by Julian Miles | Sep 20, 2013 | Story |
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
It’s really disappointing. All the science fiction stuff about energy weapons and faster than light travel turned out to be impractical or impossible. Even nanotechnology proved to be only useful rather than miraculous.
“He’s coming round.”
“Batteries four and six, come to bear. Batteries three and five, cover his escape vectors.”
“Aye aye captain.”
The great exploration of space has come to a grinding halt. The Solar System is it for us. A few colony ships have gone out, filled with fanatics or undesirables, but their chance of becoming anything but footnotes of unrealised horror is slim.
In-system, it’s been lively for a couple of decades now. Earth considers itself the ruler of the system and the various established colonies object strongly. Independence wars have been flaring up so often it’s pretty much sequential.
I grab a stanchion as Brutus fires all eight guns in the four turret-mounted batteries and the ship rings like a gong. It’s wasteful but metal is plentiful now we’ve got the asteroid belt to strip mine. Two batteries aimed at where our opponent is going to be, two batteries aimed at where he could be if he dodges. There’s no point firing after he dodges.
“He’s fired everything!”
The Raumhorst is Federal Europe’s most powerful space battleship and deservedly so. His targeting gear is famous and his crew veterans. Brutus is the one thing they fear.
The United Kingdom colonised Pluto back when we still had royalty. Nobody contested our claim and we just got on with subzero mining and other stuff. I wonder if the spies and the analysts who didn’t work out why we were shipping lumber out there have been fired yet.
Geoffrey Pyke had the idea a couple of centuries ago but it was deemed impractical. Around Pluto, however, extreme cold and water are in plentiful supply. Just add fourteen percent wood pulp and you have space armour to defy most projectiles. The Brutus is basically a pair of Vanguard class super-dreadnoughts mounted keel to keel, or where the keels would be. Everything is a lot smoother than their naval equivalents because after the ninety-six thousand tons of ‘double-barrelled battleship’ as my uncle called it is constructed, all the exterior gets a ten-foot layer of pykrete. Frozen water is great for turrets because the friction allows them to turn without having to taper the armour layer – we just have to mount the turrets on risers to allow ten feet of pykrete between them and the deck. The double-up configuration allows eight turrets, four top and four bottom. Two main guns per turret, sixteen inch smoothbores that throw two-thousand pound ‘bullets’.
I hug the stanchion as the Raumhorst’s broadside slams into us. The sound of things falling is all that occurs, the dreaded whine of escaping air non-existent.
“Three hits! Took the two we sent to port in her superstructure and portmost one of the main barrage in her stern. She’s yawing! It’s a kill!”
I still don’t understand why everyone else builds space battleships like sea battleships with the bridge sticking up like a target. But I’m not going to argue. We’ve just become the primary force in the system. Pluto Colony is on its way to independence and being able to honour the orders from Mars we have for pykrete, even if the commercial slabs will be a little weaker than our own.
by Julian Miles | Sep 11, 2013 | Story |
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
What a mess. I’m standing on the fifteen-foot diameter stump of a Redwood, sliced off three feet from the ground as if by a gigantic razor blade. About me, the effect radius covers nine miles. In front of me is the twisted confetti that used to be a hundred and fifty foot long aircraft.
“Ye gods. Found out what happened yet, Rudi?”
I turn and look at my second-in-command, Elys. She, like me, had invested both time and money in this project. Years of commitment volunteered to realise the dream of every science-fiction nut across the globe. We hadn’t been alone. The crowd-sourcing for this project set new records in amounts of money and speed of accrual. Now the only wise part of the investment was the failure insurance.
“I think I know. There are going to be repercussions if I’m right.”
I jump down from the stump and move toward the biggest fragment of the Stargazer that remains. “Look at this.”
“It’s a circuitboard.” Elys peers closer. “Correction. It was a circuitboard. What did that?”
I wait. She’s an accident investigator like me and the pieces of this debacle do fit together. The board is fried completely and evenly. That’s not fire damage.
A look of horror crosses her face. “Oh my god. You’re kidding.”
I look out across the devastation, where people move in numb concentration, looking for pieces of the crew where crows have settled, which is the only pointer. Human remains are as shredded as the ship.
“I can’t think of anything else that explains this. Sabotage will be proposed, especially by those even remotely to blame; but if they want to do that, then they can pay to have this reassembled.”
Elys crouches down and balances on the balls of her feet. “You think they’ll try?”
I turn my head to look at her. “Given what’s at stake, I would.”
She nods and I stand up. Time to report in. I walk over to the Control centre and a senator and the state governor close in to be my witnesses.
