Showing results by author "V. Ludwig" in All Categories

She’s everything I shouldn’t want. I capture her anyway. What humans hail an invasion we call Garrison Earth: A mission to save our species from extinction. But while my warriors will soon have the stomachs of their new mates swell with daughters, I know this planet holds nothing for me. Until a fierce, red-haired female points her gun with her eyes blazing fire, and I know I have found my mate. A bullet and a tranquilizer pad later, I carry her in my arms. Against my better judgment. But who argues fate?

Thirty-one, recently divorced, and behind on the mortgage for my farm, I scrape my last savings together and buy myself a farmhand. That big, horned alien I end up with? He’s a Vandalar saikh, a male concubine, and he wants to plow more than just my fields. Guess I should have read the fine print of the purchase contract better because the trader refuses to take him back. Now I’m stuck with weed-infested fields, red letters from the bank, and a guy who says he studied one million ways to please a female. (His words, it’s not like I’m going to count...)

My female matches two Vetusians: me, and the warrior she just killed. Fate is unpredictable. One moment I lose my destined female. The very next, I walk in on the kill of the other male who intended to claim her. For the Empire, the punishment for murder is death; her execution inevitable. Until I steal Katie and her daughter away to Odheim. A planet where all the ugliness of the universe comes together, including the darkest memories of my past. I’m a sgu’dal, an ex-addict. The shame of the healer stratum. But unsuitable, I am not, and now is the time for me to prove it.

It’s hard to find the right alien concubine. Finding three of them? Impossible! Watching the future saikhs practice their penetration angles at the saikhmenti alone doesn’t cut it to make a decision. What about other things like…I don’t know. Personality? What I need is insider information. That saikh-in-training who keeps failing his assessments? He’s offering it up freely. Kind of. All he wants is practice those fancy skills on me, or otherwise he might flunk his finals. Meh, why not?

You know your Gaia link is broken when your match is 93. While every Vetusian around me is expecting the arrival of the first hybrids, my mate is living out her final days in a nursing home. With true love unattainable, I concentrate on busting the crime ring responsible for the supply of human females forced into prostitution at the Odheim brothels. As a CAT officer, it’s my job to keep Earth women from being abducted. Until the department for interspecies relations offers me a breeding contract with one of them.

My alien concubine refuses to please me. That gruff, muscled Vandalar saikh I bought myself keeps running away. So I do what every lonely woman in her 30s would: I cuff him to my bed, until he comes to his senses. At least now I don’t have to chase behind him in high heels and can concentrate on starting my mail-order-saikh business. What could possibly go wrong? I tell you what: He frees himself. Of course, he does. Now I’m the one tied to the bed while he threatens punishment.

I conquered her planet and pillaged her body. Now I’m back for her heart. A decade ago, I brought war to Solgad, home of the Jal’zar. I sacked the planet and slaughtered the people, all to save my race from extinction. Until one of their female warriors hissed defiance, promising me death at her hands no matter how her body longed for mine. Each night, she came to end me, only to succumb to the raw urges of her mating heat. Each night, I gave her hungry womb what it needed, the way we coupled neither safe nor sane. I was the enemy she couldn’t kill.

Her body belongs to everyone, but her soul is mine. Patrons call her leska, female, using her body in ways that leave the human in bruises and blood. Each night, I stitch her back together, tend to her wounds, only to watch another male tear them open with pleasure. Sophie. That’s what I call her when no one is listening, that human female abducted from Earth to be seeded by many. I want to save her, but I can barely save myself, chasing my next score with no consideration for anyone - not even her.

An anthology of short stories of spaceships, aliens, and the outer worlds by classic Science Fiction authors, from the Golden Age to the New Wave Era. This compilation includes stories by William Bender, Jr., Ray Bradbury, G. Gordon Dewey, Charles E. Fritch, Edward W. Ludwig, James V. McConnell, Stanley Mullen, Robert Silverberg, Jerry Sohl, Henry Slesar, and L.J. Stecher Jr.