by Sam Clough | Feb 3, 2009 | Story
Author : S. Clough, Staff Writer
“Tash, stop right there.” Kal barked, raising his rifle, and aiming it squarely at his team-mate. Tash froze, and lifted her hands. She’d known this was coming, but it always caught her off-guard. The rest of the team had gone back to the lander to fetch some more equipment.
During Cat’s exploration of the outpost’s computers, they’d turned up a list of names: each one linked with a location deep inside one of the territories of the nearby polities. The files were touched with sakshan encryption methods: it didn’t take much to figure out that the research facility that they’d broken into was a sakshan outpost — and the list of names and places was a directory of intelligence operatives.
Kal, was the sharpshooter of the team, and was a pure-blood sakshan, with an impressive battery of combat-related headmetal. They’d found him broken and bleeding when they’d arrived to pick over the ruins of a particularly bloody border skirmish. They patched him up, discovered his skills with projectile weapons, and offered him a job. Once he realised command wasn’t coming back for him, he reluctantly took them up on their offer. In the years since, he’d loosened up noticeably, shaking off most of the comprehensive indoctrination that he’d been exposed to since birth.
His subconscious, though, still gave them some problems.
“Kal, don’t do this…”
“This list. Those men and women. If we sell their names, they’ll all die. Picked up and tortured and killed. They have families. This is stupid and futile and I won’t allow it.”
Tash bit her tongue. She knew that she couldn’t talk him out of it. He was visibly shaking: his rifle was rock steady.
“I won’t let you commit mass murder, Tash. I couldn’t live with myself if I did.”
“But you’d kill me?”
“If I had to. To protect my countrymen.”
“Kal, please. After everything we’ve done together — ”
“Just shut up, Tash.”
The silence held for forty seconds. Behind Kal, Frank (the medic-engineer of the team) was just sneaking around the corner, attempting to move silently. He was clutching a portable field generator that he’d modified for just such an occasion.
Tash took a step forward. Kal stiffened.
Frank stepped out of cover, and coughed. There was a clatter of bullets, and an ultrasonic whine as the field clicked on. Kal dropped to the floor, unconscious. Tash was clutching her arm, bent over andmuttering a steady stream of curses: blood was oozing between her fingers.
Grimly, they dragged Kal’s body back to the lander. A more subtle version of the field generator was hidden in the medical bay: the portable generator just induced a current in Kal’s implants, which quickly shut him down before he could sustain brain damage. With the generator in the med bay, Frank could purposefully manipulate Kal’s unconscious mind via the implants: he claimed it was like a first-person shooter, all exploration and twitch reflex. The point of it all was to reset their team-mate to an earlier state. Just long enough ago that he’d forget all about the mission, the list, and the betrayal. They needed him on top form.
They were well away from the outpost by the time Frank finished. Tash met him in the medical bay.
“Think you’ll be able to forgive him?” Frank glanced up at her.
“We always do, don’t we?” She stroked Kal’s hair, and sighed. “Every time.”
by submission | Feb 2, 2009 | Story
Author : Hilary B. Bisenieks
The last time I saw the surface of the moon, it was pristine save for a few sets of footprints. I had been struck dumb at the majesty of the black—an eternity of stars from horizon to horizon—while the others filled my ears with the chatter of their radios.
We were the first on that little patch of dust and rock, far from the Sea of Tranquility which had been designated as protected, along with the handful of other pre-commercial landing sites, long before our voyage had even been viable. There was no flag there, just as there was no wind to make it flap. When we left, nobody took note of our names. We were just a load of rich passengers to everyone on Earth. We were only remembered by trivia buffs preparing to compete for billions of dollars on quiz shows.
There were people who cared: the scientists whose work had made our vacation possible, the pilots who hoped that ours would be the first of many such trips for them, the CEOs whose companies could turn a profit marketing increasingly down-market lunar trips. They cared about the advances, the experiences, the possibilities, but not the moon itself. While we leaped across the lunar surface, they planned to develop it.
When our time was up, we returned to our module to make the long trip back to Earth. I wept in the safety of my suit as we took off. While there was still gravity, my tears slid across my face before being reclaimed by my suit. My grief and my joy were purified and offered back to me as nothing more than water.
by Duncan Shields | Feb 1, 2009 | Story
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer
Caught.
I’m stuck to this wall with thick maglets encasing my glowing hands. My eyes are weeping constantly and I can’t stop my long tongue from flopping down to my chest and tracing lazy circles in the sweat-matted hair there. It’s so hot here. The cluster of my eyes light up yellow and take in my surroundings. I open up my nostril slits and wetly snuffle the air for the faint stink of friends. Any friends at all within this complex.
My footclaws sheathe in and slide out over and over again as I think. I’m stuck up here, arms outstretched, legs splayed and tail pointing straight down. It’s not uncomfortable but they are not going to let me go.
There’s a low, deep growl that’s resonating in me. A low, thudding drumroll in my chest. I’m thinking and I’m humming. I’m trying to imagine back to where I screwed up.
All the energy I push out of my hands just gets absorbed by the maglets. They soften but they will not melt. Hell, they’re probably the way they power the prison that I’m in. A few kilojoules of energy from my angry fists and they can hold me for days thanks to my own poor impulse control and my race’s natural instinct for anger that we have still barely learned to control.
Posessors. Demons. Overtakers. Biters. Light-darkeners. The Tribe.
They’d have you believe that we can change shape and see in the dark. We are just as vulnerable as any meat machine, though, and that is what scares me now. I think that this is what they refer to as the first degree. If I remember correctly, the first degree is letting the prisoner wait. The second degree is showing them the tools that you are going to use on them to get the information you’re after. The third degree is asking them the questions over and over again. Or maybe it’s the actual torture. I’m not sure.
Either way, my mind is racing with animal fear and a deep need to get out of here. I’m not interested in finding out what the actual third degree is.
I wish I was back with my cubs and my breedbeds in the hive but this is the risk I took, joining the defense.
