“Sorry, Commander,” Jock said. “We’re going to have to call you back.”
He unbuckled from his seat and raced after Dom. “JAXXY, see if you can find any info on how to kill a giant frogman.”
Desire gasped but quickly followed to see what she could do. By the time Jock and Desire got to the cargo bay, Dom and the creature were face to frog.
“Damn, Dom,” Jock yelled. “I didn’t realize you were that short.”
Seeing the creature up close was quite a sensory shock for Jock. There was nothing cute about a two-meter high slimy, warty, toady creature suddenly all up in his spaceship, preparing to do whatever it wanted to his crew.
Dom punched it in the nose. He didn’t know what else to do, and instinct took over again. He punched it a second time. The creature stopped and stared back at him. It seemed just as confused as Dom as to its sudden more substantial presence. And the fact that it had been punched in the nose, not once but twice.
Dom punched it a third time.
The frogman took stock of the situation and looked down at his stubby armlegs. The flurry of punches had stunned him, but now its instincts kicked in or at least it newly developed mutant-grown instincts. He reached out with his stubby appendages and picked Dom up and flipped him into an upside-down bear hug.
“Why am I the one who always gets into it with these freaky creatures?” he yelled.
Jock and Desire inched closer, as the creature hopped back to the cargo hold where it had more room to move around. It started shaking Dom up and down, not sure what to do with its captured prey. The frogman lifted him over his shoulder to make hopping easier and flicked out a long tongue, which lapped Dom’s face.
“Oh, my God!” Dom yelled, “he just slurped me!” He looked over at Jock and Desire. “A little help over here would be nice! Anytime now!”
Jock moved around to the side of the creature where Dom was closest.
“I can try to pry you loose from the frog’s armleg,” Jock said. He didn’t know what else to do, but it seemed like a good start.
Jock lunged toward the creature, but it moved and flicked him back with his other armleg. Jock flew back against the wall, his back jammed into a light panel.
“So much for that idea!” he said, stumbling to his feet.
The frogman seemed to be learning about his new mobility, growing stronger by the second.
Jock shook himself off and made another run at the frog creature, pummeling it with a headbutt to the abdomen. The creature faltered and dropped Dom, but quickly regained its sense of balance. It grabbed both of them, one in each arm, and hopped around the cargo bay.
The two men looked at each other. “Well, at least we’re not in the cockpit where we can crash the ship!” Dom yelled.
Desire raced past the hopping creature, ignoring the screams of her male companions. She needed to get back to her stateroom and figure something out. The ship rocked back and forth with the weight of the frogman and his two grown prey.
“JAXXY,” Jock yelled, “any secret tricks or internal weapons you think we might not have noticed on the ship? Any sprinkler system or laughing gas canisters you can deploy?”
“I’m sorry, Major,” JAXX replied. “I’ve done a quick scan of the weapons system, and nothing was designed for internal use. You’ll just have to fight it off yourself.”
“Thanks, JAXX,” Dom said. “That’s a huge help. Can you see if you can rouse sleeping beauty Desire in her stateroom? It looks like she went to take a nap while we’re fighting whatever the hell this thing is.”
The frogman’s power was growing by the minute. It seemed like he had the strength of ten men. He was slowly alternating between squeezing his prey in his arms and jumping up and down, with the slobbering goo from his tongue bathing Jock and Dom in smells they’d never dreamed.
Desire ran back to the cargo bay with a laser blaster. The frogman seemed to be enjoying his exertion with Jock and Dom.
“Um, are you going to blast this thing?” Dom yelled. “If so, do you want to make sure you’re close enough so that you don’t blast us?”
“Well, that was the plan,” Desire screamed. “Do something to get it in position and duck your heads back,” she said.
“Special Liaison Desire,” JAXX said, “I do want to warn you about firing a blaster of that size inside the ship. The chances of damage are 248 to 1. Please be careful.”
Jock and Dom ducked and tried as they might to pry themselves loose from the frogman’s armlegs. Desire stepped closer and lined up the shot with the frogman’s bumpy belly. She closed her eyes and pulled the trigger.
“Bullseye!” Dom yelled.
Jock and Dom dropped to the floor as the frogman doubled over from the shot. Desire pulled the trigger again, shooting it in the head for the double-tap kill shot. That only made things worse for Jock and Dom as the brains and blood and guts from the frogman splurted out all over them. It wasn’t a pretty sight. And it smelled terrible!
“Damn, there goes another flight suit!” Dom screamed.
“So much for a clean ship, Desire,” Jock said. “I just finished getting the fish puke smell out of it.”
Jock turned to Dom and threw some goo in his face. “Thanks for knocking open that cage on Polarus by the way.”
“Hey, would you mind grabbing us a few of those towels from the cockpit?” Dom asked as Desire stepped forward to help him and Jock off the floor.
She had to twist one of the frogman’s armlegs from around Jock’s waist as its reflexes hadn’t let loose yet. He was being squeezed around the stomach and could barely breathe. Dom didn’t have as much of a problem, what with trying to take a bite of the frogman’s armleg as a last-ditch effort to free himself.
