by Julian Miles | Dec 2, 2013 | Story |
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
One world. Seven hundred and ninety-two people. Less than a hundred berths on the ship out. It’s a recipe for bloody mayhem and that’s how they want it. Only the most committed make it to upship. We did basic training for five weeks before being shipped out here in long-sleep with burst-feed data tutoring. A thousand left Earth, two hundred and eight either died in transit or emerged hopelessly impaired. We used the latter for warm-up. Even the damaged will fight like banshees to survive.
“Left twenty.”
I look past Alyn. Sure enough, another group is crawling on their bellies through the long grass toward the position we occupy. It’s the only piece of high ground for three kilometres. It allows us to see approaching people by the trenches they make as they flatten the grass on their way in.
“Right ten.”
That’s welcome news: another group incoming. I slide back down into the foxhole we dug when we arrived.
“I need two volunteers to set them on each other.”
Martin raises his hand, as does Rico.
“Go.”
They crawl off down the back of the hill and make their way round to where the groups approach. Nothing disturbs the silence except the constant rustle of wind-blown grass across this savannah. I wriggle back up to the vantage point.
“Rico’s offbeam.”
“Sort it.”
She warbles like a skylark with a cadence that tells Rico what he needs to get back on track.
“No reaction.” Lanna shakes her head in despair.
Incredible. We’re light-years from Earth on a planet devoid of animal life. Yet the cry of a bird produces no alarm. These people don’t deserve to make it. When Martin and Rico reach position, Alyn warbles again. Both men take a fifteen count before making our play.
“There’s another bunch heading for the hill!” Martin injects just the right amount of righteous anger into his voice.
“They’ve spotted us! Take them before they make the high ground!” Rico rolls with Martin’s opening.
Two groups of green and tan clad people rise up, look about and then charge at each other, screaming defiance and less obvious things. Within moments a thirty-man melee swirls below us, crushing the grass as blades and blood catch the light.
“Right thirty.”
I shift position and look down at a position just out of sight of the fighting. It’s a trench but a narrow one. As I watch, a white rag on a stick rises into view. I gesture to Alyn. She warbles for Rico to take a look.
A few minutes later, Rico and a tough-looking girl covered in mud scoot over the edge of our foxhole.
“I’m Neria. Nice set up you have here.”
Rico nods toward the extra gear she carries. Looks like she’s supplied-up from at least six other candidates.
I grin: “Any of the donors going to ask for their kit back?”
Neria looks about as Martin rejoins us. She grins fiercely: “Don’t be so bloody silly.”
I nod and Alyn does the same. Lanna reaches out her hand: “Welcome to the team.”
Our newest recruit raises her chin towards the sounds of ongoing battle: “We going to clear up?”
Martin shakes his head: “The survivors will drag themselves all the way up here. Battered, knackered and sweated out by the time they reach us.”
Neria nods: “Solid plan.”
That does us. Six-man fire teams are the operational standard. From now on, all we have to do is hold our position until the all-clear sounds and we get to ship out as soldiers.
by Julian Miles | Nov 19, 2013 | Story |
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
The bricks are antique but the ferropoxy used as mortar is a giveaway, after you scrape the film of cement coloured paint mixed with sand off.
“This is the place. Gird your loins, kids. Jig is on in three, two, one – strike!”
The doors are blackened oak. Their laminate armour cores fail to negate the demolition charges, but the military-grade shrapnel produced costs me three ops.
First wave goes in hard, ignoring my orders. The pit is classic trap-tech and I am surprised I hear no swearing from it until I peer in and see the bloody threads of asymmetrical monofilament. That’s just plain nasty. I’m seven ops down for two metres travel.
“Listen up! We’re seven-nil and not even in the bloody hallway! Sharpen your game or we’re offal. Clear?”
Twelve snappy assents and we’re back on. Bridging the pit with c-tube ladders takes time we don’t have. Forced to double-time, we avoid trip beams, pressure plates and searguns with microns to spare. Crashing through the door into the back room, I hear a metallic twang and drop as I shout a warning. Too late. I roll over and see four ops down with half-metre barbed bolts through them.
As I stand up, the timed charge triggered by the arbalest firing turns the room into a momentary inferno laced with bits of giant crossbow. Fortunately I have my back to the blast and my impact-absorbing backplate gets a workout. Doesn’t help the scorching to my butt or the backs of my thighs, but it’s better than the chest and gut shrapnel wounds sustained by three ops.
I’m face down in a corner and take my time getting up. Four ops left. This place is a death-trap! And with that, it dawns on me. This place is only that. Nobody would stuff their headquarters with this much lethality.
“Abort sortie. Out the way we came.”
Ten minutes of careful retreat later, we find a single sheet of steel blocking the hallway. Assessment reveals its set between runners made from old dockyard crane H-beams.
“Suggestions?”
There are none. The building is alight and our only known exit is gone. The ferropoxy mortar work makes this place a Faraday cage: reinforcements are out.
