The Cirrillian Campaign

by submission | Aug 24, 2008 | Story

Author : Paul Starkey

Villam’s first campaign began at 29:15; within minutes he was a veteran.

A third of his squad died within seconds of disembarking, victims of the Cirrillian psionic artillery, the heavy bombardment shattering their synapses and boiling their brains within their skulls like potatoes in a pot.

Sniper fire was the next danger, the Cirrillian marksmen were using hyper-reality bullets. Marsom was Villam’s best friend, they’d enlisted together …now, as he was hit, the unremitting truths that all men hide, even from themselves, overwhelmed him, crushing his spirit as surely as pressure would have crushed his body, and before Villam could stop him he’d blown his brains out with his sidearm.

Only half of them reached the Cirrillian trenches. Villam had turned his ankle trying stop Marsom, and so was lagging behind the rest of the squad. This saved his life.

Fazerthorn trees exist on every world, not that you’d ever know it. They bloom in another reality, invisible to all but sophisticated scanners. The realities are separate, and never the twain should meet…except Cirrillian scientists had discovered a way to compact the two together. Suddenly the clear ground the troopers raced through became a heaving forest.

Despite the thump and wail of battle around him, all Villam could hear were screams as fazerthorns materialised inside his comrades. The lucky ones died instantly, from organ failure or just plain shock. The strong ones lasted longer, thorns ripping through their skin, tearing eyeballs, slicing arteries and rupturing blood vessels.

Sergeant Coog was the toughest S.O.B in the unit, so Villam wasn’t surprised when he charged onwards, despite the blood haemorrhaging out around the branch that had erupted from his back. In the end though he’d taken too much damage, he fell mere metres from the Cirrillians.

Villam’s luck was twofold. Not only had he avoided the fazerthorns, but their appearance obscured him from the Cirrillian troopers who would have gunned him down otherwise. Now, belly to the dusty floor, he shuffled around the tangle of fazerthorns and corpses, until he drew level with the trench.

There were dozens of them, foul green creatures who lacked a head, a single eye stalk protruding from their necks. They were naked, six brains pulsating beneath the skin along their spines, reproduction tentacles drooping between their legs like elongated udders.

Villam crept closer. He didn’t want to, they truly were vile, but he needed to be nearer to throw the J-Bomb into their midst. He unclipped it from his belt, a fat disc of weightless metal, yet more powerful than anything the enemy had.

Too late a Cirrillian saw him, a whine of alarm echoing from its shoulder gills. He’d already thrown the J-Bomb though, clamping his hands over his head as it detonated.

He’d been conditioned to deal with the effects of the J-Bomb, but still the overlapping cacophony of musical tunes, of advertising taglines, and the whirlwind of special offer announcements almost drove him mad….The effect of the Jingle Bomb on the Cirrillians was more pronounced. To a creature they dropped their weapons and clambered out of the trench, fighting each other to gain a few moments’ advantage in getting to the Department Ship before all the bargains were gone.

Advertising was a harsh game, with more and more species rebelling again the psychic onslaught of the sales companies. The Cirrillians, like so many others, shielded their planet from orbital advertising assaults, so the only way to campaign was to go trench to trench, street to street, door to door. Villam returned to the ship alone, a veteran salesman after just one campaign.

Old Joe

by submission | Aug 23, 2008 | Story

Author : Glenn Blakeslee

It’s another damn fine desert day, and Old Joe sits on the dilapidated Lazy Boy on the porch in front of his trailer. He’s got his feet up and a pint bottle of cheap wine in his hand, and he’s thinking lazy desert thoughts. He’s got his chores done, tended his little forty-acres of nowhere, and he’s relaxing in the relative luxury of his porch.

His looks to the horizon, where county road S65 cuts a straight line through the sagebrush, up to the hills. He can see dust plumes rising in the still afternoon air. Here they come again.

He’s posted dozens of No Trespassing signs on his property, but the damn dirt bike riders ignore them. Might as well post signs that read Welcome To Paradise, he thinks. They don’t bother reading them anyhow.

