by submission | Mar 9, 2022 | Story |
Author: Brian C. Mahon
It takes Zax only one external sponson rotation after crawling out the sleep sack to yell, “Du’! This is complete crap!” Jackass throws a wrench at Viewscreen One, which, lucky us, I put a shield over.
“’Ey man, cut the gorbaj! We use that! I get it, dig? But we can’t cut orbit ‘til we got enough coin, and we can’t get enough coin ‘til we been here long enough to earn it.”
Zax turns red, then kinda purple, cheeks turning almost as purple as his hair. He tries to shove a cut-fingered glove in my face. Maybe if auto-grav worked, I’d take him seriously, but it’s hard to take a dang ol’ serious when rotating three-sixty.
“No! That’s not the problem! We’re stuck with this cut-rate planet’s bull eccentricity so’s we can’t work planet-side but half the time! We gotta wait out in this floating hovel ‘til the company slings us back on intercept, and while we waitin’, Novabus rate hikes coverage so we gotta stay out here even longer!”
I shrug. Novabus Insurance did hit all us exo-miners with a three percent increase. He ain’t wrong either about waiting. JupiCorp never sends pushers out on time, and we always at the pusher’s mercy to catch “Herbie” (HR 5183s if so inclined) on its return path to the survivable zone.
“I donno what to tell ya. Remember Hansen Jo Hanson? Man didn’t pay his insurance. Man didn’t pay to maintain his boosters, never upgraded control instruments when Skyward Tech pushed new software, never did a dang ol’ that cost him more ‘an he saw fit. Then what happened?” I push my bandana up so he can catch me staring.
“Well, yeah, things went bad for him.”
“Bad? C’mon Zax! Mans blew up! Booster flamed up his b-hole an’ sent him cartwheelin’ off the ionosphere! Bet Novabus heard all about that! Bet that’s why all us got tagged! You remember if Nova paid for it?”
“Naw an’ hell naw! Nova didn’t pay a dim!”
“That’s ‘cause he din’t get upgrades! That’s the model there, Z,” I says, tapping the side of my dome. “Insurance knows. Planned colony builders pay Jupi and the rest o’ the excavators for material close to the world sites, Jupi pushes money to Skyward and other manufactorums, businesses follow colonist money, and Novabus and their ilk keep an eye on ‘em all to figure who to leech money from ‘for safety’. ‘Oh, no update? Check page seven eighty-two of your re-entry supplement. See? That’s a hard no on payout.’ I mean, we just pit stops for the money train. Earnin’s never stay in hand long enough to look at, and we get just enough overhead to keep from gettin’ too ornery.”
“Yeah! Exactly! Meanwhile we gotta stay on scrap planets like Herbie just to get enough to get out!”
“Meantime, we make more money for Jupi, to give to Skyward, to give to Nova.”
Zax rolls his eyes. “Its such phage work.”
Knowing he’ll chew on this until he’s asleep again, I pull the bandana over my eyes. Can’t and won’t disagree with him. Life hanging out in a half-broke twenty-foot tube waiting on someone paid less than us isn’t exactly my childhood dream.
Viewscreen Two shows anti-grav’s on its fifth reboot, and Zax’s looks like he’s working the pre-start sequence to sobbing over the situation again. He’ll figure it out. Took me a couple orbits, but I learned, sometimes it’s just better to float on by. Soon as I hear the sniffle, I mutter, “’ey man. Welcome to the circle of life.”
by Hari Navarro | Mar 8, 2022 | Story |
Author: Hari Navarro, Staff Writer
Space.
I creep up vast multitudes of inky hills though they are not hills but rather mountains of soot and slowly I sink ever down into their glue.
My face is a hollow thing that has two windows and out of them I can see wells with stars that shine in the pit of their pits.
I have been on this vessel for so very long.
My name is a thing that I pluck and twist upon the sweetly embroidered rectangle of my uniform breast and yet it has long since failed to fill my ear.
But I know who I am.
But am I who I know?
She and she is me.
Me and she is she.
She is a thing that whispers into my fingers as they caress the data and adjust trajectory to the ebb and tidal pull of this fathomless cosmic nothing.
She is the dead girl I found with her fingers curled against the glass of her cannister.
She is my future daughter sitting on a rain-flecked curb carving my neglect into her arm in beautiful cursive font with a needle she found in the gutter.
She is the seed that died in the soil, its reach curdling just below of the surface.
She is this ship.
I want to know her more than I do. I want to wow her with my looks. I want her to find solace in scanning every inch of my body as I undress and step into the shower flute. And as I then lay alone upon my empty crib, still swaddled in towels and beading from the heat of the jets — I want her to watch.
My ship is folding in space and the space in my head is folding ever so neatly into that space.
Such obnoxious and vile calm perverted perfection.
Most days I run my long since chewed away nails across the screen. I drag shards of my protruding dried flesh and follow our projected path back to Earth and I think of the beach at the end of the cliff-top road.
Kaupokonui.
I remember how long ago a girl laid me down upon the concrete roof of the war-time bunker. A relic all but completely suckled into the roaming sand. She with eyes as grey as the grains — she who took me whole.
