by Stephen R. Smith | Nov 4, 2010 | Story
Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer
Joshua’s feet pounded against the pavement, bare soles bleeding from the coarse stone underfoot. Within his bare chest, his heart kept time.
He navigated the deserted streets outside the perimeter fence from memory, a mental map burned in through hours of illicit hacking. He cornered, climbed and sprinted reflexively, anxiously aware that he was being pursued.
Buildings stood vacant; window holes empty, doorframes bare, stripped of anything that may be used as a raw material.
In an alleyway he kicked the drying carcass of a large emaciated rat. Joshua pressed his right hand into its body and disassembled it, rearranging its component parts into the simpler but equally lifeless shape of a short bone-white shiv. What wasn’t needed fueled his microassembler, radiating heat and filling his nostrils with the stench of burning hair and flesh. A pound of dead rodent was reduced to six ounces of knife blade. Not much, but better than nothing.
Exiting the alley he loped down the cobblestoned street, through a crumbling building and out its back door into the twilight. It was here that he saw his pursuer, several hundred yards to his left, as a lone figure exited another building at a sprint and, seeing Joshua, adjusted course to intercept him.
They raced to cross the open ground to another row of buildings, his pursuer course correcting to cut him off but Joshua reached the safety of another doorway first, darting inside and immediately doubling back to flatten himself against the wall inside the room.
Makeshift weapon in his hand, he waited until his pursuer burst through the doorway then stabbed sideways at the running figure’s face, raking his mouth and carving back to the ear before the knife jammed in his jaw. The force of the impact ripped the knife from Joshua’s hand as, off balance and screaming, the guard lost his footing and slammed shoulder first into the ground, his weapon skating across the floor into the shadows.
Joshua bolted deeper into the building, finding himself in a maze of twisting corridors. The further he ran, the less light permeated the gloom and soon he found himself steadying himself between the walls with his hands outstretched, groping fingers in complete darkness until the end of the maze leapt out, smashing his nose and dropping him in a heap on the floor. He frantically felt around blind, his heart sinking as he realized where he was.
“Dead end, you little shit.” The voice not far enough behind to warrant running back. ” I was going to take you in, but now I’ll just take you apart.”
Joshua backed into the corner, pushing himself to his feet with the cold stone hard against his shoulder blades. He’d used his only weapon, and there was nothing here for him to use to fabricate another.
The guard rounded the last corner into the dead end with his starlight goggles turned up as far as they could go, the image of the man pressed against the wall ahead in high contrast.
“End of the line, fucker.”
As he closed the last few feet, he noticed the escapee’s left arm was newly missing from just below the shoulder. The smell of burned hair and flesh filled his nose, but before he could think Joshua slid eight pounds of short, jagged edged bone blade through his chest plate into his rib cage.
The guard fell to the floor, gasping around the chunk of bone still protruding through his cheek.
“You – sick – bastard,” he wheezed, struggling to inflate his lungs, normal aspiration made difficult by the frothing wound in his chest. “your arm?”
Joshua kneeled on the dying man’s chest, pressing his remaining hand against the bloody man’s cheek.
“Don’t you worry”, the smell of burning intensified in the close quarters, “I’ll just make myself a new one.”
by Stephen R. Smith | Oct 29, 2010 | Story
Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer
The sleek craft broke the upper atmosphere and fell several kilometers before deploying its chute. The thin film wings weren’t extended until they had slowed enough to not risk tearing them off.
“We’re in stable thermospheric orbit,” the copilot chirped through the headset, “and they haven’t shot us down yet, so that’s a bonus.”
Jacq ignored the copilot’s remark. He’d drawn the straw to pilot this mission and wasn’t entirely sure it wouldn’t be their last. Chuch in the seat next to him didn’t seem to have given it much thought either way.
“Keep an eye on the instruments. All that flash on the horizon is our boys keeping those green bastards from looking up here, but if we stray over something military you can be sure they’ll get interested and quick.”
Chuch buried his head in the telescope display, watching landscape made too familiar from simulation fly by hundreds of kilometers below. It was sparsely populated where they’d started their run, but shortly he knew they’d be passing over major metropolitan centers.
Jacq turned to crawl back into the glider’s converted cargo bay, sliding over top of the two large spherical canisters nestled in the plane’s belly.
Chuch looked up to watch the older man as he checked the strapping and release mechanisms for the tenth time. “Doesn’t it seem wrong, somehow, to be dropping these on civilians? I mean, I get it – war’s war – but shouldn’t we be taking out factories or something instead?”
Jacq pulled a heavy black marker from a coverall pocket and began drawing Kilroy’s face on the side of each bomb. “The war machine stands to serve its people, fight the machine and the people stand behind it. Show the people that the machine can’t protect them, that it’s failing and the people will eat it from the inside.” He pushed back and admired his handiwork. “Besides, we’ve been fighting these bastards for over a year and we can’t get close enough to hurt them. Fly a battle cruiser or fighter squadron within fifty kilometers of a military installation and they turn loose a swarm that cuts our best ships to ribbons. They’ve got more advanced weapons that we have, and more effective defenses against what little advanced weaponry we can get down planet-side.”
