by submission | Mar 2, 2012 | Story |
Author : J.D. Rice
“Icarus to Daedalus! We have primary stabilizer failure! Repeat, we have primary stabilizer failure! We’re losing altitude. Please advise!”
The lieutenant was shouting, screaming into his microphone, trying to raise his voice over the sound of his ship as it careened off its intended arc. Their test flight was supposed to bring them in a slingshot around the Sun before launching into deep space. Daedalus had been given the higher, safer arc through the Sun’s coronasphere. Icarus meanwhile had apparently strayed too close to the Sun and was now plunging towards its surface. The historic irony of the situation was not lost, even in the midst of crisis.
“Icarus to Daedalus, please respond!” the lieutenant shouted, trying his best to steer the ship up, away from the ever growing solar horizon, and back on its intended arc. Bolts rattled, engines roared, warning lights beeped and blared all over the cockpit. It was everything the lieutenant and his copilot could do to keep themselves from plunging directly into the Sun. As they continued to try to hail the Daedalus, their eyes met briefly. Each saw the look of cold acceptance dawning on the other’s face.
“Damn!” the lieutenant said, tossing his microphone aside. It was like something out of a nightmare. They’d trained for this mission, run countless simulations. They’d calculated and practiced every detail. They were ready. And despite all that, they found themselves in a hopeless situation. The cockpit was getting ever hotter, ever closer to the bright, burning star below. There was nothing the two men could do but steer into it and accept the inevitable.
“Wait.”
The lieutenant checked his instruments, ran the numbers in his head. It might work, but they’d risk being boiled alive in the process.
“Take us down!” he shouted.
“We’re not giving up yet!” his copilot answered.
“No, take us down! Take us closer! We can increase our speed and take a different arc out!”
The copilot said nothing, but just looked at his superior in disbelief.
“The computer can plot the course, just do it! That’s an order!”
Knowing there was no time to argue, the copilot nodded. Believing it to be the last act of his life, he turned Icarus’s nose down into the horizon and set the engines to full burn. His grip on the steering controls tightened, as the sweat on his hands evaporated at a rapid rate. His hands, his face, even his lungs felt like they were on fire. Inertial dampeners began to buckle, causing the man to feel himself pinned to his chair. He could barely keep the ship on course as his vision began to fade. Seconds, minutes passed as he clung to consciousness, almost wishing that death would simply take him and end it all. Any second their wax and feather wings would finally burn up, and Icarus’s journey would be over.
And then they saw black skies ahead, stars shining faintly, then brightly before them. The heat dissipated. The shaking stopped. For the first time in what seemed like ages, they could hear themselves think. Icarus had survived her journey, with the lieutenant and his copilot intact.
“Icarus to Daedalus…” the lieutenant sighed. “We made it. Superstition be damned, we made it…”
Nothing but dead air come back over the line. There was no sign of the Daedalus anywhere. Somewhere along the line, she’d lost her flight path as well. But unlike Icarus, she had not emerged on the other side of the star.
Daedalus was gone.
by Clint Wilson | Mar 1, 2012 | Story |
Author : Clint Wilson, Staff Writer
Agent Rockton was all on his own here in the heart of the city. He appeared no more than a shadow, creeping stealthily through twisting service alleys under the cover of the ink black night that hung perpetually above this remote rock that had at one time been a federation outpost.
He paused and held his breath, his back flat against a stone wall. He heard footsteps. This was good. It would only be one of the Mumphet people running this errand or that for its master Slug. Had Rockton heard the sucking sliming noise of one of the actual enemy approaching he would have had much more to deal with. He watched the short hairy being pass by, loping along with a sack of some supplies or other tossed over its shoulder. Poor buggers, they’d been enslaved for generations. He felt badly that so many Mumphets would have to perish as well when the shit hit.
Once in the clear he began to move again. Almost there now. His visor’s readout showed him that he was but meters from the city’s center, his ultimate destination. Might as well do it by the book. There ahead was a decorative fountain that spewed stale smelling brackish water. That was ground zero.
After a quick scan he stole across the open square and then dove to the wet pavement and rolled into the shadow of the fountain’s edge. He procured the receiver from his backpack and slid it as far as he could under the stony lip of the fountain, then engaged the timer. The 10:00 hours began to tick backward. That was what he had, ten short hours to make it on foot, out of the city and across kilometers of rough terrain to a safe distance from the blast.
