by Patricia Stewart | Oct 24, 2012 | Story |
Author : Patricia Stewart, Staff Writer
“Status, Mr. Ortega?” was Captain Edgington’s terse request to his first officer.
“Not good, sir,” replied Commander Ortega. “It appears that Chief Engineer Koshiba had ordered all of his senior engineers into the engine room in his effort to prevent the warp core breach. Although they were able to shut down the reactor, the subsequent radiation burst killed everyone in the engineering section. We are adrift with only battery power, and the computer and sub-space transmitter are irreparably offline. To make matters worse, we do not have a qualified engineer with the knowledge to safely restart the warp core.”
“How about life support,” inquired the captain?
“A few days, at most. And considering the secrecy of our mission, it’s doubtful that anyone will know where to look for us, even if they knew we were in need of assistance.”
“So, if we’re going to get out of this, we’re going to have to restart the warp core without the help of the computer or a trained engineer. Who’s the most qualified warp core expert available?”
“According to my knowledge of the surviving crew members, it’s you, sir.”
“Then we’re in big trouble. I only remember enough to know that if you don’t restart the core in a precise sequence, you end up vaporized. There has to be a better option.”
“Well, sir, there is ‘The Thinking Cap’. We happen to have one onboard. We can use it to imprint the necessary knowledge into someone’s brain. Its effects only last 24 hours, but that should be adequate to reestablish full power. Unfortunately, without the computer’s guidance, we’d have to select the modules by trial and error. We’ll be creating random short term savants until we can isolate the correct protocol on warp core maintenance.”
“Frankly,” noted the captain, “I don’t see that we have any other choice. Ask for volunteers, and have them assemble in sickbay.”
Twelve hours, and twenty volunteers later, Captain Edgington removed the skullcap from Lieutenant Treffert’s head, and asked the all-important question, “What’s the sequence for restarting the warp core?” Treffert simply stared ahead and smiled. “Well, at least he’s happy,” conceded the captain.
Treffert suddenly said, “Girl Happy, staring Elvis Presley. MGM Studios, released April 9, 1965.”
Ensign Wittmann added, “April 9, 1965 was a Friday.”
Ordnance Technician Peterson followed up with, “Sergeant Joe Friday was portrayed by Jack Webb.”
The captain sighed, “Now that’s really starting to become annoying. Please step down Mr. Treffert, and take the empty seat next to Beethoven and his air piano.”
Security officer Rollins replaced Treffert on the examination table, and said with a grin. “Don’t worry sir; twenty-one is my lucky number.”
“Let’s hope so Mr. Rollins,” replied the captain as he pulled the skull cap over Rollin’s head.
“I recommend sequence number fifteen,” offered Ortega. “Protocol C, as in Charlie.”
A half hour later Captain Edgington removed the skullcap, and asked, “What’s the sequence for restarting the warp core?”
Rollins replied, “Depolarize the intake coupler, followed by purging of the containment chamber.”
“Yes,” cheered the captain. “Mr. Ortega, take Mr. Rollins to the engine room and get started before the imprint wears off. I’ll babysit the crew.”
“Crew,” said Ensign York. “Noun. The rowers and coxswain of a racing shell. Also, a group of people who work together on a project.”
Petty officer Hawkins added, “Project Blue Book documented more than 12,618 UFO sightings.”
Nurse Mioni noted, “The square root of 12,618 is 112.32987136109433.”
“On second thought, Mr. Ortega,” said Captain Edgington, “I’ll take Rollins to the engine room. You stay here.”
by Julian Miles | Oct 23, 2012 | Story |
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
Imagine a blue spider. One of the big hairy ones that move really fast. Make it the size of a tomcat. Replace the back pair of legs with bat wings. Add venomous spurs to those wings. That’s what is watching me as I sway head-down in the breeze that wafts through the Ghabeni forest.
It’s called a Darth. The wheezing noise they make when angered is the reason for the name and only dead biologists know why. They’re pack hunters occupying the ecological niches usually taken by small carnivores, large rodents, small raptors, vultures and scary ginormous insects.
I inherited my father’s arachnophobia in full measure. All I can focus on is what those legs will feel like against me when it climbs down the harness that suspends me from this tree like some macabre bird feeder.
