Free Daphne Stories

If you sign up for the newsletter, you will receive free, exclusive Daphne Blazefire content:

This collection contains three short Daphne Blazefire stories:

• The World That Sleeps
• The Neutron Star
• The Ghost Cargo

If you’d like to know more before you sign up, click here for details.

Novis Terminal: The Chronicles of Daphne Blazefire

When space hauler Daphne Blazefire arrives at Novis Terminal with a cargo hold full of spare parts, she expects the usual grumpy dockmaster and a quick turnaround. Instead, the station is dead quiet—and completely abandoned.

Before she can figure out what’s going on, she’s ambushed by a gang of thugs who steal her ship’s most valuable asset: RUSTY, her loyal, slightly sarcastic, robot sidekick and best friend.

But all isn’t lost. Daphne discovers Ashley, a sharp-witted technician who managed to escape the same crew that kidnapped the rest of the station’s personnel. Together, they hatch a rescue plan… which immediately goes sideways in spectacular fashion.

With a half-baked strategy, a pair of borrowed stun pistols, and a ship held together by duct tape and determination, Daphne must outsmart a shadowy criminal ring, rescue the missing crew, and get
RUSTY back before he ends up as scrap.

Space is cold, but Daphne’s coming in hot.

Novis Terminal

Novis Terminal featured Image

Excerpt (a tiny teaser):

The repair shop was a morass of noise and confusion as technicians worked on various projects. Ashley Sinclair worked on a circuit that had given her fits for a week. The control board was used by the autopilot system of bay 17. It had failed more than a week ago, and she still struggled to get it back online. Such a delay was unheard of, except the repair was low-priority and numerous interruptions to her daily work schedule pushed the repair back farther and farther.

The plastic top bench she worked on contained several built-in diagnostic equipment. Micro-circuit repair tools littered the top. She looked at the circuitry through a magnifier that was mounted to the back corner of the bench. Normally, she would just swap this circuit with a new one, and she had a new circuit on order. In fact, she had ordered a few extras. Unfortunately, the manufacturer had gone out of business years ago, and another company made the circuits as a special order, made-on-demand only. That meant a long delay before it would arrive, and her boss wanted the bay operational as soon as possible. They were losing millions per day while that bay was not operational. Or so her boss indicated. She had her doubts about the amount of losses they were accruing. After all, Novis Terminal had spare bays.

“Ashley,” said her boss.

She growled, then looked up. What does that tiny man want now?

“Yes, boss?” she said.

“Control just called down. They want someone to check in on the docking radars. Several of them have gone dark. Also, they mentioned that the long-range comms have stopped working.”

Ashley felt her throat constrict. What did all of that have in common? Nothing, that’s what. Could there be a major event happening on the station?

Something popped into her head. Yes. There was one thing that those systems all had in common, besides their power source. Each system had amplifiers in racks inside a telecommunications room on the other side of the station.

“It’s probably something in Telcom room three,” she said.

“Well, you’d better hustle over there and investigate,” said her boss.

Dangerous Cargo

Dangerous Cargo featured image:

Excerpt (a tiny teaser):

Trevino extended a hand and smiled at her. “I am Trevino.”

When the light hit the man’s face just right, she noticed he had tiny fins where a human had earlobes. He was an alien of some sort. She decided it was too impolite to ask. Instead, she shook his hand.

“Daphne Blazefire.”

She looked up at the sky and saw another streak.

“I take it, this is your first time at Skyfall?” said Trevino.

Daphne glanced at the alien, then nodded. “Uh, huh.”

She stared up at the sky, unable to break her attention for long.

“Would you like to know the history behind this annual event?”

Daphne looked at Trevino and nodded.

“Sure.”

“Skyfall is a superstitious ritual the locals have devised to explain what is happening in the upper atmosphere of this planet. Most of the people you see in this village arrived hundreds of years ago. They were families that struck out on the frontier, becoming stranded on this forsaken world. About fifty years ago, there was a major battle in orbit. What the battle was about, nobody remembers.”