A lover of local history and fantastical possibilities, Louisa Swann spins tales that span multiple genres, including fantasy, science fiction, mystery, and steampunk. Her short stories have appeared in Mercedes Lackey's Elementary Magic and Valdemar anthologies (which she's thrilled to participate in!); Esther Friesner's Chicks and Balances; and several Fiction River anthologies, including No Humans Allowed and Reader's Choice. Space Opera is her go-to when it's time to have fun!

Find out more at www.louisaswann.com or friend her on Facebook @SwannWriter or on Twitter/X: @LouisaSwann

Paradox by Louisa Swann

Everybody loves something, even if it's only trouble.

When Hunter Blu, Justice Enforcer and self-taught mechanic, acquires a "new" space runner, he has no idea he's bitten off more than he can chew. Everything goes smoothly at first: he gets the runner running, fine tunes the drive and nacelles…

Then he's assigned his first mission: rescue a group of missing children—all humans, all girls, all under the age of ten.

He goes undercover at an elite resort, a space station with a restaurant specializing in cannibalism.

Then he discovers his ordinary space runner isn't ordinary at all. She's bionetic. A mechanical ship with a brain. Not an AI; a human intelligence. With personality.

And order turns to chaos in less time than it takes a spaceship to crash.

Can Hunter find the kids and complete his mission before he—and his space runner—drive each other insane?

CURATOR'S NOTE

•Here's a writer with a real flair for the offbeat and surprising…a writer after my own heart, in other words. Louisa dares take her fiction places where other writers might be afraid to go—and thus breathes new life into every genre she touches. In this case, she has jumped into the adventures of a spacefaring Justice Enforcer with a sentient ship in a galaxy of undeniable weirdness. I love this tale of a daring mission to rescue a group of missing children—a mission that involves the hero going undercover at a cannibalistic restaurant. What's on the menu in Paradox? Excitement and heroism unlike any you'll find in the work of any other author in the space opera genre. – Robert Jeschonek

 
 

BOOK PREVIEW

Excerpt

Prologue

Hunter Blu was a manly man. He liked his java hot and his hot dogs hotter. The only things that scared him were women and measles (all those spots!) and not necessarily in that order.

Being an orphan raised by strangers who found him stranded on Old Earth, he had no idea how old he was—just that he was more grown than not, scrawnier than a barbell, and hairier than a gorilla in a beauty salon.

So why was he tossing and turning every night, sweating like a porcupine in a steam bath, cries for help haunting his dreams?

Because I needed him, that's why.

Finding a dead woman, a screaming baby, and a barking dog rumbling around in my guts seemed good reason to call for help.

:Hunter, wake up! I got jelly in my belly and I ain't even sneezed!:

'Course, Hunter couldn't hear me. Not back then. He heard creaks and groans but no words. No words that made sense, that is.

Hunter calls me FooFoo LaRue. As for what I am, let's go with the simple expo: I'm a space runner. A live ship. The last of my kind.

As for how we met, I don't have a clue and Hunter's not talking. Suffice to say I woke from a long sleep—hibernation-style—and found myself in his possession.

I tried to communicate but Hunter only heard creaks and groans with a few cracks thrown in for good measure. He had a mechanic check me out, hull to hull. Try to figure out what was making all the noise. Idiot found nothing wrong.

'Course there's nothing wrong. Mechanically, that is.

Mentally? That's a whole different game.