by Stephen R. Smith | Sep 7, 2011 | Story |
Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer
Voychek stood at the edge of the crater, heavy boots slowly sinking into the dusty surface as he surveyed the damaged instrumentation balloon below. He could feel the wind whip frozen particles the size of grain pellets in torrents around him, the staccato beating against his suit muffled by the hardened exterior.
His suit was virtually impenetrable. The balloon, however, hadn’t done nearly as well.
Grunting, he half walked, half skied down the gradual slope of the crater wall, stopping when he reached the equipment pod. The meter plus wide spherical canister appeared to have clipped a sheer face as it fell, the top having been sliced off neatly, coming to rest a dozen metres away from the rest of the container and its battered contents.
Further still lay the harness that had attached the balloon to the equipment pack, now limp in the dust, the risers and lines splayed out, the burners torn off and the silver expanse of fabric fluttering limply in the solar wind, its skirt and lower panels shredded like so much swiss cheese.
Voychek walked to the canister lid and kicked down hard on one edge, the piece bouncing up into his waiting hand as though it were a skateboard and he a free-wheeling teenager.
He chuckled, dropping the shell back into the dust and again kicking hard at its edge, flipping it up into his hand.
From the command tower, his compatriots watched in puzzlement through long glasses.
“What the hell is he doing out there?” The balding Dominic scratched his head absently.
“Who knows, who cares. Not my problem until he brings that gear back in for me to fix.” Chase turned his back on the large observation panel and walked away.
Outside, Voychek threw the sliced off section of shell face down in the dust where the harness lay, then stood on it, wedging his boots between the cross-bracing and turning the toes out to grip the panel. Bending, he picked up the harness leads and flicked them, as one might coax a horse to action by snapping its reins.
The lead lines rippled outwards, lifting the tattered fabric out of the dust only momentarily.
Voychek snapped the lines again, then pulled back hard, the tension pulling a larger section of fabric into the inhospitable atmosphere where the whipping wind snatched at it. The increased pressure filled the section, pulling it further off the ground and taking up the slack in the risers and lines with considerable force.
Voychek tensed, heels pushed hard into the plate beneath him, holding steady in the shifting surface dust. Knees bent, arms straining he coaxed the battered balloon fabric higher off the ground until it cleared the crater lip and caught the full force of the wind whipping above it.
Voychek shot forward like a rocket, instinctively turning himself and angling the board so he was being pulled along sideways. Digging in at the last possible instant, he used his forward momentum to climb the side of the crater wall diagonally, and worried for several long seconds as he shot vertically out of the crater, high above the surface, still travelling forward at great speed before gravity brought him back down hard. He tucked into a crouch to take up the impact, then bounced back up to skim across the landscape throwing great plumes of dust out behind him.
From the observation deck, Dominic lowered his long glass and smiled.
“Don’t expect Voychek back anytime soon. Looks like before he salvages any of the equipment, he’s going to salvage what’s left of his afternoon.”
As Voychek raced towards the horizon Dominic added “He might be calling for a ride.”
by featured writer | Sep 6, 2011 | Story |
Author : Julian Miles, Featured Writer
My personality type is one hundred percent orbital, which means I need someone to be loyal to or I cannot function beyond mere subsistence.
Problem is, like any satellite, I can only circle one thing.
First it was my brother, Eduarde. I loved, slaved, lied, cheated, betrayed and eventually killed for him. Then we joined the army and it became shockingly clear who the competent one was. From there we just made it into the newly formed Extraplanetary Marine Corps.
I’d have been lost when Ed got incinerated if I hadn’t found Sergeant Stalde. He was a walking, talking god of war. He knew everything, and had an idea of what I was. Plus he liked my ass. Worship with benefits is always better than mere worship.
Then Stalde got another gopher, an enthusiastic and competent lass called Ella. So she had an accident involving a Type 18 osteoplasmic grenade. She was a lot less competent as a multi-celled amoeba.
