by Julian Miles | Feb 5, 2014 | Story |
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
The workshop echoes like a rendition of what the forges of the damned sound like. Amongst noises so loud they seem to have presences of their own, little figures scuttle in rituals of maintenance. Our gods are demanding and we have to comply, otherwise the threatened apocalypse will roll across the land.
In reality, the apocalypse arrived eight-four years ago. It came from the stars in ships of heart-rending beauty to turn our cities into canvasses of horror. They still argue about how many died in the initial attack versus how many died because shock rendered them unable to escape.
“Red!” My screaming order makes the apprentice jump, before he hands me the pot.
When the alien ships disgorged war-machines fifty feet high, with defences that rendered all but the crudest weaponry useless, we nearly became extinct. Then we built bigger war machines. Some went for the giant robot approach, but the sheer impracticality of that design – limbs come off too easily – cost us more resources.
In the end, the venerable war-wagon returned. Using the Victorian ethos of just scaling things up until they were effective, we ended up with the biggest all-terrain vehicles ever made.
Six thirty-foot wheels, steel-treaded, underpin an eighty-foot frame that mounts twin twelve-inch guns. We use an armour-penetrating dense shell around a high-explosive round because their defences render energy and external effects useless. Solid shot penetrates. Explosions inside their defences seem to work.
“Dryer!” He’s ready for me this time.
Our war-wagons are constructed from whatever we can find. The reactors that power them are high-output and internal shielding is minimal to allow more armour. The crew provisions are likewise minimal. Very few crew members endure more than eighteen months or survive longer than two years, even if the battles do not kill them. But by duty rotation, they serve until they die. They will not quit, because they are the last line.
I lift the dryer away. Wagon forty-four has just got its one hundredth poppy. We do not have time or space to bury our dead, even if we are lucky enough to have anything to inter. So the wagons have become rolling memorials. It suits us. No monument that stands alone under grey skies, visited infrequently. Our epitaphs roll out to fight the same enemy the men and women they commemorate died fighting against. Our oriental crews loved it immediately and everyone else has taken the belief to their hearts.
As walls shake and radiation burns, as shatterbeams and slicers howl against your armour, as primitive fear fills our rolling, man-made caverns, knowing you have the spirits of every fallen crewmember with you is the salvation of your sanity.
Victory will come, of that we are sure. Not one of us will see the second anniversary of it. We have already stated that there should be no memorial beyond the war-wagons. Let them rust where they stand on that final day. We will need no edifices, for we will be the ones who you feel beside you when you walk battlefields restored to be meadows or towns.
by Julian Miles | Jan 24, 2014 | Story |
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
I can hear them inside, their voices loud and fast with teenage enthusiasm. This was a bad idea; I should never have taken the assignment.
“Look at that! Hyper-alloy combat chassis, full-spectrum vision, cross-frequency hearing, graphene augmented muscle strands. Mark eighteens were the best: “
“Yeah, but they got decommissioned like everything else. What happened to them?”
“I read that they got killed off or became freebooters.”
Not quite: the killing off bit is true. A lot of my kind got a little too fond of the murdering and destroying. There was no way they could be reintegrated into a society they left as humans.
I reach up and press the call pad.
“You gotta be kidding! Twenty minutes? Out here?”
A girl’s voice: “I’ll get it!”
There’s a chorus of negatives. Then a single male voice: “Not likely. Let me get it. Johnny, get the gat.”
Smart kid. You never know who’s calling out in the estates after dark.
The door opens a little way.
I smile and point at the face that appears: “The gat’s a good idea, but a simple chain catch gives you the time to react.”
“Oh crap.” His voice has gone quiet as his face pales in the glow of my optics.
“Good evening.”
“Don’t hurt the girls.”
I bring my insulated bag into view: “No intention of doing that. I’m just delivering.”
His eyes widen: “You’re kidding.”
With a smile, I half-bow: “Us mark eighteens have to fit in somewhere.”
He nods in comprehension: “Yeah. Nobody delivers out here, it’s too dangerous.”
Precisely. Neighbourhoods overrun with crime are getting civilised quickly. All of the services are being staffed by my kind. You can’t scare or threaten something that has walked through the burning cities of Tharsis, has held the line against the mechanised tigers of Betelguese or has carried the heads of his comrades back for Transit.
The door opens wider. I see a real fire burning and a mob of kids in Steelhead T-shirts.
“Good taste in heavy metal, ladies and gents.” The mark eighteens who formed that band found that celebrity made society ignore their occasional fits of devastation. It’s expected of rock stars. Lateral reintegration at its best.
The kid tucking the gat into his thigh-high pocket smiles tentatively: “You know Steelhead?”
I grin: “Served with two of ‘em during the defence of Kandyr.”
The girl, presumably the sister, rushes up holding out a condensation-dripping can of beer: “You wanna come in?”
With a smile, I use combat speed to extract the pizzas from the bag, put them in the hands of the lad reaching for them, sling the bag on my back, step inside the place while steadying the pizza boxes and pluck the beer from her hand.