Chuch frowned at his superior’s artwork on their payload while Jacq continued.
“That’s why we’re doing this old school; high altitude drop, brute force and ignorance. Dirty atomics. Honestly, I think it’s the only chance we’ve got to end this thing. Nothing fancy, just hit em’ with a big enough hammer. Make their people want to end it.” Satisfied with his drawn faces, he wrote ‘Fat Ming’ beneath one and ‘Little Djinn’ on the other.
“Fat Ming?” Chuch screwed up his face behind his visor. “What the hell?”
“The Merciless. Ming the Merciless?” Jacq watched for some glimmer of recognition from his colleague before shaking his head and moving to the bombardier’s position. “Honestly, you kids need to read more.”
The two flew the rest of the way in silence, the only talking the occasional sounding off of the distance as they approached the cities. In the final kilometers Jacq rechecked the calibration of his targeting view finder.
“Mark my words, we’ll bring holy hell fire to them today and fifty years from now they’ll be our biggest high tech trading partner,” he paused and opened the bay doors, “probably put our kids out of work.”
by Stephen R. Smith | Sep 1, 2010 | Story
Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer
It was June when Mark and Alicia kissed each other one last time before strapping in for the long sleep to Caltrani. “I love you”, Mark had said as the canopies had closed. “Elephant shoes”, she mouthed back, and giggled behind the glass that separated their two capsules.
Neither knew it would be their very last kiss, her capsule bleeding out in flight. When they came to wake her she was dried nearly to dust.
They would have no family. He was left alone.
Back home he knew his friends and family would have long passed on. Maybe there were nieces and nephews, or great to some incomprehensible exponent – great nieces and nephews, but they were as lost to him as his love.
Home would have to be where his heart was, where she was planted in the foreign ground.
He worked first as a labourer, helping build the colony up, then as a soldier defending it against those that would see it fail. He’d seen wars before, and was trained for them, but this was a profession he had looked to the stars to escape. Starting anew the cycle of getting close to people with a uniform in common only to see them die would prove too much to bear.
Mark became a nomad, losing himself in the rough jungle of this planet he’d been so keen to make peace with, a planet that had proved so vicious in return.
On a clear night, from the hilltops overlooking Panteran Gorge, he watched the landing lights at Keff, marveled as ships arced out into space, and others descended to take their place on the ground. The horizon was alight with evidence of prosperity. Brightly lit buildings, flying craft, the multicoloured aura of the cities and towns.
“Their prosperity,” he scolded the night, “not mine. Not Alicia’s.”
Slowly he made his way to the edge of the cliff, peeling off his clothing and equipment and leaving it in a trail behind him. Above him Gentle filled the sky, the low moon giant and grey, lighting the jungle and the water below. Beneath it Skittish streaked across the blackness in fast orbit. Less massive and straining against Caltrani’s gravity, it would pass many times before the sun breached the horizon again, desperately trying to break free of the planet’s grasp to fly away into space.
“It’s hopeless Skittish,” Mark spoke out-loud to the sky, “she’ll never let you go.”
Mark dropped from the cliff, barely feeling the water strike his feet, breaking the surface to sink like a stone into the icy depths. Above him the water rushed to fill in the space he left behind, on the surface barely a ripple to show where he’d been.
As he sank, he thought of Alicia, saw her through the water mouthing ‘Elephant shoes’, and giggling as she swam away. He thought of the children they’d never have, of how he’d been right there as she grew old and died, and how he’d been robbed of his chance to share that with her.
“Nothing left to live for”, he thought, as the moon faded out over his head. He kicked out violently at the water. “Nothing left to live for.” His heart pounding as he broke the surface and filled his lungs, “but I’ll be damned if I let that kill me.”
by Stephen R. Smith | Aug 1, 2010 | Story
Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer
Thomas was spending another Saturday afternoon looking for deals. Today it was furniture, specifically something unique to fill the vacant corner by the window in his apartment.
“That’s Ralph Lauren,” he hadn’t heard the salesman approach and he jumped despite himself. The salesman ignored the reaction and continued speaking. “Avalon Lounge Chairs, very nice, very expensive. These two are kind of a matching set.”
Thomas regarded the pair of chairs carefully; indian red leather, featureless seat and back held aloft by a tubular frame which formed the base and arms in a continuous gleaming rectangle of chrome.
It was apparent that one wasn’t quite the same as the other, it was close but there was something a little strange about it.
“That’s a knock off,” Thomas pointed to the slightly misshapen piece, “how much are they?”
The salesman stepped up to the suspect piece, carefully polishing the seat back with one corduroy sleeve. “It’s a novelty, not a knock off. Twenty three hundred for the pair,” he paused, revealing nicotine stained teeth in a practiced smile, “Twenty two hundred cash.”
