by submission | Jan 9, 2015 | Story |
Author : Rollin T Gentry
In the lift, Lieutenant Andrews asked herself how she, of the two hundred telepaths in the fleet, had been so unlucky as to be assigned to the Vulcan’s Anvil, a third rate science vessel with an idiot for a Captain. She wondered what his latest discovery was. What had he dragged out of the nebula this time?
Stepping into the lab, Andrews could see the Captain, and the Chief Science Officer huddled over something emitting a bright, red-orange glow. As she approached, she saw a metallic box, the contents of which looked like lava throwing a temper tantrum. The stuff rocked back and forth as if it were trying to escape its container. She stepped closer and felt the most intense rage she had ever encountered.
“Eject it now,” she said. “I haven’t attempted to make contact yet, and I feel pure evil radiating from that box.”
“So it is sentient,” the Captain said eagerly, nudging the Chief Science Officer who, like a giddy schoolgirl, chimed in, “The box is made of an element that isn’t even on our periodic table.”
“Scan it, Andrews,” the Captain said. “That’s an order.”
So she reached out and touched it. The white hot rage reached into her mind, and as she lost consciousness, she let out a blood-curdling scream.
Andrews opened her eyes inside a bulbous body covered with a layer of slime. She paced the floor atop a multitude of tentacles, waving other tentacles in the air. She spoke angry words from a flap on her face set below numerous eyes. She/he was the ruler of this world. “Tell me again how you found the Queen with this commoner.”
“There is nothing more to tell, my Lord. What will you have me do with them?”
“Her lover goes to the dungeon. Rip off his tentacles and gouge out his eyes and take your time about it. As for the Queen, have her bound and delivered to our bedchamber. I will discipline her myself.”
Lieutenant Andrews tried to close her eyes, but they were not her eyes to close. She lived out the fast-forwarded life of a despot from a race that humans had yet to encounter.
When he laid waste to the temples of their ancient religion, the commoners finally rebelled. Andrews felt his surprise and disgust as he stood before the three priests, resting their upper tentacles on a slab of white marble, looking down on him. “According to the old ways,” they said, “we do not kill. Repent, and we will heal your mind.”
“Repent!” he laughed. “Heal me?” he mocked. “Of what? My rage is justified, and one day I will rise again.”
“So be it,” they said. The small, metal box sat on the floor. The tentacles of the priests began to glow. Andrews felt herself melting and materializing inside the sealed box.
For a long time he was in darkness, but after years of ruminating and rocking back and forth, he glowed red and yellow and black molten with rage. Memories and hatred were his only companions. Until one day.
The creatures had two eyes and two upper tentacles, and as he gazed up at them he thought, “I will kill every last one of you.”
Andrews opened her eyes in the infirmary. “Did they eject the box?”
“No,” the Doctor said, “we’re taking it back to Science Central.” He injected something into her IV.
“No!” Andrews said. “It wants to kill…” she whispered, as she fell back into a sedated slumber.
by submission | Jan 8, 2015 | Story |
Author : Connor Harbison
The villagers accepted the occupation as a fact of life. After all, where were they to go? The spaceport was heavily guarded, the surrounding jungles were filled with ravenous monsters and cannibal tribes, and beyond them the jagged mountains offered even less safety.
The soldiers knew the plight of the villagers. They knew that high command would never learn of any abuses committed in this backwater. Their discipline grew lenient. Soldiers frequently pilfered the food stores or kidnapped the pretty daughters of the villagers. The people were powerless to stop the soldiers, who were armed with plasma rifles and advanced armor. By and large the villagers submitted to the tyranny.
There was one boy for whom the injustice was too much. Though he had not yet hit puberty, the boy had more resistance in him than the rest of the village put together. Each transgression fed the fire burning in the pit of the boy’s stomach.
One day it was too much. A squad of soldiers pushed the boy’s neighbors about, stealing the food for which they had toiled. The boy picked up a rock from underfoot and lunged at the nearest soldier, aiming for his head. The rock bounced harmlessly off the soldier’s helmet, and the boy was the laughingstock of the squad. The sergeant thought the boy deserved a lesson, so the soldiers entered the boy’s house, dragged his family into the street, and executed them one by one.
