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.
by Julian Miles | Oct 2, 2017 | Story |
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
The woman on screen is stern of countenance, yet there’s mischief glinting in her eyes. It makes her even more beautiful.
“Who is she?”
“Melpomene Drenaly.”
“Why I am seeing the face of an inhabitant of the planet,” he pauses to query his headware, “Bresingamen?”
“Johan Marks.”
“This is her?”
“Yes.”
The black-suited man all refer to as ‘Alef’ gazes about the room. A room so secure even the air entering it has been vetted down to a molecular level.
“So, we’ve been watching her in the hope he drops by. I presume something has gone wrong?”
Heads nod.
Alef barks: “I’d rather be informed that mournfully agreed with! My telepathy is negligible, as is my patience.”
At the far end of the table, a figure in dockworker’s overalls raises a hand.
“Twelve years ago, Johan Marks decided the ‘blackened planet’ approach to resistance was unacceptable to anyone with a conscience. He went rogue.
Various departments pursued him. The only successes were in destroying his remaining family through over-zealous actions. In a moment of clarity, Miss Drenaly was deemed off-limits as she was the only bait remaining. After losing five operatives in the next few months, senior Ranks were convinced it was only a matter of time before Johan lost the battle to rescue his girlfriend.
Five years after that, losses had risen to eighty-five. Being assigned to ‘snare guard’ on Miss Drenaly was considered a death sentence. The entire organisation purged itself of unwanted and inefficient elements. Amongst the upper Ranks, it was tacitly accepted that some losses would be good agents falling foul of vindictive politics.
In the last six years, a further thirty-four operatives have been lost. In real terms, no progress has been made toward apprehending Mister Marks since the initial pursuit.”
Alef steeples his fingers: “Commendable brevity and honesty in a report that should have ended the careers of every Rank 18 and better in this room. Including me. But, instead, we are gathered. Does anyone want to venture a guess as to the reasons for our continuance?”
A woman in a grey robe raises a finger. Alef nods.
“Something dire has occurred. Dire enough that our services are more essential than our punishment.”
Alef smiles. Several attendees pale.
“Correct. Skipping the embarrassing silence that would occur if I asked for someone to postulate, let me answer directly: Earth no longer has an Outer Territories. As of seventeen hundred hours yesterday, they declared themselves the sovereign state of ‘Newbelt’, then promptly allied with the Farbelt nations. They were warmly welcomed. Mutual defence treaties were in place before midnight.”
Looks of confusion are exchanged.
Alef sighs: “He only killed the incompetents. The rest, he recruited. We’ve been outmanoeuvred because operatives we trained engineered it. As of this morning, he’s Johan Marks, Head of Covert Operations, Newbelt. And, I have to say, he’s got a formidable and loyal team under his command.”
From somewhere on the right, a quiet voice rises: “We should terminate the Drenaly woman immediately.”
The overalled figure doesn’t even raise a hand: “I don’t think we want to provoke him any further. Besides, I’d bet she went last night.”
Alef smiles: “Only a bet, Ethan?”
There’s a laughing reply: “Yes. Johan always keeps the details of covert actions to himself. Being over here, I’m an unacceptable risk.”
Alef raises his voice over the outbreak of shouting: “Ladies and gentlemen, may I introduce Newbelt Ambassador Ethan Marks.”
Ethan raises an eyebrow in mute query.
Alef relents: “Yes, she’s gone.”
Ethan grins: “New game?”
Alef nods.
