by submission | Feb 11, 2013 | Story |
Author : Algor X. Dennison
“Are you out of your mind?” Captain Lurren screamed at me. She clung to a broken strut over the glowing red chasm where solid deckplate had been a few minutes earlier. I wanted to tell her that she looked like the crazed one in that position, and that she was lovely anyway, but I couldn’t speak like that to my captain.
“Live for both of us!” I yelled. Turning, I ran down the tunnel to the cargo bay where we were being boarded. Another blast to our dying ship’s underbelly could suck us out into cold, dark space. Without a shieldbelt’s bubble field to push away the -450 degree vacuum, we’d be finished. I couldn’t let that happen to my captain. I had been hers to command since graduation, and I loved her despite repeated attempts to have me discharged. For her I would die, and relish it.
Shocktroops poured into the cargo bay. Before I could open fire, a burst from an enemy laser rifle cut down a pipe which fell and hit me. A novel tactic, but they shouldn’t have given that idea to a grenade man. I emptied my explosive rounds at the ceiling on the other end of the bay. Debris rained down and a pressurized tank above blew out with a colossal boom. Taking heart, I charged the alarmed shocktroops with a battlecry.
A distant roar drowned my hearing, and vapor streamed toward a dark gash that had appeared in the ceiling. The bay lit up in the wash of fire from another explosion. I stumbled, whispering my captain’s name one last time as I fell. My head and lungs were bursting.
As if summoned by my dying wish, Captain Lurren appeared next to me with a shield-belt in hand. She activated the protective bubble around us just in time. I could breathe again.
“Don’t suck up all the air!” Captain Lurren shouted, but to me her voice was honey. We floated a meter off the deck as gravity failed, watching the shocktroop assault craft pull away.
“They’re leaving!” I exulted.
“You breached the hull, you imbecile!” Lurren growled. “Of course they’re leaving. My ship is tearing apart!”
My head cleared even more under Captain Lurren’s freezing glare. “You came back for me,” I said, tears glistening in my eyes.
“Yes. The crew had taken every last shuttle,” she grumbled. “They left one shieldbelt.”
We watched in silence as the ship broke in half around us. Twisted pieces of hull twirled away and we were left in the dark of space. “We could not save our ship’s body,” I eulogized briefly, “but we saved its honor. When they pick us up, we’ll be heroes.”
“We have about two minutes of oxygen in this bubble,” Captain Lurren said flatly. “All they’ll find is two bodies.”
“That does sound romantic,” I agreed, “but don’t lose heart.” I detached a cylinder from my belt and held it up, smiling. “Oxygen refiltrator. We’ll share each breath, clinging together in a tight embrace as we make our way across the starscape. Two officers of the Fleet, loyal to the last.”
“If we survive,” Lurren grated, “You won’t be an officer any longer. Not on my ship!”
I could have pointed out that her ship could hold no more officers at all, but I decided to savor the moment with her instead.
“It’s a beautiful view, isn’t it, Captain? Look, there’s Cassiopeia, just past that burning section of the hull.”
by submission | Feb 10, 2013 | Story |
Author : Leah Hervoly
I have been drifting along for the past seven hundred and eighteen years. Things are starting to look the same. Puffy red nebulae over here, collapsing white dwarf over there. Once in a while I see a galaxy get sucked into a supermassive black hole like some kind of interstellar juice box. The colors are breathtaking and remind me of sunsets. The stars hardly change, though.
At first I tried to make my own constellations, but ran out of Latin names and animals and only managed to catalogue about twelve hundred. My programmer wasn’t the brightest in those departments. Every so often I think back on the day the escape pod ejected from the main ship and launched me blindly into foreign space. I’m not even sure what galaxy we were in when we were attacked.
I guess it doesn’t matter now.
As an android, we don’t really have a need for recreation or entertainment, although shutting down to recharge for longer than necessary is incredibly boring. The pod I’m in doesn’t offer much in the way of visual or intellectual stimulation. I don’t mind, though. I like to think I have a good imagination.
Its A.I. has become a bit eccentric as well. After about ninety years it decided that it was going to be a female and dubbed itself Samantha. She doesn’t talk to me anymore. She kept wanting to show me videos she had taken of people walking in front of the pod when it was still attached to the main ship. I found these dull and expressed my disinterest around the three hundred year mark. She hasn’t said a word to me since. I miss her singing.
Not that I’m really complaining though—I’m not lonely even without Samantha talking to me. The lack of company has been endearing and allows me to retrace the philosophical roots that my programmer installed. I know the Poetics by heart, and find that when I’m gazing out at the stars Plato’s theories are much more believable. I haven’t been able to wrap my wires around Descartes yet, but I’ll get there.
