by Julian Miles | Aug 1, 2016 | Story |
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
Across a starfield as vast as it is unexplored, two pinpricks of light crawl. Getting closer, their crawling progress is revealed to be a trick of distance. Both specks are moving at tremendous speed.
“How far, Davey?”
“Less than an AU, kid. How much less depends on how dead we want to be before the fuel runs out.”
“How much further do we need to go to outrun them?”
“Across the drift. Which we don’t have the fuel for. A fact that may be irrelevant.”
“Why?”
“We’ve picked up a close tail. One who can track us by vessel lock, not emission trail.”
“One we don’t have the fuel to shake?”
“Even if we had the fuel, the drastic manoeuvres required would attract the attention of the Roekuld, and delay us sufficiently for them to make up a lot of the head start your folks died to give us.”
“How dangerous is the close tail?”
“It’s an Urson Destroyer.”
“My mother’s people! Didn’t we have treaties with them?”
“Until the Senate tried to placate the Roekuld by reneging on them.”
“What do we do, Davey?”
“Remember, I can only advise. It’s royalty who make the decisions, kid.”
“Not really. Mum and dad were royal. They always tried to keep what they called ‘the pomp and circumstance’ away from me, at least until I got a little older.”
“That’s the problem with being Blood Royal, kid. Getting promoted usually involves heartbreak and tough decisions.”
“I’ve done the heartbreak. Anything else will be easy.”
“Then wipe your eyes, Eagle Princess of the Sunward Towers, and rise to be Queen of the Sunward Reach, with her one loyal retainer, David Knight.”
“It seems that I am in dire straits, good Knight.”
“You are, milady.”
“Then heave to and make parlay with those aboard the Urson ship. I will take their anger as fairer than the hatred of the Roekuld who slaughtered my family.”
“You do the queen thing well, kid.”
“Let’s see how short my reign is to be, Davey.”
“This is Sunward Talirand hailing the Urson Destroyer in our wake.”
“Hail to you from Destroyer Bearclaw. We note your ‘Sunward’ claim, Talirand. You have royalty on board?”
She places her hand on my wrist, then leans forward to speak clearly into the pickup: “Maliean Mar, Eagle Princess of the Sunward Towers. To whom do I speak?”
There is a pause. Then a warmer voice relies: “With regret, dear highness, we recognise and declare you to be Mar the Second, Queen of the Sunward Reach.”
I feel a tear splash onto the back of my hand.
“I suspected it would be so, Grandmother Chantrie.”
“You recognise me, Maliean? Well done.”
“We would have stopped sooner, but we thought you were chasing us.”
“No, granddaughter. We were overlaying your emission trail with ours, like the ‘Bear Follower’ in the nursery tale. The Roekuld are cowards. They will never provoke a confrontation with the Urson unless they can get someone else to do so.”
“What now, grandmother?”
“You and yours come aboard, Maliean. Then, again like the bear in the tale, let us carry you to safety. Once there, you can start to build your court-in-exile.”
Across a starfield as vast as it is unexplored, a pinprick of light hurtles. Far behind, a cluster of pinpricks mill about for a while, then turn away.
by Julian Miles | Jul 26, 2016 | Story |
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
We don’t have the technology to make the instruments to understand what they do, let alone resist. Every eleven months or so, grey column descends from space and encloses a city. Twelve hours later it lifts. The population is dissolved and non-organic surfaces are covered in a toxic sludge. All devices are flatlined and erased.
It’s eleven months since the last raid. Cities used to attempt evacuation, but the next grey column would be wide enough to encompass the bulk of the evacuee zones. Thankfully, people are very good at ignoring risks: earthquake, tornado, alien attack, it makes no difference. Shrugs are the response to direct queries. Well, shrugs and the stockpiling of weapons, to be accurate.
Just after dawn, I awoke to a twilit reality rent by screams and sirens. So I looked out the window and started sketching with permanent marker on plastic sheets.
I’ll add an approximate 12-hour count to my notes. For reference, it’s 01:00 and the sketches are done. Time to run.
02:00 The skies are filled – and I mean filled. Like a roiling, three-dimensional traffic jam comprised of vessels like Viking longboats. They are crewed by bare-chested, baton waving proto-gorillas dressed in knee-length black leggings and shiny boots.
03:00 When these raiders grab people, either in passing or by landing and rounding them up, they slap them with a stick. If it flashes red, they kill the victim. Any other colour and the person is flung onto the longship. When a victim arrives over the ship, they float down like they’re unconscious. Even if they were struggling when thrown, and even if they arrived way above the deck. When the longboat is two-dozen deep, stacked like fish frozen in a block of ice, it ascends.
04:00 Staying free takes a lot more effort than I expected. These bastards are very good at this.