Through blinding tears the boy fled the village. The soldiers took aim, but the sergeant called them off. The wild would take care of the boy. They had the family’s house to loot.
Years passed, and the village remained under the iron grip of occupation. The sergeant rose through the ranks, until he was made captain, in charge of the entire garrison. It was not a bad position. He ruled like a king, the village his own fiefdom.
One rainy night a stranger, dressed in rags, wandered into the village. The sentries were confused; the only way into the village was by air. Travel over land was impossible. The stranger approached them, though their laser sights hovered over his heart. When the stranger was two paces away the sentries heard a whistling sound, then nothing more.
The stranger reached down to relieve the corpses of their weapons, taking care to avoid the poison darts that protruded in the crack between helmet and breast plate. The stranger tossed a plasma rifle to one of his companions and kept one for himself.
They worked through the rain-soaked streets of the village, dispatching soldier after soldier with silent poison darts. Soon the stranger and his whole band were armed with plasma rifles. They began to converge on the barracks.
The captain was sleeping when a soft knock came from outside the door. He roused himself from bed, cursing whoever had the temerity to interrupt his slumber. Opening the door, the captain found himself staring down the barrels of half a dozen rifles.
By the time the captain reached the main square a small crowd of villagers had gathered. Heavily armed tribals stood menacingly on the periphery. The captain looked to the center and saw the stranger, and a spark of recognition flew through his synapses. The boy had returned, after long years in the jungle, having gained the friendship and loyalty of the cannibal tribes. As the captain faced down the firing squad, he knew he would only be the first of many.
by submission | Jan 7, 2015 | Story |
Author : Elijah Goering
The light from the unstable star took four hours to reach the scientific survey ship that was orbiting it. Consequently, it was four hours after the warning was sent before the ship’s one man crew reacted to it. The star was now too unstable, and the jump gate would have to be closed.
The jump gate, requiring rather a lot of energy to operate, orbited the star at a distance of just one light second. Although the warning was weeks in advance of the closing of the jump gate, it still felt a little late to the lone researcher billions of kilometers from the jump gate.
For nine and a half hours the man lay in his bed sustained by the ship’s machinery as his ship accelerated toward the star at three standard gravities, using up a little over two thirds of his fuel. The remainder was reserved for slowing down once he had passed through the jump gate. The ship would never be retrieved, but at least if he slowed down enough he could be saved.
After the acceleration came free fall. The man floated around his ship for weeks and watched the evacuation of the solar system. The private ships of the wealthy went through first. Then the massive government transports carrying the population of the system’s inhabited planet. The people from the moons of the gas giants came behind them. Then the colonized asteroids, outfitted with powerful engines, fell from their orbits in precise spirals. One by one they passed through the jump gate. Research vessels from around the system went through at all stages, but none had been nearly as far as the deep space explorer four point three billion kilometers out. He could only watch as they all went through.
The last ship through the jump gate was the enormous space station which had anchored the space elevator above the planet. It had disconnected from the elevator at precisely the right moment and been flung toward the sun and right into the jump gate.
At last the man was left alone, light years from the nearest human being. He spent long hours each day staring at the jump gate, his only remaining link with his species. There was no way to tell whether or not it had been deactivated. It was pure black, absorbing all light that hit it. The station that encircled and housed it appeared black as well, silhouetted against the dying star behind it. If it was still active he would pass through it and find himself flying away from another star light years away. If not, it would do nothing to stop him from plunging into the dying star at a thousand kilometers per second.
It was seven weeks after he had received the message when the day, the hour, and the minute arrived. The computer needed no adjustments after it had set its course forty nine days before. It was only in the last second that the jump gate finally came close enough for the man to see it with his own naked eyes.
by submission | Jan 6, 2015 | Story |
Author : Rick Tobin
One unusual woman carved through me—cutting rivers in my desert landscape. I met Rebecca during my second career—writing, which was stalled. My haunt, when hunting ideas and caffeine, was a spartan coffee shop near San Antonio. The Walk-in Bistro had a counter from a previous hair salon. Its four chairs and two tables were mismatched and scarred. That was it. No variety; just black java. Servers brought cups along with sugar dispensers to the shaky tables.