As he slid out and stood up he heard a click behind him. He froze, and heard the unmistakable sound of a Mumphet grunting into a universal translator. The words in Common were instant and mechanical. “I have a high caliber energy weapon aimed at your back. I must warn my master, you have done something. What is it you’ve put under the fountain?”
Rockton held his hands out, fingers splayed. He spoke into his own translator and was honest and direct. “You’d be wiser to go get any family you want to save and leave this city at once.”
“Turn around intruder.”
Rockton turned to face his short hairy assailant. He could tell the young Mumphet was scared.
Yet it raised its weapon threateningly and asked, “Is it a bomb?”
“No my friend. It is a teleportation receiver, but in a few short hours it will bring a thermonuclear device that will destroy everything here. The people who are sending it are far away, in another star system. They can’t be stopped, and the receiver cannot be turned off. Heed my words, get your family and run.”
The Mumphet was not quite convinced. “What if I just shoot you and then smash it to bits?”
“You can’t smash it; heck you can’t even move it. It’s held in place by wormhole forces, it would be easier to move the whole planet.”
Suddenly the Mumphet stepped back and said, “You know there are other Slug cities on other planets; this won’t get them all.”
“I know,” Rockton replied. “But it’s a hell of a good start.”
The Mumphet smiled. “I’d love to converse further, but I need to rescue my family.” And with that he turned and disappeared into the night.
Rockton began to make his way out of the city.
by Julian Miles | Feb 29, 2012 | Story |
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
Imagine a frontier settlement from any decent cowboy film. Then substitute troops of the Galacta Navir for every cowboy. Make the planet it sits on something beyond arid and set the humidity to nearly zero.
Welcome to my world: Rumbleday; the planet under the Clervoy Orbital Refreshment Facility. A mean hunk of dust and rock under a pitiless sun that has only one real moon and twenty-eight fake ones.
I’m Paladin Anderson Brent and I’ve just woken after returning to town from a trooper’s disciplinary hearing late yesterday. The Galacta Navir likes to keep its troopers keen: Inter-battlegroup rivalry is encouraged and the “Cleansweep” bonus scheme adds a lethal frissance. It also means that off-duty rucks are invariably messy.
It’s ten before fourteen on a thirty-nine hour day and the chime of the mainline is an unwelcome interruption of my sleep-in. At least Arty sounds unhappier than I am: “Tabitha just called from Galadriel Port; the elites of Chevalier de Anjou just landed.”
“Okay, Arty. Looks like Chantilly is in for a high rolling week.”
“Anderson! I told you a week ago. Chantilly is full of Fils de Maginot elites!”
Now the folks out here have an unwritten agreement with local command: troops from rival factions never refresh in the same hemisphere. That goes double for elites. While the old adage about being kept in cages and fed raw meat is only true of aardfangs these days (and they don’t get refreshed, they get shot), it is a useful gauge for the mentality of elites.
Just then, my priority line beeps so I put Arty on hold.
“Paladin Brent. This is Paladin Deems. I’ve had to send the elites of Martelons de Lille to Chantilly as the elites of Kriegsturm rolled into Orleans.”
The world skews and my vision blurs in momentary fugue. We have three elites from the Garde Francais partying hard in my town. In fairness, it was one of the least dangerous options. A trio of elites from the Mord und Totschlag would have been armageddon crazy. The Garde were bad but had this flamboyant streak that led to shows of non-violent mayhem in amongst the usual carnage. You might wind up with your town repainted and needing Diogenes to find the virgins, but it was better than smoking ruins and random limbs.
I’m just reaching to reconnect Arty when I hear the distant sound of small arms fire. They let the elites off-ship armed? Tomorrow someone in Downship Protocol is going to have a procedural amendment they will never forget.
I scramble into the den and bring up the surveillance of Main Street. It’s beyond control already. Bodies litter most flat surfaces and worryingly, a couple of vertical ones. Eight vehicles burning along with two saloons. Time to dry them out. I open the crash cabinet and press the blue button.
The inhabitants of Chantilly withdraw calmly to their danger rooms as the klaxons sound. Three minutes later I power down the grid and drain down all the tavern pumps and water pipes. A minute after that, the meteor deflection field around Chantilly activates and the temperature starts to climb.
Three hours later the last elite in Chantilly keels over from heat exhaustion. We drop the field, start the grid, refill the pumps and spend a while dumping floppy elites into transports.