Stalde suspected me and reported me. That’s when I met Captain Murdine. She was everything Stalde was, and everything he wasn’t. Plus she was female, which made the benefits even better. She really got me, understood my devotion. So when Stalde slipped and fell into the drive field of our fortress, she transferred me to her staff.
She introduced me to Jurgen, who was so intense, so vivid that I nearly prematurely demised Murdine. He stopped me and told me about a mission he thought I’d be interested in. I agonised for days before he let me meet Kandi. We just sat and stared at each other for six hours. Then we proved to Jurgen just how dedicated we could be by vivisecting Murdine with a spork.
Kandi is just like me. We orbit each other. We understand this thing we have, and we understand that Jurgen has let us be together for one thing. Because people close to us seem to die a little too regularly, Jurgen explained that to be together, we had to be useful to the Great Empire.
We go to undecided star systems. We come in as settlers to their peaceful worlds that do not need the protection of the Great Empire, because they have left the old crimes behind.
We bring the old crimes back. We work apart or together as needed, producing jealousy, encouraging greed, inciting murder, brokering betrayal and fomenting wars. We also do really good imitations of serial or spree killers if needed. It usually is, sometimes many times.
When a planet finally welcomes the Great Empire with open arms, it restores law and peace to the thankful populace very quickly, because Jurgen has taken us away to another planet. He says we are unique and with our augmentations, will be together for a very long time.
Long enough to unite the galaxy under the Great Empire. Then Kandi and I can retire to somewhere where there is only us at last, the binary star of our need all we need.
by Roi R. Czechvala | Sep 5, 2011 | Story |
Author : Roi R. Czechvala, Staff Writer
It’s amazing how fast the human brain can process information. Particularly when it’s being fed a cocktail of endorphins, steroids, adrenaline and other chemicals too exotic to name.
Even with his souped up reaction time all he could manage to do was blurt, “This is gonna hurt.” He watched as thousands of magnetically accelerated iron pellets barely a millimetre in diameter each, neatly separated his torso from his legs.
Due to the heavy fighting, it took the medtechs nearly an hour to retrieve him. Given the prolonged exposure to hard vacuum, not to mention the radiation, the doctors hadn’t given him much chance of survival. “I’ve been through worse,” he’d say later when he was decanted from the Jesus tank. “I feel like a battered bowl or warmed up dog shit,” and collapsed to the floor before the bored technicians.
His battle and sometimes fuck buddy Karen Jefferies met him in recovery. “I feel like hell.”
“You look like it. Why do you keep at it?”
“For the booze, broads, and good times,” He grinned. She slugged me in the arm. It hurt.
“You could retire. You’ve got fifty years in. You could take up prospecting.”
“Nah, more dangerous out in the belt than in combat. Here, let me sit down for a bit.” He leaned back against the wall and stretched. Reconstructed muscle is electronically stimulated to promote growth and reduce atrophy, but it can’t replace good old gravity, or what passes for it on a spinning battle station.. “Why are you so all fired up about it anyway?”
“I’ve been thinking…”
“Last time you did that we joined the Marines.”
“… we’re not getting any younger…”
“Oh shit. We agreed on the boundaries of this relationship. We’ve been over this a hundred times. Just fun and no attachments. That was the deal.”
“Fuck the deal Jeff. I love you. Doesn’t that mean anything to you? Don’t you love me?”
“Yeah, I guess so, I mean… are you getting broody on me?” She slugged him again. Hard.
“You’re an asshole, you know that? Look I’m getting tired of watching them stick pieces of you in that tank and praying that you come out in one piece.” She looked him in the eye. Her lips quivered. Tears welled up. She turned away. “I almost prayed that you didn’t make it this time. End my torment.”
Her words stung. “Okay, that hurts. Look, I’m a little tired. Can we talk about this later.”
“You bastard. You always put it off. You won’t be happy until you’re dead.”
No sooner had those words escaped her lips than klaxons sounded through out the station. As she looked in rapt horror, the medical section vanished into blackness. The plasma field that had reacted so quickly that barely a breath of atmosphere escaped before the breach was closed would not stand against the armada of enemy ships that were materializing around the station.
