by Julian Miles | Nov 7, 2017 | Story |
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
Funny how the roar of wind fades into the background after a while.
I loved the wind roar in my rag-top coupe. Drove that antique everywhere, pretty much spent my late teens in it, met the love of my life while driving it, and waved her goodbye from it, too. Which was fitting, as its weak brakes scared her. As trivial irritations do, the fright led to arguments that revealed bigger things; things the passion we shared couldn’t overcome.
A rogue booster rocket cuts a jagged turquoise line across the violet sky.
Ah, war wounds. The scars that proved you had been at the sharp end, and on the receiving end of it, too. NanoHeal sorted that out. Bonded to your DNA profile, it restored you to how you should be. Which was great, except for the first time. While sorting your wounds, it dealt with all the other stuff: tattoos, piercings, and every other blemish, inside or out. I can’t even get a tan. We asked if it could be programmed to exclude trophy marks like they programmed it to ignore cyberware. They replied: “That wouldn’t be cost effective.”
In eerie silence, a burning chunk about the size of a small mansion tumbles past, shedding random bits along with burnt stick figures.
Something I’m glad I missed; being on the impact side of the station when we all discovered the Euripides was a ghost ship, her crew slain by supratrans shock. Usually, that happens on entry to supralight and the ship never re-emerges. Occurrence on exit is rare and can be problematical. Supralight craft are at least the size of old Earth cruise ships. If nobody realises the problem in time and gets an emergency crew aboard, there’s going to be a big mess. In this case, the Euripides emerged closer than expected on a heading that bisected the heart of Plusidra Station. The impact hurled me through the environment field on a loading bay and here I am, imparted sufficient momentum to make orbit impossible, now freefalling from as high as you can get. Yet, I’m still glad I wasn’t on the impact side. I’m sure that was a moment of pain and fear no-one should have to endure, however briefly.
By sheer luck, my selection of cyberware means I’m not blind, liable to suffocate or pass out. I get to enjoy this ride all the way to the multicoloured desert below, where I expect to die and be buried in a spectacular spray of rainbow-hued crystals.
I can think of worse ways to go. The views are superb and the contrasts of debris against sky are quite awesome, their terrible import only enhancing the beauty.
Just in case browsing disaster investigators haven’t already guessed: this is my final diary post.
My name is Jedry Strong.
Her name was Kelly Frea-something. I hope she’s happy, out there, somewhere. For the first time ever, I’m with her on wishing for better brakes.
by Julian Miles | Oct 31, 2017 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
I land with a crunch that tells me the remaining organic ribs in my left side need replacing.
“I bet that hurt, Shields.”
Fast footsteps betray his next move. I brace, left arm tight. Sure enough, Manny lands a running kick that would have driven shards of those ribs into my lung.
“I bet that hurt, Shields.”
Manny does the silent and deadly thing, all dressed up in custom leathers. No-one had the guts to tell him he only looks sullen and silly before tonight. He’s taking it badly.
At the top of the enhanced human food chain is the bioengineered soldier. Of course, down on the streets, there are many who want that sort of power. Without the inconveniences of dedication, training, and a lifetime commitment.
A fast grab-and-throw: I take the short flight back across the street.
“I bet that hurt, Shields.”
The reason why Manny sounds like his audio’s stuck is a side effect of Doctor Clifford Lomax’s answer to a poor person’s bio-enhancement cravings: Rooster, available in syrettes that let you hop yourself up from unbalanced to crazed whenever your self-esteem needs a boost. You get super strength, super speed, super resilience, random aneurysms, and a craving for Rooster.
“Going to kill you now, Shields.”
Rooster users are tough targets, but I can usually tame ‘em. Manny’s ex-service, like me. He’s more than I can handle – on my own.
“No. You’re not.” The voice comes from a medium-tall gent in a virulent purple shirt, barefoot below spotless, razor-creased cream chinos.
“Okay, mister loud shirt, you first, then Lincoln.”
Manny makes a move so fast I can’t track it. He misses. The gent taps Manny on the shoulder.
“Try again, punk.”
Manny spins about and launches a vicious something that stops with a wet ‘snap’. His upper arm forms a right-angle. Manny screams. The gent smiles.
“Manny, meet Don.”
“My arm!”
Manny seems to be having trouble getting past his bendy humerus problem.
“Don wanted to meet you, seeing as you’ve been touting yourself as bio-enhanced. He wanted to see if you have what it takes.”
Don’s smile disappears.
“If you don’t, he’s going to take what you have.”
His moves are a blur. The impacts sound like a fast stick-on-stick rhythm. Manny’s eyes go wide while his mouth forms a perfect ‘O’. The noise stops and Manny drops, shattered in his skin
A hand grabs my collar and brings me upright, leaning against the wall I bounced off.