The early years of Rumbleday were marred by collateral fatalities. Now we can isolate each town and remove all fluid supplies. Everyone loses the will to party when the temperature hits 330 Kelvin and all the liquids have disappeared.
by submission | Feb 28, 2012 | Story |
Author : Asher Wismer
Jack realized he’d been shot. The pain lanced up his leg, shooting through his hip into his chest, and for a moment, he thought that another of the flying bullets had struck home. Instead, the pain receded, only a slight twinge as his armor took over and tightened around the wound, and he took two steps and launched himself into the sky.
The flying drones surrounded him. He ignored them — they were more for distraction than for damage, and they couldn’t do anything to his armor anyway. At the apex of his jump, he activated the graviton thrusters and powered over the building, turned at speeds that threatened whiplash, and landed with a bone-jarring thump on the roof.
The drones pulled off, not programmed to operate in the building’s defense sphere. For a moment, Jack was safe; he flicked the auto-medic on and felt relief as morphine flowed into his leg. Not enough to slow him, though; he took a quick look around and saw the stairwell door, which shattered under his foot.
Down the stairs and into the main lab. Around him, the lab’s automatic defenses activated and he shot them out, one by one, wincing as electricity slammed into his armor and flowed around the Faraday shell down to the floor.
Behind him, the main door cycled open. He spun and leaped behind the wreckage of a desk as the security team, themselves encased in armor, opened fire. They had weapons that would cut through his armor like butter. Instead of waiting for a break, he scuttled to the side and blew a gaping hole in the wall ahead. Before he fired his graviton thrusters, propelling him through the side of the building, he activated the contingency bomb and let it fall to the floor.
He was three floors down from the lab, falling fast, when the entire lab floor vanished in a pounding explosion.
The graviton generator saved him from pancaking on the pavement. Emergency vehicles circled into the parking lot, and for the moment, no one noticed him, standing up in the bulky armor that added two feet and one thousand pounds to his small frame. The comm in his helmet pinged.
“Did you get it?”
“Couldn’t get my hands on it,” he said. “I had to blow the whole floor.”
“That’s not what I paid you for.”
“That’s all I could do,” he said. “At least no one else will get it.”
“Fine,” the voice said. “Come back for debrief. I want to see the tape as well.”
Jack signed off without answering. Someone shouted and he started to run. Nothing on land except another armor unit could catch him when he went flat out.
It would take a few hours to fabricate the tapes, showing a much larger force in the lab, proving that he couldn’t get the virus out before he had to bail. His employer didn’t need to know that he never intended to steal it, but to destroy it. The virus was a horrible thing, and he knew personally what it would do if his employer got hold of it. He would never leave the armor, would die still inside it after, he hoped, a productive life, long or short.
Inside the armor, Jack felt the itch start up in his lower back, even though there was no skin there to itch. He ignored it; it would go away in time. His leg would heal as well, inside the metal skin that had replaced so much of his body.
Better this way, Jack thought. Much better.
by Patricia Stewart | Feb 27, 2012 | Story |
Author : Patricia Stewart, Staff Writer
“I’m sorry to report Mr. Jones, that your suspicions were correct,” said the private detective that I had hired to follow my wife. “Delilah has been cheating on you.” He rotated his padd so that I could see the cascading slideshow of my wife rendezvousing with a handsome man at an internet café, followed by images of them entering a sleazy motel. “I also had a camera in their room,” he added, “but I don’t think you want to see those images.”
“No,” I replied. “I need to see them.”
Reluctantly, the detective called up another slideshow. As I watched the images of my naked wife and her lover flash by in agonizing clarity, I struggled to control my anger. “I gave her everything she could want,” I hissed. “How could she do this to me?”
“It gets worse,” the detective added.
“How?”
“He’s not human. He’s an android.”
My mind exploded with rage. Sex with an android? She might as well have done it with a farm animal. “God, no,” I said aloud. “Only a sick, perverted person would have sex with an andro…” I couldn’t force myself to say the word.
“The laws are quite specific about this kind of activity, Mr. Jones. She can get up to twenty-five years under the current morality statutes. But I warn you, if you pursue that avenue, you will also be disgraced.”
“There’s no need to make this public,” I stated. “I’ll handle it myself.” I stood up and tossed an envelope onto his desk. I was confident that there was enough money in it to buy his silence. But I didn’t care about the consequences. I was so enraged that nothing mattered anymore. Well, nothing beyond the thought of staring into her repulsive, nauseating eyes as I strangled her with my bare hands.
