by Julian Miles | Nov 20, 2023 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
I hold the bottle up and watch the faint shadows cast by the rising sun through it. There are still sirens in the distance. That always made us laugh. There’s never enough traffic to delay anything. We joked the sirens were to make sure the criminals left before the police arrived. That way, they were never in danger, only had to take details and issue recompense dockets.
“Just one more.”
With a grin, I pop the seal, raise the bottle, then pour it all over my face and head. Feels good. Still stings, but there’s that clean smell of spirits. It won’t stop the scent memory of burning people, but it’ll help for a little while.
Reaching out to put the empty next to its many kin on the recycling rack, I take a look about with fresh eyes. This distillery has been in the family since we arrived from Earth: nineteen generations. It’s also provided a cover for our less legal ventures.
We are – were – gangsters in the classic style: a criminal family running an empire that spanned several worlds.
I’d been aware of some friction in the ranks. The ever-present conflict between old ways and new enthusiasm, made worse by arrogant surety on both sides. Yesterday evening I found out it had gone a lot further than ever before.
As Helmut pushed me into the refuge room I never thought I’d need, I realised there were more than two factions involved in the pitched battles, and none of them were fighting to save me. I had three loyalists, and Helmut was the last.
The single-use Benthusian maglev ran from the refuge, under the homestead, through the mountains, to the distillery. There I went through a routine I’d practiced infrequently, all the while going from blind rage, through numbness, and out into this frame of mind, which I still can’t put a name to.
Cleansing myself with spirits deals with the soil of the night. Icy cold water from a hose stops me smelling like a high-rolling drunkard. After that, I put gloves on to apply the thick paste that gives me a beard: a mix of artificial hair bonded to force-grown stubble. It burns like crazy, only stopping when I apply the neutralising gel. Which is how you know it’s been cleaned off. The burning sensation is unmistakable.
With the remains of that bagged, sealed, and tucked back into the concealed cubbyhole it came from, I don a dirty uniform and wait for the morning bus.
I get nods of sympathy from the crew getting off. Night duties are never entirely legal, but the pay’s too good to refuse. People don’t like doing it, and never speak of it.
From distillery to Cumlach Spacetown is a scenic run across the valley, and gets me even further from the homestead.
By chance, there’s a cancellation on a scheduled interstellar to Figros. I take that, paying in scrip and bars like a labourer emptying his savings. As the ship lifts, I relax.
What next?
I’d been raging, determined to avenge the betrayals. Then I became uncaring. Now? I don’t kn-
Yes. I do. Helmut said it.
“This is your one chance.”
Backoro is a safe world, part of the Orcan Confederacy. It’s a long way from Figros by translight, but it’s where my family is: Trelly and the kids, Antur and Moz. For years I’ve only stolen a month each year to be with them, under the guise of surveying off-planet holdings.
My one chance… Yes.
What next?
I’m going home.
by Julian Miles | Nov 13, 2023 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
“You stabbed me with a corkscrew.”
Gabby turns with a look of wide-eyed innocence.
“You told me to do a convincing betrayal thing if they came for us.”
I take the clean pad she offers and switch it for the blood-soaked one I peel away from the gouge in my left shoulder.
“I meant take a swing with something.”
“How would that have been safer?”
“Easier to turn into a move that toppled us off the balcony. The taser-induced spasm I faked was pushing credibility.”
“It worked, didn’t it? We got away.”
I sigh.
“Yes. I suppose this trench dug in me is a cheap tariff.”
She lightly punches my other shoulder.
“It’s a good thing. You need toughening up.”
“Topping up, you mean. I’m running about a litre light.”
“Yeah, you’re quite the bleeder. I bet witnesses were fainting and hurling all over the place.”
“Try it yourself next time. All you did was get-”
“Shot.”
I grab her wrist.
“What?”
“I got shot. If it hadn’t been for you making us jig about, I reckon it’d have done me in. As is, it only skinned my ribs.”
They went for her instead of me… Why? Oh yes: because the disavowed fifth daughter of a disgraced baron is still elite, and noble kills get a bounty from the Exiled Court.
“Then thanks for saving my life. I expected to get gunned down tonight. Even had my rear plate on, ready for a sneaky one in the back.”
Gabby nods.
“Shot came from behind you, sure enough.”
That’s a relief. The problem with cunning plans is there are usually a lot of moving parts, and many of them are supposedly sentient beings. Anticipating what greed, stupidity or madness may add to each scenario is a dangerously inaccurate art.
I look about.
“This is not the spaceship we paid a fortune for.”
“They robbed us.”
“Bastards. But we’re not on the intercontinental express, either.”
“The same bastards ratted us out, collected the reward, and left.”
“Rich, but still bastards. We need to go and kill them. But first: where are we?”
“Inside a precious livestock container on its way to Glockenspiel. Officially, we’re prize heifers.”
“Moo. How did you-?”
“My family’s ruined, but the mechanisms we had in place to save ourselves – from everything except daddy becoming a serial killer – remain. We set it all up to be untraceable by the Interstellar Bureau of Enforcement, and planetary homicide investigators are nowhere near as good. After they found the concealed laboratory and that awful collection of acid-etched skulls, nobody gave a second thought to daddy possibly having more conventional hidden assets.”
