by Julian Miles | Dec 18, 2014 | Story |
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
The external camera pan across a steely – if a trifle motley – flotilla of guard skiffs, arrayed before a Griffin-class Space Dreadnought painted in the eye-baffling ‘wasp-fragmentary’ colour scheme.
Voiceover: “These nights, the long hand of the law comes to the furthest territories in the form of the Space Dreadnoughts from Privateers-of-the-Line; possibly this decade’s greatest rebranding triumph, although their former peers have also rebranded them, less flatteringly, as ‘The Turncoat Company’.”
The internal camera shows an anchorwoman dressed in ‘Gypsy’ formalwear: “Privateers-of-the-Line, formerly the Cutlass fleet ‘Desperados’, ruled by Captain Jake Delahunt, have gone – in ten short years – from Galactic Most Wanted to Galactic Defenders without compare. Good evening. My name is Verdanata Lires, and tonight I bring you a special presentation from Mercantor Unlimited.”
Subtitles: ‘Formerly the crew of the Cutlass Banshee. Incorporated 3455, Alastor Cluster. Trader registry 160828130526JV’.
The external camera jump-cuts to a battered Cutlass tethered to a barren asteroid.
Voiceover: “Is this your future? Have the days of star-wolfing fallen to nights of fleeing the Turncoat Company? Take heart! We have the answer. Guaranteed improved profit-from-pillage within a stellar month!”
Subtitles: ‘Subject to non-capture and abiding by raiding guidelines as established by Captain Blackhook under the Gather-In of 2609’.
“But don’t take our word for it! Here’s Captain Durgindar of the Cutlass Cremator, leader of the ‘Unforgiven’ Cutlass fleet.”
The internal camera cuts to a cyborg whose flesh components sport marginally more gold piercings than obscene tattoos, and whose cyberware is black chrome blazoned with fluorescent skulls.
“We wuz at d’end of owa teffer.”
Subtitles: ‘We had reached the end of our patience.’
“D’ally plots dun cropped our take.”
Subtitles: ‘The planetary alliances had made raiding too risky.’
“Me ladz dun fink we go deeptime.”
Subtitles: ‘My crew were considering crossing to the Fergall Cluster in cryosleep.’
“Den softlad fro Mercata cum bord wit savin graze.”
Subtitles: ‘Then a representative from Mercantor came aboard with his revelatory device.’
“From dat day to dis, we dun mor bootee dan eva. Black ‘ook bless Mercata!”
Subtitles: ‘Since then, we have made more profit than we ever did before. We cannot recommend the new Galactic Pillaging System from Mercantor highly enough.’
The internal camera cuts back to Verdanata, whose Gypsy formalwear is now looking somewhat informal in places: “Well, that’s it for tonight, ladies and gentlebeings. This is Verdanata Lires, signing off.”
Cameras chop to black. Audio continues: “Keep your filthy graspers off of me, you tin-clawed perverts! Guardee! Get me out of here!”
by Julian Miles | Dec 10, 2014 | Story |
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
The lumen panels are set to ‘candlelight’ and the susurrus of the climate control system is muted to barely a whisper. The room is twilit, draped with banners from a hundred victories. In a depression on the floor, an ornamental pool has been reborn as a cushion- and pillow-lined nook for a wearied and bloody command couple to find a moments respite.
An indistinct figure with flaxen hair tilts a face of rare beauty to gaze up at the chiselled lines of a face that could have been hewn from granite – and would have seemed softer had it been so.
“How do I die?”
“It will be a thing of surprise and expectation, an act unforeseen, yet suddenly so obvious to those staggering with grief. ‘Such a bright soul could not last in the tawdry environs of today’, they will say.”
“Michael?”
“He will be as one felled by a mighty blow, but the need to be there for your armies will save him. Duty will ever be his salvation after you are gone.”
“Will I bring peace?”
