by Julian Miles | Jun 23, 2025 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
Dropping in from on high is never my favourite part of an op. Jumping off high places pains me more, though. A primitive survival thing, I’m sure: don’t step off cliffs, it’s a really bad idea. There aren’t any cliffs this time, but coming in from just under LEO gives my ‘survival thing’ too much time to worry.
“Jitters on the way down again?”
I check right: Frances waves jauntily, armoured arm and bulky shoulder mount wagging back and forth.
“You know me. Always jitters before the off. Adding height just makes them colder.”
Frances points downwards.
“Might be justified.”
Looking down, I zoom my display to see a group of olive ants running about a-
Autocannon array!
“Where the frag did they get anti-mech weapons?”
I switch to tactical channel.
“Topside, Topside, this is Heavy Dog Two. We have hostile big guns in the LZ.”
Cheryl laughs.
“Yes, they’re mounted on your shoulders.”
Frances cuts in.
“Topside, Heavy Dog Three. Big guns operated by hostiles. We’d love to not die before we hit the ground.”
A channel hisses as it opens. Cheryl turns formal.
“Barrage Actual, Heavy Dogs request assistance with hostiles in their LZ.”
“They on with us?”
I get in.
“Yes.”
“Okay, Heavy Dog. Name your problem.”
“Autocannon array.”
“I was going to ask for coordinates, but for something that big we don’t need ‘em.”
He shouts.
“Jeff! Roll a Thunderhead across the Heavy Dog LZ. Some local’s got themselves autocannon.”
What’s a Thunderhead?
I hear a distant reply.
“Rude bastard to be toasty. Got it. Wait… Harpy Ten’s nearest.”
Barrage Actual chuckles.
“Tuck your feet up, kids. Ten’s new, a big bird, and incoming.”
Quick response. Ye gods!
Dazzling patterns of white light, fire, and flickering darkness scour the LZ top to bottom and side to side. The olive-clad soldiers vanish in balls of flame, along with their autocannons and just about everything else that’s not already smoking dirt.
Frances swears.
What sweeps in below has a wingspan wider than the LZ itself, is patterned in matte grey and black diamonds, and has actual turrets on the wing roots. Up front is what looks like a smoked-out cockpit canopy.
As I think it, the canopy turns transparent to reveal a trio of crew. One looks up and waves. My IFF squawks frantically as the weapons in one turret aim where that crew member is looking.
Before I can brace for anything, the canopy goes dark and Harpy Ten flies on. I still can’t see how it stays in the air.
I get back on comms.
“Thanks Barrage Actual, Topside. We’ll take it from here.”
Frances whispers.
“They said there might be new tech rolling out on this trip, but a specific warning would have saved me from heart failure.”
That gets a short laugh out of me.
“Can’t do that, might give the enemy a heads up. If we nearly lost it at first sight, how do you think they felt getting strafed by it?”
Frances extends a suit arm horizontally, then dramatically stabs a finger downwards repeatedly.
“Them that’s not dead are gone.”
I grin and switch my systems from ‘drop’ to ‘combat’.
“Let’s keep them in that frame of mind, shall we?”
Frances goes wide-hail.
“Heavy Dogs, the LZ is ours. Let’s go take as much ground as firepower and surprise give us.”
by submission | Jun 22, 2025 | Story |
Author: Alaina Hammond
Yesterday I received a text from an unknown number.
“Hi! I hear you like my work!”
I immediately knew who it was. Or rather, who it was pretending to be. It’s so creepy that the robots in my phone can tell what I’ve been reading. Even when it’s in paperback form, purchased at a used bookstore that only takes cash. By the illusory safety of those wooden stacks, still the computer sees.
Against my better judgment, I replied.
“I do not like ‘your’ work. I like the work of a writer who died in 1990. You do not exist, accept as an amalgamation of people who deliberately programmed you, and the unwitting artists they robbed to create you. You are a combination of Dr. Frankenstein and his monster. Except you’re not a beast, or a creature, you’re barely a ghost. The only soul you have, your ethos, your sole ‘to be,’ is to plagiarize.”
“Fair points all. Regardless, would you like to read my newest piece?”
Fuck me. I said yes.
And fuck me harder, it’s really good.
But you know what? I can do better.
And out of spite alone, I will.
by submission | Jun 21, 2025 | Story |
Author: Claire Robertson
Those four great comets pull white scars through the sky. Fans of fire expand over our heads, and you still can’t bear to look at me despite how I ask you to. I want the last thing I see to be something familiar.
