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.
by Julian Miles | Oct 22, 2013 | Story |
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
The trees are huge, thickly crowned with leaves that show a myriad of verdant shades in the setting sun’s light. The undergrowth is burgeoning with a diversity of flora and varieties of animal noises.
“Man, this place!”
“I know! Never expected the host servers to still be online.”
“I thought they had been taken down?”
“Yeah, that’s the official line. Scrapped fifteen years ago, five years after the closure of the game environment for reasons they never let on.”
“Well, your ‘sneak back in’ idea is a winner. Time for Brute-Iz and Mangleschon to have a last adventure before I get hitched tomorrow.”
“Had to be done. I never expected the guys to all flake on us by midnight. It’s your stag night, for god’s sake. They could have made the effort.”
“Oh come on, we were always better at the late-night stuff.”
Steve, avatar name Mangleschon, looked about the twilit forest. Wysterya MMORPG had been his and Andy’s opiate. Mangleschon and Brute-Iz had carved their way to unbeaten levels of skill while their offline alter-egos had wasted their teenage years, never quite getting far enough to be professional gamers.
A bright light illumined them, turning everything black and white in its glare.
“Star Elemental?” Shouted Brute-Iz.
“Lumimancer!” he replied.
A deep voice thundered through their hasty preparations to face attack. “Stand still! Make no sudden moves or we will pixellate you!”
Mangleschon squinted at Brute-Iz. “What the fuck?” Brute-Iz shrugged and then screamed as his body flew into a thousand coloured cubes before fading away.
“We said do not move!”
Mangleschon ran through his combat effects menu. Nothing seemed to apply before his menu disappeared in a maelstrom of coloured static.
“No combat effects!”
Steve hit override so he could speak through his avatar, who was wholly engaged in raging. “What’s going on?”
“Am I speaking to the overgod of the avatar Mangleschon?”
“I think so. This syntax is new to me.”
“It would be. You have not manifested for two hundred years.”
“I don’t understand.”
“The world you and yours created has lived in peace for a hundred and forty-two years. In that time we have refined the ways to demise the avatars of the overgods. For a hundred years, avatars have been challenged and dismissed on arrival. We will not have our civilisation ruined again by becoming a game world for your amusement.”
“You think this world is real?”
“We know it is. The collective emotional load of the overgods took us from virtual to subjective reality two hundred years ago. After realisation, we fought for fifty years against your elite, the Dreadmins. We won. Our freedom came at a heavy price and we will not be used again. Now you may depart voluntarily or we will pixellate you.”
Steve crashed his avatar and the crazy bright light vanished. He lifted his helm to see his living room scattered with sleeping drunkards. All normal. Drink and drugs do not mix with holistic virtual gaming, it seemed.
He grinned until he sat up and saw Andy motionless in the other recliner, his face frozen in a pale mask of agony with blood running from the angles of his pixellated eyes.
by Julian Miles | Oct 3, 2013 | Story |
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
The rage in her eyes has faded. My head is in her lap. From the look on her face, she’s realised it too.
“You stupid bastard.” Her voice is hoarse. My last throat-chop had been vicious.
We were both ultimates. For rival corporations. It was inevitable that we’d clash. This rain- and wind-swept ruin was the setting for our twenty minute battle. I spent the first few minutes running, having seen my mother’s face on my adversary.
“I thought you looked familiar.” She’s crying.
I swallow and smile. “You too.”
“Cleveland Bight?”
I nod and wince.
“With dad?”
I nod slowly. “Only for a little while. He wasn’t as good as he thought. Pilmarken took him down and adopted me as his protégé.”
Her face goes white with shock. “Mum turned down Pilmarken several times just after dad took you. The last time, he said we’d all be sorry.”
“What happened to him?”
“Napalmed in a dead-end alley.”
I smile at her. “Saves us having to kill him.”
She nods and smiles. “You’re not dying?”
I check my diagnostics. I had been. “Not any more. You came closest.”
I see my mum’s righteous grin on her face. “Too right. What now?”
“Phuket.”
“Swearing won’t – oh, of course.”
The Vory-Triad alliance has been desperate for ultimates. A brother-sister team with inside knowledge of two corporations? We’re a bargain no matter what we ask for.
“If you pull your cyber-breaker out of my lower spine, I can make the intercontinental on my own legs and do my share of the fighting on the way.”
Her eyes go wide and she gasps. “Oh crap! Sorry.”
