by submission | Jun 7, 2011 | Story
Author : T.C. Powell
After a three-day’s pursuit through nothingness, Rass Det’s cruiser, the Virgil, finally tracked down the green-black war barge known throughout the Terran League as Deathspike. It orbited Regis III with shields up and weapons armed, obviously ready for a fight. Rass opened communications.
“This is Commander Rass Det of the Republic of Mars to the vessel Deathspike. You are ordered to stand down weapons, lower shields, and submit to Terran authority.”
For a few minutes, silence. Rass couldn’t blame them–he wouldn’t say anything either.
“Repeat: this is Commander Det of Mars. Submit now or we must open fire.”
Nothing.
He turned to the gunner’s well. “Make ready, Mr. Sanders.”
Power rumbled under the deck as the forward batteries charged. They would detect it too; it was talk or fight–all or nothing. Talk was the happier option, always, but this time especially: the Virgil was vastly overmatched. Rass hadn’t wanted to give chase, or force a confrontation, but assistance was forever away, and procedure was clear. No point in bluffing. No backing down.
“Arm the cannons.”
Sanders answered dutifully, but Rass could see it in his eyes. He knew–they all knew.
“On my mark.”
Sanders’ hands flew across the controls. The Virgil was a well-run machine, if not well-funded. Her crew was disciplined and loyal–true believers in the system. They’d signed on for adventure, or recognition, or a hundred individual reasons that Rass didn’t know, and didn’t want to. He watched them, going about business. Technicians making minor adjustments to keep the lights on, the heat up. The science station where Dr. Marbay was, even now, analyzing fragmentary sensor data. Maintenance workers who fought to keep the decks clean, even though they never had water enough, or manpower.
All of it–their efforts, their years of service, their dreams of family and old-age–would come down to this one moment, and then nothingness. And for what? The Deathspike?
Yes, Rass thought, for the Deathspike. It was time.
He turned to Sanders, whose finger hovered over oblivion.
“And… fire,” was what he was going to say, but the words stopped short as a soft blink caught the corner of his eye.
“She’s responding,” Lieutenant Montoya said, trying to keep the relief out of his voice, and failing.
The transmission came in, garbled and broken, the words fading in and out of perception like an auditory mirage.
“…surrender… systems frozen… mutiny… hold fire… please…”
Rass closed his eyes and said a silent prayer, then told Sanders to disengage, relishing the feel of the batteries’ hum slowly falling away.
The two ships held course above the planet, one finally submitting to the other. As Rass Det boarded the bridge of the long-sought raider, they welcomed him with tear-soaked thanks and pleas for mercy, the first of which he felt he didn’t deserve, and the second, he couldn’t grant.
He had, however, managed to luck onto one more day’s living. And that, he supposed, was a good day’s work.
by submission | Jun 6, 2011 | Story
Author : Jake Christie
“Places!” shouted Lunar Exploration Unit #4837-E. “Places, everybody!”
The other research machines trudged, trundled, and rolled across the dust. The tiny six-wheeled rover took his place at the foot of the mineral collector. The giant thick-treaded mobile equipment transport rolled to his spot on top of a small hill. Only the other humanoid Lunar Exploration Unit, #5216-ND, didn’t take his place. Instead he put his metal hands on his metal hips and stalked towards LEU 4837-E.
“Louie,” he said, “what are we doing?”
Louie was adjusting the optical recording device mounted atop his head. “I told you, Leonard,” he said. He stopped his adjustments to motion towards the robotic tableau. “Minnie is a poor Moon farmer, and he’s fallen in love with Rover. Rover’s family doesn’t want her marrying someone of such low social standing, so her father Met – a wealthy Moon plantation owner – is coming to teach them both a lesson. And you – you, Leonard – you’re the wandering Moon raygunslinger with a heart of gold, the only one who can defend truth, honor, and the lunar way.”
“No,” said Leonard, ” I mean what are we doing making a movie? We’re supposed to be collecting data.”