“Alas, no. There will be a cessation of hostilities. A funeral so rare because of the theretofore unseen gathering of intergalactic luminaries. But then the recriminations will start and rattling sabres will counterpoint venomous rhetoric. The year granted by your death will be recalled as you bestowing a gift upon the troops, even in your passing.”
“What of my killer?”
“He – or more correctly, it – is a companion of doers and movers throughout history, a creature that feeds on the rare essences generated by true heroines and inspirational leaders. But all of that is merely entrée to the haut cuisine created by the storm of emotion over each notary’s death. Thus what started as happenstance has become modus operandi. It is the lover and killer of those who make mankind great.”
“Will it miss me?”
“Forever. Every slaying wreaks decade-long havoc upon its mind, for all that the ecstasy of gourmet fare thunders within. You will be sorely missed.”
“Can you protect me, as you have done so many times before?”
“To defend you would require the end of me.”
“I know my killer very well, don’t I?”
“You do.”
“I started with the wrong question, didn’t I?”
“You did.”
“When?”
“Close your eyes.”
The molecularly-aligned edges pass through sleight fields, body armour, dermal weave and titanium-laced bone with only the slightest frissance of impact. The resonance that realigns the edges is unperturbed as the weapon describes a swift reverse question mark in her heart, sundering chambers and cleaving erythrocytes.
She feels a quiver under her breast, but knows the knife is sharper than pain: death will take her before sensory trauma registers.
by Julian Miles | Dec 2, 2014 | Story |
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
He’s petrified. I can tell from the white-knuckle grip he has on his rifle, the way his eyes cannot fix on a given point for more than a few seconds. My threat scan classifies him as ‘low to negligible’. Which is a bit of a bugger as he’s one of my best.
“Johnny… Trooper Blumenthal!”
That gets his attention. He slams upright so hard I have to backhand him in the knees to stop him coming to attention – which would leave a metre of the bits he’d really regret losing sticking up into the open.
“Johnny, I know this is scary, but you have to get your fear to work with your training. Don’t worry about bravery, charging in, even shooting your weapon at an enemy. Leave that to me. I have a special op for you.”
His gaze fixes on my visor. I can see the four-metre creature I am reflected in his eyes. In fairness, I can also see the veins at the back of his eye that tell me he needs a diabetes check if he survives this. How did the medics miss that? But, more importantly, let’s concentrate on getting him to that medical.
“Johnny. You with us?”
He swallows hard. I see him consciously gather himself into the now. Good lad.
“Yes sir. I’m back.”
“Right. You see how the back of this sorry excuse for a foxhole gives you a clear field toward our rear?”
“Yes sir.”
“Scan that field. If you see one of ours pulling back, you use that heater of yours to melt a death-for-desertion clean through them. Can you do that?”
He goes white. Then his smile thins out, and he nods.
“That’s the spirit. I’ll tell you a secret, Johnny. You’re not here to fight the Bodan. You’re here to stop the others running away. I’m going to fight the Bodan. Between the two of us, we’ll have a victory, and a unit one step nearer to being veterans by nightfall.”
He looks at me quizzically.
“Each of these combat bodies costs more than the GDP of two colonies, Johnny. We can’t waste them on trainees. Every one is operated by the mortal remains of an old soldier. As one of these is equivalent to a thousand-man battlegroup with full mechanical support, we are holding the Bodan. What we need are more hardcore soldiers to pilot the next generation, and fill the occasional gaps in the ranks.”
Johnny grins: “You reckon I’ll last long enough to get me one of what you’re wearing?”
I smile, although nothing shows where Johnny can see it: “Yes. Now cover your sector, Trooper Blumenthal. I’ll be back in a while.”
by Julian Miles | Nov 21, 2014 | Story |
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
The seasonal rains have set in; bringing the battle for the planet we call Tango to a bogged-down halt. High above, the grey clouds flash blue-veined white as miniature suns blossom in orbit. The war continues across known space, committed men and women laying down their lives for a cause that became tenuous months ago.