I put a finger under her chin and gently raise her head.
“You aren’t disavowed, nor fifth daughter, are you?”
Gabby gestures to her dishevelment.
“This is who I should be.”
She grins.
“Quite honestly, I thought my addiction to artisan coffee would give me away. You’re right. I’m not Gabriella. I’m Gabija.”
“Heiress to the fallen house of Serrende. What’s on Glockenspiel, Gabby?”
“A Varangian-Class yacht. If that’s not available, there are more than enough stashed valuables to buy something else. We’ll have to kill to collect, but not always, and nobody essential.”
Varangian… Basically a compact space battle cruiser with every luxury built-in.
“I could be persuaded to go shopping anyway. We do need a new crew.”
“I knew I liked something about you.”
“My roguish charm?”
She bursts out laughing.
“No, idiot. You love violent fun. So do I.”
The lady isn’t wrong.
“That’s why we’re corsairs.”
“Mayhem, murder, and money.”
“With extra mayhem.”
“Oh yes.”
by Julian Miles | Nov 6, 2023 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
The Achrifendil fought us to a standstill so many times. From star systems down to lonely hilltops, they fought like we could only dream of being: ferocious, honourable, truly legendary at times.
What we did in frustrated response was infamous, vicious, and devoid of honour.
To this day I can feel the shrinking awe I felt on first seeing their final stronghold: it was a gigantic ring structure thirty kilometres in diameter. Faced with it, our tacticians calculated that to assail its walls and clear it bastion by bastion, room by room, would cost us thousands of casualties.
So we broke a twenty-decade oath to Emil Hirsch and turned one of the FTL drives he invented into a warp weapon. We set it down dead centre, and watched a tornado of translucent grey consume the place.
Everyone within a thousand kilometres felt a wave of debilitating terror. People dropped, catatonic or screaming. Then it stopped, like a switch had been thrown. The warp effect blinked out.
I led the only expedition to ground zero, picking our way through crumbling cadavers. Many were suspiciously small. Toys and tomes by far outnumbered weapons. We found their fighters, dressed in armour, adorned with banners and trophies, their equipment clean and charged. They’d been ready to face foes who chose battle over indiscriminate slaughter.
In a chamber carved from purple crystal we found it. We knew it was a religious relic, having come across smaller examples on other worlds we’d conquered. But this one was made from a meteorite. We still can’t identify all the metals that comprise it.
Unlike every other one we’d come across, this was written in Terran. In shame and respect, the rest of this document I give over to the words of an unknown, and undoubtedly warp-killed, Achrifendil.
I who set this bane am my father’s pride and my mother’s hope. I too am my people’s rage, and my own despair. Never before you had I seen a race that wars with such little care. Planets, lives, stars – it matters not what you destroy, what sacrifices you make, what ills you inflict, so long as you claim that ephemeral thing you name ‘victory’.
We have no equivalent. The word we use, ‘creszad’, translates as ‘mutual realisation of futility’. When we make war, it is done reluctantly. An embarrassing last resort that all involved seek to forget as swiftly as possible – while always recording the circumstances that led to the failure, so they may never be repeated.
We denied you access to one planet. In response, you began an invasion of our entire territory that proved to be unstoppable. Our civilisation has been destroyed by gleeful thugs. It is beyond comprehension.
All we can do is fight on regardless, because it has become clear that, win or lose, we are doomed.
To be reading this, you will have conquered Raetelmuh, an edifice comprising twenty-seven temples grown together while remaining sacrosanct for seventeen hundred years. Before it existed, we were warring tribes. From founding to your arrival, it never knew bloodshed.
Habradulin, the one who brought the tribes before the Star That Fell – which I have reworked to make the bane you now read – stopped a thousand years of strife with these words –
“You who claim to be mighty, that seek to put your mark upon histories yet to be told, there is one truth you must abide: destruction does not magnify deeds, for ashes need no temples”.
This bane I now set upon you all: generations of futility and failure, until not even ashes remain.
by Julian Miles | Oct 23, 2023 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
I look back as the car accelerates away. She’s standing there under the streetlight, perfect, one hand raised in tentative farewell, the box I gave her tucked under her other arm. Then pa takes a hard right and she disappears from view – along with the world – as I’m thrown sideways to brain myself on the chest of drawers crammed in next to me.
By the time I come round, we’re parked up somewhere. Pa is standing over me having a shouting match with a group of armed thugs. Which is just like him. Standing there with his opinion-emphasising finger prodding towards them as he alternates ranting with taking swigs from the can in his other hand.
“Damnation. Take the boy, then. Not like he’s useful, bein’ set on settlin’ down to be a crumb. I can always make me another. Maybe use the skank he was sweet on. Now there’s an idea.”
Something rises inside me. I sit up.
“I know you don’t know me, but do me a favour and save the girl. Shoot this prick and I’ll owe you.”
Pa looks down at me in angry surprise as the thugs burst out laughing. Then something roars from the shadows and my father’s blood rains down on me.
“I will take your service in fair payment for such a request.”
