.

Captured

fog

From the 1980 film “The Fog”

The Eighth Story in the Time Travel Adventures of Ross Murdock

All four men on the team from the future reflexively reached for weapons as the quartet of raging Axmen charged. Suddenly Ai pushed past Assa and Rossa, held forth the rune covered amulet she wore around her neck, and then loudly cried out in a language the rest of her party could barely understand.

Three of the Axmen abruptly stopped and cringed as if confronted by their worst horror-filled nightmare. The leader of their band stopped too and half-bowed but as he looked up to peer at the woman opposite him, rage and hate still filled his eyes.

“Daughter of Gaea. Think not the Axmen of the North are so easily swayed by your powers. We flee something much worse.”

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Terror

cape crozier

© Google, Nov 2016

The Adelie penguin colony at Cape Crozier, Antarctica had long been the subject of study. There were over a quarter of a million breeding pairs of birds identified. Scientists inhabited several tents at the site plus a crude permanent structure that vaguely resembled a collection of shoeboxes. However, this expedition was not here for the penguins.

“What do the latest readings look like, Scottie?” Carter Roberts addressed the party’s Chief Volcanologist Amanda Scott. She ignored the unwanted familiar use of her name.

“Not good, Carter.” She didn’t bother to glance up from the seismology report. “If these readings are accurate, then given the progression we’re seeing, we’ve got less than three months.”

“So Mount Terror is aptly named.”

“We always thought it was an extinct volcano, but sometime next October, it’ll make the 1883 eruption of Krakatoa look like a firecracker, plunging the whole world into a new ice age.”

Written for the What Pegman Saw photo writing challenge. The idea is to use the Google street image above as the inspiration for a piece of flash fiction no more than 150 words long. My word count is 149.

Today, Pegman takes us to Cape Crozier, Antarctica. I looked the place up at Wikipedia, and when I saw “Mount Terror” and “extinct volcano,” I knew I found my hook.

To read other stories based on the prompt, go to InLinkz.com.

Ghosts

bronze age stone art in sweden.

Found at fotosidan.se

The Seventh Story in the Time Travel Adventures of Ross Murdock

“The reason I’ve invited you to this briefing is that you both already have some idea of what we’re looking for and the stakes involved, although if the higher-ups had their way, you’d both be put in Guantanamo.”

Major John Kelgarries, military commander of Operation Retrograde stood at the front of his audience in the conference room specifically addressing Gordon Ashe and Ross Murdock.

It had been several months since they returned from their mission in Bronze Age Britain and discovered the Soviets had destroyed their covert base disguised as a Beaker trading post. Ashe, Murdock, and the outpost’s only survivor McNeil had just barely escaped an armed Soviet detachment who had attempted to capture them before they could be extracted by submarine. McNeil had cracked under the physical and emotional pressure and was now off team. However, in the aftermath of their mission, the roles of Ashe and Murdock had shifted.

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Her Loveliness

janet webb

© Janet Webb

The Sun would be setting soon. The stage was set. The candle and amulet were in place, herbs were mixed and sealed in the urn. Most importantly the painting was there. It was unusual and very rare, the only one not cataloged as part of great-grandfather’s works. Maria had been great-grandfather’s lover for five decades. Enzo fell in love with her through reading his journals. The young man studied years to perfect the art. Tonight, on the eve of her death, Enzo would bring her to life out of the painting and in all her loveliness, she would become his.

Written for Rochelle Wisoff-Lewis’ Friday Fictioneers writing challenge. The idea is to use the photo above to inspire a piece of flash fiction no more than 100 words long. My word count is 100.

To read other stories based on the prompt, go to InLinkz.com.

The Cache

Sunlight over ice floes.

© National Geographic

The Sixth Story in the Adventures of Ross Murdock

The modern city of Dover had been inhabited since the Stone Age, so by the advent of the Bronze Age, it was a thriving community, one which the three agents from the future were determined to avoid. Ashe, Murdock, and McNeil, or rather Assa, Rossa, and Maka, in the guise of Beaker traders, stayed away from the well-used trails that led in and out of Dover in search of a mystery.

