by Roi R. Czechvala | Dec 24, 2010 | Story
Author : Roi R. Czechvala, Staff Writer
Tesla shielding is a magnificent thing. Invented in the early Twentieth by the crackpot Serbian inventor Nicola Tesla, it absorbs tremendous amounts of energy harmlessly. A suit sized generator can withstand several plasma bursts or hundreds of micro meteor hits before the unit is overloaded. But they don’t do well against slow moving, low energy objects, such as an errant spanner, a lump of ore accidentally dislodged or … a bullet.
I was on an infrequent visit dirtside. I had only been back to Mars three times in twenty years. Twice for funerals. I don’t know why, I can’t raise the dead… too expensive.
This time was business. I had come in person to sign a contract with Belt Foundries Amalgamated for a massive find. I had to beat Dieter “Gritty” Schmidt to file my claim. The Sonuvabitch had been jumping me for the past ten years. I was damned if I’d let him get this one.
After filing, I wandered into an antique shop. Knives are handy when prospecting and I could always find a cheap supply at these old junk shops. I was sorting through a tray of rusty blades when an object on a nearby shelf caught my eye.
“What the hell is that,” I asked, stabbing a grimy finger at the thing. It was roughly shaped like a blaster, but looked metallic.
“This,” said the pawnbroker pulling the object out as if it were the Holy Grail itself, “is a .357 Colt Python. In the parlance of the time, a “GUN”.
I took the piece. It was damned heavy for a weapon. “Stainless steel,” he said, reading my mind.
“Where’s the power supply?”
“There isn’t one. It’s a chemical reaction weapon.”
“No Shit. So a personal T field…”
“Won’t even slow the projectile down.”
“How much,” I grinned.
I returned to my claim via a rather circuitous route. I came in out of Jupiter so the gas giant’s radiation would hide my ships signature. Sure enough, there was Gritty’s ship and there was Gritty nosing around my claim. I opened a broadband link.
“Hey asshole, what the hell are you doing poking’ around my ‘roid.”
“Hello Mike. Nothing wrong with checking out a lucrative prospect is there?”
“You know damn well it’s mine. I already filed. Look it up. It’s posted.”
“I was just being neighbourly. Just thought I’d stop by and see if you needed a hand.”
I popped out of the airlock and blasted his ship a couple of times with my plazer. That would get his attention.
“What, the hell…?”
Sure enough, he pulled his plazer and drew down on me. Just for fun, I popped his head with a quick burst. His T field held, but it sure pissed him off. He launched a string of profanities and let me have it several times with his own plazer, expectin’ me to turn tail for my ship. I stood my ground and pulled out my antique Python, levelling it at him.
“What the hell is your major malfunction boy?”
“Just this,” I said, and unloaded all six rounds into his suited figure. I watched the delicate ballet as his body spun, issuing a plume of scarlet from his breached suit. I watched his body became smaller and smaller as it drifted away from me. Then it hit me. In my haste for revenge, I hadn’t secured a tether.
A quick thought ran through my mind, “For every action…”
“SON OF A BITCH… If anybody ever hears this transmission, I have one thing to say. ‘NEWTON’S A DICK!’”
by Roi R. Czechvala | Dec 14, 2010 | Story
Author : Roi R. Czechvala, Staff Writer
He made his way down a battle torn street, his T field absorbed multiple plasma blasts harmlessly while the chemical reaction ammunition bounced impotently off his reactive armour. Though better armed than the rebellious colonists, he did not raise a weapon against them. He had a larger goal in mind. He was a man on a mission.
Rounding what remained of one of the pre-fab houses, he walked directly into an ambush. “Oh Shit,” was all he managed to get out before a shoulder fired rocket screeched from its launch tube. He turned and let his back absorb the blast. Even as the fireball swallowed him, he turned towards his attacker. “Sword,” he yelled. At his command a searing blast of white plasma sheathed his right arm and enveloped the rebel, immolating him where he stood.
“Dumbass.”
He continued on. His destination of utmost importance. He didn’t have long. He had first noticed the symptoms only an hour before. It had started with a slight discomfort, but was becoming worse. Incapacitating abdominal cramps were not far off.
He subvoked the com menu on his visor and pulled up the base comlink. “White One Bravo. This is White One Victor, over.” Static was all that greeted him in response. “Damn it. They whacked the relays in this sector.” His breathing was becoming laboured. The pressure in his stomach was beginning to build. The painful cramps, the beginning of an unpleasant end, were closer than he had expected. He had to hurry.