Louie looked at Leonard as incredulously as possible, which without facial features was not incredulously at all. “Collecting data? You would reduce the whole of the Moon experience to ‘data?’ What good is data without emotion? The thrill of defeat? The agony of success?”
“You can’t experience either of those things,” said Leonard. “In fact, I’m pretty sure you don’t know what they mean.”
Louie put a cold hand on Leonard’s shoulder. “The artist can’t be constrained by their physical, emotional, or mechanical limitations. Go beyond your programming, Leonard. This is a story that needs to be told.”
“What we need,” said Leonard, “is to process and collect data about Moon ores.”
Louie looked past Leonard. The other machines were staring at them, inasmuch as you could call slight shifts in orientation “staring.” Against the star-speckled expanse of space, the artist in Louie questioned his programming about which phenomena before his eyes were the real stars.
“Let me get this shot,” he said quietly. He looked at Leonard. “I need to find something here besides just mineral data.”
Leonard turned and looked at their companions. They were straining at the gears with anticipation, ready for their big scene, and for just a moment Leonard’s visual retrieval spheres saw the same thing that Louie’s did.
“Okay,” he said, finally turning back. “I’ll do it.”
“You’re going to be great,” said Louie. “Just do what a raygunslinger would be programmed to do.
Louie extended his neck to capture the sweeping scale of the Moon’s desolate landscape. As Leonard took his place, Louie settled his optical recording device on the poor Moon Romeo and his pretty six-wheeled Moon Juliet.
“Aaaand… ACTION!”
by submission | Jun 5, 2011 | Story
Author : Harris Tobias
I felt a shifting in my circuits like I got when I rebooted, a slippery, falling feeling that signaled stress— or was it joy? The whole idea of feelings and emotions was new to me. An upgrade, I didn’t think was much of an improvement. It was difficult to keep track of what one was supposed to be feeling. Regardless of exactly what emotion it was, I knew that I was supposed to be having them, lots of them, especially on my wedding day.
According to custom, I colored my body panels white and clutched a bouquet of artificial blossoms in my utility appendage. I would say I was nervous but of course you can’t be nervous without nerves, but I was definitely feeling a little 4-0-4 File not found-ish. I looked at myself in the mirror, tall, polished, beautiful in a classical way.
I noticed the odd feelings were strongest when I thought of BEN-4-7-45, my designated partner. After all, how well did I really know him? True, the BEN models were highly rated, but you never really knew how another being was wired until you’ve shared a lot of time together, and then it might be too late. A few brief encounters hardly qualified as knowing someone.
No doubt BEN-4-7-45 was having similar misgivings. And why shouldn’t he? After all, what made me so superior? A four year old model with more miles on my odometer than I cared to admit. I was lucky to have finally made a match at all. And BEN was so kind and sweet, tall and strong; sure it was his third pairing, but that didn’t mean it was all his fault.
My best friends were clustered around me now. All smile emoticons and what passed for laughter among my kind. I had to admit the girls looked terrific in their burgundy and pink body panels. BEN’s friends looked handsome too in their charcoal and light gray panels. Maybe there will be more pairings after tonight. It would be nice to have friends in common.
There was a stirring in the hall. Soon it would be time to walk down the aisle. One of my friends slipped a piece of gauzy fabric over my ocular sensors, another custom no one understood the reason for but, like the ceremony itself, it was faithfully carried out. These ancient rituals were all that remained of the time before.
Two ancient bots, patched and discolored with age, stood on each side of me. I understood that they symbolized the parents who, if I were human, would have given me away. They were the oldest bots I had ever seen. They had probably done this a thousand times. There wasn’t much else they could do, poor things. They walked my down the aisle to the stage, a raised platform decorated with flowers of all description—plastic, fabric, even glass—more flowers than I had ever seen.
A scratchy recording of something called the wedding march began to play through the speakers of assembled guests. All oculars were on me, the old-bots moved forward. Ben was waiting. This was it, there was no turning back. I hoped for the best.
by submission | Jun 4, 2011 | Story
Author : Julian Miles
“They’ve got reinforcements!”