“Mmmmm…that was tasty,” he said. “If it weren’t for the fact that this thing was a giant mutation created by who knows what kind of chemical solution and crazy scientist, I’d say we chop this sucker up, grill him up and serve him up with a vat of melted butter.”
Jock stared back, not amused. “That freak thing almost killed us, and you want to eat it? That’s sick, man, really sick.”
“Well, hey, it was just a thought,” Dom replied. “What else are we going to do with it?”
“Um, Commander Weisman wants us to throw it on ice back in the cargo hold,” Desire said, walking back from the cockpit and handing each of them a towel. She stepped back from them as far as possible, trying to keep herself from puking at the stench.
“And why would he want us to do that?” Dom asked.
“Because he’s ordering us back to the island planet to locate the scientist,” Desire said.
Jock wiped the greasy frog guts off his face and neck, as he felt it drip down the front of his flight suit. Dom hadn’t fared much better; his entire upper body bore the brunt of the expulsion of goo.
“Well, Jock,” he said, “at least you get to meet up with your pretty science lady again. Much sooner than expected. I’m sure she’ll be thrilled.”
“That’s how the commander knew the scientist was in trouble,” JAXX chimed in. “I was keeping Commander Weisman updated while you were both fighting it out with the frogman. He knew you could defeat it, just for the record. While we were online, JACOB received an urgent SOS transmission from the assistant. The connection wasn’t very clear, but Commander Weisman wants you to find out what happened.”
“Maybe he was killed by one of his giant frogmen,” Dom said disgustedly. I mean, why is he experimenting with these things in the first place if they’re dangerous? Oh God, what if they’re poisonous like the ones we delivered! I could be dying.”
“JAXXY, Desire, can you guys run a sample on this goo to make sure we’re not dying?” Jock asked, ignoring Dom’s theatrics.
“Neither of you are dying,” JAXX said. “Commander Weisman confirmed that his last shipment was just your average horny toads from Earth.”
“Thank, God,” Desire said.
“Do we really have to go back?” Jock
asked.
“Yes,” JAXX replied. “Commander Weisman ordered you back to investigate. You’re the closest team he has to the planet right now. He’s sending Captain Breck’s squadron on the double as backup, but he’s still tied up cleaning up the slave mess.”
“Nothing like a little adventure mixed in with romance, eh Jock?” Dom asked. “You’re getting your fill of that lately.”
Jock stared at Dom, not amused.
“Well, think of it this way,” Dom said, “you can play the rescue hero again, save the day, kiss the girl, and then leave tomorrow to find yet another dame in another system.”
Desire stayed silent, but she got into Jock’s head, her curiosity getting the better of her. She could tell he was excited about seeing the assistant again. All thoughts of the Princess were gone from his head. All he could think about was the assistant.
“Well,” Desire said, “I suppose we should get this creature in the cargo hold ASAP before it starts to stink up the place even more. Where did we leave the trash bags?”
The stench overpowered the ship’s ventilation system, even after Desire washed down the deck with bleach water. She wasn’t happy to be cleaning up after the boys again but felt it was the least she could do while they disposed of the body.
Dom considered chopping off a bit of the frogman’s leg to serve up for dinner that night, but Jock grabbed the laser saw before he could go through with it.
“I assume the good doctor will want all the pieces and part of this specimen,” Jock said.
“Well, as much as we can piece together after Desire blasted his guts all over us and the ship,” Dom replied. “I wonder if there’s any crazy mutation virus on us now. Maybe we’ll get some awesome superpowers from this. Maybe we can change into mega-men and perform heroic deeds and save more damsels in distress.”
“You need to stop reading stupid things on your comm stat,” Jock said. He dropped the last part of the frogman into the hold and slid the deck cover in place. He grabbed the power ratchet and bolted it down. The creepy creature was dead, but he wanted to make sure it couldn’t reanimate itself and wreak more havoc.
With the cargo area as back to normal as could be expected, Desire broke the news to them. “You guys stink,” she said, “I mean, seriously, you guys need to go take showers and then take them again, and maybe a third time for good measure. And be sure to use soap this time.”
“Ha, ha, very funny,” Dom said. “Maybe you’d like to supervise? Make sure I don’t miss any spots?”
“No, that’s quite all right,” she said. “I’m sure you can manage just fine on your own. I’ll be in the cockpit getting us set up to head back to the planet. JAXX will keep me company. Maybe this time I can beat him in Scrabble.”
Jock took a whiff of his flight suit and almost passed out in the process. The creature’s entrails smelled strongly of ammonia. Mixed in with the bleach Desire used to clean the deck, it was a potent combo.
“I’m gonna go sit down before I fall down,” Jock said. “Then I’ll take the hottest shower of my life to get this stench off me.”
“Good idea,” Dom said, as he caught a whiff of himself. “Hot shower, coming right up.”
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Author Notes
Thank you for reading all the way to the end. I hope you enjoyed the second installment of The SPOOK & GOON Space Adventures series.