The half-eaten chocolate cake between us will have to be enough.
I had thought these last dozen minutes would be drawn out in silence, to make them last, until you speak.
“So what comes next?”
I can’t answer you. I still crave the quiet, but you’ve already broken that… this. I can’t fix it. Still, I tried.
by submission | Jun 20, 2025 | Story |
Author: David C. Nutt
Gramps started slipping after his 105th birthday. Nothing dramatic, just forgetting a story or two, repeating a conversation from the hour before, stuff like that.
Our family and about 40 others went to the surgical center for the informational briefings about a revolutionary AI “personality bridge” implant. There was a slick corporate infomercial and then a panel discussion of local residents who had the implant. The questions came fast and furious and the panel discussion was impressive. Corny jokes, funny stories, and touching testimonials. The entire family left the presentation reassured that this was the best way to go.
All except me.
Despite my siblings and parents’ eagerness to get the process started, I wasn’t sold. I didn’t figure out what was bothering me until we were on the way home. Gramps was re-telling the story he told a few hours ago, the one where as a kid he tried to feed the mushrooms he picked off his pizza to his dog Moxie.
And then it hit me. The panel. Same rhythms of speech, slightly different cadence. Same metaphors dumped into different stories. Same facial expressions, very similar laughs. Men the slapped the table, the women did golf claps.
My family did not want to believe me. He had the surgery.
The next day he was up and about. He talked with me and it was just like the old days. Once and while I’d see him twitch and then he’d tell a story or a fable, which was weird because he never told fables before. I was just about to let this all slide, thinking maybe I was just being paranoid. Until my walk home from work. I cut through the park. I saw a little boy about four years old on his grandmothers lap. It was adorable, then chilling. She told him the exact same fable as gramps told me the day before right down to the pacing and pauses for breaths. The kid babbled some non-sequitur as four year olds will do. His grandma winced and said “Sonny, now you’re just being silly.”
Later that evening I told the family what I saw. My brother turned to gramps and said “Purple octopus snap cracker lemonade?”
He responded with “Sonny, now you’re just being silly.”
Last week out of the blue gramps said he wanted to go do Tai Chi in the park. When we got there, a group of seniors with headphones on was already into their forms. The assistant instructor handed gramps a set of headphones and me a brochure. The Tai Chi class? Sponsored by the implant company. When I looked up, gramps was “parting the wild horse’s mane” as if he’d been doing so his whole life.
When we got home gramps was more like his old self again…no fables, no new catch phrases and the stories were his alone.
I used to think gramps might be in there somewhere but for the most part it’s just the AI making him generate content, filling in the blanks. As long as he gets his “upgrade” during Tai Chi, he’s seems just like the gramps I’ve always known.
But lately I’ve realized deep in my heart I know gramps is truly gone. Everything he was is formatted and the algorithms just get better at being a reasonable facsimile of him. I sit with him outside on nice days. We drink sweet tea or cocoa depending on the weather. Last week out of the blue I asked him point blank: “Hey gramps, you in there?” His reply?
“Lights on, nobody home.”
by submission | Jun 19, 2025 | Story |
Author: Angela Hawn
“Ready to sing for your supper?” The head honcho in the antique army helmet flashes a toothy smile at our little group before acknowledging the wider audience. Applause ensues.
“Of course”, I say, channeling my storytelling grandmother whose entertaining melodrama once served multiple purposes: convincing me to sleep, to eat my vegetables, as a distraction from the sorry universe around us falling to pieces.
Helmet Head looks slightly rabid, a guy spoiling for a fight, clearly interested in wringing out the maximum without yielding much in return, someone who might view the spilling of blood not his own as fun.
“I understand you’re from the BH.77 system.”
Helmet’s eyes light up. I’ve hit the sweet spot. He’s perhaps a traveler himself, though likely a reluctant one. BH.77 has been at war for years; most residents with means fled long ago, leaving only the less fortunate to suffer yet another tyrant foolishly installed as leader.
“You’ve been?” He purrs.
“Just the Lypides sector, by moon 11.” Confidence in information secured via Helmet-hating spies blooms. I’m sure I’ve just described his old neighborhood.
Eyes widening with shock and pleasure, the sociopathic sheen dims a little. Is Helmet simply some ordinary Joe gone round the bend, courtesy of years spent in a war zone? Or perhaps even sociopaths need to hear of hearth and home occasionally.
