by Julian Miles | Mar 4, 2013 | Story |
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
The speaker hums as the decoder scans for the encrypted channels that the Chendrin use. I know I shouldn’t give in to this ghoulish need to eavesdrop, but I cannot help myself.
“Seventy-four. Seventy-four. Anything on your sweeps?”
“Negative, command. Nothing except asteroids and bits of the last twenty-nine ships sent to find out what happened.”
The Chendrin are a superior race, when judged by their own opinion. They consider us intergallactic upstarts who should remain within a few AU of Earth until we learn respect for our elders. As you can guess, Earthers didn’t take to that idea. So the Chendrin started interdicting us. Pretty soon, it was a war. Problem is, now they’ve stomped our colonies and fleets, they have to prise us from the little outposts and marauder stations. Not that they have worked out the difference yet.
I run a marauder station. I have a whole asteroid field that spans one of the main supply routes for the battlegroup resident in our solar system. I spent a year setting up after I got here, then the fun started. Since then, the Chendrin armada have not received any letters from home. Or anything at all.
“Command, we’re coming up on the wreck of the Cladrana. It looks like it took a pair of direct hits from something with a half-kilometre diameter impact field.”
“We’re sure the Earthers don’t have pressor field technology. It must be something else.”
That’s right, kiddies. The Cladrana played tag with a pair of asteroids and lost. Time to cause an accident. I press the red button.
“Command, encoded burst transmission just rec-“.
The message fragments as the Cladrana explodes, her drives, armoury and anything else that could go bang wired to do just that.
“Booby trap! Taking evasive action to exit vicinity!”
“High and fast, Seventy-four. Rise above the asteroid field.”
“Obeying.”
That is the last Command will hear from Seventy-four. At flank speed it rises, collecting a terribly advanced thin cable sheathed in stealth wrap. Each end of that cable is firmly attached to a small asteroid. They work out what is going on faster than any so far, then target the asteroids to give them just enough of a push to miss. I watch as maintenance luggers start work on severing the cable.
My turn: I hit the blue button and countermeasures reduce their high tech to ornamental lights for a while. Said while being long enough for the real shipkillers to plow into Seventy-four like a pair of titanic sledgehammers. A pair of 550 metre diameter asteroids with five metres of stealth coatings and a lot of engines will do that.
Oh, that has got to hurt. Seventy-Four just became forty-one and thirty-three.
Threat broken, I release the drones from their hangars deep within another asteroid. They’ll finish up anything that’s warm or beeping then return to base. Meanwhile I can go for a juice pack and a piece of cake, then indulge in a shower and some sleep.
After that, it’s scavenging the pieces of Seventy-four while waiting for the next target or targets. No matter. I have enough traps rigged to take a dozen vessels at once, plus multiple concealed silos to dispense anti-voyeur nastiness against any ships who won’t venture into the asteroid field.
I have every luxury that twenty-five salvaged Chendrin freighters can give me. I have every weapon too. But I also have human ingenuity and no reason to quit. They will lose a fleet for every second it took my family to die when they cracked the domes of Mars.
by submission | Mar 3, 2013 | Story |
Author : J.D. Rice
There’s an alien in my kitchen, and I’m not quite sure what to do. My wife stands by the stove, humming quietly to herself while chopping away at some vegetables for the stew. My son sits at the table next to the alien, trying to teach it how to play his favorite card game, but I don’t think it understands. Its big, blue head just nods along an awkward imitation of our own mannerisms, its big, dark eyes looking back and forth between my son and the little pieces of paper he’s setting down on the table. Meanwhile, my dog sits curiously at the base of the alien’s chair, sniffing at its dangling feet.
And here I am, standing the doorway, briefcase in hand, with no idea what to make of the situation.
“Honey…” I say, walking slowly and methodically around the outer edge of the kitchen, keeping my distance from the alien. “Tell me again where you found it?”
“I already told you,” she says, still smiling at her chopped vegetables. “He was out in the garden. Poor little thing is all alone and hungry.”
“How can you even KNOW that?” I ask, my strained voice betraying my attempts at remaining calm. “Why is it in our house?”
“He’s hungry,” my wife says again, using her knife and hand to dump the finished vegetables into the pot of hot water on the stove. “I can’t turn away a stranger in need.”
“A stranger in… you can’t… it’s…”
But words really do fail me. My son is now trying desperately to get the alien to play a game of cards with him, grabbing the alien’s four-fingered hands and practically stuffing cards into them. I almost call out for my son not to touch it, but I know it’d be futile. They all seem to think this is perfectly normal.
