English Club

by submission | May 4, 2013 | Story

Author : Kevin Tidball

I ran into Soren completely by accident. We made eye contact across the busy plaza, and I prevented him from attempting to slink away in the crowd by striding up to him and forcefully grabbing him by the shoulder. Not that he would have been successful, with his grey clothes and stocky physique, surrounded three-meter-tall neon-clad beings as he was.

I dragged him to a nearby bar, and forced him to sit with me as we drank foamy, glowing beverages out of fluted glasses as long as my forearm.

“Small world, huh? I was just passing through, and I, uh, didn’t exactly expect to see any familiar faces.” He was evasive as ever, looking instead at the aliens playing on a massive terraced lawn, their stringy bodies flowing gracefully like kelp in the low gravity.

“I’m still pissed about the 1,500 bucks you owe me. I don’t think I’m about to get that back now, so I’d better enjoy talking to another human again enough to forget about it. What’s with the uniform?” I gestured to the gray fatigues Soren was wearing. The acre of brass on his chest and red epaulettes on the shoulders suggested something shady.

“Funny you should ask.” Soren fidgeted on the extremely tall stool he was perched on, allowing himself to swing wildly in the microgravity. “I actually have decided to pick back up with my military career.”

“You’re full of shit. This is my third “foster home”, and I have yet to see anyone argue, much less throw a punch. They can’t even conceive the idea of conflict, so why the hell would they want an army?”

“See that’s just it!” his eyes lit up in a way I’d learned to deeply distrust. “There’s something about the language they all speak. I’m no professor-” Major understatement, “-but in their language they can’t be aggressive. Seriously, they don’t even differentiate between species! It affects the way they think. So I set out to correct things if you will.”

“Mhmm. And how is it working for you? As well as last time?” Soren’s stint in the US Army ended two weeks before his first deployment to Afghanistan when a tree fell on his garage, revealing a marijuana grow. I hadn’t expected to ever see the bail money I posted any more than I had expected to see Soren, especially after The Event.

Soren brushed off the jab, “Seriously all I gotta do is teach ‘em English. Once they know the what, they need the how, which is me. And boy, do they pay.”

“What do you need money for? Everything’s free. It’s a utopia.”

“Now that’s just wrong. Tell me you don’t feel just a bit empty.” He leaned across the table, “We need competition and conflict. It’s who we are.” Soren hopped off his stool and landed gracefully on the ground. “Punch me.”

“What?”

“Punch me in the fucking face!”

I thought of my drained savings account and nailed him on the nose. Soren did an almost elegant backflip and landed cackling amid a gory spray. Elongated heads turned on slender necks. “See what I mean!” I realized I was smiling.

“Come with me, Nick. The universe needs a little excitement.”

I stared up in the sky, the other side of the ring visible through the manufactured air. I looked back at Soren, “What’s the worst thing that could happen?”

Interference

by submission | Apr 24, 2013 | Story | 0 comments

Author : J. R. Hargenrader

When Mission Specialist David Branson joined the Solarian Defense Force, his romantic ideal of “see the universe, learn advanced skills, and encounter alien civilizations” never meant hiding on the far side of an asteroid, cleaning regolith-covered optics, and spying on Gliesians he never met.

“Do you ever wonder if we should be doing this?” Branson asked. He lifted the zero-gravity cup to his lips and glanced at the senior officer seated next to him.

Commander Culligan stared at the satellite feed centered on the alien launch pad. The imposing man was all military—square jaw, short cropped hair, low body fat.

“No.”

And efficient sentence construction.

Branson also didn’t envision being stuck at the far end of the galaxy in a pioneer outpost with a guy less companionable than the station’s railgun. At least today would deviate from their regular routine of scanning satellite images flagged by the computer or unclogging the Waste Collection System again. The Gliesians were preparing another rocket launch and, if their last few attempts were any indication, there was a good chance they’d get something into orbit this time. A part of him secretly hoped for their success.

“This violates SDF’s non-interference policy,” Branson said.

“Don’t you think?”

“Non-interference is secondary to the safety and perpetuation of humanity,” Culligan said, quoting SDF doctrine. His face remained cold and hard. “Besides, 581 won’t be the first system where we’ve done this. Or the last.”

The primary display flashed an alert and the image zoomed on the rocket. Branson straightened in his chair.

“Get ready,” Culligan said. He swiped his hand across the console and the display panned down the slender vehicle.

Branson admired the elaborate patterns of colored dots that decorated the ship and appeared on structures throughout the city. Everything they crafted was functional and beautiful. The Gliesian rocket was a vehicle to the stars and a work of art.

White hot light erupted from the engines. The support trusses swiveled away from the airframe and the rocket lifted above the launch pad. Branson’s breath caught in his throat.

“Perfect,” Culligan said. “The trajectory couldn’t be more perfect.”

The rocket arced over the sky as blue melted into black. The first stage disengaged; then the second. The hurtling nose cone soared along the curvature of the planet into a stable orbit. The Gliesians had done it.

The display flashed “IN RANGE.” The walls rattled as the outpost’s railgun tracked its target. “LOCK” flashed in red.

The cone unfurled to reveal a silver sphere at its core. This sphere rocketed away as its crystalline extrusions caught the red sunlight and created rainbows over the blue world. Branson opened his mouth to speak but no words came to him.

Sensors detected a new transmission. A beeping noise.

“Fire,” Culligan said.

“Wait,” Branson said. “There’s a signal.”

“Fire!”

A suppressed flash of plasma lit up the barren asteroid landscape and the outpost shuddered.

The sphere burst into a shimmering spray of silver and crystal. The beeping stopped. Branson thought he watched his own heart as the satellite tumbled forward into a silent death spin.

“That will keep them planet-bound a while longer,” Culligan said.
Branson imagined the explosion as the Gliesians would see it from the surface. Beauty and catastrophe as one. Did they feel shock, confusion, defeat, or sadness? Or were those emotions exclusive to humans? A burning sensation rose in his throat.

“What have we done?” Branson asked.

Culligan sniffed. “Completed our mission.”

Mission? To preserve the ‘safety and perpetuation’ of—

Humanity?

Oh, God. What have I done?