05:00 For all the barbarous appearance, this is a ruthlessly efficient operation. The baton wielders are backed by fire teams. There is no hesitation. Any resistance and the baton team are out of there: the fire team razes the site. For tougher targets, the co-ordination with something high above is instantaneous. The response is not visible to me, but it melts everything in the target area.
07:00 Lorraine – a history lecturer – spotted some parallels: these are slave raids; could be out of a medieval European playbook. Pregnant women, young children and elderly or sick people are killed. Only those capable of surviving a long journey in harsh conditions are taken.
10:00 They just pulled out. Every ship rising in a single, co-ordinated pattern. Amazing to behold, for all that I want them all dead.
10:10 The EMP that just hit the ground was massive. I felt sick from the accompanying ULF wave.
10:15 The golden-hued gas turns a vibrant yellow in areas where it is particularly dense. I hear agonised screams that don’t last long.
10:30 The gas is the source of the residue. It’s nasty stuff: I’ve seen people in NBC suits keeling over.
10:40 I’m Kev. Lorraine and I are in taped containment suits inside the flash-sealed chest freezer at the back of the garage. We have oxygen for twenty-eight hours from 11:00. It would be great if you found us before I have to use the grenade as an alternative to suffocation. Of course, if we’re already dead, that damn gas is really insidious.
I don’t think there is a ‘fight’ option. Retaliate: seed every potential target with nukes on a two-hour count from column descent, with no ‘off’ option.
Good luck.
K&L.
by Julian Miles | Jul 19, 2016 | Story |
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
“My mum said that wouldn’t fly.”
She stands there, looking up at me, hands behind her back, daisy-print summer dress blowing in the hot breeze.
“Why did she say that, little lady?”
Her eyes widen, then she smiles: “Because you’re a heretic, and the airlords don’t like you.”
I burst out laughing and she flinches away, then her smile gets wider.
“Little lady, your mum is right, but they can’t take the sky from me.”
She purses her lips: “I don’t get that, mister.”
I crouch down and look her in the eye: “Just because someone doesn’t like you, or doesn’t like what you do, it doesn’t stop you doing it.”
“It doesn’t?”
I grin: “Truly. Words can only bind you if you let them.”
She looks back toward her folk’s shanty. It’s bigger than mine. But then again, it’s built to last, whereas my bivouac was built to make do.
Turning back, she brings her arms forward, swinging her teddy bear up to hug it against her chest.
“This is Mortimer. He’d like to fly in your skybird. But I can’t let him go alone.”
I sit down cross-legged and flip a leisurely salute to her bear: “Pleased t’make your acquaintance, Mortimer. I’d like to help, but your little lady friend needs her mum to come along too.”
She gasps: “Mum won’t come!”
I peer past her, then point over her shoulder: “Well, she’s got that protective streak something fierce, because she’s been watching me most days from noon ‘til teatime.”
Spinning round, she shouts: “Mum?”
A figure in a dress that matches her daughter’s stands up slowly, dusting herself off.
“Masha, didn’t I tell you to stay away from the heretic?”
“But mum, he says the airlords can’t stop him flying with words!”
I see a grin cross her face: a flash of white teeth.
“That may be, my girl, but it’ll be more than words that send him down if he tries it.”
I raise my hand: “Pardon me for interrupting, ma’am, but I should point out that this here ‘bird is an original God Eagle. If the airlords want to knock it down, they’ll need a lot more than the poxy kites they use these days.”
She strides toward me, hands on hips: “Any damn fool knows that a God Eagle can’t be flown by any but an airlord –” She stops as she realises the other truth: if you’re not an airlord, you couldn’t get a God Eagle off the ground.
“You’re an Airlord!”
“Was, ma’am, was. The God Eagle only cares about my blood, but much as my former friends can’t stop me flying, they sure can stop the privileges I enjoyed. These days I’m just Ral of the fifty-seventh.”
Masha runs to stand by her mum, looking up, eyes wide: “He says that Mortimer can fly with him if I go, but I can’t go without you. Please, mum. Mortimer really wants to fly.”
‘Mum’ looks at me: “You’ll take us for a flight?”
I smile: “I’ll fly us to another sector, if you want. Surely you’re tired of eating dust with everything?”
She grins: “I am, but another sector is a whole different conversation. Let’s take Mortimer for a flight and see where we go from there.”
“Fair enough.”
I turn toward the God Eagle, extending my hand to Masha: “Take my hand, little lady. So the skybird can see you and Mortimer are with me.”
“What about mum?”
“My ‘bird knows better than to try and stop a mother protecting her daughter.”
I hear laughter behind me.
That’s a good start.
by Julian Miles | Jul 12, 2016 | Story |
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
Cheese: the catalyst for the end of the world?
I worked for the Temporal Institute, investigating anomalies caused by our limited access to time travel. Now, everyone knows that time travel is proscribed by the Shibe, the mysterious entities who refuse to show themselves, but demonstrate an almost prescient ability to prevent mankind’s efforts to be naughty – be it big guns, rockets, bombs or time travel devices, we are not allowed access without ‘adult’ (Shibe) permission. Which we rarely get.