The men back off as a Benthusian ambulates into view. No cloak, six arms walking, two arms about a weapon like I’ve never seen.
The creature turns to the huddled men.
“We were to haggle over crew. One moment.”
It turns to me.
“Can you cook?”
I’m so far out of my d-
“Maisie can.”
Part of me is paddling hard.
“The girl you defended?”
Nodding is all I can manage.
“Is she a good cook?”
“Her mother runs a cake shop, her father a restaurant.”
“Will she want to travel the stars having adventures in rough company?”
One of the thugs steps out the huddle.
“Oi. Tentacle tits. We doing business o-”
The horror weapon roars even louder. The huddle of thugs become mist.
“Business is now concluded. Tell me, young man. What’s your name?”
“Carver.”
“I’m Val. As per the roamers of my kind, there are also titles and such, but between us, let’s keep it informal. If anyone should ask, I assisted you after your father was shot by brigands. Now, do you need anything from the vehicle?”
“No. What little I value is back with Maisie.”
“Then back we shall go.”
Maisie comes running out before the ship settles on the road. I slide down the boarding rod and am ready to catch her as she hurtles into my arms.
“You stole it?”
I shake my head. Her eyes go wide as Val swings down the rod, then taps it so it extrudes bars, becoming a ladder.
“This young man saved you tonight, just as I saved him. He’s now taken service with me. I mentioned I’m in need of a good cook. He said he knew one, but didn’t know if she’d abandon everything to fly away with him for many adventures.”
She runs to her parents. There’s a hurried conversation, then the women rush indoors. Mister Marsh approaches.
“You look after my daughter like you always have, Carver.”
“I will, sir. That or die trying.”
He nods in satisfaction, nods to Val, and walks back into the house. Unshakable, as usual.
Minutes later, Maisie charges back carrying my box and a bulging holdall.
She grins at Val.
“We’re ready to upship, Captain.”
Val ambulates back up.
“So it seems. Let’s go.”
by Julian Miles | Oct 16, 2023 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
There are naked angels riding our missiles down, using their wide wings to override delicate guidance systems by brute force. Distant explosions show that, yet again, we’re going to kill more friends than foes. Actually, those explosions-
“Charly Four, where are you, over?”
“Heya, Topside. Just watching the latest episode of Dances With Missiles. It’s sure to be ratings smash, over.”
“Charly Four, you’re not amusing. New orders: shoot the aliens off our missiles, over.”
Of course we shoot down our own ordnance. Good plan.
“How’s that going for the rest of the flight, Topside? Over.”
“You’re it for Charly Flight, Four. Sorry about that, over.”
“So our sainted Commodores want us to die shooting down missiles because they won’t listen, despite every bastard bombardment getting redirected to blow up our own? Over.”
“Can’t comment on that, Charly Four. It’s a good day. Every hit has taken out a bogey, and some pilots managed to bail out, over.”
Which reminds me.
“How do we know a bogey got downed, Topside? Is there a cloud of singed feathers twirling in the wind? Over.”
“You’re still not amusing, Charly Four. Weaklings like you are why this offensive has stalled. Get on with your duties and stop chatting. Over and out.”
Different voice. Could I have just been graced by one of our beloved Commodores?
There’s a knock on my canopy. Oh, poot. I slowly turn my head to look that way, keeping my hands steady on the sticks. No sudden moves.
What looks like a turquoise-haired teenager sporting auburn freckles, no nipples, and eagle-ish wings with a span wider than I can take in points at something inside my plane. I look down, trying to work out…
I look up and shout: “Ejector seat?”
The apparition crouching on my wing nods enthusiastically, pantomiming me punching out.
“Eject or go down with the plane?”
Another nod.
Nice of them to offer a choice. Okay. Live to snark another day.
“Topside, Topside, got a pair of them going at my wings. I’m bailing out. Co-ordinates are-”
The figure taps the canopy and points behind, nodding urgently, eyes wide. Surely not? Only one way to find out.
“-seven four cross three two, tactical grid nine.”
Which is about two klicks behind me, over that open ground I saw.
I kill my comms, wriggle out of my harness, and pop the canopy.
“What now?”
My hitcher leaps away, shouting: “Fly, mannish, fly.”
More of a controlled fall – I punch the eject panel.
A while later I come back to thinking, and find myself hanging under the parachute. Looking about, I see my seat being carried off by my hitcher while two more alien angels do slow circuits about me.
Shortly before I hit the trees, my hitcher comes hurtling back. The three of them manoeuvre me to drop neatly through a gap in the canopy.
I look back the way I came just in time to see a skylance obliterate the area I said I’d be landing in. So that’s what those explosions were! Well I’ll be…
Betrayed.
Being distracted means I clown up the landing, dislocating both ankles and a knee. I grab the painkiller from my medpack and give myself a shot in each leg. As I slump back in relief, a group of people, some in familiar uniform, storm into the clearing.
Uniforms might be familiar, but the lack of insignia isn’t. Gee, let me guess. More betrayed?
I raise a hand.
“We fighting angels or commodores?”
“Commodores.”
So be it. Cheeky bastards tried to kill me.
“I’m in.”