I took the turbolift to the parking garage and climbed into my waiting limo. I instructed it to take me home. I didn’t try to talk myself out of killing her. I had already convinced myself that I had no choice. First, I would kill her, and then I would destroy it. Afterwards, I didn’t care what happened to me.
When I arrived home, I found Delilah in the kitchen. “Oh, you’re home early,” she said as she approached me for a hug. But she pulled up short. “What’s wrong, honey? You look upset.” She stood there with a genuine look of concern. Her crystal green eyes innocently blinking at me. She’s so lovely, I thought.
That’s when it suddenly dawned on me that maybe she didn’t know her lover was an android. Maybe she had been duped. “I know about your affair,” I blurted out. “Don’t deny it.”
Her expression of “concern” changed to a dismissive smile. “Oh, is that what you’re upset about. I can explain.”
“No! Don’t bother,” I snapped. “I just need to know if you knew that it was an android.”
She laughed. “Well, of course I knew, sweetheart. Honestly, you’re so naïve, it’s adorable.” And she continued to chuckle in the most mocking tone imaginable.
I snapped. I grabbed a knife from the counter top and drove it into her abdomen. The blade penetrated about an inch before snapping off at the handle. I looked down and saw a needle thin spray of pink liquid squirting from her stomach. I dropped the knife handle, and backed away. The room began to spin. I fought to steady myself. “What the hell,” I mumbled.
“Now, look at what you’ve done,” she protested. “You ruptured one of my hydraulic lines.”
by Stephen R. Smith | Feb 26, 2012 | Story |
Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer
Lewis sprinted the last few yards across the wasteland and dove head first into the trench. He clutched his rifle tight against his chest as he lay in the dirt, chest heaving, heart pounding out of sync with the artillery barrage overhead.
Move, Lewis, get up and move.
A shell exploded nearby, showering him with sticky blue dirt. Ears ringing he pulled himself to his feet and, hugging the facing wall of the trench, half walked, half ran forward. He didn’t stop to pick a direction, didn’t reason which way was most likely to take him back towards friendlies, he simply ran.
Minutes stretched like hours, hours like days, energy weapon discharge cracked overhead and a constant pounding of artillery kept a beat and kept it strong. Lewis just ran, rifle clenched in his fists like the lifeline basic had taught him it would be.
His legs burning, eyes stinging from the smoke, Lewis ran past an advancement point in the trench. Here, a tee intersection had been cut out, hardened spray-plastigel buttressed the sides and a downed landing craft bridging the trench above blocked out what little sun was visible overhead. The trench continued on the way he’d been heading, but another trench met at right angles, heading towards the enemy. From ahead Lewis could hear gunfire, and not just the staccato blast of the enemy’s shard guns, but also the heavy thump, thump, thump of energy weapons like the one he still clutched white knuckled.
Lewis didn’t stop to think, just turned and ran towards the gunfire.
Within moments, he found himself at the back of a frightened young man huddled into a slit in the wall of the trench. If not for his shaking and the barrel of his weapon protruding, he might have run right past him.
“Soldier, let’s go, cover me.” Lewis barked at the frightened young man, glancing furtively along the trench.
“Sir, s-s-s-sir,” the soldier stammered, “I’m out of ammunition sir. I’m no use to anyone now sir.”
Lewis paused a moment, thinking for the first time of his own weapon, and the moments before he was sent diving for cover in the trench. He thought of the impotent whine that meant his rifle was fully discharged as well. Listening, he realized the staccato cracking of gunfire from farther up the trench had also stopped, and not even pausing to think he pulled the shaking soldier out of the hole in the trench wall and barked simply, “Barrel up, cover me.”
Together they marched up the trench, one empty rifle and one empty heavy repeater pointed towards an enemy they hoped was more scared than they were.
Within minutes, they stepped past a haphazard barrier of crates and plasteel panels, and found themselves staring down three of the enemy soldiers, guns levelled, mandibles clacking, multifaceted eyes reflecting the two commandos back a thousand-fold.
Lewis didn’t hesitate, just jammed the barrel of his rifle into the closest face he could find.
“Surrender. Surrender or I blow your fucking head off.” The force of his words for the moment drove out the fear in his heart.
Seconds ticked away like hours before the enemy soldier tossed his weapon aside and bowed down into the dirt.
“Surrender”, it said, in poorly translated mechanical English, “please, surrender.”
Lewis and the still shaking soldier stood over their prisoners for hours before reinforcements came up the trench and relieved them. Lewis walked twenty or so meters away from his prisoners before vomiting into the dirt.
