CRACKED: An Anthology of Eggsellent Chicken Stories by J. Posthumus (read after txt) 📕

can tell me herself.” Aashi sat up. She wobbled when she straightened, and Sallie stepped forward to catch her if she slipped off the medbed. She laid her hands in his. “I’m fine. Just sore.”

John nodded. “She will. She’s finishing reports before the transport leaves orbit.”

“Will you be able to get the collection tank back together?”

“We’re taking the rest of the crew to fix it. If we have to, we can use the backup this time. We should be able to drop everything in place, and we’ll be good to go,” John said. “I’ve already requisitioned for another set of backup replacements. They’ll get here in about nine months.”

“That’s good to hear. My plants will need the water.”

“Our reserves have worked well. In the meantime, Sallie got Mission Control to let us use a bit of the extra on your seedlings.”

“What caused it?” Sallie stroked the back of Aashi’s hand.

“Fred and Susan looked it over while you were unconscious. One of the tanks had a weak weld. Too much gas seeped out and that pressed on the washer. It made a weak spot in the protective coating so oxidation seeped in. It’s the kind of thing you don’t know to plan for until you’re in the field.”

“Do you need me to fill out any paperwork?” Aashi tried to scoot up a little more in the bed.

John raised a hand. “I just came to verify the rumors, but I’ll tell Cynthia you’re up.” He strolled away, whistling Brown Eyed Girl.

“You’ve had a rough Sol,” Sallie said. “I thought I might lose—”

Aashi put her finger on Sallie’s lips. “You didn’t. That’s all that matters.”

“I’m glad I didn’t.” Sallie wrapped his arms around her, his heartbeat thundering in his eardrums. He had a feeling things were going to get more complicated as time went on. He pressed her to him. In the kitchen, John started whistling Brown Eyed Girl, and Sallie kissed the top of Aashi’s head. He liked complicated and maybe NASA would send somebody else to explore Valles Marineris. He had enough things to do around Harmony. In fact…

A wedding on Mars.

Now that had the potential to go viral. He chuckled. “Want me to walk you back to your room?”

“No, I’m good right here.” Aashi snuggled closer, her face pressed against his smart suit. “Hurry up and grow me some dirt, Mr. Farmer. We’re going to change the world.”

The End

About the Author

Bokerah Brumley lives on ten permaculture acres, complete with sheep, goats, peacocks, turkeys, geese, guineas, ducks, chickens, five home-educated children, and one husband. She serves as the president of the Cisco Writers Club and moonlights as an acquisitions editor for The Crossover Alliance.

For more information and a complete list of published works, please visit: www.bokerah.com

Bokerah has a busy year planned with lots of new novel releases.

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Frozen Chicken Master

L. Jagi Lamplighter

Frozen Chicken Master L. Jagi Lamplighter

“’Ere, Farmer Valiant! Come quick! Chickens floppin’ everywhere!”

Farmer Valiant stomped into the long aluminum-roofed chicken barn, feathers and wood shavings sticking to his mud-spattered wellies. His frantic assistant pointed wordlessly. All around them, white chickens listed like drunken sailors. Some hopped on one foot, their other foot hanging limp. Some dragged one wing. Some wiggled their tail feathers, their heads entirely motionless as they ran into each other, bowling over their fellows.

“Not this again.” The gruff old man rubbed the back of his sunburned neck and sighed. “I’ll talk to ’im.”

The Valiant farm, on the outskirts of Minions, Cornwall, specialized in dairy and poultry. The milk was sent by tanker each day to the Cornish Cheese Company there in Minions and the Trewithen Dairy in Lostwithiel, where it was made into, among other things, the world famous Cornwall clotted cream. The chickens, raised in long barns that could easily house up to 96,000 at a time, would be sold as broilers. A small number of speckled Sussexes, Easter Eggers, Bantams, and Lakenvelders, with their distinctive black and white plumage, were kept for their eggs in a traditional chicken coop closer to the old farmhouse, along with some of the native fowl. It was here that the venerable father found his son, surrounded by wobbly Cornish hens.

“Using that nonsense you learn at school on the livestock again, are ye, b’y?” his father grunted. “Thought I told you no.”

Gaius Valiant was a short yet handsome boy of seventeen dressed in a plaid shirt, dungarees, and thigh-high, green wellingtons, with his chestnut hair drawn back into a queue. The son was the polar opposite of his taciturn father: cheerful, erudite, light-hearted—yet the two were fond of each other.

Gaius spoke in a lazy, cheerful drawl that held but a trace of the heavy West Country accent so prevalent in the speech of his father and the farmhands. “You told me not to practice on the cows. You said nothing about the chickens.”

The young man squinted at a cream-colored Easter Egger as it strutted by. He waved a foot-long length of teak and brass. A stream of blue sparkles left the sapphire set into the wand’s tip and struck the leg of the fowl, who immediately flopped over, unable to move that limb. The rest of the bird’s body flapped about as it clucked in confusion.

The farmer took off his hat and scratched his balding pate. “You’re scarin' the men, not to mention the fowl.”

“Can’t you cover for me?” asked his son. “Come up with some crazy explanation? I’m… er… testing a concoction from the labs at Ouroboros Industries? They all know I interned there last summer. This is an unparalleled opportunity for me to learn a spell variation that very few people know. I need to practice if I am to master it, and where else am I to find so many willing…” Gaius glanced at the squawking, wobbling chickens. “Er… uncomplaining test subjects?”

The old man gazed at him with hawk-like intensity. “If they