When the orbiter malfunctioned, we abandoned it in the shuttle. When the shuttle malfunctioned, we abandoned it using parawings. They worked perfectly apart from the lack of open ground to land on. So we had a shouted discussion, slowed to stall speed while getting as low as possible, then dropped into the trees.
I can see Angus’ red suit from here. He stopped screaming a while back but his suit is still moving. A type of movement that makes me think Angus is lunch for the rest of the Darth pack.
I don’t even have a bright light to repel them. That’s their only real aversion, apart from the nocturnal predator we have no name for as it’s never been recorded. We’ve found entire Darth packs reduced to scattered chitin, every piece showing signs of powerful pointy teeth. The owners of said teeth remain a mystery.
A vibration on my harness makes me look up. In the creeping twilight, I see movement on the branches above. Looking across at Angus, I see his suit hanging like it’s empty. Oh crap.
There’s a Darth on my boot chewing on the laces, another going through the panels on my leggings. More are coming down the harness toward my boots. This is going to be a bad way to go, eaten from the feet up. I don’t scream until I feel mandibles pierce my calf. Then I spend a few minutes making up for lost time until I feel legs moving down my inner thigh, under my suit. I piss myself, hit a new high note and pass out.
I come to tasting blood. There are no mandibles in me, no legs on me. A crunching draws my eyes to the nearby branch. There is light from a crude lantern. In it I see that I am being observed by silvery oval eyes set slantwise in a head that strikes me as a cross between chimpanzee and leopard. The body is covered in dark blue fur, the hands and feet have two opposable digits as well as wicked claws. The mouth is filled with sharp incisors. It licks the last morsels from the Darth carcass and throws it over its shoulder.
Far to my left, I hear the click of scanners. It looks that way and picks up the lantern.
“Thank you.”
I don’t know what prompts me to say it, but I do. The creature leans close, touching my cheek with a single digit. I swear it smiles as it pats it’s obviously stuffed belly. I realise the meaning; it didn’t save me, it just can’t eat anymore. With that, it extinguishes the lantern and is gone silently in an eyeblink.
As the rescue team approaches, its not fear of Darths that makes me scream.
by Duncan Shields | Oct 22, 2012 | Story |
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer
“Okay, they’re coming! They’re coming! Quick hide! Oh man this is going to be great!”
All the people scattered snickering behind bushes, trees and rocks all around the clearing as the cryopositor’s trunk arm extended down from the obscenely huge colony craft. The ship’s back end protruded out of the atmosphere. It hung in space, gravity repulsors awake and maxed. It had Ark of Terra barely legibly written on the side. It had been in space for six hundred and thirty-eight years.
The long tube dangled down from it until it first found and then stanchioned itself to the ground. All of the millions of people in the ship were still frozen. Only the most important and competent were awoken first as an advance welcome party. They were in the cryopositor now, awaiting to take their first breath of a completely unexplored and possibly hostile frontier world.
Little did they know situations like this happened now and again. The Exodus from Earth had entailed fifty-eight ships over the course of ten years. Nearly a billion people had managed to flee the crowded culling pit that our home had become in those ancient times.
Then we had discovered FTL. After that, we’d been included in an interstellar family of extra-terrestrial beings with thousands of different races. Their tech was our tech. Human lifespans were no longer finite. The far reaches of spaces were more accessible. It was a glorious time.
This had all happened while the Arks floated silently towards their impossibly far-off planets. Millions of hopeful humans asleep in a dreamless night, automated systems keeping them on course. So far seventeen of them had touched down over the last two hundred years on different planets. At first, we’d let them think they were alone for a year or two, letting them get set up before revealing how the course of history had gone. They resented us for that and in retrospect, it was condescending of us.
Now, here, the 18th Earth Ark was touching down on Melandra, or as their star charts knew it, H-L571.
The door to the cryopositor opened. Three people in spacesuits came out. The lead one boldly took his helmet off. His eyes were wide open as he took a first breath of alien air. He smiled as motioned to his two compatriots. They, too, breathed their first. The one on the left unfolded a flag to plant.
We chose that moment, all three hundred of us, to jump out from our hiding places.
“SURPRISE!”
by submission | Oct 21, 2012 | Story |
Author : R. Michael Cook
Knuckles knocked against the truck window.
Mary leaned over and cranked the window down. Rain and the diesel engine nearly drowned out her voice. “Phil, buddy?”