This was circa 2,000 BCE and they had been sent back in time by Operation Retrograde to recover technology and perhaps even the location of a spaceship left behind by the alien race they called the Forerunners. However, their outpost, disguised as a Beaker trading post, had been destroyed by time traveling Soviet agents using weapons from the present, leaving the trio fugitives, not only from Red spies, but from the local clans who believed they were cursed by the gods. Their only hope was to hold out until the extraction team aboard the nuclear submarine USS Thetis returned just under two weeks from now and they could be transported out of Britain and back to the time gate at their base in the Arctic.

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The Curse of Lurgha

rocket launch

Photo: Reuters

The Fifth Story in the Adventures of Ross Murdock

Assa and Rossa stood on a rise and gazed at smoke ascending from a burnt ruin at the far side of the valley. At that distance, there was no obvious sign of what had caused their trading post to burn to the ground. Lightning maybe? No people or other evidence of attack was visible.

“We proceed carefully, Rossa,” Assa hissed. Murdock’s senior partner moved forward cautiously and Ross, or rather Rossa followed. It was more important than ever for the twenty-eight year old former thief for hire to think of himself only as a Beaker trader, that he was the apprentice of his master Assa, and that this was the only life he had ever lived. Murdock pushed away his memories of the 21st century and continued to follow Assa from one point of concealment to the next on the future Island of Britain four-thousand years before he was born.

An hour later, they had crossed the valley and were standing just meters from the still smoldering ruin and ashes of the trading post which had served as a small outpost for the investigating temporal team from Operation Retrograde.

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The New Knight

skate park

© Grant-Sud

Terry stood overlooking the skate park. He spent too much time here and not enough in school, at least that’s what his Dad used to tell him. Should he take the old man’s offer? Sure, the old man needed Terry but did Terry need him?

He needed something. Dad was murdered. Terry had the evidence. He found it hidden at Dad’s after he died, but he’d need help using it to put Dad’s killers away. The old man had been doing this for decades, putting murderers behind bars with his fists and his brains. Terry could fight, but he wasn’t trained. Plus there was a reason the old man was called the world’s greatest detective.

Terry McGinnis looked out over the vast expanse of Gotham City. Wayne was too old to protect it anymore. He needed help. He asked the seventeen-year-old if he wanted to make a difference, a real difference.

“I’ll do it. I’ll tell Wayne ‘yes’. I’ll become the new Batman.”

I wrote this for the FFfAW Challenge-Week of July 11, 2017. The idea is to use the photo above as a prompt to write a piece of flash fiction between 100 to 175 words long, with 150 being the ideal. My word count is 162.

My tale is very loosely based on the WB animated TV series Batman Beyond (1999-2001). Bruce Wayne is now elderly and has retired from being The Batman, but crime in Gotham is worse than ever. A chance encounter with a teenager named Terry McGinnis and the subsequent murder of Terry’s father by a corrupt businessman leads to Wayne training Terry to be the new Batman.

When I saw the photo prompt, the first thing I thought of was that the young man in the foreground was staring out over the city trying to make the biggest decision of his life. The rest followed.

To read more stories based on the prompt, go to InLinkz.com.

The Traders

submarine

Found at Shutterstock

Ross Murdock, or rather “Rossa,” stood in front of half a dozen historians and cultural experts for inspection.

“I think you are lying. Who are you really?”

Aiyana Zheutlin shouted at him in a language few would understand in the 21st century, a language understood by Bronze Age Beaker traders 4,000 years ago on an island that would eventually be called Britain.

“I am Rossa, a trader. I travel with my companion Assa. See, here are the markings of my clan.” Rossa offered the necklace made of wolves teeth, and a thin leather strap tied with intricate knots as evidence of his authenticity.

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