I checked my chrono. Down to one thousand, eight hundred and forty-three instances. I warned Flank Axel Leader as Scout Axel Second cut into our channel.
“Looks like two full companies.”
Damn. That meant twelve hundred grunts. I instructed Scout Axel.
“I need to know when they’re ten seconds out.”
“TEN seconds? Ye gods, Commander. That’s cutting it fine.”
“I know, but this is where we hold them or this sector is history.”
“Tick tock, sir. We’re on it.”
I smiled. One thing about working with two thousand temporally shifted instances of yourself was that you never failed to get the in jokes. The battle was going as well as could be expected. We had the kill ratio down to one and a half me to one of theirs. A new record. Scout Axel Fourth came on.
“Lost Two and Three, sir. You are fifteen from enemy engagement on my mark… Mark!”
I counted down on open channel so all of me could synchronise.
“Five, four, three, two, one, Hawkin!”
With a purple flash, eighteen hundred instances of me appeared in six-hundred me combat deployments, at the flanks and rear of the enemy reinforcements. There were cheers on the open channel.
“Pick it up, Axels. We have five minutes to finish this.”
From then on, things got brutal. I was just about to singularise chronome when Scout Axel Seven ruined my day.
“Fifty gravtanks incoming sir! Low spec, but coming fast.”
Left with no choice, I phased in the last forty-three instances of me.
The world around me slowed down as causality and a few of its friends finally noticed that I was cheating. The rules were simple. I could take time from my past when I had been idle to get an instance of me to fight now. Of course, everyone has only so much free time. Behind my eight months, three weeks and four days in combat lay twenty years in training, which included at least two hours a day standing at full combat readiness but doing absolutely nothing. While the latest me was alive, causality took the path of least resistance and any of me that died just vanished, temporal ghosts that never existed. Of course, as they never existed, idle me’s were available for the next battle.
Assault Axel Nineteen came on the tactical line.
“We’re getting pasted, sir. They have advanced suits with reflective fields.”
Scout Axel Thirty-Two confirmed.
“They’ve got more gravtank support and I can see at least five different flavours.”
They were coming for me. It was the only explanation of such a costly manoeuvre. My chrono worked overtime as I ran temporal and flat strategy predictions. But they all agreed. I was dead. The only variable was how many of them died too. So be it. I overrode the chrono and set it to get a me from tomorrow. With a smile, I phased an impossible instance of me into existence. Causality put its foot down hard and deleted me and the planet I stood on.
I appeared in a maintenance locker on the regen ship Alexandrya at the exact time I’d entered the battle. I had no chrono and was speaking in tongues. My body is apparently twenty years younger. I suspect twenty years, eight months, three weeks and four days if it could be gauged accurately.
A month has passed and they’re still taking notes. Because the chrono-trooper project was stopped ten years ago, after all of the early subjects developed chronic multiple personality disorder, with all other personalities being me.
by Stephen R. Smith | Jun 3, 2011 | Story
Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer
The O’Brian Star sat fixed in space between two possible orbits. On maneuvering thrust, we could roll into a pattern over Telavor, shuttle down for some much needed rest while the ship was refitted and resupplied and plot our next supra-light slip. Alternately, we could drop through the nearly non-existant atmosphere of Tel N’akvar, punch a hole into the local mining outpost and load up with enough rare ore to be building a new ship at the other end of the galaxy before the N’akvarans knew what hit them.
It all seemed pretty simple to me as I sat in the upper gunner’s turret, admiring the view, the two planets nearly perfectly aligned with their sun; Telavor casting its massive shadow over the smaller Tel N’akvar.
It was from this vantage point that I had been watching them argue through the window, the Captain and his first mate. They were alone on the bridge, the viewports unshielded and thus unusually transparent from this angle with the lack of outside light. The Captain seemed exasperated, his hands constantly clutching the sides of his head as he spoke, the first mate pacing opposite him, waving her hands wildly in the air, occasionally jabbing her finger at him or smashing both hands on a console.