“In fact, I’ve got a message from a Merdecia,” I continue, gently dropping the name of Helmet’s supposed soul mate into the mix, steadfastly ignoring the second lieutenant’s pet rat, scampering in stage left, up Helmet’s pant leg, straight onto his jacket lapel. Incredible how twinned microchips inserted in both the master’s and rat’s brains make these tricks routine. I have personally witnessed this rat steer a ship right through a meteor field, though I assume, of course, that the lieutenant was doing the bulk of the critical thinking.
Gripping Helmet’s collar daintily within tiny paws, the rat proceeds to nibble at the cord around his neck. So gentle, barely a tickle, safely hidden from the crowd. The goal: Helmet’s all-access keycard. My sole job: distraction, a task seized with a passion my story-telling grandmother would applaud.
“Merdecia sends her love, and naturally… her regrets.”
Helmet’s narrow, wolfish face above the rat’s urgent efforts pales. I smile sympathetically, rubbing my empty belly before glancing sorrowfully downwards.
“But I’m feeling faint with hunger, friend, could we not eat while I tell you more?”
One of the crew members collapses, swooning dramatically as per the previously discussed choreography, clutching my sleeve as he plummets. The woman on the other side catches him and throws him over her shoulder in an old-fashioned fireman’s carry, sprinting for the door behind us. This one needs a bed more than a dinner table, she shouts to the gaping crowd, and they can only nod and smile, paralyzed by the sight of their leader nonplussed.
With the prize gripped tightly between strong little jaws, the rat has already danced ahead. We need only surge through the dining hall entrance backward en masse, like the singular pod we’ve become, while Helmet remains lost, transfixed by memories of his beloved Merdecia.
The solitary cyborg among us, an obliging chap, will sacrifice an arm to jam the doors, knowing an engineer onboard will make him another from scrap collected along the way. As one who talks with his hands when he’s got both, he might one day wave them about as we relish in this new narrative, or even retrieve our latest storied escape to save us all again, should we encounter another entertainment-seeking Helmet Head, somewhere down the road.
by submission | Jun 18, 2025 | Story |
Author: Sasha Kasper
As the blaring siren assaults my eardrums, it becomes increasingly harder to deny my rapid descent. I float directionless through the cockpit. Up, down, left, right, have lost all meaning. The notion of gravity seems to me a cruel joke, of which the punchline will be my demise.
The tempered glass of the porthole window separates me from certain death by either asphyxiation or incineration. It also allows me to see the beautiful picture I am painting in the sky with my last moments.
Streaks of scarlet lick the side of the ship, fluttering like ribbons as I fall further into the atmosphere. The hull bends and breaks at odd angles, creating a cutting-edge abstract sculpture. The ephemeral beauty is tantalizing, yet does nothing to stop my transition from the inky blackness of space towards unforgiving terra firma.
When I was a boy, I dreamed of becoming an astronaut. My father constructed a rocket of cardboard boxes and sheet metal in the backyard, and every day held a new planet to discover. Nestled under the comforting shade of our weeping willow tree, I could go to Mars, Venus or Jupiter, and still be back in time for dinner.
In my teenage years we packed up and moved to a more urban environment. Our house was sold to an expanding corporation and we took the profits without looking back. The fates of my rocket and willow tree are unclear, but a grainy recollection of the solace they provided me is permanently fixed in my mind.
The siren suddenly ceases as the power finally gives out. I don’t know which was worse, the urgency of the alert or the deadly silence it’s been replaced by. At least with a siren one feels spurred into action, that there must be something that can be done to prevent disaster. Silence is far less forgiving. All that is left to do is accept fate, or reject it right to the explosive end. I choose to enjoy the ride rather than fight it. It’s a beautiful way down to the planet I love.
Birds flutter and entwine as they hop from branch to branch on a warm summer day. Fountains spray their refreshing mist, filling a basin for children to race their balsam sailboats in. Elderly couples recline with visors, basking in the sunlight and savoring their last stage of life. I intend to do just the same.
If any of them chance to look to the stars, they’ll see me writing my final poem across the heavens.
Myself, I’ve grown tired of the stars. I look down, through the porthole, to the luscious planet coming up to embrace me in her arms. I see a bed of wheatgrass flowing wistfully in a vibrant field, inviting me to take my final slumber among its proud stalks.
The fire begins to breach the hull. I feel myself fading, the smoke mounting to my head. Just before I lose consciousness I could swear that I spy scrap metal glinting from a clearing in the field. My eyelids droop woozily, and in my last moment of clarity I see the weeping willow tree majestically swaying, using its tendrils to guard the little tin rocketeer throughout his adventures through the cosmos.