“Thanks, Linc. Another city closed to Lomax’s legacy.”
Don’s the real deal. Bio-enhanced from the age of fourteen. We met when he saved me from a nasty death a decade ago. Since then, we’ve helped each other out. This little to-do is the usual set-up: I do the finding and luring out, he does the stopping. Doesn’t usually hurt this much, though.
“Don’t call for at least two months.”
Don laughs: “Deal. With Manny ended, Lomax will be running again.”
“Shame I couldn’t lure him out.”
“Never a chance. He always gets a power-hungry fool like Manny to front for him. Gives him time to flee.”
“High cunning and low courage. Never a good combination.”
“Too right. But, he’s running out of cities to disappear into.”
“I’ll keep an eye out. He’s the sort who might try to double back.”
Don nods: “Appreciated. Let’s get you to hospital.”
“So you can leave ‘em your payment details and head off while I’m in surgery?”
“Affirmative. I have a renegade deserter mad doctor to hunt.”
“Next time, the ribs are on a plate, and on you.”
“Deal.”
by Julian Miles | Oct 23, 2017 | Story |
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
Jolla looks toward the setting sun: “A million light years from home and we still instinctively count ‘one’, ‘two’, ‘three’, ‘four, ‘lots’. Our territories are virtually limitless, yet our minds still consider a horizon as the end of the world.”
“I know you’re one of the smartest people ever loosed upon the universe, but do you have to be such an asshole?”
He looks across at me and smiles: “Unfortunately, my intelligence is the side effect of a modification to correct a genetic defect. My being an asshole would still be a feature even if I were as slow as you.”
I’d take a swing at him, but that would mean releasing my death grip on the finger-width ledge we dangle from.
The sun sinks behind distant mountains and the twilight is a strangely comforting shade of deep blue.
He reaches up, swaps gripping arms, and gives a one-shouldered shrug: “To be fair, I only pointed out truths.”
I shake my head: “Pointing out to a bigger force that we’re out of monitoring range, I could let slide. Subsequently cataloguing the shortcomings of the entire opposition from boss to deckhand, I can’t. The fact you’re the logical expedition leader had no influence on a group of beings who hated you for your condescension over the previous eleven months. Hell, the only reason I’m here is duty. We had a mission. Now our vessel is heading for the Free Territories, loaded with the legendary treasures of the no-longer-long-lost Corunna. If I’d been given the slightest moment to change my mind, I’d be with them. But gut reaction is what it is. My reward is to be left hanging from a precipice alongside the cause of my imminent death. Why couldn’t Handra or Marten have gotten lucky, instead of plummeting? At least they were funny.”
“Plus, you fancied them both.”
I look him straight in his perfect blue eyes: “True.”
He smiles ruefully: “Never could get interaction with slow-minds right. Even hints to the one I fancied.”
It takes me a moment to get that.
“Me?”
He closes his eyes: “Yes. I always hoped; never had the guts. So smart, so scared. So, here’s a thing. I know you’ve got a one-shot line on the back of your belt. You’re just too damn dutiful to abandon me, even though I’m to blame. Therefore, I apologise.”
He lets go.
Just like that. Asshole to saviour, but still an asshole. He’s guaranteed I’ll never forget him.
by Julian Miles | Oct 16, 2017 | Story |
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
Getting used to sleeping while your body moves is the hardest thing about exoskeletal operations. Right now, I’m tail-end Charlie in a forty-man column accompanying a trio of Big Dogs lugging the payloads for tonight’s test. Above us, a pair of Nighthawk drones sweep from flank to flank. From higher overhead, a Condor watch drone has our perimeter locked down tight.
We’re running two-and-one awakes with the remaining thirty-seven sleeping. The early all-sleeper tactics were subject to path manipulation techniques that fooled our flock behaviour guidance routines. The worst case was a pair of twenty-man teams jogging for hours into a moonless Sahara night, taking their drone support and any chance of a victory with ‘em.
“You asleep back there?”
Point Alpha, Captain Zim.
“No ma’am. Just enjoying the ride.”
There’s a guttural laugh from Sergeant Khal: Point Beta.
“Good enough, Pimsloff. Rotate in ten.”
Point and tail awakes rotate through the column every two hours. Gets a lot of ‘efficient sleeping’ done. Studies show it’s good for muscle tone but grim for joint problems. Even if you think you’re hale, a few nights of exorunning will reveal any joint weaknesses with agonising thoroughness. If that happens, you’ll quickly be transferred to a line post that suits your experience prior to ExoSkOps.
My rear-range pings quietly. I spin about, flick my suit into ‘runbackward’, take a moment to adjust to the gait, and cast about for what upset the vigilant Condor. It doesn’t take long to find it.
“Captain, we have a posse on our tail. Their point just crossed our perimeter.”
