by Julian Miles | Aug 8, 2022 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
There’s a queue of hopefuls outside. I didn’t allow for them. Do I tag on or what? Barely started and I hit a stumbling block.
“Ambassador Meselkis! I didn’t think you’d be able to join us!”
A glittering, immaculate form swoops down on me. I smile, giving a deprecating wave.
“I didn’t want to cause a fuss.”
“Nonsense! Follow the hoverbird. We’ll have you alongside your daughter in no time at all. It’s such a delight to have two generations of your noble line in attendance.”
Daughter? She’s meant to be on the other side of Quadrant Nine – with her father!
I zoom my eyes: she looks less than delighted to see me approaching. But, by the time we’re in normal range, she’s all smiles, shrieking delightedly and throwing herself at me.
“Daddy! You made it after all.”
The psychic lance that follows would render even a mind-guarded politician helpless.
“Your mother wanted me to remind you of something, Tona. Which gave me the excuse I needed to duck my duties and attend.”
A second, stronger lance fails to penetrate, but manages to make my shield ripple.
“Ooh. Secrets too rich for communicator webs? Do tell.”
I lean in, angling my head so only she can hear, and no-one can read my lips.
“If you could take a break from trying to turn my brain off, we might be able to help each other.”
She leans back and winks.
“For real? Better go deal with that before we party.”
We head off to one side, passing through a tall door into a long, deserted corridor. The door closes. I extend my hand.
“Taylor. Infiltrator. Feyrulanian Ops.”
She shakes it.
“Cassandra. Thief. Self-employed.”
Unexpected, but workable.
“I’m here for a data store. You?”
She smiles.
“Assorted valuables. In the vault behind the silver eagle statue in the library.”
Exactly where I’m headed, and no conflict of targets.
“How were you intending to defeat the security?”
“Stun spray the guards, then use a valid access code, followed by a selection of saliva wipes as I couldn’t get biometrics. Hoping to suss out the right blend before the console times out.”
“I intended to stun dart the guards, use a verified thumbprint, then a code cracker as saliva mixing takes too long. Hoping to get the right combination before the console times out.”
She laughs.
“My excuse for leaving early was my father calling me away.”
I can’t help chuckling: “Mine was having to rush off because my daughter’s been taken ill.”
Cassandra gestures towards the gathering.
“How about we raid the vault, rejoin the party, then exit with the crowd when the fire alarms go off because of a big fire in the library?”
I nod.
“I, being the ambassador, have a limo on call. The chauffeur is one of my team. She’ll like you. You’re her kind of crazy.”
She winks.
“Shall we go steal stuff, dad?”
“Be rude not to, kiddo.”
We dive into the back of the limousine as a burning pages drift down across the plaza.
Dix chuckles.
“You overdid the blaze again, chief.”
She points to Cassandra: “Getting a date while on mission is a first, though.”
Cassandra waves dismissively.
“Don’t mind me, I’m just hitching a ride.”
I grin at her.
“Where to?”
She grins right back: “Drop me anywhere north of the old aqueduct. I can disappear under my own power from there.”
Given the careful selection and probable value of what she stole, I’ve no doubt she’ll make a clean getaway.
“North of the old aqueduct it is. Dix? Go.”
“Sir.”
by Julian Miles | Aug 1, 2022 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
Damn them. They make you envious, make you hate yourself, your life, every breathing minute of your existence. I hated them, but it got me thinking.
How pretty is too pretty? There has to be a threshold. Under it, you’re plain or acceptably good looking. Over it, you’re a walking insult.
Insult to what?
That’s where it all opened up to me. Being pretty isn’t just about genetics – okay, they help. But the truly enraging pretty things work hard at their annoying lives. Self-indulgence, self-denial, discipline, they have it all. Even the ones without wealth are easy to spot. They work all the time to look good. Not to live. No. They just exist to make others feel bad about themselves. No purpose beyond being things for the less fortunate to aspire to.
I’ve always been good at mathematics, and my programming skills are adequate. So I sat down and wrote myself a program. Tried to make a name that would be an acronym of ‘pretty’, but gave up. Named it DEADPRETTY – and that’s when the big plan started.
A world without pretty people. Just average types getting by as we always do.
That fired me up. I spent eight years taking DEADPRETTY from basic media scanning to full profiling with illegal privileged access. For that, I got a job with the government infotech division. Read-only access with no data withdrawal was easy to arrange and conceal. I also upgraded a few things. Got promoted a couple of times. But the pretty people still grated on me.
The transfer to Janus Habitat got me where I wanted: an environment where I could stage a controlled test. Then came my first real problem: how to kill lots of people effectively?
That took me a while. In the end, I went for a two-stage process: the first makes all the people available for killing. The second sorts the pretty from those who will survive.
DEADPRETTY is my opus. It reviews a person from birth to now, evaluating every little thing they have, did, or do. After that, it calculates how pretty they are. That stumped me for a while, but in the end, a percentage was easiest: one hundred percent being the perfect pretty thing who has everything, is physically flawless, and possesses a mind able to perpetuate the crime of their existence. Most people fall in the forty to sixty percent range. For this test, I set the threshold to seventy-five.
