by Julian Miles | Feb 26, 2018 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
I’ve shipped many things since the day I left Oktoberfeld. Some legal, many dubious, a few contraband, and nineteen wanted beings. Technically, this is my twentieth.
The job came with some unusual aspects. On a ship like mine – one of the many ‘fireflies’ that flit about the universes delivering the stuff that everybeing needs at prices everybody can afford – a fully sigilled commission was unheard of. The metre-square piece of parchment with its ribbons and wax arrived in the hands of Raine Deckham himself. The ‘Rhamphorynchus’ was being chartered to bring his brother home.
Cargo that wants a view travels in the stateroom. It has a private access to the galley along with a huge starboard-facing window siding the lounge. About as serene as this spaceship gets, because little ships are never quiet.
Raine brought a case full of peripheral noise suppressors. I didn’t know you could get them that small. Consequently, my lounge is still and silent. Disturbingly so. His words carry clearly.
“Nearly home, Doone. Mama’s done the Hazrien lamb you love. Papa picked up Lurina at the ‘port. It’s going to be the first family gathering in twenty years.”
The commission also stated ‘no monitoring’, but this is my home as well as my ship, so I left one basic view-and-listen at floor level. I’m watching now. Can’t take my eyes off it, to be truthful.
There’s a handsome man in a blue and chrome tuxedo sitting on a titanium coffin, candlelit colours almost lost in silhouette against the brightness of the planet that rises across the view. His eyes shine in the light, tears falling as they have done ever since we dropped from transit space into the Deckham system.
“You’re going to love the bower Elspin and Christopher built for you, Doone. It looks out across the Parmadan Falls, set so the evening sun turns the mist to gold, the thing you always said you missed while out amongst the stars.”
Doone Deckham might never have been notorious if he hadn’t been a hero. War turned him into a fierce leader. It also taught him about his love of killing. After the war, he couldn’t stop. A hero who won every battle except the one with the psychopath that lived inside him. That battle was finally won two galaxies and at least fifty murders away, when a Shramni veteran killed Doone as Doone killed her.
“You can rest easy, brother. The hungry dark that stalked your dreams has laid down. No more nightmares, Doone. There’ll always be abeyance candles lit.”
That explains the candles! A naked flame requirement that nearly drove Eddy, my systems tech, round the twist coding exceptions into our watch routines.
“There are no spirits of vengeance to hunt your soul, Doone. Mama wouldn’t have it. She insisted we handle all the rites.”
Which explains why the Deckhams have always paid death dues for every victim in full measure and without attempt at mitigation.
The orbit alarm chirps quietly throughout the Rhamphorynchus.
He pats the coffin.
“Rest ye, son of Deckham. The skies of home will bring renewal.”
With that, Raine stands up. As he wipes his eyes and turns away from the coffin, I catch his whispered words.
“Sleep well, little brother.”
by Julian Miles | Feb 19, 2018 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
“Everybody ready?”
“Hell, no. I want to go home.”
“I didn’t ask where you’d rather be, Andrei. I want to know if your suit is sealed so you don’t give us away.”
Muted assent follows Don’s outburst. There’s no more banter. I wriggle forwards and bring my night-eyes online. Peering at the green and grey world about me, the side screen shows the infra-red view. We’re all part of the ambient heatscape. No hotspots.
Sylvia whispers: “Down there. Ten o’clock.”
A hotspot: walking quickly, shoulders hunched. Just a sensible citizen on their way home after a late night.
Don’s words focus us: “We’re on. Watch the low sky.”
‘Low sky’ is the space between buildings. What we seek doesn’t traverse open sky, or so we think. That’s one of the things this project was set up to prove.
When you’re looking to do interesting things with biotailoring, everyone looks about and sees what niche needs a fancy bioform to fill it. From swarms of personal defence wasps to anti-drone bats, the innovation comes from looking forward for our benefit.
Fortunes are made or lost, speculating on the AB – artificial biodiversity – market. Of course, where money making is involved, risks are taken. Surprisingly, nothing disastrous had occurred. This science-cum-art works within rigid boundaries that are still being fully defined. Until then, the layman’s understanding is as good as any: you can’t diversify beyond what nature could create, or has created.
Someone took that rule to heart, then went looking in places no-one else had gone: far backwards.
Madeleine sounds excited: “There! Left of the Marksin Tower Hotel.”
It takes a moment for it to get close enough to make out, then the comm fills with wordless exclamations of awe.
Swooping round the building at the edge of our zone is a grey shape that flashes white highlights to our enhanced vision. The audio sensors prove this thing’s traveling at over forty MPH, yet quieter than an owl.