“Why don’t you sit down and have some soup,” my wife says. “It’ll be ready in a few minutes.”
“I… I’m calling the police,” I finally manage to say. “We can’t keep him here. This is absolutely ridiculous.”
“He’s just hungry,” my wife says again in a sing-song voice. “Just have a seat and we can call the police after.”
“No,” I say, more definitively. “I’m calling them now. We don’t know what this thing is or what it could mean to the world. We can’t keep him here.”
Suddenly my wife’s hand shoots out, grabbing my wrist and forcing it down into the counter top with freakish strength.
“No.” she says again, all joy having left her voice. I stare up at her, eyes wide, and watch as she slowly raises the knife over her head. “He’s just hungry.”
Before I get a chance to scream, the knife drives into my chest, piercing my heart and sending blood gurgling into my throat. As my body hits the floor, my family doesn’t move, not even the dog. My body twitches, once, twice, then goes still as the feeling leaves my limbs. Just as my vision starts to fade, I see the alien stand up from its seat at the kitchen table, kneel over my body, and sniff at my blood as it flows steadily from my chest..
“Ah…” a voice says in my head. “A-Positive, just what I needed. I’m really sorry about this, but I was simply famished.”
by submission | Mar 2, 2013 | Story |
Author : Alex Bauer
It never started here, my dear. We are victims of circumstance.
It started with the fires, with her, as we watched the skyline burn in the middle of terrific night. Standing there on the lake shore, horrified beyond rational thought, among wailing multitudes while the city burned to so much carbonized slag. Her. Standing there next to me, face hammered into masks of sorrow and enchantment, painted with furnace shadows. Beautiful.
We had been left behind. There would be no salvation this time.
Every fear a thread–a final impulse–so I reached out and grasped that hand. Shock smoothed away the horror and I felt my expression mirrored in hers. She looked at me.
Looked at me. I mattered again, just like that.
Cool carboplatinum fingers reticently cradled mine. Marvelous control. “Darwin,” she hiccuped, singed hair whisking around green weeping eyes. Taken aback, I laughed darkly, nodded. I touched her cheek in a fit of fear-crazed need, something to show, for once, that I could be kind. Truly kind. I felt inlays beneath the skin, the reconstructed zygomatic, the carbofiber masseter relaxed under my caress. Recycled.
Someone loved you very much, once. Sent you away. Darwin indeed.
“Just so.” I said, looked up as giants hammered on the sky once more, the wheeling horizon all engulfed in flame. Nauseating vertigo, as if I’d spiral out of her hands and into the stars above. The skies were cracking above us. Spidery cracks heliographed the light of burning cities, peoples, their last stretched long fingers into the night. Flotsam and debris floated beyond the transparent shield, bits of smashed lightships and radiator panels glowing like banked coals.
Nearby stars blink and seconds later, ferromagnetics fireballed into the colony’s canopy at twelve kilometers per second. Each star a ship, each blink another shove toward the precipice.
Soon, I thought, the race between cooking or choking would be over. The lake itself began to burn. Sweat poured down the groove of my back. A breeze touched us, and I welcomed whatever came.
Excisement, the Enemy called it. For the consumption of thought. For the heresy of existence. Another volley battered the canopy and the end came in a single body-crushing tsunami of overpressure.
Decompression is equal parts waiting and celerity. The canopy over the city blew outward in rending silence, like it was sucked up by a giant’s straw. Brilliant tidal waves of debris and mezocyclones of fire fell up into the night before extinguishing. No one screamed, even when the fingers of the breach wrapped ‘round us, fetched us up into the night in greedy handfuls.
Excisement.
I never let go of her hand, even when the light went out in those weeping eyes. And here we are. Here I am. Floating here with her, in the depths. This vast ocean. Drowning. Anoxia is killing me and we’ve only begun to swim! Only these few minutes we’ve known each other. Reefs of transparent alloy float around us, glittering like wet jewels. If only she could see this.
Not even a name! I never told her mine. Better this way… isn’t it?
“Darwin.” I mouth, feel something like God’s own hand reach down my throat to tear the life away from this husk. Prosthesis spasms to the tune of dying synapses. “Darwin.” Oh. Oh, I am so sorry. Always so stupid, so awful, never thinking about others. Choking.
