by submission | Sep 10, 2013 | Story |
Author : Scott Summers
At 18:55 Standard, the Breakwater dropped out of superspace above New Tellis and began jettisoning escape pods into the atmosphere. Leaking oxygen and billowing fire, the ship guns rotated on their axis and fired into the empty space overhead. Torpedoes, missiles and railgun shells hurled away from the cruiser, pushing it farther into the planetary gravity well.
Ten seconds after opening gambit, a ripple in the vacuum signaled the arrival of the Talcani cruiser. The ship had intercepted the Breakwater as it went super at the edge of the galaxy. With no place to run, the Breakwater had taken its licks and set a course for the closest defensive system. Jumping into New Tellis orbit was a bold move — one that would lead the Talcani cruiser into the heart of humanity’s presence in the galaxy.
To Commander Mason, it meant one thing: The enemy could not survive this exchange. He watched the enemy cruiser’s engines activate, a sharp burst of ion propulsion meant to correct the ship’s oblong position. It was one of the few advantages they had over the Talcani: for all their advances in weaponry and ship design, they still couldn’t fly worth a damn. They paid dearly for it now as explosions erupted across the cruiser’s backside.
A warning siren sounded from the bridge console.
“Shields!” Mason shouted.
Nearby space wavered before erupting in crystalline blue as Talcani combat beams assaulted the shields. One of the first technologies they had stolen from the enemy still proved their greatest ally in the war that followed.
Mason was beginning to wonder how long the shields would hold when a thick, golden beam — a ray of liquid sunlight — flashed past the bow on a collision course with the enemy cruiser. Planetary defenses. The Talcani pitched to port, still under the Breakwater’s guns, into the blast. Mason watched the cruiser’s portside armor disintegrate.
He had braced for a return volley when the ion thrusters stopped firing.
Mason narrowed his eyes. Talcani never gave up, even in dire straits.
“All crew evacuated, Commander,” someone reported.
“Get to your own pods,” he ordered.
Shadows dashed through the smoke. Mason ignored them. The enemy tactic piqued his curiosity. A warning light on his personal overlay signaled another beam rising from New Tellis.
Suddenly, a soft red glow shimmered around the Talcani cruiser. Mason thought they were prepping for super when he caught the faint outline of a shape.
A wedge.
Realization struck him. Sucking a breath, Mason scrambled for the weapons control panel, punched an override and took aim at the side of the wedge. Missiles and gunfire careened toward the target. The rails hit first, illuminating the shape in full form. Mason swallowed. He had done all he could.
The second golden ray shot past the bow, but instead of shredding the cruiser it split on the wedge. Fragments of the beam sheared the Breakwater’s shield. Metal groaned. Mason felt the hull above him tear away. The force of the vacuum hurled him into silent space, tumbling wildly.
As the cold air crystallized his flesh, Mason was rewarded with a gratifying sight: the missiles impacted at full force, misaligning the wedge, and the remainder of the beam skewered the cruiser through the middle.
His last vision before the vacuum took him was a glimpse of the atmosphere above New Tellis, where two dozen escape pods, glowing like tiny fragments of starlight, made their way toward safety.
by submission | Sep 8, 2013 | Story |
Author : Connor Yeck
Employee entry, Kennedy Space Center:
I don’t know if the other guys do this, but I like keeping records so I’m typing some things on my own terminal while we wait. Is personal stuff allowed? The rockets are past the point of alteration anyway, so there isn’t much to do.
Hoping my first project goes smoothly.
I guess it’s ironic or something to say that, as we’re trying to crash our hardware into the moon. But if we’re lucky, LCROSS* will give us a look at how much water is up there, and the impacts will throw up a cloud or maybe something even better to analyze. It’s hard trying to explain to my parents why this isn’t a waste of tax-money.
*LCROSS (Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite—we just know what it does, the details of acronyms tend to be forgotten around here)
We’re at the one minute mark, no one’s talking. It’s just like the movies.
There’s the first hit. Someone claps and we watch the figures. Second hit. Everyone’s cheering. It’ll be a while before we know anything, but the hardware made it, that’s all that matters.
I’m typing this in the evening.
It was a good day at the office, and we’re heading out for the night to celebrate. Further results will be checked tomorrow. There might’ve been bigger impacts than we thought, and are tracking an object heading out from the moon that could be a crater fragment. Should burn up. Still can’t believe I work here.
It’s morning. No one came in today, but I’m alive, which is good.