So why go there regularly? It was simply her. She made coffee sublime, even when served a bit cold. I was a chump for redheads, especially with green eyes. Rebecca was coy at first, keeping her petite frame away as I held tight to my table for hours. She finally asked about my continuous typing on my tablet. We talked frequently and she finally joined me twice for dinner. Nothing came of it. Still, she would listen to ramblings about life in the Navy and the ports-of-call I’d visited, as if I was Columbus before Isabella. The time came to move ahead to something more interesting and lasting, even for a semi-retired adventurer.
“Rebecca, I’ve been coming here for over five months. You know about me, but I know little about you, yet I feel like I’ve known you…okay, it’s hokey, but forever.” I stared into her as she endured the other chair at the tiny table. It melted me to see her tilt her head, but she did not smile this time. Her frown surprised me.
“Donnie, you are truly interesting…and if I had more time…but, I simply don’t. Didn’t you ever wonder about the shop’s name?”
She had me, stunned and ready to stuff. What did the name of this hovel have to do with us? “No. I don’t get it. I thought we were hitting it off. It’s the age thing, huh?”
“Hardly. You are so young, but that is not the issue at hand. I’m simply on the way out. We’re only allowed to hold a body for six months. Someone else will enter her when I close her eyes. That’s what walk-ins do. The limit to our time travel is six months. This is my last day. You have shared wonders of your life with me and places I simply couldn’t visit on this trip. It’s a fascinating time to be on Earth…so many possibilities. We work in places where we can hear many stories of travails of the hungry, suffering, fragile…and you are all so fragile now.”
My coffee stuck in my throat. I was so young? I nearly coughed it up. She wasn’t joking. A writer can tell…at least a good one. I panicked, not sure if the caffeine or shock was rocking my chest. She touched my shirt and it calmed. It was warmth unfamiliar to me. She smiled broadly and looked at me with complete content. She rose and walked past the counter into the back room. I quickly followed but couldn’t find her.
Two days after that I heard about her attempted suicide. I found the hospital but their rules blocked me. I haunted the recovery area, but I never saw her again. I never went back to the shop. I couldn’t. My writing picked up after that and I moved away. I started selling my salty military stories after a surprise break from a publisher in San Francisco. She raved about my tales, but then left the publishing house after a few months; still, I was on my way…and wondering.
by submission | Jan 4, 2015 | Story |
Author : David Botticello
We only discovered them by mistake.
Waiting out in space, watching, listening. Deliberating.
We had this exploration drone, for a comet. It was supposed to land, take samples, send back pictures and analysis—you know the deal. The physics of the thing was astounding; firing what was essentially a ballistic camera off into space with only small maneuvering thrusters, trying to hit a chunk of rock and ice hurtling through space. It was almost comical, when it bounced off. Hubris you might say, that we thought we could accomplish such a feat. Space Command had given it fifty-fifty odds.
Well, it bounced. All that money, time, effort, skipping off the surface, back into space. And so we figured, might as well leave the cameras running, right?
And then three and a half months later, while going over the images in some lab late at night, my buddy says, “huh, that’s odd.”
That was how we discovered the Vorinii. They had it all perfectly timed, tapped into even our most secure networks, moving their ship around so that none of our satellites would ever see them—if everything had gone according to plan, that is. Damned deliberating aliens. Just waiting there. Watching us. But they hadn’t expected us to fail. No, I don’t even think they understood failure in those days. They just didn’t get the concept. Everything they do is a resounding success. Some people say they’re just that much smarter than we are. Others say they are a particularly lucky species, or that we’re an unusually unlucky one. Or that they plan so much they just rule out all the bad options. This priest from my bowling league thinks they have some sort of cosmic authority that conforms the universe to their desires, makes everything they do come out well. I’ve half a mind to believe him. But whatever the situation, however it goes, for some reason the Vorinii just, kinda, succeed.
And that’s why they were so interested in us—a kind of morbid fascination, when you think about it. We fail. Sometimes dismally, but other times, there’s a bit of comedy, or even glory to it.
Well they landed, made contact, explored, flew away, came back. The whole deal. They even took news of this odd new race called Humans to the stars.
Twenty-five years in the planning. Ten years of travel. Hundreds of thousands of manpower-hours. Resources from across the world, some of them near-irreplaceable.
So that’s our first introduction to the universe, I guess. We fail spectacularly.