I’ve seen the history programmes, the mess we made in the twentieth Century and the horrorshow we made of the twenty-first. The Shibe decided that we were not going to have the chance to turn the twenty-second into our last.
The Temporal Institute was established so we could study time and the effects of time travel in a controlled manner. The bear named Causality was not to be poked. We could go back and witness, but going back to intervene was forbidden.
It was all going well until I came back with a wedge of Stilton caught in my coat. When it fell onto the floor of the changing room I nearly fainted with terror. The Shibe were very keen on making examples of transgressors – artistically painful examples that were hung in parks, so people could be sickened while wondering just how you could do that with a human body.
Nothing happened. I and my Stilton were undisturbed. After a short while, I picked it up, took it home and ate it. It was delicious.
The Shibe only allowed us temporal travel due to a quirk of causality – because we had not been born yet, we did not exist in the places we visited. Therefore, anything there that could see us, did not. ‘Causalic Invisibility’ allowed us to witness the gamut of history. Mysteries and hearsay could be clarified. But had I ruined it all?
Apparently not. I ate the cheese and the universe didn’t die. The next trip, I tried some wine. The trip after that, I came back with more cheese. Then, I discovered bacon: eating dead flesh may be taboo, but it just smelt so good. Gradually, I became an illicit sampler of the victuals of history. But only the ones I could recognise. And nothing that moved.
I was in the bedchamber of Cleopatra VII when I had to try the wine, as the ‘trysting’ I was observing suddenly involved things I had never seen, even on the erotic relief feeds. She’d given herself to Augustus, along with her retinue, and he was taking advantage in a moment probably omitted from recorded history on censorship grounds.
As the spectacle continued, I discovered that the snakes roaming her chamber were purely decorative. The wine was poisoned.
And here I lie, dying unseen in a corner of Cleopatra’s bedchamber, an invisible impossibility that will cease to exist the moment I stop breathing – or I’ll cause a paradox that will collapse reality.
I never thought I’d be hoping to be discovered, caught and executed by the Shibe.
by Julian Miles | Jul 5, 2016 | Story |
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
The tide is full of bodies and the sky is filled with lies. Sullen waves roll corpses back and forth, trailing organic tatters in varying shades of death. Above me, seagulls scream furiously at the metallic crags that obstruct their flight and deny them perches with beams of fiery death.
Earth was poisoned: blighted crops, tainted waters, acid rain. Letharn proposed colony ships. The world laughed. Then the Madagascar Quake of ’73 delivered a tsunami that left the land it covered radioactive as well as salted. While many pointed fingers at the submerged tailings of Fukashima, others turned to Letharn, prepared to discuss. When the ‘Greenflame’ fungoid moss defoliated the Amazon in a matter of months, people wheezed as the oxygen content of the atmosphere dropped by non-decimal percentages. Letharn built his first ‘Jargangil’.
His mountain-shaped behemoths were all named Jargangil, after a table-top mountain in his homeland. Jargangil I was built off the coast of Australia. II was off the coast of Wales. III arose off Los Angeles, and the game was on. A fevered gestalt of race for survival and the only competitive event that mattered. While the ships were identical from the outside, interior fitments and passenger load varied far more than advertised. Jargangil C and Jargangil M were rumoured to be elite vessels with barely twenty percent of the passenger capacity of other ships, their interiors given over to landscaping, spacious accommodations and immense stores of luxury foodstuffs.
In the end, it made no difference. Letharn’s Jargangils took on all who would (or were permitted to) leave the dying Earth and made ready for deep space. Clouds calmly drifted against silver cliffs as main drives roared to life. Sea turned to steam under spears of white-hot power, but the vessels did not lift. Drive plumes faded and steam dissipated. Silence spread as we who were left, either by choice or denial, puzzled over their lack of departure. The clouds were undisturbed.
Then a single speck fell from Jargangil LIV. That speck turned out to be a dead body, purged by Letharn’s ruthless, automated answer to graveyards: eject the dead into space.
More specks appeared and horror rained down. Sheers numbers overwhelmed attempts to manage the mass of cadavers. All communications were ignored. Thousands of mountain-sized hazards dot the skies. Rotting flesh pollutes both sea and air.
Letharn’s designers either miscalculated, or were undone by contractors cutting corners. Within seconds of the drives firing, insulation and cladding materials combusted under the transferred heat, starting chain reactions that released toxic fumes into the areas where people lay in their launch cradles. The following minutes do not bear thinking about: billions died in agony.
The Jargangils remain, devoid of life, defence systems preventing all boarding attempts. We await the near-inevitable day when experimental gravity-repulsor drives reveal their design flaws, and drop Letharn’s toxic mountains into the seas of Earth.
