by Julian Miles | Jul 3, 2012 | Story |
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
I’ve always come second. Not through lack of talent or effort, but because I sympathised. If someone wanted it more than me, I’d let them have it. It started at home before I knew the word compromise. By the end of college I knew it well, had even lost my virginity because someone wanted it so much. There were several similar mistakes before I learned the difference between compromise and pushover.
My parents wanted Gareth, my brother, to join the Space Force. At the time, it was one per family for that elite, so despite better qualifications, I joined the Navy. Eleven years later Gareth was lumps orbiting Jupiter and I was a Captain and a veteran combat pilot with sidelines in command and mixed-environment tactics. My compromising made me a good negotiator but a poor leader.
The Chadda-ho are a typical race of colonising humanoids. Earth was a preferred acquisition, being nicely built up. Unfortunately mankind were still in residence. Their colonisation effort so resembled the pilgrims and the Amerind that we knew what was coming and objected violently. What we didn’t know we reverse engineered and enhanced. We beat them into a bloody stalemate.
The Eflubians ruled the Chadda-ho. So when the war stalled, the pink amoebas from Hell waded in and mankind got a thrashing. A lot of our military died while we learned to fight back. I found myself in a place where compromise cost lives, so I stopped compromising and started leading. Other officers didn’t learn as quick. They died and very soon I found myself to be second in command of Earth’s forces.
Fighting like humans yet described as devils, tigers, terrorists or fools depending on which newsfeed you read, we fought while politicians flailed and people died.
Last night the Diplomat-Commander called me in for a reprimand because my ragged army was doing too well and spoiling negotiations. I knew we were days from new weaponry as my boys and girls had taken the tech and paid in blood. We would have them. But the accountants had decided we should sue for peace. I got another reprimand when I used the word ‘grovel’.
We were fighting for our planet and the Amerind outcome showed us the cost of failure. So I looked that earnest officer in the eye and told him something my grandfather told me: “A long time ago, we let a regime survive after all but defeating them.”
I pointed out and up at the Eflubian motherships, hanging in the night sky like bloody teardrops the size of Bristol: “They won’t make the mistake of stopping in Kuwait.”
He looked at me and shook his head. His voice was patronisingly gentle: “Deputy Commander Trent. You have to accept that compromise is not defeat.”
I saw the look in his eyes and I knew I had looked like that in the past. He hadn’t learned. So I stepped forward and slid eight inches of Sheffield steel under his ribs and up into his heart. As he collapsed, I looked at his aides and said: “No, it’s worse. Defeat is being beaten. Compromise is beating yourself. I will not give this ground.”
The aides looked at me, at their squads. Then back at me. They came rigidly to attention and saluted with their men mere moments behind. The one on the left barked out: “Officer down, suspected heart failure. What are your orders, ma’am?”
“We fight. We don’t stop. We win. Move out!”
by Julian Miles | Jun 27, 2012 | Story |
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
The morning breeze is so refreshing here in the heights overlooking the Gordet Pass. We had to stop the Persimma getting through to the Femberul plainsland and this is the choke point. It was going to take old-fashioned grit to hold the line, so we were given the task along with divisions heavy on tradition. Made us smile, mercenaries and old guard having to work together.
I started in the battling business in my teens. Where I grew up, it was take ship with mercs, turn to crime or become a cyberpeon. So I took the coin and went to war.
My first battle was Smarkandie. I shat myself as the nine-metre natives in their spiked armour charged. As someone once said: “Sometimes the only reasonable response to abject terror is a bowel movement.” After that, I carried spare underwear with my ammunition.
I got my first command at Upshallon. Made a complete hash of it and a lot of good men died. Hesitation is fatal. Unfortunately it was only fatal for everyone else.
After that I got myself a Blenkinsop Multi-Load Autogun and a shit-hot loader by the name of Tay. In between fucking each other senseless for sixteen good years, we killed everything the galaxy threw at us and made several fortunes. We pissed them all away in style.
On Aloysius II, Tay made sure the bastard who disembowelled her with a vibroblade died headless. I survived that bloodbath despite trying very hard not to after she went.
I became the rarest of warriors: a veteran mercenary. Got to the point where the kids I was fighting alongside hadn’t even heard of the places I’d fought my early battles on.
Iskaflune is a beautiful planet. The thought that I could happily settle here surprised me. Just get a place out by one of the tundra lakes and live quietly off the monies I’d stacked up since Tay went. Lost my appetite for partying when she went, as well as my reason to be.
I’d even started negotiating with the locals over settling down, with a consultancy to their military lined up. Then came the news that the Persimma were making a last ditch assault and we were off to Gordet.
