by submission | Mar 27, 2016 | Story |
Author : Bob Newbell
Queen Chandrietta VI motioned for her Prime Minister to stop speaking while she gave instructions to the royal hairdresser. Her majesty was only one point nine three meters tall, fairly short by the standards of a native of Earth’s Moon. After thirty six generations, the human beings who inhabited Luna were much taller and thinner than their terrestrial ancestors. It wouldn’t do for the Moon’s monarch to appear too short. The Queen’s hair would need to be styled to aid the vertical lines of her dress and the high heels she wore to give the illusion of greater height.
“Continue,” she said to the nervous Prime Minister.
“Your majesty,” said the anxious man whose features suggested an East Asian ancestry, “the Royal Family, yourself excluded, have escaped. Their craft exited the rail launcher just before it was struck by a missile launched from lunar orbit. The New Zealand consulate on Lagrange V has offered them asylum and they are even now despinning their ring down to simulate lunar gravity.”
The Queen stood and faced the Prime Minister. “Shouldn’t the Combat Minister be handling this inconvenience?” she said with annoyance.
“My Queen, the Combat Minister says preventing Luna from being occupied is no longer an option. His strategy is to lure the enemy into the heart of Armstrong City and then to destroy the city’s supporting structures burying the enemy soldiers under tons of rocks and regolith.”
Chandrietta VI sighed as if she were conversing with a child. “You’re telling me, Mr. Prime Minister, that the man charged with protecting my kingdom plans to do so by annihilating its capital city?”
“Your majesty, the Russian Navy are too powerful. We have no choice but to make their assault so costly that it will force them to the negotiating table at which time we–”
This time the Queen silenced the Prime Minister with a look.
“Prime Minister, if I asked you to put me in communication with the Speaker of the Pan-American Senate and the President of China do you think that might be within your power?”
“Of course, your majesty.”
Three hours later, the Prime Minister of Luna again came before the Queen.
“Your majesty, the enemy have ceased their orbital bombardment and the few troops they’ve landed are lifting off from Luna. The enemy fleet is on a trajectory that will take it back to Earth. How–”
“Helium-3,” said the Queen. “For the next five years, China and Pan-America will get our helium-3 to power their fusion reactors for thirty percent under market price in exchange for their threatening to go to war with Russia on our behalf.”
“My Queen, you have saved–”
But the Queen was already walking away from her Prime Minister. This coiffure looks ridiculous, she thought to herself and sighed. I’ll simply have to get the royal orthopedist to extend my legs.
by submission | Mar 25, 2016 | Story |
Author : Ian Hill
Harsh white floodlights drenched the area in a sterile haze.
Hundreds had gathered at short notice, all saturated with stomach-burning anxiety as they tried to figure out what was going to happen next. There they stood, packed together tightly, wondering if they would still exist a second from now. Those who managed to salvage some presence of thought held bulb-tipped microphones forward, trembling slightly in the chill wind. Most simply waited, hands stuffed in pockets, faces pallid and mouths flattened into thin lines.
At the front of the gathering was the white podium, draping its multicolored patriotic banners. Behind the lectern stood a tall, thin man whose weathered face wore a grave expression. Shadows under his eyes and the papery quality to his skin made the stress obvious. Slowly, he scanned the crowd, throat itching as words stumbled through his buzzing mind.
“I have no doubt that all of you are very worried.” He began, voice soft but imminently audible through the speaker system.
An absolute hush settled over the assembly in the wake of his first words since the disaster.
After a moment of gauging the crowd’s reactions, he continued. “Why aren’t we retaliating? Where is the war?” He leaned forward conspiratorially. “Have we won already?”
A few people nodded as if their concerns were being voice for the first time. Most listened impassively, hearts gripped with terror. Only a handful had an inkling of what would be said during this address.
“Well, I can tell you this,” the man drawled solemnly, rising back to his full height, “this… tragedy exists not as an omen of war, but as a shield from it.”
A sudden wave of confusion passed over the crowd. Reporters exchanged uneasy glances, and a few people mumbled into each other’s ears. Here and there a pair of eyes widened in realization.
The man opened his mouth to speak again, but quickly closed it. He grimaced, shook his head, and looked down to the podium’s surface where his hands lay intertwined like two ivory spiders. A tiny bloodstain at his cuff acted as a brief distraction.
The susurration of an uneasy crowd drew the man’s attention back forward. It was clear what he had to say. Steeling himself, he continued. “The bombs were dropped at my order-”
An audible groan tremored through the crowd, and expressions shifted from fear to apprehension, and from apprehension to outrage. A few shouted out at the man, staggering forward as if they had violent intentions. Guards in front of the podium pushed them back. Someone from behind the stage moved forward and whispered into the speaker’s ear, but he shook his head, motioning them away.
