Leigh Kimmel's Bibliography -- Short Stories

Short Stories

	Lunar Surface Blues The High Frontier is no place for foolishness, but nature can always make a better idiot. Four years ago, Molly's parents brought her up here to the Moon when their work brought them to Shepardsport. In the time since that move, she's earned her place here and a seat on this field trip. Only one problem -- she's been given the worst possible EVA partner. A pencil-necked dweeb with an attitude, Benji wants to be one of the guys. But his stunts keep putting them both in danger, and the adults keep blaming Molly. When Benji gets in over his head, can Molly save him before it costs both their lives? A short story of the Grissom timeline. Published September 30, 2022 by Starship Cat Press, August 30, 2022
	A Hymn for Those Who Fall Forever Endings always hurt, but Vitali Grigorenko never expected a nightmare in orbit. Assigned to command the last flight of the orbiter Baikal, Vitali had started the mission in a nostalgic mood. That went out the airlock when he saw the body tumbling through space just beyond the flight deck windows. A body in NASA blue, not Russian tan. Now he's trying to get to the bottom of a murder in space, and his own country's space program as much a hindrance as a help. It's becoming clear that politics is involved, on both sides of what used to be the Iron Curtain, and he's going to need to go clear to the top. A short story of the Grissom timeline. Published August 30, 2022 by Starship Cat Press, August 30, 2022
	A Gift of Koi Ancient and wise, the grandfather Koi knows at first sight that this human bears a hidden wound. But how can a mere fish, even one as old as himself, be of any aid to a human? Astronaut Tyler Lanham had come to Grissom City, first and oldest lunar settlement, in search of the medical expertise he couldn't find on the far side of the Moon. When he sees the scar on the ancient koi's side, he knows he's found a kindred spirit. But an enemy is stalking these lovely gardens. A danger that will change both man and fish. A short story of the Grissom timeline. Published by Starship Cat Press, February 17, 2022/
	The Secret of Pad 34 Who would put a ceiling on humanity's expansion into space? That's what Gus Grissom wants to know. While fishing offshore from Cape Canaveral, he glimpses a mysterious undersea city of unearthly geometries, marked with a strange three-armed cross symbol. His efforts to research it bring him veiled threats from strangers at his door. Trouble blights an exemplary career. However, Gus refuses to be cowed into silence, and pursues every lead he can find. HP Lovecraft wrote that we live on a placid island of ignorance and were not meant to travel far. This is the Space Race in a world where the Soviet Union is not our only adversary. Published by Starship Cat Press, April 3, 2021.
	Vengeance Is Mine Chance spared Bina when the Sand Locusts destroyed the village of her birth. Determination kept her alive in the years that followed. But survival has come at a price. Each day she lives among her captors, she must ignore the signs that their nameless god is not a force of law and justice. Published by Starship Cat Press, November 28, 2017.
	Starlight Running Eight lives depend on Kyle's desperate trek across the Moon to get help. But someone -- or something -- intends for him to fail. Can he defeat it in time? Published by Starship Cat Press, October 27, 2017.
	Technoserf The Madrian Empire rules worlds as numerous as the grains of sand on a beach. When the Madrians conquered Roby's homeworld, they brought him to this godforsaken lump of a world, to toil at their will. Now the Gate has failed, leaving them without communications or transport to the rest of the Empire. When Roby identifies the problem, he's offered a chance to fix it. Roby now faces a quandry. Even if he can repair the damage, should he? Will he be better off reunited with the masters' metropole? Or will he only complicate a difficult life? Originally published in Visions VII: Universe, edited by Carrol Fix, Lillcat Publishers, August 10, 2017. Reprinted by Starship Cat Press, January 5, 2022.
	City of Blinding Light The Columbian Exposition has transformed Chicago into a vision of the bright shining future. However, the electric lights that turn night to day bring no joy to Kitty Hawthorne, and not just because they are the work of her employer's chief rival. Now Edison wants her to abandon her investigation of Tesla's alternating current system and look into a mysterious newcomer. Who is Samuel Gillian, who devises calculating machinery as easily as he builds flying machines? Published by Starship Cat Press, February 21, 2017.
	Love in the Time of Campaigning As Frank Correra brings his family to a lunar settlement to get them away from a worsening political situation on Earth, he reminisces about how he and his wife met. Frank had always dreamed of the skies. As a clone of an astronaut who subsequently became a US Senator, Frank thought he had a clear path ahead of him. But when it comes time to apply for the Air Force Academy, it is an election year. His ur-brother can't promise a nomination until he's won another term, and this year promises a hard race to run. When the other side puts up an ugly attack ad, can Frank find a way to discredit it before it destroys his ur-brother's chance of re-election, and with it Frank's slot at an Academy appointment? A Gus on the Moon story. Published by Starship Cat Press, January 27, 2017.