It’s only desert, but it’s his desert. Riders have cut trail across it where no trails should be. Every autumn flash flood gouges those trails deeper. Soon his place will be nothing but gouges, he thinks.

Maybe they’ll veer off, Old Joe thinks. Maybe I won’t have to reach for the gun.

The dust plumes rise higher. Soon he hears the buzz of motors, sees flashy helmets above the sagebrush. Sure enough, the riders are off the road, weaving through the brush toward his little trailer home.

Old Joe creaks forward in the Lazy Boy and groans to his feet. He puts his bottle down and reaches for his old Remington 12 gauge. He’s in the driveway before the riders can see him, holding the rusty old gun across his chest like a western hero. When the riders come out of the brush and onto the dusty drive, he swivels the barrel and fires a round into the air, over their heads.

The riders come to a sliding stop in the driveway. They look at Old Joe holding the gun, and look at each other. Old Joe yells “Get offa my land!,” and he levels the shotgun at them.

That’s all it takes. The first rider drags a donut across the driveway, throwing up dust, and heads out to the road before Old Joe can finish yelling. The second pushes his motorcycle backward, downshifts and roars off.

Old Joe blasts the shotgun in their direction, just for good measure, and staggers back to the shade of his porch, his Lazy Boy, and his bottle. He props the shotgun against the trailer.

“Damn bikers,” he mutters.

Old Joe has dozed off, and he wakes to eerie sounds and bright lights. A pulsing bright globe sits over the sagebrush on the side of the driveway, and as it descends he’s suddenly awake and reaching for the shotgun.

The globe glows, and sheets of static flow across its surface. It emits a disharmonic hum that gives Old Joe goosebumps. He steps away from the porch, shotgun across his chest, shouts “Get offa my land,” and fires a shot into the air

The globe touches the sagebrush and then bounces, falling and rising. Lines of red light circle the globe’s equator, and the hum rises in pitch and then drops to a basso rumble. Joe takes steps toward the globe and aims the shotgun.

The globes rises and swoops down the driveway, lighting the sagebrush and the sand as it dwindles into the distance. Old Joe fires a shot after it, just for good measure.

He watches for a little while, until the thing disappears altogether. He turns and stumps back to the porch.

“Damn aliens,” he mutters, and reclines his Lazy Boy into the perfect desert night.

Incident Desk

by submission | Aug 21, 2008 | Story

Author : Oisin Hurley

On my first day on the incident desk, a distraught little man well into his second century burst in through the door of the station. “I’ve killed her!,” he shrieked at me, “Killed her!” He punctuated each bespittled utterance with a spastic wave of a cricket bat, spattering blood over me and my day book. Clumps of brownish hair were stuck to the edges of the bat. I stared at him while his initial excitement receded, then asked for his details. He gazed at me wide-eyed for a moment, then jerked his head to one side to look at something behind me. A smile of apparent relief broke out on his blotchy face, and I heard slow applause coming from the break room. I turned around and saw Sergeant McGrath approaching, clapping his swollen hands in front of his big purple face. McGrath had earned the station’s Officer Most Likely To Experience Congestive Heart Failure Within The Decade Award nine years previously. There was a busy book open on whether he would make the ten. Clapping me on the shoulder with a handful of baby eggplants, he roared, “Well done, Mack!” Then he nodded to the nerd with the cricket bat. “Many happy returns, Doctor! Let’s go in back and have a coffee. Here, I’ll take that bat.” As McGrath headed back to the break room, one meaty arm around Mitchell’s slim shoulders, the other twirling the bloody bat, I heard him shout. “Dicky, get Mack a coffee and some sero-wipes!”