At midnight I set the program to execute. It took complete control of the habitat in less than ten minutes. Within an hour, everybody except me was unconscious.
The assessment phase is taking longer than expected. I only have a nineteen-hour window before the next ship docks. Which is why I’m doing this, of course: to make this viable. Reprogramming the evaluation criteria is fiddly, but the predicted completion time falls to under eighteen hours.
Damn them. They even look pretty when dead! Arrayed in their gaudy clothes across the walkways and parks of Janus Habitat, their colours picked out by the intensity of the night lighting. From my drone view, they look like jewellery scattered across the ground. Beautifully irritating.
A needle stabs into the back of my neck. No! How did I…? My fingers fumble across the control boards. As my head slams down on the console, I see my life laid out on the screens. Someone’s comment is highlighted: ‘a workaholic who seems to hate everything about himself’.
Damn the pretty things. Damn them all. I never allowed for them being infectious.
by Julian Miles | Jul 25, 2022 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
Of all the things I loathed while growing up, learning that kept me indoors and sat down was highest on the list. Consequently, I became a superlative athlete with appalling academic skills. If it wasn’t for my never-admitted abject fear of my mother’s wrath, I’d probably not even have bothered with the basics.
It’s a combination that set me up for military service, like my father before me. Mother said his father had been a soldier too. I looked her in the eyes and promised to never father a child anywhere that I might need or have to leave. So, when the space army offered me enrolment in Special Projects Division, one of the things that decided me was the mandatory sterilisation.
“Bantal! Bantal!”
At the cry for assistance, I look up from my notebook to see Sergeant Jevnis being carried in. Carefully putting the book on my private shelf – mother would be delighted to see me do that – I rise to see what’s befallen our oldest team member.
The octopus/bear hybrid troopers place him down with a care made possible by having four upper limbs apiece. They then step back and salute.
“Shon kora, Troopers. Gothni.”
Reassured, they sprint from the bivouac to return to their unit as instructed. Myself, Jevnis, Helene, and Taranys are the four Specialists assigned to this world. The hybrids were fast-bred here for combat, and regard anything with a lifespan longer than ten years as holy oracles.
“Sorry, Geelo. Didn’t turn fast enough.”
I sluice the half-metre slash. Bone and cerametal articulation are visible at the bottom.
“Did you kill the chancy bolnu?”
I like that local word. Carries all the weight of every scathing nickname you can think of, and combines it with a deep respect for devastating martial skill and fearless, stubborn courage.
“Beheaded it as I went down.”
For a monster with three heads, any one of which can ‘pilot’ the body, that’s the sort of move that causes the hybrids to revere us.
“For once, they were right to bring you to me.”
Due to their reverence for our lifespan and combat abilities, the hybrids – I must come up with a name for them – tend to bring us all of their problems, no matter how trivial. Which is why these sorts of duty tours are often referred to as ‘combat kindergarten’.
“Monkel threw a fit at the sight of me. Made the kids enthusiastic about getting me here.”
Monkel’s one of the crab/wolverine hybrids we brought along from Cerus 9 – which reminds me: I still need to name them. Some hybrids are too good to leave for recycling. We scoop them up, extend their lifespans, and build cadres of deadly monsters. But, no matter how much we educate them, their reverence never fades completely.
“Okay, shut down your torso pain feeds.”
He chuckles.
“You think I haven’t done that already? I’m not as tough as you.”
Our healing is incredible, but eccentric. A wound like this will heal perfectly in about three days, but will not close. To get it right, it needs a little help. I pull out my needle and thread, cut myself a two-metre length and double it through the eye.
“Going right to left. Grab the tail, will you?”
Jevnis pinches the ends of the thread between the thumbs of his right hand. I use my right hand to press the wound closed, then start stitching.
I can hear mother laughing every time I do this. But I like to think she’d be proud.
by Julian Miles | Jul 18, 2022 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
I staggered from the wreck of the Templeton stark naked. I’d been submerged in a sensory womb, enjoying some virtual sports with colleagues from C-Shift, when all three dropped offline. I wasn’t to know their side of the ship had been torn asunder by a rogue asteroid. While I tried multiple options to reconnect, the Templeton hurtled out of control, rammed through the escort corvette Wiltshire, scorched itself featureless entering the atmosphere of Velomere, and carved a trench twenty kilometres long into the largest continent.
There isn’t a description for my shock when I exited the womb – convinced I’d done something wrong because of having to use the emergency manual release – and found myself standing in half a room, gazing out at burning forest as a wave of sensory-enhancement gel sluiced across the blackened floor and out across the ground beyond.
My attention lingered momentarily on the verdant hills I could see between clouds of smoke and steam, then the needs of the moment struck me. A childhood of foraging and making do surged back into mind. I grew up on Atalus, a backwater world that deliberately cleaves to a low-tech way of life.
My parents taught me to farm, forage, hunt if needs be, and the joy in making and repairing. I’d thought it all useless after I ventured off-planet. Turns out it was another win for the ‘just in case’ school of learning.