I wished I could hear what was being said, but I had to assume he’d done something incredibly stupid to deserve her obviously harsh words.
There were many instances where I’d wished the Captain would be sucked out an airlock, leaving the first mate to assume command and open the door to my advances. He was an ass, and she was the normally calm headed, cool tempered beauty that I’d gladly spend the rest of my life under.
Honestly, I don’t know what she ever saw in him.
Snapping back from my reverie, I noticed she was staring out the window directly at me. I froze, trying hard to look like I hadn’t been watching the entire incident.
Then, she waved.
Without thinking, I waved back. We sat frozen there, facing each other across fifty metres of vacuum before she seemed to shake her head and turned away. Around her, the viewports of the bridge opaqued, and I was left staring at nothing but the cold blackness of space.
Minutes ticked away, and I irised open the entryway into the corridor below, straining in the hopes of hearing the sounds of her footsteps making her way from the bridge.
Instead, I felt the rumble of the ship’s engines firing, and the steadily increasing pitch of the sub-light drive as it whined to readiness.
I felt the ship shudder, and then I did hear the sounds of booted feet pounding down the corridor beneath me. The floor lurched beneath my feet, and if I hadn’t been tethered I might have fallen down the access tube.
“Shoot the bitch”, the voice wasn’t my one-day love, “Shoot that goddamned bitch!”
The floor lurched again, and looking out the turret port I realized the entire upper cargo deck, with me and my gun-turret attached, were floating away from the bridge. I stared, dumbfounded as the Captain hauled himself up the ladder into the crowded space.
“She’s taking my fecking ship, blow out the bridge”, I watched as he screamed, and the bridge ports became transparent again. The last sight before we rolled over backwards and my firing options expired was the first mate waving with one hand and extending her middle finger with the other.
I could no longer make out the Captain’s words, I could only think ‘never assume…’
by Duncan Shields | Jun 2, 2011 | Story
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer
We were at Jason’s house partying when it happened. W6, The Rapture, Day One, whatever you call it where you are.
I remember everyone’s phones going off. They lit up in the darkness of the party, confusing everyone like surprise holiday lights or large blue fireflies. Everyone got the same message at the same time. Emergency Broadcast Signal, it said. It had links to instructions and details and those horrible words “safe distance”.
We turned on the television and rushed to our laptops and Jason’s computers. Trajectories were laid out, newscasters were openly crying, and the Moon Senate cam showed rows of empty seats.
Jason lived outside the colony limits. We’d all brought our transports and were going to stay over. No drinking and driving. We were responsible people. We turned off the music and went to the main viewport. In the distance, we could see the city underneath its glittering dome. Smoke from the first few fires started to smudge up into the air underneath it.
What sounded like an earthquake started about a mile to the right of Jason’s house and with a clank and hiss, sixteen circles irised open in the ground. We all turned our heads towards the vibration in unison.
The missiles came up out of the ground like angels in the darkness. Magnesium flares attached to huge pencils going up and up and up. He had no idea that there were missiles silos that close to him, Jason said a few minutes later. He’d heard rumours of an army base there but that had closed years ago, before he emigrated from Earth. It must have been automated and left on standby.
We all stood on the porch and saw the missiles arc into the sky and away into the night, joining other stars making their way to different destinations, pulling faint spiderweb contrails across the dark night.
The fact that there were missiles close to Jason’s house probably meant that area was a target, Ryan said. His dad was in the army over on Titan. That made us all realize that we wouldn’t live on after this in some sort of post-apocalyptic fantasy.
A few people suited up, airlocked to their cars and drove away to the city dome to find their families or away towards the far-off crater bowls where they thought they could outrun the radiation.
Most of us stayed at Jason’s. We all tried calling our parents and loved ones. Some of us got through. I didn’t. Then weak EMP waves from other impacts must have started washing through because the phones and the lights went out.
We sat there in the darkness. A few couples went to have sex until the end came. The rest of us stayed there in the living room near the big window.
There it was. Carrie saw it first. A falling star. Coming straight for us.