“Stairway or cellar?”
The ‘up’ vote is unanimous. Less chance of structural unpleasantness.
Fifteen minutes later we’re at the roof hatch; bloody, rattled but still five up. The hatch is wired but defusing primitive detonator traps is my speciality. My legs about the ladder, I check the charge on my sidearm, wave everyone out of potential lines of fire and slam the hatch open with everything I’ve got.
The rumbling below starts as the hatch lands above. I’m looking for the cause when the floor falls away, taking the rest of my team with it into the basement along with the building interior.
I hang there, listening to the now-unsupported roof creak. The rusted ladder sways as I breathe, but at least I have a signal.
“Tiger One, respond.” Urgency in the words.
“Tiger One is down.”
“Mackie. Anyone else?”
“No, ma’am.”
“She said she’d make you pay for her husband’s death.”
“It seems that the Mad Trapper is actually the Mad Trapette.”
“We have your location. The lifter will drop you a line.”
Nineteen crems to attend after skin regen and psych eval. Rebuild the team in a month, up and running two months after that. Shite. She’ll have three months to prepare because she knows I’ll be coming for her. Next time, only one of us walks away.
by Julian Miles | Nov 12, 2013 | Story |
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
“Brigitte! Slow down!”
I thought I loved Adrian. I really did. I even fooled myself for the first year of our Outer Reaches tour. Then on Certys I had to stop him turning the planet into a game reserve so he could quietly harvest the luxurious pelts of the quasi-feline Pelmuk.
“Brigitte! Run faster, it’s gaining!”
He was a predator who had groomed me into giving him a free ride to the heights of our profession. My trust-fund supported his petty side-projects whilst plagiarising my work got him through university and our early tenures. I was naïve and besotted by the visions of our wonderful future that he spun.
“Brigitte! How far to the ship?”
The tour is ten years with no opt-out. Who would want to? Every planet that has indiginous large fauna is on the itinerary: a xenobiologist’s dream. Except when she’s stuck with a smooth-talking gold-digger who only wants an easy life and gonzo sex on demand. Not that he got much of the latter after Certys.
“Two kilometres.” Replying on the exhale as my years on the treadmill pay off.
The final argument occurred on Tangentia, where the Martonsee’s gold-flecked ivory carapaces sent him into a frenzy of greed. When I vetoed the fraudulent cull order, he told me what he really thought of me in his fury. Afterwards, his apologies rang hollow and his touch revolted me.
“Can’t you shoot it?”
“Would only annoy it.”
The Dangtrazian Sun Ferret is not a product of natural evolution. A long time ago forerunners with life-splicing skills we can only dream of created a polar-bear sized monster. It has a hide that acts like hyper-Kevlar covered in a double coat of refractive fur that fragments energy beams before they impact that hide. That hide wraps a physique that is hailed as the perfection of predator development. The intelligence of a dolphin guides this beast with two hearts and the forerunners coloured their masterpiece in shades of gold. It is beautiful, deadly and can eat anything not tougher than its claws. So far, that’s proven to be two things: spaceship plating and bedrock.
The ‘ferret’ name comes from a scaling error during satellite image analysis. It stuck, despite the first landing team discovering the error and becoming entrée. The sun ferret’s immunity to energy fields was discovered by the second team moments before being the crunchy scientist special. The third team discovered the bullet- and beam-resistance, then were dessert.
We were assisting in establishing a new sensor-web to gather more data on Dangtrazian’s infamous residents when one of them spotted us.
“Use the gun to lead it away while I make a dash for the ship!”
I draw my pistol and slow down. Adrian catches up to me, that smug smile smeared across his sweat-sheened face.
“Me saving us again! I’ll come and pick you up.”
How exactly are you going to find me, you lying bastard? You never bothered to learn how to use the locator array. I smile and he frowns. My eyes must show how I feel.
“Brigitte?”
I shoot him in the calf. A clean through-and-through, no bone damage. As he screams and topples, I holster the gun and sprint for the ship.
“What did you do that f-”
The sentence cuts off with a wet crunch.
An alpha predator in a closed or limited environment will usually fall fast when it is introduced into an open environment that has established alpha predators of its own. Conversely, prey that has learned to flee finds that single skill is always applicable, if applied soon enough.
Good riddance, Adrian.
by Julian Miles | Nov 4, 2013 | Story |
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
The cigar from the dead guard’s pocket has a red and gold band that says it’s from Havana, the first pleasant surprise of tonight.
“Ricky. Help me.”
I look across to where Estevez lies in a pool of his own blood, his eyes over-bright with pain and anger. Nodding to him, I put the cigar down on the low wall, rise and cross to him. As he looks up, my carbon-steel spike drives through his right eye socket. He convulses once and settles with a rattling exhalation.
The cigar is twenty centimetres long and smells wonderful. I’ve just slipped the band off and put it in my pocket when a shadow rises where only the line of the wall should be.
