by submission | Oct 8, 2012 | Story |
Author : Bob Newbell
Antonio pitched forward onto the ice, the exit wound in his left upper back clearly visible. He was dead. I finished reloading my rifle and took cover behind what remained of the wall of the dome. It was almost entirely a ground war now. Between our anti-aircraft lasers and the aerospace support from the Lunies, it was hard for an enemy drone or fighter plane to get through. In the distance, I could see several vehicles approaching. Hovercraft tanks, most likely. I doubted I had anything left that could hit something that heavily armored and do much damage.
My hands and feet were getting numb. It wasn’t that cold out, only -20°C according to the readout in my helmet’s display. Something was wrong with my battlesuit’s heaters. I did a sensor sweep and could still only see the heat signatures from the hovercraft. If there had been individual soldiers on foot, I might have tried to pick one or two off.
I looked back at the fragmented dome. Inside the area of the dome about a quarter of a kilometer in the distance I could make out a few hectares of hydroponic crops, long since frozen and shattered. Off to the left were rows of much smaller geodesic domes: individual houses, some of them remarkably intact given the pounding the giant habitation dome had taken. I wondered what the cities in the Americas and Russia and Asia looked like? The Lunar Free State and Lagrange-5 had been bombarding the enemy for close to eight months. That had to be taking quite a toll.
As I looked around, my eye fell on a small, dark object a few meters away. It was a grenade. My battlesuit’s system interrogated it and the grenade’s computer confirmed it was functional. I ran over, picked it up, ran back to the edge of the wall, and looked around the corner. The hovertanks were getting closer. I could see their skirts had tessellated armor, probably a ceramic-matrix nanocomposite that might withstand a grenade blast. The ice between my position and the tanks had several small craters. If I could manage to get the grenade in one of them just before the tank passed over it, I thought as the vehicles closed in on my position.
I picked a crater and estimated how long I should wait before I made a run for it. I’d almost certainly be gunned down before I could make it back behind the wall. But I figured I was as good as dead anyway. May as well take a half-dozen temps with me to hell. I got ready to sprint for the crater when the tanks all suddenly stopped.
“Wěi! Wěi, can you hear me?” I reflexively jumped when I heard the voice in my helmet’s speakers.
“John? Is that you?,” I replied.
“Yeah, it’s me. Wěi, the war’s over! They’ve had enough of the Lunies and Laggies pummeling their countries. The temperate zone powers just agreed to a ceasefire and they’re ready to recognize us as a sovereign state!”
I gently put the grenade on the ice and then sat down with my back against the inner wall of the shattered dome. My hands were shaking and it had nothing to do with the cold. We’d done it. We’d won our independence. Antarctica was free!
by submission | Oct 7, 2012 | Story |
Author : Debra Lim
When the call finally came, I just stared at the phone. The answering machine picked it up, and Dr. Wainwright’s voice echoed throughout my small room.
“I’m afraid the implants didn’t take. I’m terribly sorry to tell you that she didn’t-”
I shut off the machine and just stood there, a heavy pain settling in my chest.
The implants had been a long shot anyway, they said. She was just too old, they said. It was a miracle she’d survived this long, they said.
Feeling the warm tears slide down my face without my permission made the pain explode into anger. I threw my chair across the room and fell to the ground, tugging my legs into my chest.
I imagined her coming to me now, sensing my pain, gently nudging me. She’d always been by my side, her happiness giving me the strength to get up everyday, to beat back my depression and finally make it into the Academy. If it hadn’t been for her, I might never have left my room.
“And now she’s gone, and you weren’t even by her side at the end.”
My voice sounded distant. Everything felt far away, and I closed my eyes.
–
“Stop that!” I squealed with mock anger, rolling on the ground. Nala’s silicone tongue slapped against my face awkwardly as we wrestled. She leapt back, her eyes alight with their usual green glow.
I held up my personal datapad, re-reading the acceptance letter for the umpteenth time.
Ms. Miller, you have been accepted into the Moses School of Engineering at the…
I hugged the device to my chest, tears streaming down my face. I’d worked so hard in the last few years, and not all of it was on academics. I’d gone shopping on my own, and even walked through the park, Nala by my side. I still avoided large crowds, but I’d made it a long way from the dark cave that had been my bedroom.
I looked at Nala, her bare metal tail wagging happily. I sighed, reminding myself to replace the fabric that had worn off of it. The exposed circuitry could get damaged without the protection.
Rolling to my feet, I reached down to pat her blocky head, and it felt a little too warm.
“Hmm, maybe it’s time for your maintenance check-up?”
–
“There’s not much we can do. There are no more models like this one anymore, and this company in particular went out of business over five years ago.”
Five years in technology basically meant ancient these days.
I looked down at Nala, her floppy, too large tongue hanging out of her mouth.
