by Julian Miles | Sep 10, 2014 | Story |
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
Dad said that the nannybots inside would stop the monsters from getting me. I liked that. The first night after the injection, I slept with the lights off. My nannybots would protect me. Even when mum died the next day, I knew that bad things couldn’t get me and only cried a little.
There’s a knock on the door. I know who it is before the voice comes.
“Chloe? It’s Pietro. Can I come in?”
“Of course.”
Pietro is bigger than dad ever was, and has a physique like my dad thought he had. But the main reason I like Pietro is because my nannybots like him. Having someone who can hold me without going into spasms or being turned to sludge is wonderful.
“How are things today?”
“Better. My arm has stopped itching.”
“Can I see?”
I emerge from under the sheet and hold my arm out, smiling as his eyes widen. My skin is like the softest silver-grey silk, with purple filigree patterns that change colour with my mood. Dad’s notes called them ‘nanotattoos’.
Pietro takes my arm so gently. His touch makes my skin tingle and the filigree flushes a sparkling violet. He smiles.
“You’re complete.”
I nod: “Do you think that now it’s over, we could get a pet?”
His expression drops into a frown and my filigree goes dark.
“It’ll be the same, Chloe. Your nannybots wouldn’t like it.”
I feel a tear slip down my cheek. Of all the things that my nannybots don’t like, cute furry animals are the thing we disagree about.
What dad did to me made him rich and famous. He spent a lot of that money hiding the fact that my nannybots had only one response to things they didn’t like: they killed them. Didn’t matter if it was a common cold bug or the lady hired to teach me to play piano.
On my fifteenth birthday, Pietro came into my life, cameraman for a sneaky reporter. He picked me up from the floor where I cried over the puddle that the reporter had become when he tried to stop me calling my dad. My nannybots hadn’t liked that. I waited for Pietro to scream and die, but he didn’t. His words were kind, but his touch was like what mum described as ‘cool water in the desert’. I never knew that I desperately needed to touch someone, until that moment.
Then dad rushed in shouting, before falling silent as he saw me cradled in Pietro’s arms.
“Young man, you should leave.”
I felt the arms around me turned steely: “Sir, I don’t think I’ll be doing that until this lady sends me away.”
He called me a lady. Dads face flushed red and he grabbed Pietro’s arm. I saw the purple flash that travelled from me, through Pietro, to dad. Then dad went all stiff. He looked at me, nodded, and fell backwards.
My dad’s last words were: “Time to pay the piper.”
Since then, we’ve been together. Pietro taught me to laugh, fight, love, hide and lie. He also taught me to meditate, and that let me engage with my nannybots. They wanted to make me better. After Pietro and I talked, I let them. Today, they finished.
Something makes a noise. I see Pietro has his other hand behind his back. I grin: “Show me.”
His arm comes forward. In his hand is an Alsatian puppy. I can see the smoky grey filigree patterns on its skin.
“Happy Rebirthday, beautiful. From me and your nannybots.”
by Julian Miles | Sep 2, 2014 | Story |
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
The metro swishes past while I tap my fingers in frustration on the dashboard. I may have priority, but nothing out-prioritises fifty tons of autotram.
“Where are you, Lime?”
“Watching the metro. The collision avoidance system in my car decided that playing chicken was a losing game.”
“They’ve brought down the SWAT drones. No jokes.”
“I had no intention of mentioning swatting.”
There were collective groans over the airwave. Tony had company.
“What’s the book say?”
“What book?” Tony’s voice radiated innocence.
“You know, the one where the audience around you bets on how long it takes the thuglifes to realise that they’ve left toytown.”
“Oh, that one. Current favourite is two minutes and one magazine.”
“From sidearm or main?”
“Main.”
“Oh, ye of little faith. Oop! Metro’s gone, taking emergency measures. Route me a waiver.”
“Chief says to keep the damage under six figures.”
He would. They need me to catch these bad guys, so I need to do something they won’t – manual driving at excessive speeds. As a getaway car is only a vampire conversion on a standard grid runner, they can’t do what I’m about to. I hang a left through an advertising display and cut across the rough ground behind, collecting bruises as the suspension they upgraded for me proves to be as crappy as the last set they did. Next time, I’m doing it. My granddad taught me how to fettle cars. Time for me to revive another redundant art.
Exploding through a vending kiosk – showering seven people with Instablend gel as a side effect – I reach the on-ramp for the interstate. Slewing the car sideways, I exit and retrieve Gertrude from the rear seat.
