The Prodigal

by | Aug 8, 2007 | Story

Author : Benjamin Fischer

“Have a seat, Jim,” said the General.

“Is this what I think it’s about, sir?” the Colonel asked, shutting the hatch behind him.

He sat down. Across from him, a LED nameplate proclaimed “Major General David Pietz USAF, Commander-in-Chief Colonial Expeditionary Force” on a broad, glass-covered aluminum desk. Behind it the General reclined in a plush leather chair halfway turned to face a bank of monitors behind him. Blown up to maximum magnification were the latest from the reconnaissance office–an impressive fleet of spaceships, moored like the petals of a flower around a long, cylindrical space station.

One of the ships was highlighted in red.

“Your thoughts?” asked the General.

The Colonel shook his head.

“Yeah, that’s her,” he said.

“The Charleston,” the General nodded. “Old Chucktown. Lost with all hands. Five years, six months, and two days ago.”

“You still keep track of that too?” the Colonel asked.

“Yes,” General Pietz said.

They sat in silence.

“Definitely, positively destroyed in a meteorite collision,” the Colonel finally said. “They found pieces, they found bodies. No doubt at all.” He was paraphrasing a report.

“And yet the Colonials seem to have repaired her,” the General responded.

The Colonel snorted.

The General sighed.

“OK, Jim, confession time,” General Pietz said. “I don’t know whether to be completely pissed or crying with joy.”

“Yeah, it took the wind out of me, too,” said the Colonel. “She could be alive.”

Pietz let out a sharp laugh and turned away from the telling images. He set his elbows upon his desk and leaned towards his guest.

“Oh, she most definitely is,” he said, his face half-smiling, half-grimacing. “My girl was always tougher than that. I knew a handful of damn buckshot couldn’t have killed Marissa.”

The Colonel swallowed.

“So that means?” he said.

“Yes. The god damn rumors,” said Pietz, “are apparently true.”

“Apparently,” agreed the Colonel.

“Well, here’s another one, for you to spread,” said the General. “Tomorrow, at twenty one hundred, we’re deploying. Our eventual objective will most likely be those facilities at Lagrange Two. And the fleet defending them.”

“Jesus,” said the Colonel.

“To say I am disappointed in the Security Council would be a gross understatement,” said Pietz.

“Jesus,” repeated the Colonel. “We’ll have to use nukes. There’s no other option.”

“Eventually, when our hands are untied, yes,” said the General. “And that’s why I called you in here.”

“Sir?” asked the Colonel.

“When Lieutenant Colonel Pietz and I last spoke,” the General said, “she was convinced that full independence was the only reasonable course for the Colonies. She told me that any sort of half-measure was an invitation to open, violent rebellion, and that she sympathized with secession. I disagreed. It was not a pleasant discussion.”

“Lord,” said the Colonel, his eyes wide. “She told you.”

“Almost,” said the General, shutting his. He snorted softly. Then:

“Jim, I’ve known you and you’ve known me for damn near two decades now, so listen to what I say very carefully now. This contest will be for control of mankind’s future. We can not lose. I say again, we can not lose. If at any point–if at any point you feel that I am holding back even the least bit-”

“You’re not the only one who misses Marissa,” the Colonel said.

The General opened his eyes, and they were cold.

“I expect everything up to and including the last full measure from everyone, myself included,” he said. “Marissa will be very hard to kill.”

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The Return

by | Aug 5, 2007 | Story

Author : Grady Hendrix

“Wait!” he said. “Look at that!”

“What the hell is it?” she asked, slamming on the hovercar brakes.

“You’ve never seen one?” he asked.

She shook her head.

“You’re in for a treat,” he said, bouncing up and down with excitement. “Come on.”

He scrambled out of the hovercar and onto the blasted earth.

“I haven’t seen one of these since I woke up,” he said, jogging over to the green patch. “It’s called a tree.”

“I thought they all died in the Great War?”

His knees buckled a little and she caught him. It had only been two months since he’d been cracked out of his hundred year cryo-sleep, one of the first old growth humans to be brought back into this postwar world, finally judged capable of leaving the Citi-Dome and going on patrol with Sara-10.

“Steady on,” she said.