I think most of the cities are gone now. I’m sure we would’ve retaliated the same way, if a rocket had come through the roof of our world and landed in our president’s bed. The Lunars (some like the name Moonies (ugh)), are very scientific from what we can tell, and are sending a good deal of our own planet into the air for study.
Final note: mission success, results show water on moon.
by submission | Sep 7, 2013 | Story |
Author : Nils Holst
It had been five years since Theo had seen another human being, much less saluted one.
“Captain Theodore Holmes of Alpha Company, Third Colonial Marine Battalion?” asked the man with the holopad. He didn’t look up as he scrolled through the UNSS Sargazzio’s personnel list.
“Yes sir,” croaked Theo. The Sargazzio’s voice recognition software had failed over a year ago, he hadn’t spoken in months.
“Where’s your commanding officer?”
“I’m the only soldier aboard this ship sir. The rest of my battalion died on Ignis Magna.”
The man frowned and clicked off his holopad. He looked a bit soft around the middle. Too much time behind a desk.
“There were over eight hundred men listed on that manifest. You’re the only one left?”
“Yes sir,” said Theo. “Seven soldiers made it to the dropship, but I was the only one the Sargazzio’s autodocs could save.”
“You, ah… seem to be taking this pretty well captain.”
“It took the Sargazzio five years to get back here sir, I’ve come to terms with a few things. When will I be redeployed?”
The man shook his head and beckoned for Theo to follow him.
“I am Martin Ortega, or Admiral Ortega I suppose, if you insist on titles. I was promoted from postmaster to high admiral this morning for the express purpose of welcoming you back home. We don’t have much of a need for admirals these days, but we figured you’d appreciate the gesture.”
The space station was deserted, silent save for their footfalls echoing through the corridor. The sound had nearly driven Theo mad on his long flight home.
Ortega paused in front of a viewport, looking out at the massive hull of the Sargazzio. The pinnacle of military engineering when she was commissioned over eighty years ago, the ship had sixteen twin-mounted flak cannons, eight large-coil railguns, a suite of countermeasure lasers, four Grindlewald drives capable of sustained .9c, and enough life support for a full mechanized battalion. She had gone out accompanied by much pomp and circumstance, stuffed with soldiers and armed to the airlocks. She had come back a battered hulk, an ancient behemoth limping into dock on quarter power with holes the size of watermelons punched through her hull.
“The war is over,” Ortega said. “The treaty was signed the year before you landed on Ignis Magna, but even at near-light speeds most planets didn’t get stand-down orders for another couple years. The riots started when they declassified the casualty lists. Billions dead for no reason. The Colonial Defense Force was dismantled, the arms cartels overthrown. We’ve been at peace ever since. For decades we’ve kept this station operational, waiting as the warships trickled in. Waiting for you.”
“Me?”
“Your battalion was the last. After we’re done here the station will be demolished and the Sargazzio slagged. The world has moved on, the war is ancient history.”
Ortega turned away from the viewport and walked toward the receiving room.
“What happens now?”
“You’re discharged,” Martin said. “Let me be the first to congratulate you on surviving the Long War, now described as the biggest fuckup in human history. You’ll be in the media spotlight for a while, journalists and network commentators wanting to talk to the last returning soldier. But after a couple weeks you’ll be old news, and everyone will forget. You’ll see – things have changed. You may have only aged ten years, but the world you knew fell by the wayside decades ago.”
Silence filled the room.
“Did we win?”
“Does it matter?”
by submission | Sep 6, 2013 | Story |
Author : Amanda Schoen
I was at work when the chat program pinged. We weren’t supposed to take personal calls so I ignored it. Two seconds later it pinged again. And again. Oh hell. One conversation couldn’t hurt.
My sister’s handle popped up. <Mel, I have some bad news. Dad passed away.>
It was the sort of thing that warranted a phone call, so the words could dissipate in the ether. Instead they lingered in fuzzy black print on the screen.
Had he been sick? I didn’t know. It’d been eons since I called home.
Well. That was something.
I logged into my personal server and sent every picture I had. <When’s the service? I’d like to be there.>
The screen said my sister was typing. It took ages. I expected directions to the funeral home, the date of the ceremony. But when the screen blinked, her reply was short. <That’d be nice.>
She logged off without another word.
Well…people coped with grief in different ways. Maybe she just needed space. There’d be an obituary. Something in the paper that would have the details. I opened the browser and kept a tab open to the local paper.
It seemed disrespectful to just go back to work. Maybe I should hit a bar. Or call my sister back. There were probably things to do before the service…
But I couldn’t tear myself away from the computer. My sister might need space, but I just threw myself into work. There was something comforting about coalescing data. I’d been doing this for…I don’t know how long. A while. It’d become rote.