	The Wonderful Traveling Medicine Show Surrounded by a family who were happy with life in their West Virginia mining town, Janeen struggled against the pressure to keep her head down and conform. A dreamer, everyone said, Just like her father. And look what that got him, dead in the Turkish war. But Janeen knew she was meant for a wider world, and one day it came to her in the form of a broken-down steamer and its mysterious owner. Published by Starship Cat Press, December 11, 2016.
	She Dreams Day and Night Nancy White they called her, a good, solid name for a troubled girl. But she knew her father had called her by another name, before he disappeared through the gate into another world of strange stars and stranger moons. No matter how hard the staff of Hildred House try to force her to forget, she remembers. And longs to reopen the gate, to rejoin her father on that alien shore where cloud-waves break. Originally published by Starship Cat Press, November 1, 2016.
	Perfect Darkness What would perfect darkness look like? And what would happen if you saw it? When Pavlik becomes obsessed with the idea of seeing perfect darkness, it becomes a distraction from the pod's duty as asteroid miners. Little does he know that danger lies in opening one's mind to the things that lurk in perfect darkness. Things that endanger his pod-brothers, even all of Briar's Children. Published by Starship Cat Press, October 31, 2016.
	Phoenix Dreams In Greek myth, the phoenix is a bird that rises from its own ashes. Growing up in the city named for it, Toni knew the story well, and being a gamer made her used to death being negotiable. During a visit to her grandfather's ranch, she discovered a cache of books and videos from the lost golden age of space travel. Entranced by the enthusiasm of Roger Chaffee for his upcoming spaceflight, she was shocked and angered to learn the disaster that happened only days after his interview. When she expressed her desire to get him his spaceflight, her family's anger came as an even bigger shock. But she refused to forget, no matter how hard her parents tried to distract her, to prevent her from researching online. Her determination would lead her along strange paths that would end in a desperate cross-country chase and the realization of a dream decades deferred. Originally published in Lazarus Risen, Bundoran Press, September 17, 2016. Published by Starship Cat Press on January 27, 2020.
	The Shadow over Leningrad In Stalin's Soviet Union, Tikhon Grigoriev lives a precarious life. He knows too much. He's seen too much. A single misstep could destroy him, and if he stumbles, he will take his family down with him. With Leningrad besieged by Nazi armies, the danger has only increased. He's not a man who wants to come to the notice of those in high places. But when he solved a murder that seemed supernatural, impossible, he attracted the attention of Leningrad's First Party Secretary. So when a plot of land grows vegetables of unusual size and vigor, and anyone who eats them goes mad, who should be called upon to solve the mystery but Tikhon Grigoriev. However, these secrets could get him far worse than a bullet in the head. For during the White Nights the boundaries between worlds grow thin, and in some of those worlds humanity can have no place. Published by Starship Cat Press, August 31, 2016.
	The Shadow of a Dead God A routine archeological dig on a world once ruled by the mysterious Star Tyrants. For Moon-born Liu Shang, working on a planetary surface might be unsettling, but she could manage -- until the dreams started. Unwilling to drag others into a harebrained search, she headed out alone, contrary to mission rules. Just as she was about to give up, she found an unlikely artifact. Handling it connects her to the mind of a long-ago rebel against the Star Tyrants' rule. Nothing will ever be the same. Originally published in Visions V: Milky Way, Lillicat Press, August 15, 2016. Reprinted by Starship Cat Press, December 30, 2020.
	The Other Side of Midnight Life has been a nightmare for Mitya ever since he was arrested on trumped-up charges and exiled to Siberia. But this labor camp in the far north of Magadan Oblast hides a secret far more terrible than the merely human evils of the Great Terror. For the universe we know is not the only one, and there are places where it interpenetrates with universes where the laws of nature as we know them do not operate, where humanity has no place. Worlds inhabited by beings ancient and terrible, to whom humanity are slaves, playthings, food. Published by Starship Cat Press, July 30, 2016.
	All the Little Hedgehogs In Soviet Union, genetic engineering does you. Yona wondered why everyone kept steering him toward a military career, until one of his teachers noticed his aptitude for genetics. Now he's the personal student of Academician Voronsky, working in a secret genetic engineering facility in a closed town. However, Yona keeps having to spend as much time babysitting the Academician's adopted son Kolya as actually doing genetics. When this extra assignment becomes a frustration, Yona learns just how quickly privileges can be retracted. And then he starts learning just how deep the secrets of the Soviet human genetics program really go. A story from the Grissom timeline (Gus on the Moon universe). Caution: Contains intense material that may be disturbing to some readers. Reader discretion advised. Published by Starship Cat Press, May 20, 2016.