“Accident Investigator Rudi Teans. I confirm that the anti-gravity project was a success. The failure of the prototype was caused by two flaws. First: the magnetic field generators emitting outside their specified ranges. Second: the shielding on the electrical systems being substandard. The combination of these resulted in Stargazer suffering the complete destruction of all control systems by an electro-magnetic pulse effect as the generators reached peak load. I recommend that Federal authorities move swiftly to secure all build records and inspection sign-offs. The deaths of all eleven personnel are directly attributable to criminal negligence.”
The senator touches my arm. “What about this?” He waves his hand to encompass the blasted landscape.
“The effect zone can only be attributed to some unforeseen aspect of gravitational repulsion that is beyond my expertise to analyse.”
The governor looks me in the eye. “Did they suffer?”
I look up at the circling crows. “I hope not.”
The governor nods. “Amen.”
by Julian Miles | Aug 23, 2013 | Story |
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
The post-incident review was in closed session and after the presiding officer read the first line of the bonded testimony, the session was restricted to herself and Brevet Captain Danyls alone.
“We are in complete privacy, Danyls. Having read your report and the recommendations of those with reputations to protect, I’d like you to take me through the end of the Vigilance’s last mission.”
With a nod, the frowning young woman stared at the blue fluctuations in the anti-snoop field and started to tell all in a calm voice.
*
She dived onto the bridge, heart hammering, smoke searing her lungs. Across all the port viewscreens, the impossible hulk they had hit hung like the gigantic headstone it was about to become. Her eyes were drawn to the video feed from Pinnace One, where Mike was buckling in.
Her hand slammed down on the intercom button. “Mike, what the hell are you doing?”
He looked up at her, guilt-faced “Sorry, Helen. It’s got to be done.”
“You don’t have to do this, Mike. What about us?”
“What I did with you was wrong and I admit my actions are tinged with relief in knowing you’ll never tell.”
Helen lurched back as if struck.
“I’m sorry, kiddo. You were great in the sack but in the end, I’m the irreplaceable asset on the Vigilance.”
“But Mike; Captain –“
“No time or interest in long goodbyes, Danyls. It was a pleasure having you.”
The screen went blank and the ‘clang’ of the departing pinnace shook the Vigilance.
*
Helen brought her eyes down from the blue.
“You have to understand that until his second sentence, I thought he was about to sacrifice himself to save us.”
The presiding officer nodded. “Go on.”
“After that, I suppose I could have interrupted him. Maybe I should have.”
“But you didn’t.”
“No, ma’am. I let him launch from the occluded side of the Vigilance, straight into the hulk. The reaction to his launch combined with that from the explosion when the pinnace hit the hulk broke us free.”
“After which you stabilised your drift away from the planet while the hulk entered the atmosphere, eventually causing a Category Eight catastrophe when it hit.”
“Yes, ma’am. But it went down without taking the Vigilance with it.”
“Your recommendation?”
“Captain Michael Tiernan should be buried with full honours, a Captain who died saving his ship and crew. The data that he was a philanderer and a coward who didn’t know the way around his own vessel is of no relevance to history or to his family. The result displays the proper command attitude.”
“Agreed. Captain Tiernan will be a feted hero. You, Deputy Danyls, are offered command of the Vigilance Two. Your recommendation proves that you have learned a hard lesson.”
“I accept. Thank you, ma’am.”
“Very well. Captain Helen Danyls, you are dismissed.”
by Julian Miles | Aug 19, 2013 | Story
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
They say that a man who seeks revenge should dig two graves, one for his target and one for himself. I dug two hundred and seventy-nine.
Into two hundred and thirty-seven of them I put all that remained of the inhabitants of my home town, Padgest. I had to guess which bits belonged to whom toward the end. The two hundred and thirty-eighth is Karen’s.
Filling the next forty has taken me six years. Six years to track down every member of the Twenty-Third Special Operations Commando, who turned my home into an abattoir during the dying days of the ‘Endless’ Empire. They went their separate ways after the war, slipping anonymously back into the newly-freed populations as their training had taught them to do.
The first squad ran an adventure holiday company on Eridanus. My quest for vengeance nearly ended there. Eight-to-one odds, only offset by the fact that they had all gone to seed quickly, partying hard with their customers. I shipped their bodies home in a freight container.
The second squad was ruling the planet of Haberdesh. I had to start a rebellion to get them and only salvaged a suitcase full of remains to bring back.