“Please,” he said, voice louder now, arms outspread in a pacifying gesture, “allow me to explain.”
With shocking speed, the most vocal dissenters were ejected from the crowd. Those who remained stood stunned, minds slowly dissecting the new information.
The speaker powered on, determined to deliver what he had to say. “Six hours ago a mistake in our machinery led to orders being given to one of our planes to bomb the capital of our adversaries. We were unable to contact this rogue bomber. It quickly became clear that a war was unavoidable, unless we—unless I proved my trustworthiness to the prime minister…”
The crowd looked on in horror as the puzzle began to clarify.
“So an exchange of cities was arranged.” The man finished. It was clear now that everyone understood. He stepped back from the microphone and strode from the stage as the screaming started again.
by submission | Mar 24, 2016 | Story |
Author : Suzanne Borchers
Rebkkh stepped into the large rec-pod, surveying the room’s occupants with an experienced eye. Two off-worlds were tipped back in their chairs sipping orange drinks, three off-worlds crowded appendages onto the table jabbering loudly, two more off-worlds wrapped their drinks in leathery fins.
A man was alone at a corner table sipping something golden. His bald head was ringed with gray wisps of hair that straggled over large ears. His nose seemed poised to drop into the glass at each sip. One eye winked in her direction. His hand opened slightly and closed again but not before she glimpsed a small object within it.
She moved across the room, careful to appear random in her choice of direction. She chose a table next to the rumpled man, putting her back to the wall to face him at an angle. She opened and closed her hand holding the wooden figure. Did he see it?
“Granddaughter, do you know what you hold?” The man murmured to the table as his eyes swept over her.
“My inheritance,” she whispered. “But no.”
“Come to Section D, Number 22, an hour after I leave. I can help.” He pushed himself up from his chair, placed tokens on the table, finished his drink, and left.
An hour later, Rebkkh hesitated outside the D22 door. Should she knock? Should she cough? Should she turn around and run?
The door slid open. The strange yet almost familiar man ushered Rebkkh to a platform couch and asked her to sit. He sat close beside her to whisper, “Let me see it.”
The hair on the back of her neck rose and Rebkkh’s heartbeats crowded each other. She had to know what it was, no matter what. So much mystery about this object. Her family had never spoken about it, had never spoken at all when it was placed in her hand. Only the scrap of paper around it told of this man and where to find him. But who was he? Why?
She opened her hand. Lying on her palm was a crudely carved piece of what she guessed was wood. A man wearing a funny headpiece seemed to look back at her.
The old man opened his hand and showed her the figure’s twin.
She gasped. “Tell me please.”
“Countless centuries ago our family owned many such carved characters and kept them in a box with squares carved on it. Some characters were identical to this and some represented kings, queens, horses, castles, and bishops.”
“What’s a bishop?” Rebkkh couldn’t stop herself from speaking.
“These belonged to a game of skill and intelligence, something our people had in abundance. Others hated us and long, long ago when our people still practiced religion…”
“What’s religion?”
“Their government butchered us and stole our treasures.”
“Why?”
“A fortunate descendant found this one family treasure so many centuries ago, and each branch of the family was given a piece to cherish and to remind us of who we are.”
“Who are we?”
The old man’s wrinkles at the corner of his mouth crowded each other as he smiled. “Granddaughter, let me whisper the Truth to you. We have a proud yet humble history that you should know. Be sure to tell your children and their children. You must pass down our secret.”
Rebkkh leaned toward him, her hand over her mouth so she wouldn’t interrupt.
He began his story.
But there came a banging on the door.
by submission | Mar 23, 2016 | Story |
Author : Bob Newbell
I rub my eyes. I’ve been staring at a computer screen for hours but my allotted telescope time will soon come to an end. It’ll be easier in the coming years when there are more telescopes available. Astronomy has finally become a properly-funded field of study. I turn my attention back to the screen but it’s no use. I’m tired and my mind keeps wandering back to a decade ago.
“That can’t be right,” I’d told a colleague over the phone ten years earlier.
“It’s confirmed,” she’d replied. “The Great Canary Telescope in Spain, Hobby-Eberly, the LBT — they’re all seeing the same thing.”
The “thing” in question was an object for which the word “spaceship” was pathetically inadequate. It was a lattice structure so big its ends touched the orbits of Venus and Mars. The sheer mass of the thing should have disrupted the orbital mechanics of the solar system but didn’t. Mankind reacted with a predictable combination of wonder and fear. Four days later, emissaries from the giant vessel arrived.