“We can try an implant that would allow us to remotely access her data files. We’d then be able to transfer her to a new body. She’d still be the same pet, just in a new suit.”
Nala just continued to smile her doggy grin up at me, oblivious to our conversation.
“Alright, do it.”
“There are risks…”
“But if we do nothing, she’s gone anyway, right?”
It hurt to say it, but it was the truth. The specialist would be in at the end of the week. By then I’d be away at the Academy.
I rested my hand on her head.
“I’ll be waiting for you at the Academy, silly.”
She let out a tinny bark as I walked away.
–
I uncurled myself and stood. The tears had dried. I looked at my monitor, a picture of Nala and I at the park.
I wrapped my arms around myself and whispered.
“Thank you.”
by submission | Oct 6, 2012 | Story |
Author : Ian Florida
Metal grates against stone as my cell door shrieks open. They shout as they slam their rifle stocks into my ribs. I laugh. They pause. They think I should be afraid. They think the metal mask they’ve strapped around my head keeps them safe. I know better; I have a plan.
The leather bites into my skin as they strap me to the cart. They wheel me through the compound’s silver corridors. We enter the fluorescent halls of the medical wing. The light stings my eyes. I blink.
In that instant they jab the needle in my arm. The blue fluid flows down the tube and through my paper thin skin into my tight purple veins. I try to relax and remember the plan.
A thump shudders through the cart as we push past a door. My mind swoons but I don’t need to see to know where we are. The sterile stench of disinfectant fills my mouth. We’re in the operating room.
White masks and blue scrubs crowd around. I find the one clutching the blue sack. The world starts to dim. I don’t have the concentration to make him pull a gun or unstrap my bonds. That would be too much. Remember the plan, something simple. A single word.
“Lean.”
My need burns like the morning sun setting fire to the fog.
“LEAN.”
My vision starts to focus. They haven’t noticed yet. I glance to the side, quickly so I don’t give it away. His hand is resting on the line, cutting off the blue river’s flow. I smirk.
The surgeon drops his knife, “he’s awake” he screams with a voice that reminds me of my cell being opened. One reaches for an alarm, the man at the foot my bed raises his gun; they try to jab another needle in my arm.
“Freeze,” I whisper. They all obey.
“Cut me free,” I order. The lead surgeon takes his scalpel and slices the leather straps. I smile in thanks, but his face remains blank. He is my prisoner now.
I touch the sunlit window and smile. “Shatter.” I collapse against the empty window frame. My muscles shake. I slip to the ground and let my feet dangle from the tenth story window. I sit that way until the sun burns a ruddy red and slips behind the hills to the west.
I sigh as the last light flickers beyond the ramparts of my prison. The sun is dead. I give the surgeons their death as well. I stop all their hearts but one: the man with the gun. I release him so that he may release me.
I can feel his heart race as he realizes I’m no longer strapped to the table. I can feel the wind on his face as he turns to see why the window is open. I can see myself through his eyes: bleached skin that clings to limbs as thin as reeds streaked with blood and cobalt liquid. I feel his trigger finger finish the arc it started so many hours ago.
I leave his mind and return to my own, it’s better to die in the place you were born. If I can’t be on my own world, at least I can be in my own mind and free.
by submission | Oct 5, 2012 | Story |
Author : Desmond Hussey
When John Allen wakes, two suns, one red, one blue, peek through the line of smoking atmosphere generators fencing the horizon. He glances at his snoring wife as he shifts his weight to the edge of the bed. With luck he can get out of the house before she awakes. She’s not a morning person.
Dressing in his work coveralls is awkward due to his lame leg and arthritic fingers. He doesn’t know what caused his leg to ache so much, particularly in the morning. The “quack” doctor who comes once a year to check up on him is no help at all. He regrets the loss of mobility, but he gets by.
During breakfast, he checks the satellite readout of the day’s weather conditions. The damn monitor is on the fritz again, but after a few bangs he gets the readings he needs; 30% humidity. High temperature, 36 degrees Celsius. Oxygen 16 kpa. Nitrogen 44 kpa. Carbon Dioxide 6kpa. 32 mph winds, NNE. It was shaping up to be a good day.
John sips instant coffee as he scans the field maps on his tabletop console, dusty despite numerous air filters. Automated alerts inform him that a Nitrogen pump and a CFC emitter have failed and there are some irrigation malfunctions in sectors six, thirteen and forty-four. He should also check on the kamut field. The grain is nearly ready for harvesting. He could rely on the automated harvest indicator system, but some of these machines are older than he is and couldn’t be trusted. John prefers the tried and true methods of identifying crop readiness with hand and eye.
He hears Marg stirring. He slugs back the last of his gritty coffee, straps on his utility belt and makes for the airlock.