I’m not sure what the malfunction was that prohibited the pod in locating a civilized planet and landing. Samantha had muttered something about missing binary code, but I think that’s only because she was upset with me. Sometimes the radio transmitter crackles and I can hear indistinct voices requesting coordinates, but most of the time I just peg that as wishful thinking and turn off the communicator.
I smile slightly when I notice that another twenty four hours have passed. Another day ticks off on a file in my hard drive. I look out of the window and smooth down my monofilament fiber hair and blink my blue glass eyes. I absently fiddle with my plastic fingernails. I’m not worried that no one will find me, or that nobody realizes I’m gone.
I kind of like it out here.
by submission | Feb 9, 2013 | Story |
Author : Thomas Howe
The sleep pod hissed. He awoke full of dreams of empty fields and dark corridors.
He sat up, his feet hitting the cold floor. He walked naked to the console, checking the monitor.
“When am I?”
The computer clicked and whirred. One line of code appeared: SEPTEMBER 28, 2012.
He whispered a curse. “Too late. Just too late.”
He looked around the small windowless cabin. The external monitors were black. The pod and the computer filled the tiny space. His clothes still hung over the console, his long blade still propped against the wall. It felt like a short nap. It had actually been more than a century.
All the planning ended here. Piecing the craft together took him more than a year, and they tracked him down that morning, so he had to move up the launch. In a hurry.
He reached for the blade. The implants in his hands stuttered; solar energy hadn’t touched them for over a century, and they’d be out of juice soon. He used up most of it finishing the ship. He had planned to recharge before launch, but the drone ships changed that plan.
“Open the hatch,” he muttered.
The screen flashed: UNABLE TO COMPLY.
“Why?”
Nothing.
He went to an access panel on the wall, opened it. The processors looked fine.
“Run a diagnostic,” he said.
Click. Whirr. ALL SYSTEMS OK. FUEL LEVELS AT 84 PERCENT.
It was possible to relaunch, perhaps. He had planned a roundtrip, but the sleep pod screwed him over. He was out way too long.
“Open the hatch,” he tried again.
UNABLE TO COMPLY.
“Why won’t the hatch open?”
UNABLE TO COMPLY. UNABLE TO COMPLY. UNABLE—
He slammed his fist against the panel, electricity flying from his hand. The computer’s screen went black.
“Perfect,” he said. He punched some keys on the console. The screen relit, its cursor flashing.
“Reset navigation to original temporal destination. August first, nineteen-oh-two.”
DESTINATION SET.
“Is there enough fuel left to—“
ATTENTION! MORE POWER IS REQUIRED TO ENGAGE LAUNCH SEQUENCE! PLEASE REPLENISH FUEL STORES TO NINETY PERCENT MINIMUM!
“I was afraid of that,” he said. He accessed historical data and found the temporal line to the virus. It hadn’t mutated yet.
His original plan was to return to the virus’s inception around the turn of the twentieth-century, to eliminate it there. He started running the numbers of infected. It was fifty thousand, give or take. All carriers, but no symptoms. It still lay dormant.
Maybe he wasn’t too late after all.
“Can we synthesize an immunization?”
Click. Whirr. FORMULA FOR VACCINE IN DATABASE.
“Good. How do I get it to the population?”
UNABLE TO COMPLY.
He rolled his eyes and started looking around the cabin. The first step was to get out, recharge. Himself and the ship.
“Location?”
CURRENT LOCATION: BALTIC SEA. ELEVATION: 187 METERS BELOW SEA LEVEL.
“Shit.” He pressed more buttons. “Do we have enough fuel to surface?”
FUEL LEVELS AT 84 PERCENT. SAFE TRAVEL TO SURFACE IS WITHIN PARAMETERS.
“Do it,” he said, strapping himself into the console.
The ship, one giant engine, began to rumble. He watched the monitors. The monitors changed from black to dark blue to light blue. Bubbles rushed past. His ears began to pop. “Here we go,” he said.
The ship burst through the surface of the waves. The screen showed the churning waters of the sea.
“Now will you open the hatch?”
The hatch above him hissed, and sunlight poured into the tiny cabin.
He stood under the beams of light, blade in hand, recharging.
by submission | Feb 8, 2013 | Story |
Author : Bob Newbell
Trimet VII was the Emperor of the entire Epsilon Eridani star system. Of course, he didn’t know his solar imperium by the name a human celestial cartographer had given his sun. To Trimet VII, his star was designated Benzaprin and his planet, Benzaprin Prime, was the seat of his empire. But one solar system was not enough. He coveted the resources of another star system 10.5 light-years away. In particular, he wished to conquer the inhabited third planet of the system, a world called by its inhabitants “Earth”.