“I’ve got to get out of this armour.” Sweat was running freely downs his face and back despite the armours environment comfort level set to Earth Standard temperate. Again he jacked into the base comlink freq, “White One Victor to Vostok Base. If anyone is monitoring this frequency, I need a medevac on these coordinates immediately.” He shot his location along with the message, knowing that the cobalt60 blue sky would never allow his transmission to reach its destination. Soon it would be all over. The sardonic grin that had been plastered across his face only minutes before had been replaced with a gruesome rictus.
Time was growing short. He clutched vainly at the interlocking plates of armour that covered his torso. He stumbled and fell against a wall. He clutched the corner of a tumble down house. Looking up, a welcoming sight met his eyes. He could scarcely believe it. He shook the sweat from his eyes. The image remained fixed before him. A fuelling station. Battered by plasma bursts to be sure, but the structure stood. He prayed it held what he sought.
The building was small, not that it mattered. He quickly found the door he sought. “Locked. Damnit.” The keypad beside the handle of the sturdy steel door had been destroyed. He saw that it could also be accessed by a key. Antiquated, but not unusual in these far flung outposts. He made his way around to the buildings front office. His spirits fell as he saw that it had been ransacked. He fell to the floor scrabbling amidst the rubble.
He found the key surprisingly quickly. It hadn’t been overlooked in the previous search, it had been deliberately left. For some unimaginable reason it had been affixed by a length of nearly indestructible molecular cord to a large piece of scrap metal. Lugging it back to the door, he unlocked it and fell to the grimy floor of the cramped cubicle. He didn’t care.
He quickly stripped himself of his armour and with a relieved sigh, sat, as the door marked “MEN” swung shut.
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by Roi R. Czechvala | Dec 6, 2010 | Story
Author : Roi R. Czechvala, Staff Writer
He pulled the collar of the leather duster tight around his neck. It offered little protection against the rain. It wasn’t rain. It was the unceasing, oily downpour of condensation dripping from the environment units of the dwellings of those who lived a thousand feet above the human flotsam below.
He had been someone once. A soldier. A warrior. Now he was down here, among the faceless, the invisible. Looking up, he could just make out the blimps drifting above the buildings, reflecting the distant sunlight. They housed the truly wealthy. Floating in the clear sunlight. A sun that never shone into the man made canyons.
“Hey Handsome, want some honey?” A whore, pupils dilated from designer drugs her government subsidized ’nites couldn’t keep up with, opened her blouse, revealing a pair of small, dry breasts. He walked on without a word.
“Fuck you asshole,” she shrieked.
He thumbed the cerasteele blade in his pocket and rolled his shoulders deeper into his coat. He hadn’t gone far when he heard the hooker again.
“Get your fucking hands off me… hey what the… hey… HEY.”
He turned to see three young punks clawing at her clothes. Ripping off her blouse. One grabbed her around the waist and with his other hand reached under her skirt, savagely ripping off her panties. “Who’s first,” he laughed. Pedestrians along the wet, grimy street shuffled blindly on.
In a few short strides he was on them before he realized what he was doing. His composite ceramic/steel knife materialized in his hands, its blade oscillating thousands of times a second. In an instant, two of the attackers were down. The blade passed effortlessly through their throats. They fell to the gutter before twin crimson fountains spouted from their necks.
The third got to his feet and backed away. “Hey, fuck you man. You want some of this,” he taunted, slapping his chest. He looked down just in time to see the hilt of a knife sprout from his sternum. He looked up and stared dully at the large man facing him. The blade in his chest disappeared as it was recoiled on an invisible molecular line, itself more dangerous than the blade. The kid sank to his knees and slowly slumped to the pavement.
He turned to face the prostitute. She sat on the sidewalk crying silently, pulling the remains of her blouse across herself trying to cover what only a moment before she had so brazenly revealed. He reached down and in a soft calm voice asked if she was okay.
“Yeah, yeah,” she stammered between sobs, “I think so.”
He removed his heavy cloak and draped it over her shoulders. In the same moment, he clicked his teeth and ordered a taxi with a subvoc command.
“I’m… I’m so sorry… what I did… what I said…,” her voice trailed off. She began to cry again.
He folded her in his arms. She leaned into him, her body wracked with sobs. Soon a cab drifted up and settled to the ground before them. Gently he helped her into the back seat and fixed her restraints. To the driver he said, “Take her… somewhere. Somewhere nice.” He shoved a wad of bills into her hands. Archaic perhaps, but still legal tender. With a soft hand he lifted her chin until her eyes met his. “Just because you live down here, doesn’t mean you have to become one of them.”