He didn’t really have room for two chairs, and while it appealed to sense of style to purchase the genuine Ralph Lauren piece, he found himself quite enamored with the odd reproduction.
“How much for just that one?” He pointed to the chair the salesman was now leaning on.
“Two hundred. One eighty if you pay cash.” His tone reflected his lack of interest in pursuing the larger purchase his customer was obviously not going to make.
Thomas was already counting out the bills.
It took the pair of them to carry the deceptively heavy piece of furniture and lift it into the trunk of the Audi, the suspension sagging noticeably as Thomas fastened the trunk lid down with a bungee. It took the promise of a six pack at the apartment to convince the superintendent to help wrestle the chair out of the car and onto the elevator, then down the hall to Tom’s apartment.
Finally in its new home, Tom was surprised at how much darker the chair seemed than in the store. The leather was almost black in the late afternoon sunlight, and decidedly more rubbery than he’d realized. He’d need to find some leather cream to soften it back up again, but that was another days work.
On Sunday Thomas travelled to the nursery, buying a pair of five foot tall indian rubber plants in terra cotta pots. One he placed beside the pseudo Avalon chair, the other flanked it in the other corner of the room.
From the kitchen around a mouthful of beer he could swear that the chair had turned green, and the chrome was reflecting back the terra cotta color in such a way as to almost look like terra cotta itself.
Heating a plate of leftovers in the microwave, he took the food and another bottle of beer to sit in the new chair and wait for his girlfriend to arrive. He finished the food, downed the last of the beer and dozed off.
It was nearly midnight when Jilly knocked at the apartment door and then let herself in. She dropped her purse and keys on the kitchen counter as Thomas entered, rubbing sleep from his eyes.
“Hey baby,” she met him halfway and gave him a quick kiss, “did you get a haircut or something? You look different somehow.”
by Stephen R. Smith | Jul 19, 2010 | Story
Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer
Atto hovers at the end of the bar furthest from the dance floor. Under the harsh lights his skin seems translucent even to him. The revelers around him tipping bottles back and clinking glasses look right through him. He knows a kind of invisibility now he’s never felt so completely before.
The music slips between songs without apparent effort; the DJ has phase shifted something new so that the thumping of the bass tracks line up perfectly, one giving way to the other without missing a beat.
While he watches, Edie glides out from a crowd of dancers, hips swaying, arms pumping and wearing a smile that splits the room in two.
For a moment Atto loses his composure, hands shaking and head reeling he worries that his legs may not support him. He looks for something to lean against and realizes the futility of that. Instead he counts the bottles on the back bar until his anxiety passes.
On the dance floor Edie draws a crowd, young men with bulging muscles and unquestionable intent cycle in and out of her personal space, each trying to outdo the last in some form of tribal mating ritual.
She used to look at him like that, once.
Atto wasn’t bulging muscles and animal dance moves, he was stoic and intelligent, a pragmatist. He was project lead at his laboratory where people trusted him to create things no one imagined possible, trusted him with secrets no one else could know. Atto was known as the ‘Science Spook’, he knew more and was seen less than anyone else in the business. Why Edie had loved him he didn’t know, but she had always danced like that with him, for him. That was then.
Trembling, he stepped toward the lights, towards Edie. The bass rumbled in his chest, and he pictured for a moment the tissue samples they had blown apart with low frequency noise not entirely unlike these tones. A waitress passed by with a test tube rack filled with shooters, their bright colours fluorescing in the ultra violet lights and he reflexively flinched away.
Edie gyrated, sweat rolling off her body and soaking through her clothes. Her eyes almost met Atto’s as she pushed a lock of wet hair back behind her ear, only to shake it free again as she turned.
Atto squeezed his eyes shut, trying hopelessly to shut out the sights in the bar. The music assailed him from all sides, pounding away at his senses until he was sure the pain of it had reached his limit.
“Hey baby, come dance with me.” Her voice cut through the haze like a velvet blade, and for one incredible moment she was looking right at him. He stepped forward, reached out his hands towards her. For an instant he thought everything could be alright again.
The sensation of the younger man passing through him wasn’t nearly as gut wrenching as was watching him take Edie’s hand and slide back onto the dance floor, stealing his Edie right from his grasp.
Edie had looked right at Atto, looked right into his eyes but where there should have been recognition there was nothing. In an instant she was gone.
Atto stumbled towards the door, passing through crowds of people like damp breezes without them even knowing. The door came and went and he found himself out on the road, street lamps casting long shadows in the late night gloom, shadows of everything but him.
He imagined her smell on him, the taste of the sweat from her skin on his lips.
As a scientist he’d done what no one imagined he could do, shifted himself just enough to see but not be seen, neither touch nor be touched.
As a spy he was without equal, he could observe anything, be anywhere.
Except with her.