I want to be taken again.
I want to be taken whole.
I want to be taken home.
Endless.
by Julian Miles | Mar 7, 2022 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
Colin claws his way through a ruined doorway, his sight near-obscured by the blood smeared across his face. Slumping to the floor, he wipes his vision clear with his sleeve, then surveys his surroundings.
An ancient stone vault, lit by an ultra-modern lamp. The soft light highlights the exquisite etchings on a steel coffin, and is reflected in the smoky chrome of the blaster clutched in a taloned hand.
A calm voice emanates from the shadows above the gun.
“Good evening, Mister Dawson. A stimulating journey, I trust?”
“Bastard.”
The reply tails off into a wrenching sob.
“I take it your little army came to a sticky end?”
He gathers himself. There’s still a chance.
“They did.”
“Well, here we are, exhausted hunter and indifferent prey. What next?”
“Smug bastard!”
“Defiance. How sweet.”
“We’ll get you. Not me. Not my team, God rest ‘em. But someone will find the data caches.”
Hopefully enough impetuous fools will have vanished by then to make the rest wary. Make them investigate this evil thoroughly, using all the technology available, and then not make stupid assumptions based on centuries-old cinema.
“You left them with Susan?”
“Not just her.”
“Then other people might see them.”
The choice of words catches his attention.
“But not if we’d only left them with her? What have you done?”
“Nothing new. Now, enough byplay. Time waits for no-one, not even me.”
“So?”
“Choices. You may join us, or you and your family will simply disappear.”
“Us?”
“You didn’t think I was a singular aberration, did you? That was a rash. Our attrition rate is vanishingly small amongst those who fully adapt.”
“So I work for you, or you eat my family?”
“In short: yes. Technology still trips us up occasionally. Having someone who can intervene is essential. Since you discovered and then killed Tez Wallace, you will take his place. It can be quite lucrative, and the health benefits are excellent.”
Colin nods. A sop to his selfishness to make servitude bearable: old techniques, but effective. The data is his only hope. All he has to do is buy time.
“I’ve no choice. I’ll obey our bloodsucking overlords.”
“The term is ‘nightwalkers’, and I am not one of the voivodes. We should both pray to whatever gods we have left that we never attract the attentions of such. They are busy trying to save my kind from the ravaged planet your kind have created. Petty distractions receive short thrift.”
“You’re trying to sneak onto the colony ships!”
Fangs flash in the darkness.
“Very good. A few self-contained feudal domains are the ultimate goal, I believe.”
Marty’s crazy idea had been correct. He’d been right to insist it be included in the cached data.
Colin smiles. Good on you, Marty. When Susan gets the truth to the media, you’ll be famous.
There’s a chuckle from the shadows.
“You still haven’t realised, have you?”
He looks up.
“What?”
The sound of skirts rustling makes his eyes go wide. A raven-haired figure in a pale ballgown steps into view.
“Did you really think you had any sort of advantage? Susan has belonged to my voivode for years. Our monitor within the hunter collectives. Bringing about your downfall was her final task before being embraced.”
She smiles, revealing long, delicate fangs instead of canine teeth. Green eyes show no hint of regret.
Colin feels hot tears start down his face.
“We of the dusk are eternal. Will you serve us?”
He nods, still crying. This surrender is only to save his family. It will never be more than skin deep.
by submission | Mar 6, 2022 | Story |
Author: William Kee
Captain J. P. Koontz was locked in the munitions bay. It was freezing. Thank God, I brought the suit. Soon he would need to put the helmet on. The crew was outside banging on the door.
“Give it up, Cap. We’ve turned off all life support except the oxygen. You’re going to freeze to death in there.”
Koontz shouted back, “I told you, you’re not taking this ship from me. She’s mine!”
“You know you didn’t give us a choice. Come on out now,” Carter’s voice held the anger and resentment it had since they left Earth. They won’t wait out there for long.
“If I come out, it’ll be with a phaser in each hand.” Koontz moved as he talked. They had taken control of the bridge, but he’d been able to do a complete lockout of the munitions bay and opened the weapons cases before his clearance was revoked. This room was his. If they want it, they’ll have to come in and take it. Koontz removed a single block of plastic explosives from the lockbox. It was soft in his hand and easy to mold and press into the seams of the exterior wall. He shouted over his shoulder, “Hey, Carter, how many of you are out there?”
“All of us. So you come out with however many phasers you want. It won’t make a difference. You can’t win.”
“I think you and I have different definitions of winning.” The sound of Carter typing into the keypad on the outside of the door was audible through the cold metal. They’ll be through soon. Koontz connected the wire between each packet of plastic explosives. He put his helmet on and turned it to lock it in place. Then, holding the detonator in his hand, he crouched down behind one of the large boxes of munitions secured to the floor of the hold and waited.
The door chimed and then hissed as it opened. The crew stood there in the doorway trying to get a look into the room. Captain Koontz made eye contact with Carter through the suit helmet. Carter’s eyes grew wide in fear and Koontz said, “I tried to tell you,” and activated the detonator. The sound disappeared along with the crew into the vacuum of space. Koontz was sucked back against the secured box for half a second before all the air was gone from the room. He floated through the door of the compartment and sealed it behind him, doing the same through each door as he made his way to the bridge. When he sat down in his chair the computer announced that the remainder of the ship had been pressurized. Koontz took off his helmet and said, “Computer, confirm I am alone aboard this ship.”