“They haven’t given me much history yet, but I haven’t seen a tree or a plant since I woke up. Look,” he said. “Its leaves change color with the time of year. See those tiny green things? They’re buds, new parts of the tree will grow from them. They’re capable of so many things that we can’t do…” a tear slid down his cheek.

Then a high pressure stream of burning liquid fuel hit the tree and it exploded into a fireball.

“What are you doing?” he screamed.

Sara-10 ignored him and burned the tree until her flamethrower was empty.

“We lost a lot of good men to bastards like that,” she said as the tree crackled.

“That’s maybe the only tree left alive after the Great War and you killed it?”

She slapped another fuel tank on her flamethrower and hit the tree with another blast.

“Who do you think we fought the Great War against?” she asked. “Fucking trees. Taking up all the land, breaking up our cities with their roots, killing everyone – “ she broke down crying. He reached to comfort her but she slapped his hand away. “Let’s just go,” she snapped. “I have to report this.

The tree watched them depart, cursing the mobile ones.

“We’ll be back,” it thought as it died. “There are more of us…we will water our roots with your blood…”

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Sheer Irony

by | Aug 4, 2007 | Story

Author : Sarah Klein

“You must think yourself pretty clever, Mr. Culler,” Parkinson said, snickering. “Look at all these devices you’ve rigged up to catch an intruder. Do you notice how I’ve been able to avoid every single one without losing a drop of blood?” He cackled.

Culler said nothing as he awoke from a drugged slumber, taking in his surroundings. He had been propped up in a chair and he was handcuffed. He clenched his teeth and very, very slowly eased his cuffed hands towards his pants pocket.

“You know, I’m just as smart as you, maybe even smarter,” Parkinson said evenly. He pressed the barrel of the gun against Culler’s temple. Click.

Culler had managed to get a couple fingers inside his pocket. He kept a straight face, looking ahead, groping silently.

“We were supposed to be partners! PARTNERS!!” Parkinson roared. “And you dismissed me! Why? Because you ‘felt like working alone’. Do you have any idea what that did to me, you worthless snob?!”

Flecks of spit hit Culler’s cheek as he grasped the lockpick and began to carefully ease it out, hoping he was being subtle enough. But Parkinson was too far gone to notice.

“You ruined my career!” he screamed, pushing the barrel in harder. Culler braced himself so as not to fall over. “You made me a disgrace! No one will even look me in the eye, much less work with me! All because you had to have all the glory yourself!” His red eyes bugged out as he trembled with rage.

Culler picked the lock without trouble, the small noise covered by Parkinson’s hysterics. He sat calmly with the cuffs still around his wrists, and slipped his hand into his other pocket just as subtly.

“You ruined my life,” Parkinson whispered darkly, “so I’m going to end yours.” He prepared to pull the trigger, but after a blink, saw only empty space. His mouth dropped open in surprise.

Click. A pair of handcuffs fell to the floor. Parkinson whirled around to see them, fallen on the floor – and unaccompanied by a person.

His heart sank as he remembered the theme of the project they were supposed to share.

Invisibility.

He felt his neck being squeezed. As his vision began to blur, he heard a voice.

“You must think yourself pretty clever, Mr. Parkinson…”

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Leisure Time on a Starship

by | Jul 30, 2007 | Story

Author : Patricia Stewart

“Honey, I’m home,” I yelled as I entered our spacious 241 square foot twin occupancy cabin. Being married, and serving on the same spaceliner together, entitled us to that extra 103 square feet of living space. But more importantly, it also includes a 32 cubic foot, state of the art, holovision center. Reason enough to get married, if you ask me. But, let’s keep that our little secret.

“How was your day, Steve?” inquired my lovely wife from our private shower. Another perk on these extended missions. I meant the lovely wife perk, in case you thought I was referring to the private shower perk.”

“Awful,” I replied. “I had to work four straight hours. Two consecutive shifts! Boy, I’m really beat too. Eed,” that’s short for Electronic Entertainment Director, “activate the HV. What are my options?”

“Good afternoon, Steven,” replied Eed’s deep simulated male voice. “Several sporting events are on tap. Solar wind racing in the Alpha Centauri system. Nuclear wake surfing on Saturn’s upper atmosphere. And, the Olympus Mons, 53 kilometer downhill sand skiing finals.”