That’s her name. Her na–
by Desmond Hussey | Mar 1, 2013 | Story |
Author : Desmond Hussey, Staff Writer
wake screaming. where am i? body hurts… everywhere… spiders beneath my skin, crawling, biting. feel queazy. stomach’s spinning. so dim. can barely see. my arms. can’t move my arms. “What the f -…?” stay calm. focus… breath… in… out… in… out… in – what was that? shadows. something’s coming! blurry shapes. “Who are you? Why are you doing this?” an awful chittering sound. “Are you talking? Listen to me! Hey! Listen to – nonono don’t… aaaaaaahhh!”
wake again. scream in agony, rage, terror. alone. cold… so cold… still can’t move. side hurts… can’t see it. am i bleeding? blurred shapes come in-out of focus. walls of flesh. breathing, in… out… crimson light pulses through translucent veins… down curving corridors. a honeycomb of tunnels. movement. too fast. someone’s voice. “Kara? Is that you?” flash of steel. shes’screaming! “Kara, what’s happening? Stop hurting her. Stop it!” screaming stops. silence. too quiet. “Kara? Say something. Kara… Please. Say something… please… please…” my eyes burn with fury. “What did you do to her you sonofabitch? What did you do to my wife? I swear I’m gonna – aaaaaaaahh.!”
no strength. mouth like glue. eyes. too heavy. how long has it been? no pain. feel nothing. no cold. nothing. what’s that sound? who’s crying? “Emily? Emily, sweetheart? Is that you? Come to daddy. Emily? Who’s with you? Who’s hurting you?” shadows. too many arms. cold light. too bright. “Get away from her! Leave her alone!” muscles ripping, trying to reach. hands trapped in wall of flesh. a face looms. too many eyes. what’s that smell? tuna? “I’m gonna kill you! No! Don’t hurt her too! Look away, sweetheart.” no! not her eyes. “Look away, Emily. Don’t let them touch you…” her beautiful eyes. i love you… so sorry… couldn’t protect you. i –
don’t move a muscle when the shadow returns. eyes closed. wait. feel movement – left arm. free. right arm. free. stay limp. play possum. falling slowly. drifting. floating. wait. hook slices through left shoulder. don’t flinch. too numb to feel pain. wait. being pulled, floating horizontal… down a corridor? or up a shaft? pulsing lights. breathing walls. weightless. a drop of blood floats past. emily’s? kara’s? mine? ceiling/floor/walls? flash by quickly. a maze of tunnels. dizzy. feeling nauseous. spinning. stomach heaves but nothing comes out. stop moving. wicked chattering. the face!
now! swing hard. fist connects with sponge flesh. bird-like bones crack. the action pushes/throws me. feel a surface and push off with all my rage. a missile of revenge the color of fury… when it’s over i float within a swirling mist of quicksilver blood.
head clearing. see a glowing hole… beyond it our room! our bed! i’m dreaming. thank god. “Kara? Emily?” reach, crawl, hand over fist, pulling my rebellious body over sinuous walls toward that warm, familiar light. so close. i’m coming… can almost feel you…
“ – you’ll awaken at the sound of the bell in three… two… one…” A bell rings. “You’re safe and sound at the institute, Mr. Stewart.” Dr. Penrose smiles wearily at the distraught patient and turns to Police Inspector Cross, “Still nothing, I’m afraid. If you were hoping for a confession, or to know where the bodies are hidden, we won’t find out through hypnosis. He’s completely blocked all memory of murdering his family and has substituted this outrageous fantasy.”
“I see. Most unfortunate. One more question, doctor. In your professional opinion, is it possible to remove one’s own kidney?”
“Possible, I suppose,” Dr. Penrose muses gravely, “but highly unlikely. Why?”
“His is missing.”
by Clint Wilson | Feb 28, 2013 | Story |
Author : Clint Wilson, Staff Writer
The survival group, pulled from Earth by the alien craft mere hours before the cataclysmic solar event scrubbed the planet clean of all life, were still in absolute shock.
Some seven hundred refugees, huddled together in the large hold, listened as the alien with the round grey head spoke to them. “We have been monitoring your evolution for millennia via worm-cam. We can show you recorded images of any point in your history.” He motioned to a large wall, which suddenly blurred into a view screen.
The crowd murmured in awe as footage of prehistoric people hunting, gathering, creating fire and tools, was displayed before them for some time.
Then they were treated to actual images of great historical figures of their race. Gilgamesh, a fierce barbarian, as was Attila The Hun, Cleopatra, actually quite beautiful despite the rumors, and the great Julius Caesar! Folks whispered that he was taller and slenderer than any of them had imagined.
On and on the mesmerizing real life images went, until one man jumped up and shouted, “What about Jesus? I want to see Jesus!”
A few others scoffed at this crazy person with his ancient ideals. One woman snickered, “Who cares? Even if he existed he was only a man.”
