by Julian Miles | Aug 3, 2020 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
A thousand droplets of unseen dread. The sudden transition from person to pariah. You see me wipe my eyes and tear the mask from my face with that same tissue, crumpling the lot and sending them with sure aim into a nearby bin.
Without bothering to look up to see your looks of condemnation, I pull another mask from my pocket, slip it from the wrapper and put it on. That done, I take the two steps to the bin so I can dispose of the wrapper as well.
I look about. You all look away. I turn and exit the store.
I’m a block away by the time the active component in the mask reacts to my saliva. The resulting compound combines with the one soaked into the tissue. The wrapper adds the final ingredient.
Two blocks away: I hear a scream from behind.
Three blocks away: I turn into an alley and use a tissue from a different pocket to remove mask and face. The pile they make is starting to smoke before I’ve taken three steps.
After reversing my jacket, I emerge from the other end of the alley, a cheerful smiley face mask concealing my features while the reflective weave in it ruins any attempt at facial image capture.
The autocar is waiting in the taxi bay, a private hire booked by someone who only exists for the next twelve hours, and answered by an autocar that isn’t on the company’s books.
As it takes me to the train station, I watch the news about an incident downtown. Something about a suspected gas leak at a convenience store. There are unsubstantiated rumours of it being an attack.
They won’t be confirmed before I exit the train with a different jacket and mask, and disappear into the evening of a nearby town riding another autocar that doesn’t exist, booked by a new temporary digital ghost.
Some pandemics actually walk amongst you, taking advantage of what you sacrifice in the name of a freedom you never actually had.
by Julian Miles | Jul 27, 2020 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
The walls are clad in something cheap that’s meant to look like metal. The table I’m attached to has one leg bolted to the floor. Likewise the chair, but I’m not tethered to that. The door looks like it might actually be metal, but the frame is wood and the hinges are on the inside. Whoever signed off on this ‘secure room’ needs stabbing. With something blunt. A lot.
The police sergeant sat opposite me is the first combat trained anything I’ve met in the last nineteen hours. He’s looked through the notes and is now watching the video for the second time.
“Is that the incident scene video or were they monitoring the room?”
He pauses the playback and smiles at me.
“Incident, miss. The Sunset Apartment Complex is one of the rare clean operations in this city. By clean I mean they change the laundry between guests, have a two-hour minimum on all rooms, and don’t eavesdrop.”
Back he goes to watching the video. Time passes. He watches it again. If he goes for a fourth pass, I may cry. Or kill. It’s fifty-fifty at the moment.
Putting the tablet down on the table, he points to it.
“You said you hit him once. Difficult to reconcile that with breaking both arms, nine ribs, and his jaw. What did you hit him with?”
“I said I attacked once, not hit. Completely different thing.”
He nods.
“I’m familiar with the terminology. Give me it field report style, Specialist.”
Ah-ha. Combat trained ex-officer.
“Twenty hundred hours. I was impersonating a normal woman looking for a one-night stand. The target landed his tight buns on the stool next to me and flashed a full set of Purple Devils ink. As they were the rivals of my outfit, Nighthawks, I thought I’d found a way to unwind without risk to persons or property. We had the regulation three drinks, then adjourned to Sunset Apartment 312.”
He raises a hand.
“Purple Devils being the Mars Rangers, Nighthawks the First Spacebourne?”
I nod. He gestures for me to continue.
“On our way up to the room I vetted him. Being unable to detect combat enhancements, I placed him as a stealth operator, likely Recon team: power and precision. Just what I needed.”
The hand goes up again.
“Just sketch me the intimacy.”
“I thought he was testing when he offered a fourth drink. Nearly backed off when he drank, but it had been a while since I unwound. We were both up for it until he started strangling me. That kicked me straight into active response. I attacked. He wasn’t Special anything: he broke.”
The man grins.
“I think the term is erotic asphyxiation.”
“Can’t help how my combat enhancements interpret soft action.”
He sighs.
“Not your fault you ended up with vermin.”
I nod, then can’t resist.
“Speaking of rats that shave, which one signed off on this room?”
He laughs.
“My predecessor. I’m Manuel Tegua. Formerly a Captain in the Sixth Armoured.”
“Your mob lit up Trabanth City to cover the withdrawal that got my mob decommissioned.”