Four days later the survivors of the Wiltshire followed the smoke of my fire to the makeshift camp I’d established to house the dying survivors of the Templeton. The womb had saved me from a brutal battering and lingering death. All I could do was make twenty people comfortable. Those from the Wiltshire were in worse state, but only from the privations of the trek to reach me. Their conventional upbringing had left them unprepared for offline survival.
While their medical orderly tends to the dying, and the few who might now survive, I face the other nine survivors. My father’s words come to me, back from the first day he led me out into the wilds and watched while I tried to make head or tail of what to do first.
“Us human’s aren’t so good without our tools. We don’t react properly. Something that could be used as a weapon is comforting when you find yourself troubled and in the wilds. Without it, you’re instinctively on the defensive. You might not need to be that way, but your thinking has already changed. It might not be entirely detrimental, either, but every advantage counts.”
I point at the ground, carpeted with all the detritus a forest sheds.
“You’ll be collecting wood – or its equivalent here – for fires and to make shelter. Somewhere along the way you’ll come across a chunk that’s a little too big for one purpose, too small for another, but sits comfortably in your hand. Keep it. It might be useful, might even serve as a weapon – until you can upgrade to a suitable rock.” I grin. “More importantly, it feels good.”
Gatsbul shakes his head: “Pick up a stick? That’s your Atalunian survival wisdom?”
Yallit turns to him: “I think he means to be on the lookout for potentially useful things while foraging, and not limit ourselves to specific targets.”
Edrin nods: “The moral is that intelligence and tools will keep us going.”
Two more interpretations. There isn’t a correct one. That’s the idea.
Like my father said: “Give survivors a purpose, and something to think on. Both keep hopelessness at bay”.
by Julian Miles | Jul 11, 2022 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
The tennis-court sized office is lit like a summer afternoon. Everything within is red, but each item is a different shade.
“You must tell me who makes those soft ownership collars for you. I’ve only seen that shade of purple once before.”
Rooney turns to meet the six-eyed gaze of Tokok. Courtesies taken care of, the grey and mauve spider-mantis noble unwinds its five-metre body from the undoubtedly painful crouch necessary to be at eye level with a human.
“We call them ties, Tokok. Would you like some?”
He’d got fifty, part of a bulk salvage acquisition.
“Could you get me twenty? Laktik will be in a frightful rage over my staff wearing her bridal colours as ownership apparel.”
“I’ll send thirty. Her rage might damage some.”
“Thoughtful of you. Would a kilo of green rocks be acceptable?”
Rooney keeps his expression neutral. The Doktup come from a gem world: ‘coloured rocks’ like emeralds mean nothing to them.
“Entirely.”
“This trade is completed.”
He sits in the only piece of human-sized furniture in the office.
“I presume you called about something a little more serious than ties, Tokok?”
The monster waves it’s fighting pincers about: an expression of great mirth.
“Dressing ones staff correctly is terribly serious, dear Rooney. But, in this case, your insight is correct… I have received a complaint.”
“How did that happen?”
“The human female,” Tokok checks a nearby screen, “Wendie Smith, identifier NKH22492, insisted the problem be escalated to the highest level. My staff understand humans assigned here are to be treated on par with full-fledged Notaries of Doktup like myself. Each passed the complaint to their senior, who spoke to this Wendie, then passed the complaint to their senior. I wished to talk with you before speaking to her.”
Rooney pulls out a datapad and looks her up, then does a double-take. 27 complaints against retail staff this year? It’s only the 23rd February!
“When will you be calling her?”
“I couldn’t treat her with such disrespect. She is in reception.”
“Tokok, would it be acceptable if I accompanied you, and handled the opening discussion?”
The flesh-eating predator sags back into its chair in relief.
“Thank you, Rooney. She is apparently quite strident.”
Funny how the screams of captives being dismembered doesn’t disturb them, but being shouted at stresses them out.
“One thing, Tokok? Please come down without holographic disguise. I think the situation will be swiftly resolved when Wendie realises she faces a Notary of Doktup.”
“I will accept your guidance.”
Rooney smiles. Doktup look like upright-walking cartoonish locusts with their disguise fields on. Plus, the ones who serve are smaller: they don’t have the dietary advantages of Notaries.
“I’ve been waiting over an hour! The rudeness of these Dock Tops! Call this service? Hah! This really isn’t good enough! These aliens don’t understand when you order a triple-syrup mocha with marshmallows and sprinkles it has to come in a jumbo cup or the froth leaks out! They ruined my skirt! I expect the insect who served me to be – Sweet Barnabus! It’s a monster! Who let it in? Get it away from me! Help! Help!”
The outside door swings wildly in the wake of her exit.
Tokok looks down at me.
“Does a screaming retreat mean the same on your worlds as it does on ours?”
“You can’t chase her home and eat the whole clan.”
“Sure?”
“Absolutely. But, it wouldn’t be right to ask any Doktup to engage with one so blatantly defeated. Instruct your staff to forward any further calls to me.”
“Thoughtful of you, again. Many thanks.”