	Grandmaster's Gambit The disastrous war of 1913 is over, and young journalist Isaak Babel has used his fame as a war correspondent to win a peacetime job covering an international chess tournament in New York City. However, trouble is aboard the airship Grossdeuschland, in the form of the notorious Bolshevik terrorist Koba and his henchmen. Men with a dark plan, and New York City will not welcome their visit. Published by Starship Cat Press, April 18, 2016.
	The Sound of One Child Crying Who is the child Reza can hear crying every time she goes to the new addition to the Royal Library? Her boss insists there is no child, that it is nothing more than her uncanny sensitivity to the unseen world making a nuisance of itself. Worse, searching for answers gets her angry rebukes about respect for the dead. The further Reza goes, the more certain she becomes that someone is hiding an ugly secret. It's a secret that traces back two generations, to a dark period in this land's history. A time most people would prefer to forget, not caring that denial doesn't make a problem go away. The truth may set you free, but not without a price. And Reza fears that death itself might turn out to be an easier price than the one demanded of her. Published by Starship Cat Press, February 22, 2016.
	Ice Storm Everywhere Evangeline looks, a thin coating of ice makes objects gleam in the sunlight. However, the beauty proves deceptive, for it hides a deadly secret, one only she can recognize. In her youth, Evangeline had aspired to master the powerful magics of her world. Those dreams died the day her Gift awakened uncontrolled and plunged her into a vision of a full fleet battle. The Admiral's Gift will not be denied, and for Evangeline there was no choice but to trade her mage's robes for Navy blue. Now she is faced with an enemy she cannot fight save by magic. Except those who bear the Admiral's gift are forever barred from working magic. Published by Starship Cat Press, March 9, 2016.
	Beach House on the Moon The Moon is a dead world, airless and desolate. Emmaline Waite has known this fact since childhood, when she watched the Apollo landings. But here she sits on the shores of the Sea of Tranquillity, looking up at the gibbous Earth as the waves roll in. What madness can this be? She gets no time to contemplate that question, for she is not alone. She is about to enter a realm of love and fear, of mindbending secrets that change her understanding of human history, and of self-sacrifice. Her life will never be the same. Originally published in Eldritch Embraces: Putting the Love Back in Lovecraft, Dragon's Roost Press, February 29, 2016. Reprinted by Starship Cat Press, February 28, 2020.
	The Crime and Glory of Antonia DeVilbiss, at Gus on the Moon!, January 27, 2016.
	Rockin' the USA It's not easy being married to the leader of the band, even in the best of times. When everything becomes political, you've got a nightmare on your hands. Laurel had her doubts when her husband signed on to headline Governor Thorne's Independence Day concert in Candlestick Park. Now that the band's committed to the appearance, the Flannigan Administration has decided to shut the show down, with prejudice. Laurel knows she has to fight this attempt to stop the signal. But doing so may put her in more danger than she could ever have anticipated, and risk those she loves. Originally published at Liberty Island Magazine, July 2, 2015. Reprinted by Starship Cat Press, July 6, 2022. This edition also includes a bonus essay on the era of dictatorship in Grissom-timeline America.
	The Day the War Struck Home Astronaut Peter Caudell comes home to find his daughter struggling with a school assignment. She's to write an essay for Memorial Day, and her teacher suggested astronauts -- but she wants to write about combat heroes, not REMF's. So Peter suggests the NASA Massacre and relates his own part in those events. It's the summer of 1994, and the Energy Wars are raging in the Middle East. On the home front it's the Summer of Fear, a season of continual terrorist attacks. All eyes are upon Kennedy Space Center, where a Space Shuttle is launching for a critical on-orbit repair of a spy satellite. When it goes up without a hitch, everyone breathes a sigh of relief. However, the intelligence proves incomplete -- the actual target is Johnson Space Center. Suddenly Peter is in the fight of his life, as the presence of multiple police agencies further complicates the fight to stop the terrorists from slaughtering the astronaut corps. It's a story of courage, patriotism and self-sacrifice that proves a much greater lesson than the teacher imagined. A short story of the Grissom timeline. Originally published in Liberty Island Magazine as an Honorable Mention for the Memorial Day contest, May 19, 2015. Reprinted by Starship Cat Press, April 3, 2022. This version includes a bonus essay on the genesis of the Energy Wars. Also available at: Barnes and Noble Scribd Thalia
	Gnawing the Bones of the City at Fiction Vortex, March 31, 2015.