The grey-headed alien cut them off. “Here he is if you should so desire.” The entire crowd skeptics alike shushed and stared at the black-haired, brown-skinned man walking across the desert in his flapping robes. The alien continued, “It’s true he was a human male, but we admit to tampering with him.” The people stared in sudden disbelief. “His message was really quite simple, implanted by us. But your kind were too savage to enact his ideals. Even those who claimed to follow him were mostly flawed.”
“I was not,” said the man who had originally jumped up. “I followed his ideals.”
“Yes, for the most part you did Tom Douglas. And that is why you are here.”
The man registered surprise. “You know my name?”
“Of course we do. Just like we know Mohamed Hassan over there who spent his life trying to follow the ideals of the prophet with whom he shares a given name, also influenced by us, and again misread by most who claimed to follow him.”
The Middle Eastern man looked back at Tom Douglas and said, “Good for you brother. Peace and tolerance is the only true path.”
Then a black teenage girl chimed in, “I’m not religious at all. So what do you make of that?”
The grey tilted his head lovingly. “It matters not Marsha Wilson that you followed a religion or not. Tell me Miss, to how many animals have you been cruel?”
“Why, none of course!”
“And how many times have you lied to achieve gain, monetarily or otherwise, over another person?”
“Well, none really ever… I guess.”
“I could go on but I think everyone here is getting the idea.” The seven hundred men, women and children looked at one another nodding slowly, many with tears in their eyes. For they all knew “generally” good folks who were not amongst them.
The grey went on. “There was only room for this many, and we had to act quickly. So here you are. And for those of you who still practice religion, now might be a time to thank your deity for giving you the sense to be true to the universe throughout your lives. Without this good sense there would be no hope for the human race… and we would have left you all to burn in the global apocalypse.”
by Julian Miles | Feb 27, 2013 | Story |
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
“Helph mi.”
John’s my next door neighbour. He’s growing into a fine specimen of xenorchis caucasia. By the look of the scalar development that has absorbed his ears, his head will blossom in about a week. His body is mottled cream and purple, with his extremities shading to a beautiful jade green where they sink into the soil and the wood panelling of his house.
His wife took the kids and fled when he first mottled up. I hear that she’s the beautiful xenorchis negrosa on the Longbridge roundabout. Don’t know what happened to the kids, but infection of both parents gives a ninety percent chance of the children becoming xenomycotina, the fungi that are essential for these xenorchids to germinate.
As for John, I can’t do anything. The religious and legal status of the florated is still a hotly debated topic amongst the few of us who remain Homo sapiens.
Two years ago, we picked up a formation of six vessels as they passed Pluto, travelling faster than anything we had previously seen. By the time the information flashed around the warning systems of the world, they had entered our atmosphere. The world braced itself for momentous events, but all the vessels did was split up in the upper atmosphere and circumnavigate the globe a dozen times before departing rapidly, leaving nothing but a web of intricate contrails that faded before they left the solar system.
It was three months before we realised what they had done. We presume they were doing what they always do, a fast pass to allow them to unload millions of litres of water containing hundreds of millions of spores into the upper atmosphere. The reasons for said remain a mystery.
The spores made their way to earth through precipitation and on the outer skin of anything that passed through the upper atmosphere. Global distribution meant that containment was impossible. It also meant that the predictions of anarchy in the event of a global pandemic were largely circumvented by everybody blossoming at once. Any creature is a viable host. Adaptation seems to depend purely on mass. Elephants, whales and the few other examples of megafauna are moving masses of growth with the underlying creature apparently adapting to its newly symbiotic existence. However, smaller creatures are consumed entirely. Anything under forty kilos is reduced to one of the many subspecies of germination supporting fungi, anything over becomes a species of xenorchid. There are as many species as there are hosts and the only protection is the amount of certain minerals in the host body. Survivors ingest dangerous quantities of potassium, iron, zinc, copper, manganese and molybdenum in a daily regimen that is adjusted on a near-weekly basis as further research results come in. Those results also tell us that most flora on earth are now toxic to humans; an unfortunate side-effect, we presume.
As to what happens next, we have no idea. Eighty percent of Earth’s fauna are infected, including ninety-three percent of humanity. We don’t know if any of the resulting xenorchids are edible. Which raises a whole new ethical dilemma. Should we eat what were people if they are the only safe food? Will we be vulnerable to infection from ingested material?
Unfortunately we are agreed on the fact that we will have to confront these issues and a host of others we haven’t fully realised yet. This is not about winning. It’s about surviving.