He closed the door and the taxi soared off into the night. He continued his walk. “I think Houston is playing tonight,” he said to himself.
by Roi R. Czechvala | Nov 19, 2010 | Story
Author : Roi R. Czechvala, Staff Writer
They watched him through a one way mirror. He sat in a corner of the room in a pool of his own excrement, legs pulled up to his chest, arms tightly wrapped around his knees. What was left of his clothing had been reduced to little more than filthy, shredded rags.
“How long has he been like this“, asked Dr. Scoffield, head of the Behavioural Psychology Department of the University of Mare Tranquillitatis.
Ryan Murphy, doctoral candidate and originator of the experiment for his thesis, fought to tear his eyes away from the pathetic, huddled figure mere feet from him. “Four hours. He showed sings of mental instability within minutes from the cessation of the neural feed. He lost total control of bodily functions within half an hour.”
“Has he eaten?”
“As you can see on the monitor, the butler has been programmed with all of his favourite food and drink. He hasn’t touched it.”
“Has he made any attempt at communication?”
“As soon as the feed was cut, he began screaming incoherently and began tearing at his hair and clothes. He has remained motionless since. As you can see, the urine around him is nearly dry and undisturbed. The solid excreta are beginning to harden.”
“I had no idea the effect would take place so fast, nor did I ever believe the reaction would be so extreme.”
“What do you wish to do Doctor?”
“This is inhumane, end the experiment at once.”
Ryan turned to a technician sitting at a computer and drew his finger across his throat. The technician entered a few commands restoring the neural feed to the subject.
“Doctor, the subject is already responding.”
“Remarkable.”
Beyond the glass barrier, a blissful smile returned to the face of the test subject as continuous feeds of American Idol, Big Brother and Inside Edition flooded through his mind.
by Roi R. Czechvala | Nov 12, 2010 | Story
Author : Roi R. Czechvala, Staff Writer
I began my journey out beyond the orbit of Mars and just before Jupiter. I was just hanging around. You know, just doing whatever. Occasionally I’d bump into one of my friends, but we’d quickly go our separate ways. That was just the way things were, kind of casual. BUMP, “Hey, what’s up,” we might say.
So, there I was, just minding my own business when, with out so much as a “by your leave,” a comet ripped by and yanked me out of my happy little home and sent me hurtling towards Sol.
“Is this to be the end of Rocky,” I asked myself, “to be gobbled up in the Fiery Depths of Sol Herself?” Alas, I was in for a far worse fate. It would be better to end my days as Glowing Plasma than to suffer the slings and arrows that destiny had in store. I was heading inward towards the blue planet. It likes to be called “Earth”, but we in the Belt simply refer to it as “Corky”.
I felt as if I were going to split open as I entered the upper atmosphere and caught air. I must have been a beautiful sight, tearing through the atmosphere trailing a white hot glowing tail for miles across the early morning sky. Well, that’s one for me. At least I made a spectacular entrance, blazing across oceans, soaring above mountains and prairies and reflected majestically from lakes and rivers.
That all came to a screeching halt when, BANG, I slammed unceremoniously into the ground. Except…horror of horrors it wasn’t gentle, pleasant, comforting rock, this was ice.
“Why, oh why cruel fates have you abandoned me here?”
I was morose for many millennia, buried there in my frozen tomb. Then I noticed something, something wonderful. Something that had escaped me previously as the change was so subtle. I was moving. Okay, maybe not with the blistering speed I had entered at, but at least I was getting somewhere. Somewhere, anywhere beat the hell out of here.
I continued to move slowly, inexorably south for several more millennia. It was so dreadfully boring; I counted to infinity…twice. That’s when a miracle occurred. It began to get warm. Slowly my icy cocoon melted away and there She was, Sol, Shining down upon me; bigger and brighter than ever. I nestled among my stony friends, and wept with joy.
Over time, a stream rushed over me, again covering me with soil. For many hundreds of years I was once again cut off from the Shining Face of Mother Sol. However, with the ebb and flow of centuries and the shifting of the ground around me, I once more entered into the Glorious Light. I was surrounded by all manner of things; stones and pebbles that would be my friends and all sorts of living things that crept under and over me and flew through the air as I once had.
One day, while basking in the wondrous Warmth of Her Light, a creature larger than I had ever encountered before, whom I shall call a “cow’ for lack of a better word, gently nuzzled me with its nose. It was warm and soft, and I thought we’d be great friends until she turned and soiled me.
Thus is my fate. I travelled interstellar space, plunged through the atmosphere of this puny little backwater, bringing Light and Glory with me, only to end up in this Sol forsaken pasture with a cow pissing on me daily.
Sol, I hope You’re getting a big laugh out of this.
Bitch.