I took regular breaks to check if Dad’s obituary had made the paper yet. Nothing. So I sent a chat request to my sister until she responded.
<No, himself.> It was free to go in and get the scan, to store a copy of your memories on a hard drive. Accessing them later, now that got tricky. Most folks agreed to work for the storage company. Contract basis. Who wouldn’t do a year of labor—or ten, or a hundred—if it meant immortality?
And there were laws. You weren’t a piece of software; you had rights. You got email. The Internet. All the commercials showed happy families chatting away with their loved ones on their laptops. Some even set a place for the computer at the dinner table. What more could you want?
<Why?> It made no sense. You made your backup before you died. You didn’t even need to know how it’d happened, no memories of agonizing pain to haunt you. Most people spent their time plugged in anyway. They just carried on. Forever.
She paused. <It’s late. I should go.>
She logged off, leaving me to reread our stilted words, longing for a program that could parse them for deeper meaning.
Somewhere along the seventeenth time I checked the paper, the obituary popped up. It was short and sparse, each word measured against the cost of printing it:
Jean Phelps passed away at the age of eighty-six.
That wasn’t right. He’d just celebrated his seventieth birthday. We set the smoke detector off because I’d lit seventy little candles on the cake.
I read on:
He is survived by his wife Marie Phelps-Sanchez and his youngest daughter, Stephanie. His eldest daughter, Melanie, passed away sixteen years ago. He will be missed.
by submission | Sep 4, 2013 | Story |
Author : Mickey Hunt
“Welcome to the edge of the universe,” I said cheerfully. “The very edge.”
The clutch of tourists easing into my parent’s store seemed overawed. At night, part of our sky is lit with nebulae, pulsars, galaxy clusters, and all sorts of stuff, but the rest of the sky is black, pitch black. As far as anyone knows, no electromagnetic phenomena, gravity, or nothing ever emanates from out there.
“We’re stocked with souvenirs, snacks, drinks, contraband cigarettes, and camping supplies at wallet gouging prices,” I said as the customers fanned out among the aisles. “Hot showers cost a fortune per minute.”
“Excuse me, young fellow. Postcards?” the sweet little grandma asked.
I stepped around the counter to show her the rack for our best seller: a jet black card with the caption ‘Beyond the Horizon’.
“I’d like a dozen,” she murmured to herself.
Tourists. I don’t figure what they’ve come to see, but they know how to spend.
“Where’s the hotel?” a man in a sweater and shorts asked.
“Our planet doesn’t have hotels, sir, since it’s a park, except for the few concessionaires like us. If you want a room, you’ll have to stay a parsec or two closer toward the Center.”
“That’s too bad,” he said. “We’ve come so far already.”
“We have plenty of camping spaces,” I said. “Campers bring lawn chairs, extra blankets, and sit up all night staring into the dark void.”
“Do you rent gear?”
“Whatever you need.”
#
Early in the offseason, two of my school buddies thought we should take an adventure. Dad owns a junker Galaxship that once carried the mail, so my friends and I took it apart, cleaned everything, recharged the quantum cells, put it back together with the safeties disabled, and loaded up all the canned beans, frozen steak, citrus concentrate, and beer it could hold. We charted a course directly away from the Center and launched.
At first it was fun. I mean, because even scientists never attempt this. Before long it got boring, but honestly, when we weren’t lifting weights and watching movies, or playing video games, we slept. Outside, absolutely everywhere was black, black, black as we traveled four years as close to c² as we dared.
Then one of my buddies, Janos, said, “We should stop.” So we did, and other than the ship not rattling and shaking, we’d have hardly known. We looked homeward to find that the universe had shrunk to an infinitesimal spark of light.
“Holy Higgs Boson!” Janos said. “We flew faster than we thought.”
I took a picture.
A quiet minute afterwards, my other buddy, Rasper, said, “I’m scared. Let’s go back now.” So, we did. The tiny dot of the universe grew until four years later (minus a month) our planet emerged into view.
When I walked into the store, Mom asked, “How was it?”
“Okay. I’m glad to be home. It’s not so bad here.”
“That’s how I felt,” Dad said. “You’re just in time. The tourist crush begins this weekend.”
Anyway, that picture I took of our infinitesimal spark? We couldn’t decide on a caption, but we make a ton of money from the new postcard regardless. Maybe, just maybe I can now afford to go someplace really fantastic and astonishing.