“TROOP!”
Everyone wakes.
“Pimsloff, call it.”
“They’ll be single file along that last ridge in four minutes. I call skittles.”
“Good call.”
The Big Dogs swing back and crouch, their handlers behind, targeting views synchronised and patched through to everybody’s HUD1: the upper-left display in our visors.
On the knife-edged ridge half a kilometre away, our pursuers are moving carefully, aware we’ve stopped and worried because they don’t know why.
Railgun technology is changing the dynamics of the battlefield now it’s finally shrunk to manageable sizes. The night briefly lights with fire and a chunk of metal, travelling at over eight times the speed of sound, rips across the intervening distance and tears through the lead elements of the opposition.
The survivors crouch and then get a hustle on, looking to clear the ridge before what they think is our only railgun can wind up for another shot. Their slight variances in pace string them out again. The projectile from the second railgun punishes them brutally. I see limbs spinning away into the night.
Afterwards, they take a while to regroup, avoiding the ridgeline. Which, unfortunately, is their mistake. We have three railguns because the two ‘stubbies’ – helical railguns – are here to protect the prototype. What shoots from that is a bright fireball of near-fully ionised gas. We recoil from its heatwave and see plants puff into ash as it passes. Distant, hideous screams echo as a ball of man-made hellfire disintegrates the survivors of the first two strikes, along with the topsoil they stand on.
“Fuck’s sake.” Corporal Kane has the right of it. Please gods never let me have to face off against one of these.
“Mount up, kids. Condor and the Nighthawks-”
“Should be the name of a band, Sarge.”
Levity lifts us from dwelling on the horror meted out.
“Shut it, Mackie. We have enough data. This op’s a success. Time to bug out.”
Just like that. Three shots, twenty kills, mission accomplished. We’ll be home for breakfast.
by Julian Miles | Oct 9, 2017 | Story |
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
The laboratory is filled with the sound of slow drops landing. The smell alone is enough to drive three officers back. Seeing the mess does for the next five. Officer number nine moves his torch in slow arcs, picking only edges and highlights from the sanguine layer covering everything.
On his third pass, he sees movement.
“Professor?”
“No. The mess was him. I’m Peter Luan.”
“What are you doing here?”
“I was invited. Do you have your witness app?”
“Yes.”
“Activate it. I need to get this down before it fades.”
“Your confession?”
“No, what he said before,” Peter waves a blood-covered arm about, “this.”
“Very well. Citizen, you’re about to make a legally admissible declar-”
“I know. Witness running?”
“Yes.”
“Last night, Professor Gregory Pane invited me to witness a ‘demonstration of concept’ as to why our eight years of time travel research has been without result.
I don’t know why he chose me, nor do I know why he decided to do this without a permanent record. When I arrived, he was standing by the workbench with a device resembling a bulky glove on his right hand. In answer to my queries, he offered the following statement:
‘Time travel has been a powerful desire for almost as long as it could be conceived of. Fiction has chronicled its pitfalls and paradoxes. After a lifetime of research – and knowing that an aggressive brainstem glioma will soon affect my faculties – I offer the following theory and demonstration as to why I am sure time travel is not viable.
In summary: time itself does not possess the granularity that we need for effective reference. Our detailed concepts of time are arbitrary divisions that have become finer and more numerous as our preoccupation with placing value upon every moment of our existence increases.
How can we, who ‘time travel’ in our individual perceptions of its passage, hope to grasp something that has no real measure bar day, night, and similar universal markers? Each of us has a realisation of time and the events that fill it that differs slightly from the next person. Eight billion subjective chronologies. How can a traveller choose which to use for their journey? Against that ratio of billions-to-one, no matter what is attempted, the inertia of the many overrules the single intent.
However, travelling to the future is possible, but it would be a self-destructive act. The would-be traveller tries to simultaneously reach every instance of possible time that could exist. Over eight billion tomorrows multiplied by the branching of every possibility within them. I say over eight billion because who knows just how many other things have a temporal sense sufficient to exert influence?
This is why I contend that time travel is either impossible or suicidal, depending which direction you attempt. Therefore, using this experimental gauntlet modified from the proposed Steinberg-Du accelerator, I intend to travel to tomorrow’s dawn.
If I am successful, I will probably die. However, if I fail, I’ll see you tomorrow morning and we can discuss the sudden advance in chronological transit over breakfast.’
Then he raised the glove, clenched his fist, and silently exploded. Since you’re here, I presume someone heard my incoherent yelling.” Peter looks at the officer: “End of statement.”
Forensics are still combing the scene at sun-up. As sunlight touches the uppermost windows of the lab, a hideous scream followed by the sound of a tremendous explosion temporarily deafens everyone in the room. Apart from that, both events leave no trace.