“Is there any obvious pattern?” I had asked my team regarding the audio and radio transmissions originating from the…what? Ambassadors? Robot probes? We’re still not even sure what the things were. The few samples of material we have don’t really fit into our categorization scheme of biology or machine. As for their appearance, one blogger’s description — “A giant cyborg octopus” — has yet to be improved upon.
“It’s not a sequence of prime numbers. Doesn’t look like anything related to the hydrogen line. Don’t think it’s any human language,” a fellow astronomer had said. To this day, despite exhaustive efforts at finding some meaning, we have no idea what the aliens said to us.
After a couple of hours of analyzing the repeating message we had received, the first shooting happened. Someone in Aleppo, Syria opened fire with an AK-47 on one of the aliens. There soon followed similar incidents in Chicago and Nigeria. Most of the estimated 2,000 aliens simultaneous rose silently back up into space. A few remained and traveled to assist their three wounded comrades in their ascensions. The enigmatic message ceased abruptly.
One of my friends had unleashed an expletive-laden tirade at no one in particular regarding Man’s barbarity. For the next 18 months, the human race waited to see what the reaction of the aliens would be. The great lattice-ship hovered ominously over the solar system. One day, a second impossibly large vehicle arrived. And then another. And another. The alien fleet soon numbered 11 vessels. Both the northern and southern skies seemed covered in mesh. Ten days later, the ships seemed to vanish. But the skies they left behind were unrecognizable.
I look at the bright whirlpool on my computer screen: the Milky Way galaxy, now well over a million light-years in the distance. They only teleported the Sun, the Earth, and the Moon to the intergalactic void between the Milky Way and Andromeda. Even the company of the other worlds of the solar system has been denied us. We always assumed the day would come when Man explored and colonized the solar system and then, confident but unsatisfied, would strike out for the stars. Now, we are marooned in a cosmic desert. The odd and distant brown dwarf aside, we are prisoners in a starless void.
by submission | Mar 22, 2016 | Story |
Author : Roger Dale Trexler
The ship touched down on the barren planet. Tabitha Sandor piloted it alone, because the thing in her belly had killed everyone on the ship. It made her destroy the ship. There was no way for her to go home.
She looked down at the ever-growing lump of her belly. She knew that her sole purpose was to give birth to the thing that grew inside her.
Slowly, she reached down and stroked her stomach.
Yes, It thought. I am here.
She pulled her hand away, startled. She knew that the alien thing growing inside her could read her mind—knew, in fact, that it controlled her mind. It had made her get in the escape pod, made her eject the pod and drop to the war ravaged planet.
She stood and walked to the nearest port and looked out. The ground was flat and scorched black everywhere she looked. She wondered what sort of bomb could do such a thing.
A bomb more powerful than your kind have ever seen, the thing in her stomach replied.
A sharp pain coursed through her and she gasped. She staggered backward, grabbing a handrail.
Soon, It told her.
She returned to the pilot’s chair and sat. “What will happen to me?” She asked.
You’ll give birth, the thing replied. Just like human women have been doing since the dawn of mankind.
“Will I die?” she asked.
No, the thing replied. I need you.
You need me?
She wondered.
Another sharp pain ran through her and she doubled over, her hands going to her stomach. Through her clothing, she could feel the thing moving.
I should kill it, she thought. I can’t trust it.
You can trust me, Mommy, the thing told her. I love you.
Another volley of pain coursed through her.
I’ll be here soon, It told her. I’ll be here and we can be together.
As if to prove that, she felt a warm wetness between her legs.
Her water had broken.
I’m afraid, she thought.
Don’t be. It’ll be all right.
A contraction ripped through her and her scream filled the escape pod. She looked about her for something to stab into her stomach, but there was nothing within her reach that would end her misery. Whether by design or sheer dumb luck, the thing in her stomach was protected from her.
Another contraction brought another scream.
You need to lie down, the thing told her. It’ll make it easier.
She wanted to protest, but the fight had gone out of her. She undid her safety harness and staggered out of her seat. She lay down on the platform between her and the escape hatch.
The pain dissipated.
She looked up at the controls to the escape hatch and realized that, if she opened the hatch, the toxic atmosphere outside would kill her. She tried, but the pain came back as she reached for the handle.
I’m coming, the creature told her.
A sliver of sheer agony ran down her spine and she screamed. Madness took her for a moment and she instinctively pushed.
Several other contractions and pushes later, she felt something slither from between her legs.
The agony of childbirth was gone and she slowly gained her breath.
When she looked down, she saw it.
And she screamed.
It rose above her, tentacled and hideous. Its fangs moved and, in her mind, she heard it say: I needed you, Mommy. To give me life.
It hissed.
And to give me nourishment.
As it lunged forward she screamed for the last time.