I finished Invasion of the Frorees with a final 30-minute writing sprint on the morning of January 31. After thirteen days of inspiration, I wanted to keep the momentum going. I sat down over lunch that afternoon and dove right in on what would become Escape of the Glitter Princess.
Aside from a vague idea of the trio saving a princess tossed around with my mentor, Ramy Vance, I didn’t have much idea of what would happen. The first few days of writing were rough attempts to see if some story might take shape. At the time, I was still deciding whether I was a plotter or a pantser.
Most writers seem to fall into one of the camps where they either have a meticulous outline and write from that, known as plotters. The other side sits down and writes whatever comes to mind, known as pantsers. I never knew where things might lead with the action, so I guessed at that point I was more of a pantser. For me, half the fun of writing fiction is letting your mind take you to new places when you let go and open yourself up to it.
It’s also cool how the mood I’m in when I sit down at my MacBook Pro adds subtle suggestions to the plot as my mind takes off and I start typing. I wrote the milk and cookies scene with Jock on a Friday evening, thinking it was funny that a big guy like Jock had to order milk instead of bourbon.
A few hours later, I got a text message from my wife who was out to dinner with a friend. They’d just ordered milk and cookies for dessert, which seemed a pretty crazy way of life imitating art.
I wrote Desire’s Akumal scene with the solar storm the next morning before reading a news report about one that was set to strike within the next few days. With all the weird coincidences, I knew I was onto something. Too bad I didn’t know where it was going, but I was having a blast finding out.
It wasn’t until I got to the tent scene that the story finally took shape. It’s an obvious nod to the TARDIS in Doctor Who, but it allowed me to take the story in new directions, adding the quirky bits that came out of nowhere. The idea of slave traders seeped in from reading a lot of Wayne Stinnett’s novels, though I had to make them more humorous than dangerous.
I was also able to weave in two of my earliest memories from the summer of 1977—Star Wars and Elvis. I turned five that July and saw Star Wars six times in the theater, including once by myself on a hot Sunday afternoon as my parents were tired of seeing it. A month later, I remember lying on the floor in front of the TV when David Brinkley came on the NBC Nightly News and said, “Elvis Presley died today.”
I kept up with my writing sprints, backing off a bit to just over 3,000 words per day in an attempt to keep from being overwhelmed with juggling the writing and my job as a corporate recruiter.
I wrapped up the story on the evening of February 19, cleaned things up a bit and gave it to my wife to read. She struggled through the beginning and its various twists and turns. I ended up cutting huge sections from that part and starting the opening later in the story. I forgot about it for a few months while I wrote the prequel and then the next book, Attack of the Mutant Miners.
Once we finished the summer editing sessions for Invasion of the Frorees, we jumped right into a similar process for this one. After a few months on the shelf, editing with fresh eyes revealed a much better story than I remembered. The love affair between Jock and the princess had some moving moments that I really enjoyed.
I fleshed out a few scenes, including the snake and frog raid toward the end, cracking myself up as I sat on the couch coming up with various ways to torture the slavers.
We’re now working through Book 3 the same way as I get ready to hit publish on Book 2. With having done it once, the process was much easier this time around. As before, I can’t wait to do it again.
Chad V. Holtkamp
Providenciales, Turks and Caicos Islands
8 October 2018
More fiction by Chad V. Holtkamp
The SPOOK & GOON Space Adventures Series
Domi
nation of the SPOOKS
Invasion of the Frorees
Escape of the Glitter Princess
Attack of the Mutant Miners
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Acknowledgments
Many thanks to RE Vance at Self-Publishing School’s Fundamentals of Fiction group. Thanks for your all your comments and suggestions as I continued the adventures of Jock, Dom, and Desire.
To Chris Fox, whose YouTube videos clued me in on knuckling down and doing daily writing sprints. I still have monthly reminders set on my iPhone calendar.
And to Michael Anderle, Barry J. Hutchison, Wayne Stinnett, and Hugh Howey for the fun adventures your books have taken me on over the last year.
And to my wife, Carrie, my biggest cheerleader and partner in sun, surf, and sand. Without her perseverance, you wouldn’t be holding this book in your hands. Thanks for giving up multiple late summer weekends and spending them with me editing in front of the computer.
About the Author
Alex P. Keaton was my idol growing up. I’ve always had that dual nature of being interested in business (numbers, wearing a suit, working in an office) while also being a creative at heart (singing/playing guitar in alt/punk bands, writing, and acting).
My academic advisor in college told me to learn a trade after I said I wanted to be a writer. Being 20 and infatuated with Goethe and the Romantic movement, that wasn’t what I wanted to hear. I wanted to be an ARTIST, not work in an office.
Fast-forward 25 years and the office worker has won out the majority of the time while I’ve still dabbled as an artist. Having worked for many years in corporate recruiting, I’ve always had side gigs, be it playing in a band, DJing, photography, writing freelance entertainment articles, acting, or voiceovers.
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