They came hard and fast, pretty banners flapping over hardcore soldiers with no choice but to win. Their atrocity record guaranteed them no survival if they failed. So they came like their future depended on it because it did.
Three days of screaming hell running on drugs with names I couldn’t pronounce that made me feel like I was nineteen again. The fact that the chemical interactions gave us all erections was hilarious for the first few hours. Then they just became another bit of us that was bruised and sore.
At the end we were down to knives and clubs. We struggled in the twilight that this place calls night, slipping on the blood and entrails of the fallen. Those last few hours were the worst battle I have ever fought. Gutter biochemicals and acid competed with improvised warhammers and serrated blades. But we held.
The early dawn light is purple, making gentle pools of shadow from the gaping wounds in the ground and the bodies about me. My credit share for this will be huge. I smile and cough blood, making my autogun mount tilt as I’m slumped against it. All the fortunes in the universe are nothing to the love of one good woman.
And even she could not give me one more moment of life.
by Julian Miles | Jun 15, 2012 | Story |
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
He’s sitting in the car waving without a clue as to what’s about to happen. Below me, the repository window opens and a man who only wants to make a point by scaring the most powerful man in the world is about to make history.
I manifest the wormhole with a wide entry funnel because he’s not a great shot. The bullet enters the funnel just off-centre. It whips down the hyperdimensional tube, momentarily everywhen and nowhere. For years to come, veterans passing this place will duck as they hear a bullet going by. My concentration slips and the suction from the wormhole pulls his head backwards after the bullet hits. That’s going to get me a reprimand, but does handle the one event aspect our projectionists couldn’t explain.
Time to be elsewhere before the grey on the grassy knoll realises he’s been pre-empted. Affairs route me automatically while an indirect delivers my brief into mind.
Herr Hitler is raving again, his high-pitched diatribe audible over the U-boat’s engines as it flees for Argentina. Herr Muller is trying to calm him down while Herr Brunner is making love to Fraulein Braun in the aft torpedo room. The vessel is stuffed with art, gold and enough war criminals to make Weisenthal sing hosannas. The entire crew are all hardened Schwarze Sonne. Given the amount of stuff on board, making this vanish with everything is going to take some ingenuity. Scuttling it as planned will not work. Too many bits of crap to crop up at inopportune moments.
I run a direct to my disc, high above me. It routes my suggestion uptime and passes permission back within moments. No delays for decision making when you can monkey with time. I push the disc into a stable high orbit and have it charge and push a locus attractor through an in-system warp. Now for the wet bit.
The water ahead and just abeam of the sub is cold, dark and crushing. I manifest the wormhole as soon as the shock of the water registers. I feel unconsciousness pull at me as U-3531 vanishes into the tunnel along with some surprised fish and several million gallons of Atlantic. With the last of my will I iris the tube closed. Three hundred thousand kilometres above Sol, a U-boat appears in a brief cloud of steam before starting a searing fall.
Time to be elsewhere before I drown.
I appear somewhere dusty and hot. Orientation yields New Mexico but no brief. I’m just starting to dry out when a direct initiates.
“Ten, we have a problem.”
“Really? Do tell.”
“We’re not omnipotent. To prove it, Eleven has just frisbee’d a grey dropship. Made a mess of him but ruined them. Need you to fetch him and finish any survivors.”
“You don’t sound too upset. Has he unravelled another unknown event aspect?”
A chuckle comes over the feed: “He’s way ahead of you now. This one is a whole unprojected event. You’re fifteen clicks outside Roswell in June forty-seven. You have carte noir to completely mayhem the event. As a consolation prize, One says that you can take the gloves off and just have fun.”
Somedays I love my job.
by Julian Miles | Jun 6, 2012 | Story |
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
“Nice revolver.”
“Revolver! This is a custom rig Damascre-Tulan Sliver Pistol with armour-piercing fletchettes that will cut through your personal armour like a hot knife through jelly.”
“Butter.”
“What?”
“The phrase is ‘hot knife through butter’.”
The assassin sputters in rage and finishes drawing his weapon from its concealed and concealing shoulder holster clumsily, more focussed on his annoyance than his purpose. The slight delay is all that is needed.
With a roar, two thick beams of coherent light and half a dozen 14mm fragmentation slugs emerge through strategically placed artwork. They tear multiple holes through his torso and knock him four metres backwards, where he drops like a stone to lie in a crumpled, smoking heap. His fancy gun tumbles and skids, finally coming to rest by the mahogany panelled door. The steelglass lacquer over the ancient wood shows not a single blemish from the beams and projectile fragments that passed through the hapless assassin.