“Love to.”
There are collective squeaks and sighs of awe. The first lad grasps the pizza boxes and kicks the door shut with his foot.
A boy with glasses watched my move over the back of the settee. He swallows before commenting: “That was surreal.”
I think I’m going to do well around here.
by Julian Miles | Jan 14, 2014 | Story |
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
It’s not like I meant to end the world. I was just scared.
“Mike! Another side of fries for table fifteen!”
He should be shouting for bread and cheese. It’s my fault that he isn’t an innkeeper.
I found it lying in a clearing, limbs turning from purple to grey in the fastest rotting I have ever seen. I didn’t mean to hurt it, but a movement in the undergrowth had to be a deer and we hadn’t eaten properly for weeks. So I shot blind and killed a monster. There was a satchel lying on the ground by it. Sticking out of it was a device that reminded me of a matchlock with extra cogs. So when another ‘demon’ charged into the clearing, as I hadn’t reloaded my rifle, I grabbed the device and ‘shot’ it between its gem-like eyes.
The world seemed to lurch and then tilt. The woodland about me withered to stumps and dust in the blink of an eye. My clothes unravelled and I felt stabbing pains as I drew breath. Around me, the world vanished in a kaleidoscopic tornado that had gaps that showed impossible views: cities that hung suspended over blue seas blew to dust to be replaced by oil rigs. Things that looked like metallic eagles of impossible size twisted to become ugly passenger jets. In my hand, the device shimmered between states, finally settling to look like a tin can with an array of lights on the top. I peered at it and the squiggles on the side resolved into a language I could read: ‘activation without boundary limitation fields may be hazardous to the reality instance surrounding the operator’ and ‘unconstrained use may cause manifestation of temporal resilience effects’.
When the whirling chaos faded, I stood on an expanse of waste ground between two tenements. Before me, a chain link fence sparkled briefly before fading to dull metallic grey. Then a rain of fire scoured my mind. I screamed and toppled to writhe on the ground, clutching my head. Of course, I dropped the device. There were three bass thuds, like a giant hand was knocking upon a vast door. I blacked out.
“Wake up.”
I woke. Crouching next to me was a young man in an expensive suit. He held the can in one hand. Seeing his gem-like eyes shocked me fully awake and then the realisation of new knowledge, the new history in my head, caused tears to cascade down my cheeks.
He nodded: “If you’re lucky, memories of your former instance will pass. If not…” He looked down at himself: “Seems like you remodelled me too.” Looking up, he smiled a wintry smile: “I’ll not lie. You’re a nuisance and you nearly killed me when you erased your timeline. I hope you can make something of yourself to offset the number of people you deleted.”
With that condemnation, he stood up and walked off, shrinking into a distance that meant he vanished before he reached the edge of the waste ground. I rolled over and vomited myself compos mentis.
A year has passed and I’ve adjusted to this terrible world of my own instigation. I’m studying the fundamentals of existence while working two jobs just to stay alive. The memories of hunting through verdant woodland to provide for the family I erased have not faded.
I have given myself ten years to achieve something of worth. If I do not and the memories remain undiminished, I will see if the afterlife from my previous time survives and hope that my family are there.
by Julian Miles | Jan 10, 2014 | Story |
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
“We are in so much drek.”
“Did I not say that you were to be nice to him?”
“Nice? Emmett, he had his cyberpaw so far up my skirt I thought he was a gynaecologist!”
“Easy, Celene. Watch the tollway.”
“We’re only doing two hundred. I can do this with my eyes closed.”
“Please don’t.”
“I love it when you plead.”
“Don’t I know it.”
“Emmett, baby, could you tell the cops to frack off? Didn’t you pay them enough?”
“I did. These are hired ronin. You know, friends of the razorboy you performed balls-in-the-throatomy on.”
“He grabbed my-”
“I know, Celene. I’m just hopin’ they can get his cajones out of his oesophagus.”
“I’m not. Now. We cannot outrun the interceptor they have as top cover, and they’re running interference on our drive. Got any ideas? You are my spannerman, after all.”
“That’s ‘drives’, darlin’. I mounted an extra two in series. As for the jammin’, let me get my axe.”
“The last thing I need now is to listen to you murder ‘Roll on Down the Highway’.”
“Oh, that’s harsh.”
“Truth hurts. Stick to Reo Speedwagon, baby. It’s more your speed.”
“Harsher. Much, much harsher.”
“The first stage is acceptance. Now, about our imminent blazing death?”
“Like I said. My axe.”
“You really have lost it, haven’t you? There are nine raging razorboys across five speeders, backed by two mercs in a mil-spec interceptor that I didn’t think you could even have drawings of outside Level Eight clearance, and your best answer is to go Hendrix on their collective arses?”