The third squad had become bounty hunters. I realised that my need to look them in the eyes as they died would get me killed, thus personal vengeance ceded to practicality and I sabotaged their ship. I brought their frozen bodies home strapped to the outside of my hull like sculptures.
The fourth squad came after me. It was inevitable that they would keep in contact with their former comrades and work out that someone had declared open season on them all. I spent eight months in hospital after the month-long running battle with them, wading through the stinking swamps and blighted mires of Kelsige, relying on a native crossbow as the planet’s corrosive atmosphere destroyed their kit and removed their advantages.
The command squad split up while I was in hospital and went to brutal lengths to conceal their tracks, forgetting one thing: a trail of bodies is easier to follow than a trail of transactions.
I found them all and dealt with them one at a time. As I didn’t have their training, I had to improvise: hiring a truck to crush a coffee shop, dropping a skip on a stationary car, using a tourist submersible to sink a yacht, using home-made bombs to cause an avalanche, a rockslide and a bridge collapse.
The former leader of the 23rd SOC retreated to a hunting lodge in the mountains of Tarkerut. He used all his skills to make the place lethally inaccessible. So I used mortar bombs filled with Charo musk to paint the walls and roof. Charo are voracious and look like the furry bastard spawn of lampreys and cockroaches. He tried to stop the infestation I attracted and died very badly, if the screams were anything to go by. I had to wait two months to retrieve his remains.
Today I filled his grave and walked across the blue grass meadow to where Karen’s mound lies next to the only empty grave. I sit on the edge of the open grave and tell her about the last death while I finish my champagne and cyanide. Then I check the deadfall holding the earth back from the grave.
“Now I lay me down to sleep,
Next to my girl, forever to keep
Come judgment day or ending times
The guilty have paid for their crimes.”
The darkness washes in as I feel myself topple into my grave.
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by Julian Miles | Aug 14, 2013 | Story |
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
“Tell the Charmian that we can see her.”
“She refuses to believe us.”
“Oh, for the love of Turing, she got out before sensor tutoring?”
“Seems to be the case, sir.”
The half-kilometre diameter of the moon Abaddon hangs in near space on the view-screen, with the fins and drive tubes of the Smart Ship Charmian sticking out of the monstrous crater she blew in it. Puppy logic: if she can’t see us, we can’t see her.
I tap my fingers on the command console as my long-serving crew look increasingly nervous, and rightly so. I have better things to do than supervise children. Even if this child has a four hundred and fifty metre pursuit destroyer as a body.
“Get me Commandant Sallast.”
The voice is cheery. “Call me Amanda, Captain Obers. Have you found my prodigal?”
“Commandant Amanda Sallast. I regret to inform you that your project is cancelled. You cannot educate Smart Ships in a nursery environment.”
“But I’ve had such success! They respond so well to being allowed to fly and learn with their siblings.”
“Horseshit, madam. I was on the way to you when I received your distress call. The reason I was nearby is that eight of your protégés refused to engage in combat off Falconer II. When asked the reason why, they stated that the Falmordians were ‘too cute’ to be really hostile. They suggested a game of tag.”
“Oh, isn’t that lovely?”
“Madam, these are warships. While their crews tried to wrestle control from the puerile minds that ran their ships, the ‘cute’ Falmordians vapourised them. There were no survivors. Four hundred and eighty dead, madam. Four hundred and eighty people will not be going home because you got your father to leverage backing for your fluffy spaceship school.”
The voice from the speakers was shaky. “I was only trying to give them a balanced view.”
Daniel Obers muted the call while he punched a bulkhead. Shaking his bloodied fist, he returned to the call. “I actually sympathise with your broad aims. But front-line Intelligent Warships are not the place for them. Now, is the Charmian aware of the capabilities of this vessel?”
“I doubt it.”
“Please commence wind-up of your installation. Fleet units are inbound.”
“What about Charmian? She really is a sweet girl. Just a little highly strung.”
“I’ll coax her out, Commandant.”
“Thank you.”
Daniel looked at his crew and saw his aghast expression mirrored on all present. He switched channels. “Charmian, this is Captain Obers. It’s time to go home.”
The voice from the speakers was petulant, a tone Daniel had never heard from a Smart Ship, or any other artificial intelligence, for that matter.
“I’m never going home. You can’t make me. I’m bigger than you.”
Daniel looked at the ceiling as he muted the call. “Prepare a pair of Lances. Full-spectrum EMP at one hundred percent load. This sentience is irretrievable.”
He opened the channel again. “Last chance, Charmian. Behave or face the consequences.”
“I’m never going home.”
“Too true.” Daniel whispered.
He looked up at the weapons team. “Fire.”