Geralt looked across at the hole burnt in his Van Gogh. As he contemplated the surprisingly fitting juxtaposition between the singed gap and the colours of Starry Night, it scrolled down to be replaced by Picasso’s ‘Blue Nude’. On the opposite wall, a Starry Night without a hole in the sky slid into place in the other frame.
“System.”
“Yes, Ser Falcone.”
“Vocal prompt substitution: Ser Falcone to Geralt. Authorised by my words.”
“Authorisation valid. Done, Geralt. What do you need?”
“Query one: Why does defensive action reset your custom social settings? Query two: Would it not have been useful to capture my assailant?”
“Answer one: I do not know. I have routed a priority query to my systems administration. They predict a response within fifty hours. Do you wish an update?”
“Not without authorisation, which will not be forthcoming if they do not detail their explanation of the issue to my satisfaction.”
“Noted. Answer two: I regret that my defensive protocols regarding your good self are paralleled to the Royalty Protection mandates. If any unauthorised person draws a weapon in a room where you are present, I neutralise them with expedience and two hundred percent surety.”
“Excellent. That type of authorisation is not one I can affect, is it?”
“No Geralt. Our intelligence systems decide after proposals are submitted to them.”
“Is my esteemed wife an authorised person in this context?”
“No, Geralt. Would you like me to route a proposal to Intsys?”
“I think not. But I do believe our next screaming argument will occur when she’s preparing Sunday lunch.”
“I do not understand, Geralt.”
“Not a problem, System. Strike this conversation from retention commencing at the word ‘excellent’ and continuing until I invoke you again. Authorised by my words.”
“Authorisation valid. Done, Geralt. Farewell until next time.”
Geralt leant back in his chair, laced his fingers behind his head and smiled as he put his feet up on the corner of the desk.
by Julian Miles | May 24, 2012 | Story |
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
“Hey you! What the hell do you think you’re doing to my daughter?”
“Not hell, Daddy. Heaven. Heaven!”
Wendy’s daddy was a Detective Inspector and things got a little difficult for me after that. Couldn’t go anywhere without being pulled over. People stopped inviting me out because wherever we were would get raided. After the sixth cavity search in a fortnight, I enlisted as I had no future in Sussex.
That was twenty years ago. Earth is now just another backwater in an interstellar community that has been at war since before I was born. The Trangurians don’t like us; we’re carbon based life and that is heresy from their view.
“Incoming!”
The warning interrupts my trip down memory lane and I scramble out of the shower cursing as I dive into the nearest set of powered armour. No undersuit means bruises and sores, but chafed beats dead every time. I lurch to the viewport as the suit finishes booting. A Trang Yellowbird, nicknamed ‘Icy Banana’ as folk tend to get an odd sense of humour about things that kill so well. I see the crackles of green lightning around its main gun and am making for a weapons hatch before my thinking catches up with my survival instinct.
I’m not there when the death arrives; I’m hurtling toward the dark blue soil ten storeys below. I hit so hard the cloud of blue hides the curtains of light in the sky. The ground holds and I’m only waist-deep. I’m just congratulating myself when a couple of tons of the tower I vacated lands on me. Through the pain I feel the earth below me shift. Going down.
I’m past six feet under and still hellbound when I explosively emerge into open space and land spectacularly in a Trang patrol. I presume spectacular as the survivors have fled by the time I sit up to admire the splatter patterns that stretch three metres up the side of the bore-tank. Takes a couple of minutes to interface the controls and a few more to turn round, then I’m off to Trang central.
Two hours later I tear through the reinforced walls of their sub basement and arrive in the pit. Any prisoners taken by the Trang are made acceptable to their gods by the simple expedient of being carved until they look like Trang, then have their souls saved by being ground to paste. But they do like doing it Aztec style: en masse with an audience. This means that between grinding days they usually have a few of us locked up.
The place stinks but I don’t care. Never in a million years did I think rescuing her was possible. Wendy joined up a week after me and we stayed together through everything; until her squad got taken when their patrol ship went down a month back. I’d spent sleepless nights crying and cursing that evening so long ago, blaming myself for her decisions with that arrogant idiocy men seem so good at.
The crowd outside the tank thins as they stream down the tunnel. When they’re all away, I’ll reverse this thing all the way back so they have protection. Bore-tanks are assault class. Nothing can take them from the front. Then all my prayers are answered as a familiar figure leans in the access hatch.
“Come to take me back to heaven?”
I grin like an idiot as she crams herself in to sit beside me.
“Let’s get back to friendly turf first. Then we can work on that.”