Outside, the breeze makes small twirling dust tornadoes across the yard. John puts his air filter on, grabs one of his many canes and makes his slow, limping way to the barn where his eeda-win beetle munches on frizzle, the tall, thin native grass that grows everywhere on this endless plain.
When he arrived fifty years ago this place was nothing more than a cold, inhospitable sea of sandy dunes with minimal plant life and a handful of hardy insect species. Today, the atmosphere is thin and dusty, but breathable. Water, drawn from deep, ample aquifers fills ancient craters with small, algae rich lakes. He’d helped introduce over five thousand agricultural and medicinal plant cultivars and personally engineered a breed of cattle that could subsist here.
For years this moon was a much needed, though humble bread basket for the seedships heading further into space. Today, he’s the only farmer left on Thuprair-E, fifth moon of the massive gas giant now cresting the horizon. The others, including his two sons, had left for more exotic and easily terraformed planets and moons. With the latest hi-tech machinery and temperate environments, the work elsewhere was much easier. John stayed. He likes a challenge.
Little Squirt croaks when John enters the tin Quonset. The giant, metallic green beetle shuffles in its stall, eager to get out. Massive, powerful pinchers clack anxiously.
It takes longer these days, but John has rigged an ingenious method of tacking up Little Squirt in the complicated harness and getting himself settled into the two-wheeled cart which contains all the tools he’ll need for the day.
“Come on, old friend,” John urges as he twitches the reigns. “We’ve got a long day’s work ahead.”
John gets his bearings, then slowly, steadily, beetle and man trundle off across a brave new world.
by submission | Sep 30, 2012 | Story |
Author : Kevin Crisp
The four rotary blades of the harvester chopped violently at the dank, cold air as it rested with spidery legs on the jagged rock. The sickly sweet smoke of its four combustion engines wafted faintly up the heights. Every thought was punctuated by the thunderous crash of hungry waves slowly devouring the island below. The harsh bright flood lamps mounted on the harvester seemed like candles in the gloom, where perpetual sea fog choked the feeble light of two cold suns, painting “night” and “day” with similar drear.
Out in the distance, a magnificently fortified fishing vessel glowed dimly like a faint star as it dredged the shallows for the last exportable resource of an otherwise dying world.
“Nests up there?” Rob asked as Alec stumbled down the wet, crumbling rock.
“Think so, up there in the crags,” he gagged. “Must be; I’ve never seen such a cache of chips before.”
The smell of the droppings was fetid, stifling; it burned the back of Alec’s throat. Dried out chips never smelled this rank; fresh droppings must be near. Alec flashed his torch toward the harvester, summoning the crew using a pre-arranged signal that meant “proceed with caution.”
Rob leaned over and heaved onto a pile of fish-like bones.
“Where’s your nose plug?” Alec asked.
“Forgot it,” Rob said. “Must have left it at Karla’s last night.”
Inwardly, Alec seethed.
Below them, men with shovels and pails began pouring out of the belly of the insect-like harvester, ducking low to keep out of range of the propeller blades. Cones of light seemed to pierce the harvester from every direction. Out in the water, unseen denizens of the depths surfaced, wailing hideously.
Then, there was a new sound, one that the two scouts knew too well. It was the heavy flap of leathery wings.
Rob spun around. “Where is it?” he asked, panicked, searching the stygian blackness that engulfed the island.
Alec ducked behind a rock and pulled his rifle from its scabbard on his backpack. Blasters were no good here, the saturated air caused dangerous refraction and scatter. He clipped in a fresh magazine with oily calm, the red rage strangely stilling his mind.
“Where is it?” Rob hollered. He fumbled a few cartridges out of his coat pocket, dropping half into the cracked rock in the process.
With surprising calm, Alec waited for the huge, bat-like shadow to emerge through the fog in his rifle-mounted scope. Rob spun again as the hideous beast roared, with a deafening sound like a steam valve discharging. Below them, the crew scattered and scrambled in every direction for cover. One or two of the closer of the party took cover near Alec.
Long taloned feet pierced Rob’s thickly padded coat and planted themselves in his back, piercing almost as deep as vital organs, but still Alec waited. The thing lifted the flailing, screaming Rob from the ground, carrying him up and out of sight, leaving only a new, steaming pile of wet droppings and dropped cartridges.
“Shoot it!” screamed a desperate female voice now crouching beside him. “Alec, shoot!” Alec looked over and saw Karla’s anguished face peeking from under her hood, her nose pinched by a flesh-colored plug, its tight, elastic bands dimpling the pink flesh beneath her cheekbones.
Alec fired a single, pointless round into the now vacant gloom.
“Why didn’t you shoot?” Karla asked. She buried her face in her hands. Alec fired a second useless round into oblivion.