“Puto. Mala puto.” The tone filled with trenchant disgust.
The shadow lurches before tapering and shrinking as its owner falls backwards. Determined, these people. But not very smart.
The guard who provided the cigar also provides the guillotine to clip the cap, matches to warm the beast and to my surprise, cedar spills too. This man was a purist. I salute his corpse in respect.
There is a red dot on the cigar. It slides across to join its companions on my chest.
“Do no move!”
Squinting against the glare of the spotlight. “You mean ‘do not move’, I presume?”
“Si.”
I clip the cap from the cigar as strobe lights commence beyond the wall. ‘Death fields’ are illegal for this very reason. As I roll the cigar briefly above the match flame, I hear the screams of the wounded cease one by one. It is a ‘death’ field. Things that attract its attention only lose it when they cease having a pulse or equivalent.
I ignite the spill from a fresh match, then light the cigar gently and evenly. Delicious. The unfortunate donor was a man of refinement and taste.
“Senor?” The tone is deferential and coming from some way off. A smart one at last.
“Yes?”
“Please explain why you here. Then if you take efecto diablo away, you may go.”
The societies in the southern hemisphere retain their superstitious fear of invisible things that kill. Which is why I obtained a Serenti, a lifeform from Suli Serenta that’s larval stage now shares my body, filling the ‘empty’ places in me with frogspawn-like milky nodules, and getting from me whatever a Serenti does. Until it is mature and leaves me, it dies when I die. Unique energy manipulation abilities allow it to take certain liberties with how things stick together at an atomic level. It can sense everything within twenty metres or so, and react fast enough to reduce bullets to dust and energy beams to lightshows. Tonight has convinced me that I should have got one sooner and I will never be without one again, unless the pain of a mature one leaving is agonising.
Time to give the man what he wants.
“Consigilia paid us to kill Dupare and his people. Our broker, Hester, sold us out to let Dupare take us and Consigilia. I would be grateful if you could find Hester for me. Then I will take my diablo domestico to visit him.”
There is muted activity beyond my sight before the voice replies: “Senor Hester flew to Los Angeles three hours ago.”
I stand up and smile around the cigar in my mouth. “Then I’ll be going to the airport. Call me a taxi?”
“With pleasure, senor. Please never come back to Federated South America.”
Coming, Hester. Ready or not.
by Julian Miles | Oct 28, 2013 | Story |
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
The sea of faces looks like a spattering of pale raindrops against the dark pastiche of their clothing. This demonstration promised to be ‘a spectacular denial of President Lacorn’s policies’ and it is. The estimates place the heaving crowd at over a quarter of a million people. There are snack vendors and even souvenir stalls!
“No tyrants! No tyrants!”
Their cries are consistent, carefully orchestrated. My people have confirmed that all the lobbyists and hardcore groups have come in force. Speeches have been given.
“Ninety seconds before optimum is exceeded, sir.”
I look up at the ceiling. This will be a defining moment in the campaign. I walk over to the console.
“Stand clear. There will only be one with blood on his hands today.”
They look at me in surprise, relief plain on their faces. This may be necessary, but the scale is stupefying. It has kept me up vomiting into the early hours for a month. I think that nightmares will replace nausea after this.
“Sixty seconds.”
There is silence. Some of the para-military elements in the crowd have noticed the lack of official presences or watchers. They are starting to wave their hands to get attention when I reach down and press the button.
Thermobaric weapons are devastating. The fuel-air bomb is unbelievable in enclosed spaces, but used in the open it merely sentences a lot of people to an agonising death instead of pulverising them. The one slung under the media stand at the centre of the gathering has an augmented warhead to make it more deadly, not more humane.
I watch it all. Ignoring the tears streaming down my face and the sounds of my staff retching into waste bins behind me. People turned to flaming mist, people suffocating in a vacuum then screaming in silent agony as burning fuel fills the place where air should be. At the edges of the demonstration, I see people with blood shooting from their ears, noses and mouths. Then firestorm follows pressure wave. Obliteration rolls across the view.
“Close the borders. Implement Emergency Procedures.”
My staff stare at me. They have had the luxury of only bracing themselves for today, the start. I have not.
“This act will be condemned globally. Closed borders and martial law will make them hesitate. When we don’t do anything against them, they will hide behind their words and do nothing.”
“Sir. The fleets?”
Exceptional thinking in extremis. I nod to acknowledge the quality of question; although the answer is something I have had for weeks.
“All fleets are to co-ordinate with overseas bases to lift our entire presence, then return to international waters as soon as possible. Bring our boys and girls home.”
They kept on insinuating they wanted us to stop meddling. So we will gather in and see to our internal strifes. Intercontinental trade agreements with China will supply what we cannot make. The Chinese rulers have withstood nearly three millennia by being insular. Let us see how we do.
The rest of you? You’re on your own. Good luck.