“Solar wind racing? Are you kidding me? That’s ten times more boring to watch than cricket, as if that were even possible. Were there any crashes in the other two?”

“Nuclear wake surfing will be carried live via hyperspace relay. There’s no guarantee, but you can usually count on a few ships wiping out. The skiing was recorded yesterday, relative Mars time. The captain of the United European team caught an edge on the second gate and tumbled for fifteen minutes. But at only 0.4g, he was uninjured. Is it safe to assume that since there were no known fatalities, you want to move on?

“Roger that, Eed. How about movies?”

“Of the 162,244 movies in my database, you still have not watched four: Mr. Smith goes to Sirius, The Wizard of IO, It’s a Wonderful Timeline, and Top Phaser.”

“Pass.”

“There are several network comedy shows that are about to start: Married with Clones, Two and a Half Aliens, My Favorite Titian, and Gilligan’s Asteroid.”

“I swear, the major networks repeat the same shows every generation.”

“Apparently, every generation for the last 200 years. But as you always say Steven, Mary Ann is still the hottest babe in the entire universe, right?”

“In any century too, Eed. Ant keep your volume down, please. What do you have in the way of science or history?”

“There’s an International Solargraphic Special on the killer worms they found on Europa.”

“That was true? I thought somebody made that up. What else?”

“How about a Supernova Special on public holovision about alien spacecraft debris found in Siberia near the Tunguska River?”

“That debris was probably planted there as a college prank. Public holovision always falls for that crap.”

“Oh, here’s a good one, Steven. The Ancient History Channel has a special on a 21st century phenomena called Flash Fiction.”

“What’s that? Did you say ‘Flash Fiction’? Man, I love that stuff. Those writers are geniuses. No, make that super geniuses. Hey, honey, hurry up. There’s a great show about to start. While we wait for her Eed, run the credits. I want to see it any of those early writers ever became famous.”

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Tail

by | Jul 29, 2007 | Story

Author : Duncan Shields

It’s how you react to your life going wrong that defines you.

When you win, you smile like everyone else. It’s how you react to obstacles, changes of fortune and sudden lane changes in your life that reveals a true aspect of your personality.

Take me, for instance.

I never wanted to be cleaning the mobile arrays on the outside of this gigafreighter as we passed through crystal dust fields. I had a girl once. I even had the money to afford a pet. I lived planetside and breathed real air.

I’ve been given a tool much like a toothbrush. Something about the crystalline make-up of the comet trail doesn’t show up on sensors until the build up is too severe. They found that two diligent humans, each working in twelve hour shifts, was the cheapest solution to keep the array clear of crystal dust.

Some of this crystal dust is rumoured to be sub-molecular in nature. I try not to imagine the feeling of tiny shards filling my entire body, lodging in the mile-wide craters of my pores, sticking out of my skin like tiny daggers. It make me itchy.

Being itchy in a spacesuit is not good.

I clump around the array in a ritualistic circle, making sure to scrub in between the struts and under the dishes. I get the whole thing done in about two hours. That means that I clean it six times during my shift.

The comet we’re following must be giving us some pretty impressive data because I’ve been doing this for a year. I was only supposed to be doing it for eight months.

The overtime’s good but I miss my dog and even after everything that happened, I still miss Sara. If that was her real name.

Sometimes I’ll stop for a minute and just look out. I’m standing on a long steel tube in the middle of nowhere stuck in the sparkling tail of a comet. There’s a light xylophone being played just inside human hearing range as the rain of crystal dust collides with the hull. A constant distant ringing that I’m sure I’ll miss when I’m done this job.

If it doesn’t kill me. I’m scared every time my eyes get itchy that my orbits are filling up with interstellar sand that won’t be able to be removed. The bosses assure me that it’s psychosomatic but really, it’s in their best interest to keep me working. I don’t trust their smiles.

The colours swirl around me in blues and violets like a sheer veil thrown over the stars. It’s a belly dancer about to drop the last scarf.

I get back to work before the siren call of that shifting borealis makes me leap off into infinity.

Scrub, scrub, scrub.

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