“Lime, that’s not a service piece.”
“No, Tony. It’s something a bit older and a lot more effective.” A hybrid of Anzio 20 and 20/50, to be precise.
“I’ll get another waiver en route.”
“Cheers, buddy.”
Down the road comes my target, feeling smug now that they’ve EMP’d all the drones for six blocks, crashed the city grid, all local CCTV and jammed the air-op frequencies. Unless their pursers are using off-grid vehicles and personally present to drive, they’re clear. Which is why I am tolerated in a police force my granddad would have ridiculed.
My first shot would have won me a shooting competition a century ago. It enters the front of their vehicle, taking out their frontal interference unit. After passing through the central power core of the car, it enters the passenger compartment through the centre-console display, spraying hot LED shards everywhere as it disappears through suspect number four and comes to rest in the trading system core they dropped into the boot after their raid.
The car comes to a smoking, sparking halt and all four doors open. Suspects one, two, three and five throw themselves face down.
Across the road, an old man pauses his exo and shouts: “Ya gottem’ Sheriff! Good goin’!”
I wave and grin. At least the older folk appreciate what I do. Everyone else seems intent on suing me for contraventions of noise, weapons, vehicle, and ‘humanitarian rehabilitation of criminals’ statutes.
The four I didn’t shoot are rehabilitating just fine. I can hear them from here.
by Julian Miles | Aug 19, 2014 | Story |
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
“What the hell is he riding – or is that piloting?”
“Riding. Even though the round bits front and rear aren’t wheels: they’re gravtac repulsor loops.”
Blake turned to stare at Neville: “Nice. So what the frack is it?”
Neville smiled: “Vincent Black Banshee.”
“Aren’t they illegal?”
“Not yet.”
The ten-foot long vehicle they pursued – seemingly made only of flowing lines and reflections of the objects it passed – accelerated away from them without difficulty, then pulled an impossibly sharp left-turn and shot up the side of a tall building.
Blake punched the roof lining of their unmarked pursuit car.
“Bloody marvellous. How are we supposed to catch something that can do that?”
Neville grinned: “Vincent’s Black Ghost was the first gravtac motorbike. As the gravtac was like you get on the boots, it behaved like a motorbike. The Black Banshee added a gravitic field generator and Lenkormian Forever Drive. That means as far as it’s concerned, ‘down’ is whichever way the underside points.”
Blake clamped a hand on Neville’s shoulder: “He’s been causing chaos for months. Given the state of the streets inside the London Orbital, his antics were tolerated – until he started tagging secure vehicles.”
“He only showed the inadequacies of our security versus new technology. He saved lives: we revised our procedures and stopped two hi-tech assassination attempts cold.”
Blake nodded: “I’ll give him that, but the feeling is that he’s with the activists.”
Neville slammed the car to a stop: “They what?”
“They think he’s setting himself set up as a popular icon to heighten the impact when he pulls something grievous. It’s not like we could stop him.”
Neville chuckled.
Blake stared at him: “What’s so funny?”
Neville pointed out the window on Blake’s side. Barely twenty feet away, he could see his reflection in the gleaming black panels of a thoroughbred hybrid of drag bike and cruise missile. It hung inches from the pavement, the rider sitting relaxed with hands in lap and helmeted head turned toward them. The gloss black bodysuit, bulky from chest inserts, matched the gloss black finish of the machine. Just forward of a shapely thigh, Blake could see the word ‘Vincent’ in white block capitals on a curved gold banner.
He paused; shapely thigh?
“That’s no man!”
Neville applauded: “Well done, detective. That’s Metropolitan Armed Response Sergeant Suzy Mandrill. It was the only way we could think of to get urgent security improvements past the bureaucracy.”
Blake’s head came round so fast he winced: “’We’?”
Neville smiled: “You must have misheard me.”
Blake clenched his fists and pointed out of his window: “You just told me that two elite officers conspired to subvert security protocols.”
Neville peered over Blake’s hand: “Me and who?”
Blake looked back. Between his window and a shop entrance, only a solitary fox trotted by.
Neville drove while Blake swore himself out. After the silence had stretched for an hour, he stopped the car and turned to look at Blake.
Blake glared and snapped: “What?”
“I was wondering if you’d like to come round for dinner one evening. Bring Heather; I’m sure she and Suzy will get along.”
Blake’s face turned a colour normally reserved for beetroot: “Your girlfriend is the Black Rider?”