Dicky wandered over with a mug and a bag of wipes. “Well done, Mack,” he said, “a fine performance, I’m up ten bucks.” That was too much for my patience. “What the fuck is going on?” I demanded. “That guy got blood all over me, admitted doing a job on his old lady, and now he’s getting coffee from the Sarge?” Dicky handed me the mug and the wipes and I started cleaning off the spatters. “All new starts get Doctor Mitchell on his birthday, McGrath loves to rattle you noobs. His wife isn’t dead. She lit out to Proxima years ago and is living the high life at a fancy resort.” I blinked at him to continue. “Anyway, Mitchell’s loaded, made a pile from biotech patents. He gets to pick up her resort tab. While she’s off having fun, he’s here with a barring order not to get within three systems of her and no divorce in sight. You can see he’s a bit pissed. So, every year he orders himself a meat puppet, made from her DNA. It gets delivered on his birthday about nine in the morning and then we see him in here about ten, usually with some kind of blunt instrument. It was a seven-iron last year. Carthy swears he saw him bring in a unicycle once. It’s a bit sick, if you ask me, but there’s no law against it. Meat puppets aren’t people.”

The next year, McGrath’s luck broke at last and he succumbed to a succession of heart-rupturing myocardial infarctions. Dicky cashed in about a grand on the event and I made sure I was at the front desk on the Doctor’s birthday. There was no sign of him at ten, and when it got to twelve, we were wondering if he’d given up on his proxy revenge habit. Just before one, a little mousey woman turned up in the office and looked around nervously. I called her over to my desk, asked her if I could help. “I’m sorry,” she said, “I think I’ve just killed my husband.”

Gods Upon Gods

by submission | Aug 19, 2008 | Story

Author : Ryan Somma

“Is that one of those computers?” I asked gesturing at the flat, monolithic screen hanging on the far wall.

“Sort of,” he replied, staring oddly at the housewarming gift I’d set on a table. “It’s more of an entertainment center, but it does a lot of the same things computers do.”

“Huh,” I scratched my chin. I didn’t know what a computer did, so I didn’t know what to say next. I just knew they did powerful things, “I’ve been meaning to get a computer.”

He gave me a funny look, “Why would you need–?” he caught himself. “You know there’s lots of multimedia features and games that make computers a good investment.”

He was being polite, but I still felt stupid, “I guess I would need to get electricity first.”

“Um,” he swallowed, and I realized how ignorant I appeared to him. “Electricity is quite a luxury here.”

I frowned and nodded, “It’s too expensive, but I hear you’ve got it everywhere in your cities.”

He nodded, still embarrassed, but now of his superior social status. It bothered me how easy it was to read him, how his body language and facial expressions matched those of my friends.

“You have to buy electricity from outside the reservations,” he sounded apologetic. “It takes thousands of your credits to add up to one of ours, making it cost prohibitive here.” He handed me another open beer. “Where I come from, I’m pretty low on the social ladder. Here on your reservations, my money goes a whole lot further.”

I took a swig, enjoying its thick richness, and we fell silent for a few moments, until I caught his eyes shifting to my housewarming gift again. “It’s a termite farm,” I explained. “You dip one of these twigs into it anytime you want a little taste.” I pulled a twig from the jar I had brought and handed it to him.

“Uh–,” he took the twig and considered it.

“If you don’t like it–” I began.

“It’s not that!” he held up his hands. “They’ll make wonderful pets. It’s just… I don’t eat animals.”

“What? The heck you say!”

“No really!” he was nodding earnestly. “A few centuries of being domesticated for experimentation and spare parts kind of turns a civilization off exploiting other animal species.”

“Spare parts?” I frowned. “You don’t mean for the gods who live on the spider web in the sky?”

“Not gods.” He shook his head, “Those are our descendents… or ascendants, depending on your perspective. We created them.”

“You made them?” I was shocked. “I thought they’d made you!”

“Nope,” he sighed. “They came from us, just like we came from you.”

I didn’t get it, and then I did. “Oh,” I shook my head. “That evolution nonsense your kind is always pushing on us. Some of the church-goers buy into that stuff, but not me.”

“Truth is truth whether or not you accept it.” He looked at me, “But when you recognize it, you see patterns. When the robots became their own masters, they nearly drove my species into extinction consuming all our resources. Just like when my species descended from yours. It wasn’t until we became advanced enough to realize the side effects of our population boom that we turned benevolent… established these sanctuaries.”

“Now you’re trying to make amends.”

He nodded.

“For the sins of your ancestors.”

He nodded again.

We lapsed into silence, considering the termite farm between us.