“Yeah,” said Phil, leaning down to the window. His breath fogged up the glass as Mary unlocked the vehicle.
Opening the door, Phil squelched into the seat, water forming a puddle at his boots. The truck’s hinges creaked as the door closed. Water still trickled in through the truck’s rusted roof.
“Glad you made it,” said Mary, not meeting his eyes and ignoring the excess water. “The cops thick tonight?”
“Yeah,” said Phil, “but more on the other side of town. I was fine once I got over the tracks. How can you drive this carriage? And how the hell do you get the gas for it?”
“It runs on vegetable oil, dude,” said Mary, “and I run it because it’s a pre-comp model.”
“Pre-common sense model, you mean?” Asked Phil dryly.
Mary exhaled patiently. “It doesn’t have a computer in it. The cops can’t track me and I can grow my own gas.”
Mary began rummaging through a paper bag. She pulled out a small cluster of whole, shriveled leaves.
Phil eyed the tobacco. “Same price?”
“Same,” said Mary, “but if you try something new, I will give it to you for half.”
Phil hesitated. “How much is the new stuff?”
“Three-fifty.”
“What exactly is the new stuff?”
“It makes you see reality, man,” said Mary. “It screws the mind sensors and you can think whatever you want. It frees you.”
“That’s ridiculous,” said Phil. “How?”
“You know how it all works,” said Mary. “Everything we see is a construction to keep us safe. That’s the way it is. Everything is monitored. But don’t you ever want to be free? Freedom and safety don’t balance well.”
“They use those sensors to catch killers and psychopaths,” said Phil, annoyed with the conspiracy. “It is to keep us safe.”
“Don’t you want to live dangerously?”
“I’m buying illegal tobacco from you,” said Phil, running his hand over the stubble on his throat. “I am living dangerously.”
“The government allows every import and export,” said Mary, “the illegal and legal. They know you are buying and they know I’m selling. They don’t care about tobacco. They only jail you for show. If you take this, they can’t get at you anymore.”
“Have you taken it?” Asked Phil.
“Yeah,” said Mary, “and I came down from it all right. It’s better than sex, man. Pure freedom.”
“But if they control import, how did you get it?” Asked Phil, his wide eyes darting around nervously. “Won’t they know?”
“Naw, man,” said Mary, “I make it myself. It’s got my DNA too.
Phil stared, eyes wide. “And… you’re sure that it will block the mind sensors?”
“That’s the beauty of it. It doesn’t block them, it just feeds ‘em nonsense and they don’t know what to do. When it gets both our DNA it can’t read either of us. But don’t worry, it’s not enough of mine to be a threat to me, just enough to make you… not readable.”
“Alright,” said Phil, hesitantly, “I’ll take it.” He opened his wallet. “How do I, you know, take it?”
“Put it in your eye,” said Mary. She handed Phil his purchases.
Phil stuck the slip of paper underneath his eyelid and took a deep breath. “OK, thanks. Next month?”
“Deal,” said Mary. “Enjoy yourself.”
“Right,” said Phil. He stepped out into the rain and had his first free thought.
by submission | Oct 20, 2012 | Story |
Author : Bruce Meyer
It could have been the simplest of conquests. One properly-placed shot and the rebel city would be nothing but ocean.
“I’ll sink ‘em all,” Lam said, his red face was projected as an image ahead of Enoch’s cockpit window. “I’ll blast the monsters to the sky. Give the word!”
Two spider-shaped fighters were dispatched to the floating metropolis. Lam’s hovered just off Enoch’s flank, powering low over a remote region of the Thalassinus Ocean. The target’s sleek and slender spires gleamed in the sunlight.
“Denied,” Enoch said. “Hold your fire. Survey the city first. I want to locate all inhabitants.”
“What?” Lam’s red deepened. “What will a survey do? We know right where they are. Those things are diseased! Dark energy has destroyed them. I vote we make them ocean garbage.”
“Prepare the survey,” Enoch said. “They may be diseased, but they’re still human beings.”
Although Lam argued, he eventually complied. After a time, he completed the survey. “Nobody’s down there. The place is deserted.”
“Yes,” Enoch said slowly. Even with Enoch’s years of experience, the readouts were unfamiliar. There were no life forms indicated, but the energy readings were off the scale. “We’ll search the city on foot.”
Lam argued all the while they lowered their vessels to the streets of the city. When Enoch secured the landing and opened the hatch, Lam was already there ahead of him.