	Willa's Alien Published on the Open Range Forum at Liberty Island, March 30, 2015.
	Wormwood at Liquid Imagination, February 28, 2015.
	Mirrored Lives at Gus on the Moon!, January 27, 2015.
	Lunar Christmas at Liberty Island Magazine, December 15, 2014.
	Bringing Home Major Tom Sandy didn't believe in wishes. Walking home one evening, she saw a bright star shining over the abandoned Starlite Motel and made a wish. Purely as a lark, of course -- she never expected anything to come of it. Now she's dealing with a man who claims to be from another world where history ran differently. He wants to go back home -- but Stacey has no idea how to go about it. Originally published in Forging Freedom: Dimensions, November 26, 2014. Reprinted by Starship Cat Press, February 14, 2021.
	The Angry Astronaut Affair It only takes a spark to start a raging inferno. One sharply-worded post online, and now Reginald Waite has a flamewar on his hands. A welcome distraction from the frustrations of preparing for a technically demanding space mission -- or so he thought. The conflict just kept spiraling, until it attracted the attention of higher-ups. Now Reggie's looking at serious trouble. A short story of the Grissom timeline, originally published at The Liberty Island Magazine, November 17, 2014. Reprinted by Starship Cat Press, June 2, 2022. This edition includes a bonus essay on the Space Race in the Grissom timeline.
	The Japanese Jupiter Mission at INfective INk, October 17, 2014.
	The Baying of the Hounds In the world we know, Nikola Tesla's Wardencliffe experiment proved a costly failure and was ultimately torn down for scrap. But what if things had gone differently and he pressed his work to completion? In a world similar to but unlike our own, Tesla completes his transmission tower. But when he turns it on, he discovers his calculations were incomplete. Some unknown factor has created a connection with another world with physical laws unlike our own. The commingling of curved and angular space has led to catastrophe. Now his greatest rival, Thomas Alva Edison, compels him to repair the damage. To do so, Tesla must make his way through a ruined city to the locus of the damage. And through his mind echoes the baying of unseen hounds. Originally published in in Steampunk Cthulhu: Mythos Terror in the Age of Steam (Chaosium Fiction #6054), June 17, 2014. Reprinted by Starship Cat Press January 3, 2021.
	Once a Chekist Katya Burinskaya carries a deadly secret. So when she is summoned to the Lubyanka for a personal meeting with the head of Imperial Security, she fears the worst. However, this meeting does not concern her, but her daughter. Tasha has become entangled with a troublesome genomic prince of the Imperial House, and both mother and daughter may suffer if Katya does not assist Security Minister Chalkov in investigating a family affair of his own, which also involves Prince Yevgenny Yakovlevich. Politics makes strange bedfellows in the new Russian Empire born of human cloning and Cold War genetic experiments. Chalkov was once an officer of the old Soviet KGB. And as Katya's husband often warns, once a Chekist, always a Chekist. A short story of the Grissom timeline. Originally published in Mortis Operandi, The Harrow Press, December 16, 2012. Reprinted by Starship Cat Press, March 25, 2022. Also available at: Barnes and Noble Scribd Thalia
	"Royal Steel" at Swords and Sorcery Magazine, May 2012.
	Tell Me a Story Storytelling is as old as humanity. Given the importance of reading to children in their intellectual development, it is certain that we will take the storytelling tradition with us into space as we build permanent settlements beyond Earth. As one generation after another take a beloved childhood story further from Earth, it is seen in new ways by children for whom the pre-spaceflight view of the Moon is increasingly alien. Originally published in Rocket Science: Science Fiction and Non-Fiction, Mutation Press, April 2012. Reprinted by Starship Cat Press on January 27, 2021.
	"But Loyal to Her Own" in Past Future Present 2011, December 10, 2011.
	The Damnable Asteroid Danger comes from the sky. Seryozha and his pod-brothers were miners on a distant asteroid. It was a lonely life, and a lot of hard work, but they could take pride in work accomplished. And then their asteroid captured a mysterious object. One that drew their minds even as it left them profoundly uneasy. When a passing suttler provided the opportunity to investigate its mysteries, all of them discovered that there are some secrets best left unplumbed. Originally published in Future Lovecraft, November 23, 2011. Free to subscribers to the Sailor Yuggoth newsletter.