“Darlin’, I am a lot of things, but losin’ it is no one of ‘em. Shut up an’ drive. An’ be ready to drive real fast. When the speeders go, we’ll have about three seconds while the mercs engage hind brain. If we ain’t going like a Lenkormian Devil at the end o’ that, you better kiss me quick, coz that’s all the time we’ll have left on this earth.”
“That’s the ugliest guitar I’ve ever seen.”
“Tollway! Watch the tollway! For the love of Senna, drive!”
“No need to get mean.”
“You just insulted my vintage BC Rich Draco. Count y’self lucky I’m not tannin’ your butt instead of savin’ it.”
“Newsflash. Those are not custard pies they have started shooting at us.”
“Noted. Now pop my side of the targa.”
“What the hell is that?”
“A phased plasma rifle in the 40-watt range, built into the back of my Draco. Sometimes audiences get real critical.”
“I’m not saying a thing.”
“Get ready to hit the ‘go’ buttons.”
“Snapline!”
“Wup! Yeah, would be embarrassin’ fallin’ off the back.”
“And then some. I’m ready, babe.”
“It’s time to rock ‘n’ roll, then.”
“Kick their arses, Emmett.”
“Hello, you ugly mofo’s. Meet my lil’ friend.”
“Frack but that’s bright!”
“Tell me ‘bout it. Slipstream took me shades.”
“Louder! I can’t hear you over the wind!”
“Five down! GO!”
“I hear that! Wheeeeee!”
“B’garkuph!”
“You okay, baby?”
“Snapline was fine. Nearly becomin’ twins on the back edge of the door wasn’t.”
“I’ll kiss it all better later. After we finish selling the data.”
“Yeah, that stuff always has a short sell-by. Hang a left at Capella, kid. The Geek’s hangin’ off Auriga. We’re goin’ to be rich.”
“Amen to that. Play me something.”
“Roll on Dow-”
“Emmett! I have the passenger ejector seat button under my thumb.”
“Gimme Shelter?”
“Better. Sing me away, spannerman.”
by Julian Miles | Dec 31, 2013 | Story |
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
They came from heaven, or hell, or outer space, or under the sea. Earth has been invaded in every way imaginable, thanks to the imaginations of authors over the last three centuries. You would have thought, with such a rich base from which to draw inspirational tactics, that mankind would have done better when it finally happened.
“Commander! They’re reinforcing on the left flank!”
“Captain Yaeger, abandon the dugouts and trenches. Return to the bastion with everyone you have, bringing everything you can.”
They came from a long way away, arriving without warning. It was midday on a beautiful summer day. By three minutes past, most of our continents were in the shadow of spaceships of every imaginable shape and size. Their bombardment was swift, devastating and surprisingly inaccurate. They missed military bases and levelled universities. Warships were ignored while schools and libraries vanished in waves of searing energy. Hospitals were reduced to craters while missile silos stood untouched.
“Commander! They’ve brought up snipers! We’re getting murdered here!”
“Captain Durov, abandon your positions. Withdraw to the bastion with as much gear as your people can carry.”
It took us a few days to realise that they had obliterated ninety percent of humanity between the ages of four and seventeen. They had removed generations of prospective resistance fighters along with our advanced medical capabilities. The strategic analyses turned from bleak to grim.
The raids to take infants and babies were something the analysts didn’t predict. Caught by surprise, our hopes for the future were whisked away. It was a devastating blow. Suicides peaked during the subsequent week.
“Commander! Looks like they’re massing for something!”
“Captain Sung, abandon your positions. Retire to the bastion with your troops and as much gear as they can manage.”
Then the invasion started. They used no area-effect weapons. They came without mercy, solely for the surviving humans. Professor Grey of Roehampton produced and circulated a document after the first week that may as well have been humanity’s epitaph. I remember the final paragraph so well:
‘Our stolen children will be vassals, without history
or knowledge. Our civilisation may form part of the
mythology that they tell each other around the cooking
fires of their simple culture. Apart from that, the
works of man will be forgotten.’
They stalk through this world, killing everyone who remains. You can see how careful they are with the environment, and how uncaring they are of anything created by us.
“Commander. Everyone is here.”
I turn from the bar and drop my cigarette end into the empty shot glass. The last of the Lagavulin is inside me. The Captains of every group are here: the finest, and the last, soldiers in the world.
“Ladies and gentlemen. Eight months ago they came to take our planet. It swiftly became inevitable. We have been fighting desperate battles and saving nothing. So, I propose an all-out attack. Simply because my dear, departed grandfather would be gutted if his bonny lad didn’t go out moving forward with a whiskey inside him, a smoke between his lips and a blazing automatic in his hand. Who’s with me?”
They looked at each other.
Captain Brewster stepped forward: “My dad always said that when it all goes to Hell, you want a Tommy at your side. While everyone else is getting weepy, he’ll be the one having a brew, checking his weapon and lighting a smoke, before asking when we’re going to stop pussyfooting about and get stuck in.”
There were nods and grins. Hands started to rise.
Pour me a shot, grandpa. I’ll be there soon.