“Wasn’t up for letting the turncoats kill more, no matter what the ceasefire orders said. They decommissioned me, too. With no pension, I had to get a job.”
He waves his hand, indicating this place.
“Now I get to do good with only occasional violence.”
Nothing to lose: ask once.
“Need any veteran Special Weapons types?”
He grins.
“Actually, I do. But you’ll be on probation until the caution for last night expires.”
I salute.
“Offer accepted, sir. When’s lunch?”
by Julian Miles | Jul 20, 2020 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
“Good morning. What a glorious day to be chugging through the cosmos in a scow named Cameron.”
“Fuck off, Mike.”
“No need for that, my esteemed colleague. We should revel in the sinecure we’ve been given.”
“Are you high?”
“Merely full of the joys of spring.”
“Keep your hands to yourself, then.”
The bearded roughneck chuckles as he slides into the pilot pod that has ‘Mike’ stencilled on the side.
“Do you know you’ve got a narrow worldview?”
Dan sighs and reaches up from his pilot pod to slap the bald spot on Mike’s head, then points out the vertical cockpit window.
“Yeah. It’s about a metre wide, five high, and shows me nothing but stars and spaceshit.”
“I rest my case.” Mike brings up the flight schedule.
“Well, Dan, your digital horoscope shows an improvement in mood. Care to guess?”
“Don’t keep me in suspense, dipshit.”
“We’re collecting a double load from Connecticut Orbital and heading on out to Trashteroid 42. Going to overnight there as we’re bringing a train of empties back.”
“Suzy!”
“Yes, I’m going to be drunk on my own tonight while you slave over a hot girlfriend.”
“She’s not my girlfriend! We just get along.”
Mike grins. He’s never known a couple so determined to deny they’re a couple.
Dan confirms their course and checks for any HEO traffic they could conflict with.
“Hey, Mike. I don’t think you’ll be getting drunk tonight.”
“Why not?”
“Looks like the train we’re bringing back is the Christmas and New Year overspill. So many we’re coming back with tugs fore and aft. We’re tail-end. The lead tug will be the Johnson.”
“Stacey’s going to Trashteroid 42?”
“Docking a few hours before us, according to the conflict list.”
“I say, old bean, fancy a double date?”
“Providing you promise to only show off your scars to Stacey, and only after we’ve left the room, yes.”
“Top hole, old chap.”
“Let’s not get into details.”
Mike chuckles.
“Cue up some Tygers of Pan Tang, brother. Let’s rock the rubbish all the way there.”
“Classic rock the rubbish, you mean.”
“More than merely classic. Noah was headbanging to this stuff on the Ark.”
They both laugh as the opening riff of ‘Suzie Smiled’ shakes their consoles.
“Hell yeah.”
by Julian Miles | Jul 13, 2020 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
|
After the old nations fell, the survivors formed tribes. They argued, fought, and reformed into smaller tribes, always defined by ever-shrinking differences and increased fanaticism. When a tribe reached stability, it promptly set off to find other tribes to fight. For a long time after the ‘Years of Anger’, vicious skirmishes flared up as old hatreds manifested, driven solely by learned bias – because the causes were long gone.
These days, there are few enough of us that fighting is a last resort, except when confronting cannibal tribes. Where we go from here, I do not know. This is my last diary entry, for I now believe there will be none who need written knowledge for generations to come. We have become savages.
To any who read this, I hope you do so in brighter times.
Daniel Mapmaker.
|
“You finished painting on the rocks, my Daniel?”
“It’s called ‘writing’, Martha.”
“So you keep telling me. Still don’t see why you need to capture words before the air takes them away, but you’ve always been strange.”
“But good for making and teaching children, so you keep telling me.”
She giggles.
“Mama was right about that. Said your pappy had been a right brute, and only made one to follow him. Told me to ignore what I didn’t like and take what I needed. Said you’d learn, and that you’d always do right, no matter how much you didn’t like doing it.”
“Your mama was smarter than me.”
Martha sticks her tongue out: “She said that, too.”
He smiles. Look at me now, papa. You said you’d rather teach than kill, but to have a future with humans in it, you had to be a killer before being a tutor. I said it didn’t have to be like that. You smiled and said I’d change my mind. Here I am, agreeing with you. I wonder if that afterlife you spoke of was full before you got there? A lot of people died, after all. Guess I’ll find out, one day. Until then, I have a tribe to look to.