Don quietly opines: “Flying cudgel.”
As if on cue, the winged form brings its wings in and drives down in a shallow stoop. It’s doing nearly sixty when it hits the hotspot. The crunch on impact makes me shudder.
Andrei replays the strike: “Base of the skull, slightly left of the spine.”
My area of expertise: “Unconscious and/or paralyzed. Not sure body armour would have helped, either.”
The hotspot falls and is shrouded by the wings of its slayer. Audio picks up a tearing sound, followed by little noises that raise my hackles.
Sylvia’s tone betrays no emotion: “That explains the skull trauma and post-mortem throat damage. It mugs its prey for their blood.”
“Size?” Don’s always interested the threat, not the aftermath.
Madeleine’s had a chance to check Andrei’s footage.
“About a metre and a half of body, with a three-metre wingspan.”
That gets to Sylvia: “I never want to be out at night again.”
About sums it up, too. We have proof. Now we have to find the mad scientist who made this nightmare. Moths used to have mouthparts instead of a proboscis, we know that for a fact. That their fascination for light could be the vestigial remains of hunting by heat-seeking is either crazed intuition or vicious addition. Flying at the light being the remnant of their killing strike, likewise. Speculation on origins aside, the world now has what we’re calling ‘Norian Moths’. Judging from reported deaths with the same tell-tale kill marks, and the diversity of victim species, they’re already widespread and well-established.
“Bioterrorism using giant vampire stealth moths? Oh, hell no. Now can I go home?”
Don chuckles: “Put the kettle on. We’re all coming with you.”
by Julian Miles | Feb 12, 2018 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
Do you see the snow as it gently falls?
Can you feel the frost as it climbs the walls?
How do you feel now our world is gone?
Why did you leave us to carry on?
Well, ‘us’ may be a bit of a stretch, but ‘me’ is too cliché. After all, I have the critique of future readers to consider. Whatever they may be.
Excuse me. I’m Giles Rapson Drew, car salesman, stock trader, poet, husband, father, and – of late – childless widower. I’m also the sole inhabitant of Hove in East Sussex, formerly a town, currently an expanse of icy rubble on the southern coast of what used to be Great Britain.
In truth, the only things I was ever good at were writing and being a father. But the pressures of life and career made writing a secondary thing, for odd moments snatched from the month. After all, whoever made money at writing stuff if they didn’t get lucky?
A world heading for peace at last. That’s what we were told. The Moscow Accords, the Pyongyang Treaty, the Pacific Alliance; things were settling nicely.
I still don’t entirely understand what went wrong. Some lunatic I shared a bolthole with raved about ‘legacy automated systems’ left over from the Cold War: never updated and so hair-trigger they would activate even if the missiles they detected were part of a different war.
Whatever happened, it happened too fast for anyone to prepare for. On the Thursday before Christmas, Sandra took China and Grace to shop in London. When the newsflashes started, I couldn’t associate the pillars of white light and rings of fire with a place where my wife and twin daughters had been listening to carol singers and looking forward to meeting Santa. By the time I finished screaming, Europe was aflame. Whimpering, I ran through the house, pulling on coats and overboots, then hurled myself down the garden, levered the padlock off the abandoned power substation and threw myself into the gullies under the rusting machinery.
The blast obliterated Brighton and, but for our place being on the lee side of a hill, would have ended me too. As it is, I staggered out into a world I didn’t recognise and swiftly fell into a semi-feral existence that lasted for quite a while.
Since then, I’ve scavenged. I think it’s no more than three years since the world ended. I see no indication of any other outcome. To pass the time, I write. A stationer on Church Road had a storage room converted from a World War II bomb shelter. It’s got a steel door, air vents, passable drainage, and is filled with paper and pens. An army surplus store up the hill had similar but smaller facilities loaded with dried food and other survival sundries, all of which I’ve dragged here.
Outside, it’s an empty, quiet world. I see crows and foxes, but little else bar a rather aggressive variety of giant cockroach which seems to have done for the rat population and most other small creatures.
There’s a candle under an upturned flowerpot heating the room. I’m bundled in blankets and surrounded by paper: on my left, blank. To the right, written upon. I have become quite prolific.
Here I sit in this hellish survival,
Waiting for sign of humanity’s revival,
In a place that’s not big enough to hold my sorrow,
I still wish my girls would come home tomorrow.
by Julian Miles | Feb 5, 2018 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
That leaden feeling in your gut as you trudge from transport to entrance. The warmth of the lift buttons under your fingertips. Those shooting pains in your head as Maxine punctuates a story of her weekend with piercing giggles.