I’m not here to contemplate the vagaries of politics. Like all hierarchies, we have our share of champions, villains, and those who simply do the best they can for the people they represent. They couldn’t do my job. I couldn’t do theirs. Neither of us would want to trade places.
“Hangman Seven, this is Gallows. What’s feeding the crows?”
I smile. Someone has a darkly appropriate sense of humour back at headquarters.
“Eight this morning. Awaiting this afternoon’s first customer. H-7 out.”
A long time ago, men in trenches never lit a third cigarette – an early form of chemical inhaler – from the same match. This was because enemy snipers would have ranged them from the first two ignitions, and the third recipient would die.
These days, all the battlefield drugs arrive by patch or spray. Nothing to betray a position. The beams from combat lasers are invisible to an unaided human eye, which is all I have. My people joined the war when the enemy decided that our homeworld was more valuable as a vast open-cast mine than a place of ancient forests and sky-piercing peaks.
For centuries uncounted, we hunted fairly. Man versus beast, intelligence our only advantage. When command found out about our far-sighted hunters, they tried – and failed – to fit us into the armoured warrior ethos they had fostered. Then a smart man asked us what we needed to kill our foe. We took body paint that hid our heat and did not run in any liquid, then learned about rifles. What they made for us are short, very accurate – and place us within range of enemy rifles. That is only fair. When we told them to let the enemy know, many regarded us as lunatics. A few nodded and smiled coldly.
Our prey is hyperaware that we are nearby. They know we have to be within range of their guns. They cannot use area devastation because of that caveat. Their initial contempt has turned to fear, because they cannot stop us. We are far better unseen hunters than their technology, or skills, can neutralise.
Forty feet away, a bored enemy watch-sniper idly vapourises a raindrop. The little puff of steam is not detectable, as far as he knows, but I see it. To honour tradition – something that has always separated us from the beasts we hunt – I wait until he does it a third time before putting a silent projectile into his nasal cavity, which explosively removes the back of his skull as it fragments.
My first for the crows of the afternoon.
by Julian Miles | Nov 12, 2014 | Story |
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
Ravella is a blighted world, riven and sundered before man ventured into space. The race or races responsible are hopefully dust as well, because the fury they vented upon this planet was breathtaking in its totality. But whoever – or whatever – held Ravella dear was not to be deterred by the apocalypse visited upon them. They adapted.
It was sheer luck that put an imaging satellite over the Gorge that day. It was a coincidence of timing and position that made everyone involved shake their heads and glance about nervously. They were puzzled by chill pangs of a supposedly long-dead thing that used to be called superstition.
On a world ravaged by winds that howled across glassy tundra that spanned whole continents, a single rift sheltered a planet’s ecosystem. Aligned so perfectly that it was illuminated right down to its depths regularly enough by sunlight, yet concealed from discovery by anything except a lone viewer high above, at a precise time and place, for only a few minutes each day. Outside of that, the Gorge was shrouded in shadow and easily discounted as another barren, mile-deep crack amongst the many.
In the Gorge, the craggy, precipitous walls were festooned with flora that hung, sprawled or clung to surfaces you would have thought impossible for anything to thrive upon. Down in the depths, a floor was swept by a swift river that whirled past dozens of islands. Each cluster of islands exhibited differing habitats. Within those habitats, creatures that could not thrive in another environment lived alongside the visitors and predators from the walls. Some species had evolved to use the walls as their hunting grounds, but they were few. The sheer scale of the place was baffling. The scope of the ecological planning involved to balance this entirely artificial, two-hundred-mile long preserve has driven experienced ecodesigners to tears of joy and frustration.
Amidst this abundance of flora and fauna, there is only one trace of those who created it. On a single island, set at the westernmost end of the Gorge, a great boulder had been sliced in two – without trace of method. On one smooth face, graven eight inches deep, is a lexicon of stunning complexity. Once translated, it gave meaning to the paragraph graven upon the opposite face.
“Let the cause and participants of the conflict be unknown. Let that which we forgot be the thing that is remembered.”