He turned to her with a rueful smile. “I guess we’ll find out won’t we.”
by submission | Sep 4, 2011 | Story |
Author : Dan Whitley
Ortega stormed into one of the houses on the outskirts of town, looking for and finding his colleague Pablo, who was mulling over the very thing Ortega had dreaded Pablo would hang on to. “Pablo, we are not taking that thing with us,” Ortega declared, staring into the oblong crate and pointing at the thing inside it.
“You are too superstitious,” Pablo replied calmly. “This is a great find, Ortega. Think of the sensation it will cause back in home!”
“More likely a calamity,” Ortega shot back. “It is the grotesque bi-product of the rituals of the savages. Who would want to see the burned corpse of a man ruined by their godless rites and sacrifices of local savages?” he demanded.
Pablo leaned forward over the crate, the light of the lanterns in the room casting dark shadows over his face. “Ortega… I’ve been examining this corpse for a long while. You know that. But I’m starting to believe…” he poked at the corpse’s chest, “I’m starting to believe this isn’t the corpse of a man.”
Ortega stared hard at Pablo. “Explain.”
“You’ve felt its skin, haven’t you?” Pablo pulled at the skin of the corpse. “It feels like sandstone and moves like stiff leather. Not even burn victims wind up like that. And look here,” he added, rolling the corpse on its side, causing Ortega to dry-heave. “It has a four arms, and hands with three fingers. But the most intriguing feature, my friend…” he said, laying a hand atop its head, “…is the skull.”
The pair leaned in close to the corpse’s head as Pablo began manipulating it. “See, it’s much longer than a human skull should be. And here, its jaw protrudes too much, and its teeth appear to be fused.”
Ortega folded his arms. “Since when are you a physician?”
“I’m not, but I am a man of common sense, and something tells me that this creature is not human.” Pablo left the corpse in the crate and pulled Ortega over to a table. “I took these from the same place we found the corpse. Look at this.” He held up a sphere, roughly the size of an orange, perfectly smooth. “Give me your sword.” Ortega obeyed warily; Pablo unsheathed the sword and held the sphere up to the naked blade. It attached like a drunkard to his bottle.
“It’s a lodestone,” Ortega observed tersely. “What of it?”
Pablo slid the sheath back onto the sword up to where the sphere sat. He grabbed sheath and hilt in a strong grip and said, “Pull it off.”
Ortega grabbed the sphere in one hand and gave it a light tug. It didn’t budge. He pulled again, harder, without success. Frustrated, he gripped the sphere in both hands and played tug-of-war with Pablo for several seconds before finally the sphere came free, sending both men reeling backwards.
“My word,” Ortega said. “That is not natural.”
“I found this near the corpse,” Pablo said, standing and brushing himself off. “There was some other metal around him, stuck in the ground, one of which looked vaguely like a ship’s wheel, but they wouldn’t move. I’m not sure what this all means, but my guess is this corpse is some other, undiscovered race of man. Perhaps someone will know, someday.”
Ortega thought about this, stared a long while at the crate and the corpse it held. Finally he shuddered, shook his head, and made for the door. “I’ll see that it’s loaded onto the San Jose with the treasure. We leave Cartagena to sail back to Spain tomorrow.”
by submission | Sep 3, 2011 | Story |
Author : Polar McCoy
The bystanders cheered and applauded as Officer Jimenez holstered his weapon. They patted him in the back and said things like, “Great work,” and “Now that’s one less of them we have to worry about.”
“Damn, Jimmy,” Jimenez’s partner, Goldberg, said. “That’s like the third one you got this week! You must be goin’ for a record or somethin’.”
“Come on, grab her feet,” Jimenez instructed.
“Why don’t we just leave her there?” asked Goldberg.
“Can’t. It’s almost rush hour. There’s gonna be a lot of foot traffic around here. She’ll be in the way.”
“Yeah, right,” Goldberg said, picking up the woman’s feet. “Where’re we puttin’ her?”
