TWV B-1: SimSim

Genre: Adult Sci-Fi
Title: SimSim
Word Count: 75,000

Query:

Trader, pirate, crook – take your pick, they all describe Ali Baba Khan, and he doesn’t really care what you call him. There’s only one thing on his mind, and that’s making the Reformation pay. They took everything from him – his home, his livelihood, his beloved wife – and now he’s going to destroy them.

Twelve long years of careful planning have led him to this point. Twelve years of moving from plant to planet, planting seeds throughout the Fringes of space that will spark a revolution. Twelve years of struggling with the demons inside, haunted by dark secrets he can’t even share with his crew. And that’s because Ali Baba Khan’s cloned crew is one of the greatest secrets of all. They just don’t know it.

Twelve years, and it all went so smoothly. But when a man from his past steps back into his life, threatening to expose his true identity, Ali Baba Khan must make a choice: Abandon his plans on the cusp of completion, or kill and run, taking his ship and crew into hostile territory where he’ll be hunted.

SimSim (75,000 words) is a completed work of adult science fiction that is loosely based on Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves.

First 250 words:

The house lay in ruins – roof blown out, walls collapsed, fire and smoke everywhere. Piles of rubble dotted the area, the remains of other houses, an entire neighborhood razed to the ground, wiped completely from the map.

This was no accident, the raven-haired man thought, scanning the wreckage.

It couldn’t be. The targeting was too precise. A square mile of devastation stretched around him, with his home at the epicenter, the focus of this destruction. That stank of military. And because there were no emergency crews around, no fire brigade, no first responders looking for survivors, he knew without a doubt that the Government had done this. Only the Reformation could so bold, co callous as to murder dozens of people and not even care.

“God. Oh god.” His legs buckled, sending him crashing to his knees.

He should have been in that house. He should have been killed with the others, buried in all that rubble.

“It’s all my fault,” he whispered, staring numbly at a child’s doll lying half buried beneath a shattered toilet. “What have I done?” he asked it, leaning forward, reaching for the doll.

It had button eyes, yellow yarn hair, red thread for lips. He fished it out, and immediately wished he hadn’t. The doll had been cut in half, legs torn away, stuffed innards dangling grotesquely.

That’s how he felt. Gutted, torn in two, heart bleeding its life’s blood onto the ground, brain trying to figure out how the hell this happened.