	Daddy's Girl in Daily Science Fiction, e-mail distribution on November 23, 2011, posted on website November 30, 2011. Reprinted in Rocket Dragons Ignite, Daily Science Fiction Year Two
	"Antigone to the Infinite Power" in Potter's Field 4, September 22, 2011.
	"To Turn Back Time" at Every Day Fiction, June 1, 2010.
	Red Star, Yellow Sign Whom the gods would destroy, they first drive mad. It's 1934, and the assassination of Sergei Kirov, Leningrad's Communist Party chief, has rocked the Soviet Union. When an up and coming young Party official is assigned to investigate, it looks like an open and shut case. The further Nikolai Yezhov looks into the case, the stranger things become. Mysterious entities lie beneath the swamps upon which Leningrad was founded. Because he has stumbled upon these secrets older than humanity itself, Yezhov must be eliminated. But first he must be led to commit acts that will ensure that history will forever remember him as a vicious criminal. Originally published in Historical Lovecraft: Tales of Horror Through Time April 20, 2011.
	"Fool's Gold" in Every Day Fiction November 17, 2010.
	The End of Her Line at Every Day Fiction, October 5, 2010.
	Mage's Gambit at Coyote Wild
	"Marching to Armageddon" in Black October Magazine, V1, #5, 2004.
	The Wolf and the Well-Tempered Clavier With the coronation fast approaching, the Cathedral of St. George the Dragonslayer cannot afford trouble. But come it does, while the cathedral choir director is at the Dragon's Breath Organ, practicing the anthem he wrote at King William's own request. While explaining some technical terms to his understudy, the choir director decides to show off a little. In the process, he releases an ancient menace from long before humanity came through the worldgate to this place. An entity that strikes him blind, and threatens further harm to anyone who tries to play the Dragon's Breath Organ. However, they dare not disappoint His Majesty, not on the most momentous day of his reign. Someone must cleanse the Dragon's Breath Organ of this malicious entity, and the choir director cannot. So the task falls to Miss Anne Teesdale, understudy organist. Now she must delve into the history of the cathedral, and the mysterious ancient magic that fills the organ's windchest. A secret that may well cost this young woman her life. Or worse, her sanity. An Ixilon story. Originally published at Far Sector, September 2003. Reprinted by in Dark Angel Rising, February 2003.
	"Food Will Win This War" in the CD-ROM issued with the hardcover version of John Ringo's Hell's Faire, 2003. Available online at The Fifth Imperium.
	"Spiral Horn, Spiral Tusk" in Beyond the Last Star: Stories from the Next Beginning, August 2002.
	"The Moneylender" in Dragonlaugh v2 #3, December 2000.
	"Shadow of the Madrians" in EOTU E-zine, August 2000 issue.
	"The Coin of Heaven's Badger" in Alternate Realities Webzine.
	"The Wishing Box" in Lunar Castles, Spring 2000 issue.
	"Wings of Freedom" in Lunar Castles, Winter 1999/2000 issue.
	"The Merman's Gift" in Literary: The Magazine of Writing, March, 1999.
	"Showing the Flag" in SpaceWays Weekly, issue # 79, March 5, 1999.
	"The Exile Star" in Literary: The Magazine of Writing, January 1999.
	"The Sleeping Admiral" in SpaceWays Weekly, issue 74, January 29, 1999..
	"The Slave Boy" in issue six of Dragon Soup.
	"Kamikaze" in Pulp Eternity, issue 1, September, 1998.
	"She's Leaving Home" in Musing Magazine Winter/Spring issue, January 1998.
	"An Offer Spurned," in Sphere Late-September '97 issue
	"Song of the Merman" in Sci-Fi WEBzine, June 1997 online issue free section.
	"Black Homecoming" in Millennium Science Fiction & Fantasy, online from May 31 to June 29 of 1997 and in their June 1997 hardcopy issue.
	"The Metamachines" in Literary: The Magazine of Writing, June 1997 issue.
	"Cracking Up" in Literary: The Magazine of Writing, April, 1997 issue.
	"Claws of Vengeance" in Fortress
	"Holy Ground" in Black October, Issue 1, May, 1996.
	The Stirge When Liphrel's family fell too far on their debts, he was sold to the priests of the death god. But his family were followers of the birth goddess, which left him in a difficult position. Originally published in Plot Magazine, Issue 2, March, 1995, and reprinted online at Alexandria Digital Library. Subsequently reprinted on the Kindle by Starship Cat Press, May 30, 2015.
	"Sulishros and Kojadi" in New Frontiers, a micro-anthology issued by Show and Tell, subsequently reprinted online by Dark Planet.