“Commander, the towers, do you see them?”
Enoch saw houses and apartments. Then he followed Lam’s gaze to the slender structures rising miles into the air.
“They’re not buildings,” Lam said. “I think they’re particle accelerators, tearing the fabric of spacetime. The buggers are manufacturing dark energy, would ya believe it? Commander, we have to get out of here. We’re at risk-”
“Commander Enoch Frangin,” said a metallic voice from behind.
Enoch whirled around. Behind him stood the most gruesome creature. Its skin was like boiling mud, and its eyes glowed like two red lasers. Despite the terrible disfigurement, Enoch recognized the face of Dr. Carter Frangin, the lead rebel.
“Father?”
The monster reached out with his molten arm and touched his son’s shoulder. Repulsed, Enoch jumped back.
“Father, what have you become?” Enoch realized why their instruments hadn’t picked up anybody. They weren’t human anymore. “What has dark energy done to you?”
“Dark energy?” The monster’s speech resembled machines grinding without any oil. He held out his bubbling hand to his son. “It’s only by dying to your humanity that you can live. Give up your human weakness and be reborn in energy.”
Lam looked around at the multitude of creatures that had joined Dr. Frangin. He grabbed Enoch’s arm and pulled him away. “Commander, to the ships!”
But tears streamed down Enoch’s face. “I will never become like you-”
Dr. Frangin extended his arm to his son once more. “You already are, son, it just doesn’t show yet. You’re already infected.”
Enoch and Lam never made it to their ship. The eyes were the first to change, turning bloodshot and then fluorescent red. Splotches appeared on their faces and arms, spreading like insects burrowing into their bodies. Enoch and Lam joined the rebel ranks of the dark energy beasts.
by submission | Oct 19, 2012 | Story |
Author : Nathan Martin
Jev killed a cop. Technically, he pushed an undercover narcotics agent into an airlock and blew the outer hatch. Technically, it was the loss of pressure and lack of oxygen that killed the cop. Jev just pushed the button. Would’ve gotten away with it too, if the sun-burned corpse hadn’t made half a stable lap around the earth before smacking into Orbital Main station. Some luck.
He reached out and tapped a button on the console. The image on the main screen of Earth, slowly passing below him, blanked out. He was sick of looking at it. Six days since the launch, and still he sat there in his little ship, not quite ready to jet off. “Execution, or space mining,” they told him. It was an easy choice. Still, he missed the drugs.
He closed his eyes and stretched, unable to avoid brushing some portion of the ship’s interior no matter what angle he chose. When he was finished, he tightened his seat mesh to restrain his floating. He looked down at one of the screens; several windows were open, none of which were the tutorials he was to spend the next six months of flight time studying. A pop-up was on the screen, an override from Orbital Control. They were becoming more frequent, now that he was closer to overstaying his welcome. The latest pop-up informed him that he had, “12 hours 37 minutes 32 seconds to vacate Earth orbit or be terminated.” This one was bright red. He closed it and unhooked his seat mesh, floating free.
Grasping the overhead wall rungs, he moved hand over hand to the small cold box at the back of the cabin. He pulled out his last beer bulb, bit the tab off, and put the nipple in his mouth. He wondered if he was the first to drink the whole supply before leaving orbit. It was nice and dim in the cabin with the main screen off.
“Why am I still here?” He thought. “What the hell am I doing? I can’t go back down. There’s no way. I’d be dead as soon as I set the course.” He scratched the new tattoo on his wrist that marked him as a convict-miner. It itched. “I could say, ‘fuck asteroid mining, I’m going to Mars.’” He finished the beer bulb in two more gulps, and realized that he was speaking aloud; he hadn’t noticed the transition from thought. He continued. “They wouldn’t take me there, either.” The ships transponder was hardwired from the outside, marking him for what he now was.
He handed himself back over to the seat before the screen. There was only one thing left to do. He tapped a button and turned the screen back on. Earth burst over him, and he found himself missing it for the first time. Ice cream. Couscous with tomato sauce. Gravity.
“Fuck it,” he said. He tapped into the navigation system and activated the presets. The engine behind him began to roar, and he barely remembered to re-hook the seat mesh before he was tossed back into the cushions. Earth dropped out of view and was replaced by a slur of stars, drawing him away.