“Confirmed.”
Captain Koontz shook his head and said to the empty bridge, “Looks like I won. I tried to tell them.”
by submission | Mar 5, 2022 | Story |
Author: Kaci Curtis
You said that everything was going to change. I remember where we were sitting, sand clumped between our toes. I remember being afraid. Not of you; never of you. But of the picture of inevitability that you painted upon a rough and murky canvas.
“Everything will be different,” you warned.
And it was. The world took a turn that was so sudden, so irrevocable, we may as well have jumped off a cliff and tried to fly. Well, some of us tried to fly. The rest just fell, screaming all the way down.
You said that it would get better soon. We sat in the shadow of a crumbling bridge. A stringy bird charred over our fire. The darkness was full of enemies.
I remember scoffing when you said it. For the first time, I didn’t believe you. Nothing was going to get better. And you, once a mountain of a man, became a liar in my eyes. Because you couldn’t trust me with the bitter, relentless truth.
Fathers and daughters were supposed to trust each other. You feared that I would break; run screaming into the night and become of a victim of those who wanted what little I carried in my pockets. So you lied to me.
And in the same breath, you lost the parts of me that cared.
You said that I needed to be more careful. We soaked in a stream, scrubbing the blood from our clothes. I was humming a song from back before it all went silent. Your warning went unheeded; it was useless to me. I’d been careful for too long.
I wanted to be careless, to run shouting through the trees and draw them all to me, for miles and miles. I wanted to find the edge of the world and sail right off of it. To put an end to this monotony.
You could see my restless spirit, like prey trembling on exhausted legs just beneath my skin, jumping at the smallest noise.
“Be careful,” you cautioned.
As if I had a choice. As if my cavernous soul and rotting mind was something small to be swept away by the current; cleansed and forgotten.
But I was too often hunted, too often hungry, and far too gone.
You said that you were sorry. I was lying in a casket of mud when you finally found me. Someone had taken my knife and bundle of snare wire. They’d left me with a deep gash across my stomach.
You said that you should have been there to protect me. That had never changed, even when everything else spiraled into something savage and unrecognizable. There was still a father and a daughter, and a desire to live.
Except that I lost mine, didn’t I? I think so. I think it fell off that cliff I was seeking and didn’t have anything to grab on the way down.
What else was there to do, when the world as we knew it ended and everyone lived off what they could steal from others? When food became as scarce as good water and there was nowhere safe to sleep? When the electronics that we’d let devour us went dark and half of us didn’t know how to start a fire? What else was there to do but to falter, crash, and break apart?
You said that you were sorry, and clutched my hand. And I would have told you that I was sorry, too. That I had fought to stay with you.
But I’d already gone.
by Hari Navarro | Mar 4, 2022 | Story |
Author: Hari Navarro, Staff Writer
There is a house that grows like a jar of cancer-rimmed razors from the very top of my head. I wear it like a hat and when it rains its central courtyard fills with water and makes my skull feel soggy with its burden and my neck hurts and cracks when it twists.
This house is where I was born and into it trickled the very first of my memories or at least those that I have been groomed not to forget.
Pretty things like the man with the buckle-head snake whose tail bound at his knuckles and swung and pirouetted at his thigh. It was vicious and it bit but I used it. I did and it distracted from the stains that bloomed and dripped from the cotton.
I have just boarded and been seated upon the transport and already feel the vibration between my legs as its mighty engines thrum and clamber in anticipation of lift-off.
It has been a long time coming but it will be this craft that finally pulls me away from my home and the creeping wet mould it has sown in the grooves of my mind.
I rest my forehead against my portholes cooling compress and my eyes dart to the side and for an instant in the cursive colours I can see the twin iron doors that lead to the boilers.
I can see the hideous verdant paint that he slashed upon them although he knew there was not enough to finish.
No care. No attention to the little things that matter. Every inch of that house splattered with spittle-lipped hate.
The constantly tinkering craftsman.
I remember the tools he used to hammer and bend and smash and… crack. Such skill as he left just enough of a gap so that the light got in and then froze and split me in two and three.
He pulverized my youth so effortlessly as he tapped his foot in time and ground me away between my tiny thumb and the swollen gorge of his forefinger grasp.
I wish I could forget that tune. Three chords are all you’ll ever need, he said. “Daddy’s lil’ girl ain’t a girl no more…”
I can feel the pincers of that house at One Zero Nine arch and dig into my sides as we power up and away and I finally am to be rid of this filthy mesa of such hopeless hope.
Its time to do the dishes.
The woman in the green knitted top that I think I remember from a pornographic clip about a polo-necked secretary who is surprised by a UPS delivery man screams at my feet.
I am a wet used sack of flesh on the floor and my peeled carcass slumps to the side and the exposed meat of my forehead feels again the cool calm compress on the portal glass and I wonder if I’ll be having the chicken or perhaps maybe the pork.