Neville smiled and shook his head: “You do have the strangest ideas, detective. We just thought you’d like a relaxing evening. Maybe even go for a ride. You know, see how pillion suits you?”
Blake rested his head in his hands: “We’re all going to jail.”
Neville patted his shoulder: “Only if you tell, detective, only if you tell.”
by Julian Miles | Aug 11, 2014 | Story |
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
The conspiracy nuts must have wet themselves when the Barraz arrived. In a global broadcast, they announced that they were making a pre-emptive move to protect their main weapons supplier. That was us. Or the chunk of us that worked within the notorious ‘military-industrial complex’. It really existed and had been untouchable for decades, but played the game of being only a megacorporation or two.
The Barraz were just negotiating embassy and land rights when the Vortinshur blew their diplomatic fleet to pieces. Then our new visitors broadcast that they had come to protect their weapons supply.
We were still looking about in shock when night turned to day. The Kraddim fleet was huge, both in numbers and sizes. They broadcast that they were happy to liberate us from the invading brigands.
We had no satellites left and falling bits of spacecraft were devastating the land, regardless of affiliation or religion. That menace caused a moment of beauty when world leaders denounced the complex and came together for the betterment of the planet.
Which was when the Kraddim pulled out. A single ship, half the Moon’s diameter in length, arrived just as they faded away into whatever form of jump-space they used.
The broadcast was simple: as ‘we’ had provided weapons to all comers, it had been decided by Galactic Court that we were not suppliers, but gunrunners. As such, our operation would be shut down. Since it was impossible to discern who exactly served the complex, it was with regret that the decision to sterilise Earth had been taken.
They apologised to the innocents about to die, but apparently it was for the greater good of all who lived under the galactic peace initiative. We were given a galactic standard day to set our affairs in order.
A galactic standard day is twenty-nine hours. What would you do if you knew that your loved ones – and yourself – had barely a day to live?
That’s right. We will be approximately twenty-six hours into World War Three when the hammer falls.
I really hate my race right now.
by Julian Miles | Aug 4, 2014 | Story |
Author : Julian Miles
I’m sitting on a rock on Hezbolla XIV. It’s a damn comfortable rock, overlooking an expanse of tundra without salient feature between me and the horizon in all directions. This is why I chose it. After four months of headlong flight, I can stop and have a cup of tea.
A rock situated at the remotest point of the least-inhabited planet of the furthest and most anti-Dominion star system at the distant edge of the outer rim, which is on the far side of the frontier systems.
They said I’d never escape. They said that eluding them was impossible. She said that even if I ran, I would be my own downfall.
A phone rings.
After I land from the jump that hurls me and my tea from the rock, I look about frantically. There is nobody in sight, no vessels in the skies.
The phone rings again.
I creep forward and peer under the edge of the rock. In a little depression, there’s a Nanga Starcom. Tucked into the survival bag next to it is a Leroo Rothfruit bar. I straighten up with the bag in my hand and a sigh gusting from my lips as they curve into a smile.
The phone rings for a third time.
“Yes?”
“Hello Curtis. You certainly got there faster than I expected.”
“How did you find me, Gloria?”
“You’re OCD, darling man. You couldn’t just hide. You had to hide at the exact point that is furthest from Dominion influence.”
There wasn’t really an answer I can give to that.
“So here’s the deal. I know you’re there. No-one else does. When you get bored, give me a call.”
“Why?”
“Well, firstly to have someone to talk to. Secondly, I may have a job offer. Either covert, or things may have changed. You were right, after all.”
“If I was right, why am I hiding by a rock over a million light years from home?”
“You’re always right. You always notice things. But, darling, you have the most appalling timing and no discretion at all.”
I’ve got no answer to that one either.
“Are you still there?”
“Yes, Gloria.”
“Do you have – no, of course you have everything you need. That would have been a silly question.”
“I have a question.”
“Go on then.”
“What if they find me?”
“They could only do that if they – oh, damn. Scrambled comms but unscrambled office.”
“Gloria, my love. I brought a two-man envirodome.”
“But they know where you are.”
“Leave now. Leave fast. Head for the last place that I stopped at before I came to this planet.”
“How can I be sure where that was?”
I grin: “Because I’m OCD, attentive, indiscrete and right. Move, woman.” I close the connection. She’s lovely. Scatty at times, but lovely. It’ll be good to share my cave with her.
Cave? Yes. The rock was only a stopover. Because I knew that they knew that I’m a little bit fixated.