Your desktop serves up the application screen so slowly it loads in sections, with an irritating pause between each. The completed page seems too bright, input fields needling your eyes with piercing white light.
The rest of the office had great weekends. Cheerful conversations, loud congratulations, and the usual start-of-week complaining all meld into a roar of babbling noise that makes you wince. Through it all, the printer/copier emits despairing beeps, thirsting for toner.
Too much. You break for coffee. The percolator jug is already down to the dregs, but you wring a half cup out by shaking it for every last drop, promising yourself a fresh one as you gulp the gritty mix. That doesn’t help. Your guts spasm at the insult and you try to settle them by drinking half a carton of tepid milk.
Leaving a fresh pot brewing, you stroll back to your desk, able to cope with things by only squinting now the initial hubbub has died down. Blurrily, you note Maxine wandering off.
A sonorous belch escapes as you sit down. It tastes really bad. So bad, you wonder what the hell you ate after Saturday’s drinking binge obscured all hope of memory.
You ate a lot of sushi.
Garnished with me.
It’s too late. By the time you work out you’ve been invaded, you’ll not be running your body. That sensory turmoil indicated your nervous system was in the final stages of being subverted.
Don’t worry, Maxine is on the menu. A few slivers of me-spawn and that giggle will never bother you again. She’s gone into the server room. Why don’t we go and see if she’s feeling alright?
by Julian Miles | Jan 22, 2018 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
By the time the stubborn git drops, I’m not sure if my nose is numb from the cold or from him hitting it. Christ, what a night to be out earning. Snow up to my ankles and only a footie top under my now-torn padded jacket. Dammit, I like this jacket. Had it off a stallholder down Streatham way. Fuck me, must be over a year ago now.
Right, enough of the ‘down memory lane’ bollocks. What’s this hardcase got that he didn’t want me to have?
As my grandad loved to say, “You know when you’ve been tangoed.” Bloody hell but my ribs are giving it some. I’m going to be black and blue tomorrow.
Aye-aye, fancy phone you had, matey. My word but it’s heavy. You stashed something in it, did you?
“David, is that you?”
Was the prick on the phone when we kicked off? No? What the f-
“Hello, bystander. Has my carrier encountered an unexpected difficulty?”
Yeah: me. Hang on, ‘my carrier’?
“Just found him lying out here, miss.”
“I’m not ‘miss’, I’m Prototype Ninety-Three. Now, is David dead?”
“No. he’s breathing. Looks like he’s been mugged: his clothes are ripped and he’s bleeding.”
“Thank you for your assessment. May I have your name?”
Like hell you can. I swing my arm back for a high lob up onto the railway viaduct. That should sort-
“Throwing me away won’t help. I’ve summoned paramedics and police in addition to the armed response unit that scrambled the moment I alerted Centrex of activity I interpreted as melee.”
“Then why the questions?”
“To interrupt any murderous intent and discern your state of mind from voice stress analysis. It also allowed me to conclusively match your voice with that of the assailant.”
I was always too fond of mouthing off when fighting.
“Are you trying to keep me about ’til the plod get here?”
“From your word usage and stress levels, you don’t evaluate as being dim-witted. Delaying tactics would be useless. However, I would appreciate it if you don’t kill David or damage me. Therefore, my survival protocols allow me to offer a deal.”
What the utter fuck is this thing?
“I’m listening.”
“He has a datavault with four thousand cryptoRUP in a sheath on his left ankle. Worth a lot and, more importantly, something he cannot report stolen. By the way: you have less than three minutes before the first weapons drone arrives.”
Wait a minute.
“What’s to stop you giving my voice print to the authorities?”
“You’re going to put me back in his trouser pocket and I’ll delete the log of this incident from immediately after the alert to when I am next prompted by external query. Two minutes.”
Fuck this. I’m gone.
“Deal. I’m putting you back now.”
I grab the vault and do one. Through a fence, down an alley, over a wall, and through the grounds of the cathedral. Exactly two and a half minutes later, I’m buying a jacket to replace the torn one I shoved into a recycler at the edge of Borough Market.
My phone rings.
“Hello?”
It’s that voice again: “Thank you, Roger Cerrant of twenty-one the High Street, Balham. As Centrex has deemed you useful, Prototype Ninety-Four will arrive at your gaff – is that the correct parlance? – tomorrow morning. It will be dormant. The activation phrase is ‘Use this or die while serving eight years for robbery’.”
The line goes dead. There’s no trace of the call on my phone.
Oh, fuckin’ hell.