“Dumpster in the alley.”
“Hey, don’t forget her purse.”
Jimenez picked up the Gucci handbag and slung it over his shoulder as he picked up the woman by her wrists.
“I betcha she’s a Prima,” Goldberg said. “Primas never want to show their status cards.”
“Well, if they would, then this wouldn’t happen as much,” Jimenez said.
“She looks like a Prima.”
“How can you look like a Prima? Alphas don’t look any different from Primas. That’s why we have status cards.”
“I can just tell.”
“You know who else said that?” Jimenez asked.
“Who?”
“You hear of Valentino from the two-seven?”
“No.”
“He got booted off the force a while back because he thought he could tell them apart.”
“So what happened?” Goldberg asked.
“He ended up shooting nine Alphas thinking they were Primas.”
“Jesus. Here, pick up your end. She’s slipping.”
Jimenez rested the woman’s bulleted head on his knee for a second as he gripped her wrists more firmly.
“The only reason he didn’t get arrested was cause those types of shootings were justifiable back then.”
“What changed?”
“Too many of those types of shootings. Just as many Alphas were getting killed as Primas. So they introduced status cards.”
“They should just tattoo ‘Prima’ to their foreheads,” Goldberg said.
“Not a bad idea. Here we go.”
They were at the dumpster. With one good heave they tossed the woman’s body in. Her head thudded against the side. Jimenez tossed the purse too, but missed. It fell to the ground, spilling its contents. He picked it all up.
“Katherine McKenna,” he read off the license. “Says she lives in the Presidio.”
“Should we notify the family?” Goldberg asked.
Jimenez flipped through Katherine’s wallet.
“Don’t have to,” he said. “Status card says she’s a Prima.”
by Duncan Shields | Sep 2, 2011 | Story |
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer
‘His’ blue skin glinted in the harsh glare from the studio lights in the supreme court. Archbishops, cardinals and the Pope herself were seated there beside the president, the UN security chief, and our representative on the newly formed Galactic Council. The world watched.
I say ‘his’ for lack of a better pronoun. The English language had yet to adjust to a race that had five sexes. The male pronoun had been selected for all of them because they created babies by circle-jerking in sequence. The five ejaculates mixed, first the anchor glue, then the stamen juice, then the egg chain, then the catalyst, and finally the foam that hardened into a shell. Each lumpy ‘egg’ looked like a meringue and contained between ten and fifteen embryos. No one was sure if that qualified them as homosexual or not. They had complicated mating seasons.
The scientists had long latin names for each of the five sexes. The aliens told each other apart by skin markings and pheromones. I knew some people that said they could tell them apart but I doubted that.
They all looked the same to me.
This alien wanted to become a priest.
This alien claimed to have been called by God.
So far, ‘he’ was the only one of his race to come forward as wanting to join the clergy. Some of the aliens had attended church in a few cities since first contact ten years ago. Some of them had gotten jobs and gone to schools as well. They were tolerated but as far as I was concerned, this was too far.
I was huddled in the cold on the roof looking at ‘his’ face. I had a clear view of ‘him’ through the scope on my rifle. I was waiting for the verdict.
If they proclaimed that he was allowed to serve in the church, I was going to pull the trigger. I’d served in the army. I’d performed black ops. I was a Christian. I’d gone off the reservation for this. This was an independent mission but one I felt had to be done.
The com buzzed in my ear with the live feed. The jury foreperson had taken the microphone. Over three-quarters of the earth was watching.
“We find the alien capable of joining the church. The universe belongs to God. We are not to judge whom God calls.” said the foreman. He glanced at the Pope. She nodded her head.
The murmurs of the courtroom rose in my ear. My trigger finger tightened.
The blue-skinned alien looked directly up into my scope, making the sign of the cross. Then he closed his eyes.
Startled, I didn’t pull the trigger. He knew I was there. What else did he know? Then I realized what was happening. I relaxed.
I hated the aliens. I hated the aliens joining the church even more. But I didn’t pull the trigger.
I didn’t want to create another Jesus.