“Greetings, Majesty,” said Prime Minister Klav. “You asked to see me?”
“Klav!” said Trimet VII, “I want an update on my plan to expand our empire to encompass Earth and her star system. How long until an imperial battle fleet will darken the skies of the human homeworld?”
“Well, Majesty, there is the little matter of the system in question being 10.5 light-years away. Even fusion-powered vessels would take at least many decades, perhaps centuries to reach–”
“I don’t want excuses!” yelled Trimet VII. “That system has material resources that will make our empire fantastically wealthy! We must exploit–”
“Majesty,” interrupted Klav, “there’s no way the natural resources of that solar system could be shipped back here profitably. Even if the planets and asteroids were made of pure gold and platinum, it’s cheaper to mine our own system. And it’s cheaper than that to simply use Benzaprin Prime’s resources efficiently. A recycling program would make a lot more economic sense than–”
“Slaves!” said Trimet VII. “What about slaves? The human race could be pressed into service to cater to our every whim and to free our subjects from tedious and dangerous work!”
“Uh, Majesty, slavery hasn’t been economically viable since our industrial revolution four centuries ago. That’s why the anti-slavery movement gained so much traction within a generation or two of industrialization. We’re a service and information economy. Robots already do most of the drudgery. Transporting captives across light-years of space over a century or two is quite imposs–”
“A new world for our surplus population!” insisted Trimet VII.
“Birth control is many, many orders of magnitude cheaper,” retorted Prime Minister Klav.
“The glory of military conquest!” said Trimet VII.
“The Liberal Faction favors pacifism,” said Klav. “Besides, we can’t afford–”
“Raise taxes to fund it!” said Trimet VII
“The Conservative Faction favors tax cuts,” said Klav.
“A new scientific frontier!” said Trimet VII.
“Telescopes and robotic probes,” said Klav.
“Ambassadors and diplomats!” said Trimet VII.
“Radio transmissions and laser pulses,” said Klav.
“Spinoff technologies?”
Klav shook his head.
“Manifest Destiny?”
Klav frowned.
“No chance?” asked Trimet VII
“No chance,” said Prime Minister Klav.
The meeting over, Klav left the throne room and headed back to the Prime Minister’s Residence. Young emperors always went through this stage, thought Klav as he walked out of the Royal Palace.
by submission | Feb 3, 2013 | Story |
Author : Christine Rains
All they cared about was the color red.
When we landed on blue-gray gaseous Kepler 3, the squirrel-like beings greeted us peacefully. The Keps were primitive and living in small farming communities. They’d never even seen the full spectrum of colors, but they were intelligent and eager to learn. We brought them machinery to help with their fungi crops and technology to make their everyday lives easier. We even shared with them the secrets of space travel.
The first time some of their kind entered one of our ships on the surface out of the color filtering atmosphere of the planet, they cried out and some fell to their knees. Our galactic allied flag was brightly dyed, and the ship’s name was in red letters underneath on the wall. The Keps reached out their stubby hands, trembling as they traced each letter.
We were proud to have made new friends and allies. Not all beings we met in the galaxy were friendly. Yet we humans managed to make enough allies to help us flourish in the darkness of space.
The Keps worshiped us at first. And, not surprisingly, we liked it. Yet we didn’t stop to understand why. We assumed it was because we were strong and smart. They were small and comic in our eyes. We had brought them into a new age. We were gods.
We were blind to when it started to change.
They created a new flag for their world and wore uniforms. All red. We saw it as a tribute. They learned about weapons and strategy. They became great pilots and techs. Every farmer became a warrior. The Keps left their planet and made space their home.
When they helped us win wars, we gloated. When they conquered our most feared enemies, we congratulated them. We were the most powerful alliance in the galaxy.
Then they turned on us. We didn’t understand why. We had given them so much.
We lost several billion humans in the fighting. We feared we’d become extinct. When the Keps accepted our surrender, we thought they would kill off the rest of us. They were hungry for violence and glory.
They kept us clustered in camps on Mars. Earth was no longer habitable having been devastated by the war.
The Keps used us as entertainment, but mostly for livestock. They’d bleed us to stain their flags and uniforms. The red kept its intense color through ingenious fabric preservatives. Our blood was so different from the bluish-black ichor in their veins. Perhaps it was a statement to other aliens of their superiority, but in the end, we realized it was something more primal. Something that reached into their hearts and souls to bring out centuries of suppressed anger, passion, and hostility.
It was the color red they truly worshiped.
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