“Mapmaker! Which way?” Edward grins and raises his hands in entreaty.
Daniel waves to his eldest and points westward. Edward nods.
“Gather yourselves! We go toward the sunset. It’ll be a long haul, but our Mapmaker knows where better land can be found. We’ll have to fight to get there, so don’t miss a chance to speak your heart to those about you. You never know who’ll be left to come to the evening campfires.”
Daniel swings his pack onto his back with a surge of pride. That’s his son. Using a decent vocabulary to effortlessly lead and inspire a hundred people who have difficulty counting past five, and no interest in learning how to.
Martha swats his backside.
“Giddy up.”
“I will get you for that later.”
She winks: “Counting on it.”
He takes a few careful steps, settling the load. Then he strides down to join the tribe. Where they’re heading for used to be called Cornwall. Papa said there was something about the weather there that would make it a good place to settle when the foraging and farming couldn’t support the number of people the tribe would eventually attract.
Hope you were right about that, papa. Otherwise I’ll be finding out about spaces in your afterlife much sooner than I’d like.
by Julian Miles | Jul 6, 2020 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
We raise our fists and give a round of hearty ‘hurrahs’ for our intrepid leader. He waves from the engine deck of his Chieftain before clambering up into the turret and taking command position at the top hatch. He brings a loud hailer up.
“My glorious armoured brigade! Today we take the fight to the barbarians of Sherwood! No more shall their primitive ways and crude technology besmirch this green and pleasant land!”
I love him, I do. Professor Lionel Ferrous, Lord of the Iron Lands, Conqueror of Blighty. That last one isn’t quite true yet, but after we’ve suppressed the ruffians in Sherwood, it’s only a quick trundle up north to reduce the Anto-9 forts to rubble. Then mopping up operations and home for tea. After that, we can petition to be allowed a final campaign: dealing with the ne’er-do-wells hiding in the wilds of Sussex.
He points ahead and the roar of our armoured brigade moving off is like a punch in the chest. We lurch forward, taking up positions in the V-shaped formation that has no less than three Chieftain steam tanks as the point of the spear. It never fails to inspire me: the genius of the Professor gave these great war machines a second lease of life, even inventing lighter armour because of the weight of the steam turbine.
There is nothing like charging into battle as part of an armoured brigade. The wind in your hair, the smoke, the noise, the joyous shouts of righteous warriors engaged in redeeming this land from the ignorant and craven.
I see a flash and a cloud of smoke in the forest. Something big enough for me to catch a glimpse of hammers into the lead Chieftain. The explosion that follows knocks the other Chieftains sideways and the shock wave rolls across us like a swinging curtain of hammers. The charge staggers. I catch my breath and pull the cord that unfurls our colours.
“For the Iron Lands!”
My shout catches the ears of a few nearby. They follow my lead. I see Professor Ferrous turn my way and raise his fist in approval. The fire that spouts from his hatch frames that pose, then he disappears in the fireball that consumes his Chieftain.
I lose my helm in the blast. Looking toward the forest, I see two blocky, turretless tanks emerge. One has a gigantic, stubby weapon that looks like some mutant pepper pot. The other is a behemoth, it’s gun barrel like some wand of doom aimed at our suddenly vulnerable ranks.
A cry from the left brings my attention to the harbinger of ruin emerging from the trees at our flank. Some relative of the behemoth, it swings it’s turret to target the remaining Chieftain. In the moment before the end begins, I see the arms emblazoned upon the slate-grey armour: Lord Morrow of Grafton! We’ve been ambushed by an alliance between Sherwood and Sussex!
These, then, are the legendary Morrowtigers. Ancient god-machines of war, released from centuries-long internment in some tunnel in far-off Polska and brought to this once-blessed isle by a man as brilliant as he is evil. There also seems to be truth in the rumours he has rediscovered engines from the Before Times, for these behemoths do not smoke, nor do their motive sources make noise.
With tears pouring down my face, I grab my loud hailer.
“Retreat! Save your souls! Retreat! We cannot face the forces of Sussex!”
Not anytime soon. But I will never forget. Professor Ferrous shall be avenged.
