by Patricia Stewart | Jul 1, 2011 | Story
Author : Patricia Stewart, Staff Writer
The captain struggled to stand up. His dislocated left arm hung uselessly at his side. In the dim red light of emergency power, he could see his bridge crew climbing back to their assigned stations. “Does anybody know what the hell just happened?”
“We entered an uncharted wormhole,” answered the crewman monitoring the Opts Station. “Main power is off line. Possible hull breaches on decks 41 through 45. Emergency bulkhead doors have automatically deployed.”
“Any damage to the passengers sections?” asked the Captain, suddenly focused on his 6,214 passengers.
“The damage to primary structure appears to be limited to the crew sections. However, there must be injuries above deck 38. The ship experienced more than 20 gees when we returned to normal space.”
“Okay, Mister Hichens, you’re in charge of search and rescue. Take all non-essential crewmembers. Move the seriously injured to sickbay. For the rest, set up triages in cargo bays 1, 2, and 3. Mister Jessop, your top priority is life support. I want a briefing by all department heads in two hours. Now get going.”
* * *
“Hold still,” protested the nurse as she tried in vain to put the captain’s reset arm into a sling.
“Report,” barked the Captain to his department heads, as he pointed the nurse toward the exit.
“Limited power has been restored,” said the chief engineer. “We have enough power for two hyperspace jumps, maybe three. However, long range sensors and subspace communications cannot be repaired until we get to a space dock. In essence, we have some mobility, but we’re blind, deaf, and dumb. Until we get a fix on our position, a jump would be foolhardy.”
“Options?”
“I have the ships navigators in the passenger observatory,” replied Jessop. “They are trying to locate Cepheid Variables. If we can identify the spectrum and frequency of three of them, we can get our bearings. But to be honest, it’s a long shot, Captain. The equipment installed on cruise ships wasn’t designed for the kind of precision we need. Rescue isn’t likely either. Who knows where the wormhole dumped us.”
“Does anybody else have an idea?”
“Excuse me, Captain,” offered the timid Cruise Director, “but I think I may have something?”
“I’m listening, Mrs. Cartright.”
“I was reviewing the passenger manifest, sir, and I noticed that we have over 100 Extra-Terrestrials on board. One of them is an Eridani, sir. A Way Finder.”
“Whoa, a Way Finder,” replied the captain with a smile. “I’ve never met one of them before. Have him escorted to the bridge, immediately.”
* * *
The short Eridani stood in the center of the Bridge with his hands spread wide above his head. He chanted and mumbled for several minutes, as the ship’s translator and navigator worked furiously at a computer terminal. Then he lowered his arms, bowed toward the captain, and left the bridge.
“Give us a second, Captain. The Eridani use a log cylindrical coordinate system, and we use a spherical coordinate system. We’re doing the conversion now.” A few minutes later, he announced, “Got the direction, but does anyone know how far a ‘merdeft’ is?”
“A light-year or a parsec?” suggest the first officer.
“I think ‘defteros’ means ‘second’,” suggested the translator.
“I’ll look up Eridani’s AU, and do the parallax calculation,” said the navigator. Twenty minutes later he announced, “Ready, Captain.”
The captain mulled over the risks, but finally committed. “Let’s hope the Eridani are using standard galactic time. Make the jump, Mister Elliot.”
A few minutes later, the bridge crew cheered as the image of Saturn appeared on the main viewscreen.
by submission | Jun 30, 2011 | Story
Author : Pete Clark
In the vast, senseless void of space, a new star appeared.
Darin watched from the observatory with wide eyed wonder at the glowing orb, reflecting on the War, the unknown enemy. The unseen enemy. He trained his telescopes and tapped keys to optimise magnification. His hands shook, then steadied as he increased his adrenaline levels with a thought to a hormone implant at the base of his skull, inserted painlessly into his spinal cord. He maximised magnification and shut his nictitating eyelids, minimising glare.
It was innumerable miles away, this orb. Its light came in steady pulses, of every known wavelength and, Darin noted, searching the databases, some new. His excitement grew with each pulse, and as he watched, it moved subtly in his viewfinder. Impossible. He looked again, using a thought-controlled drone to connect more computer power. He gained another power of magnification and the orb filled the viewfinder, strange swirling clouds scudding across its surface. Instantly, Darin knew this was no star. He chilled.
He quickly patched into the communications network and tapped a message out on the keyboard that lit up on telescope’s base unit. Its soft glow illuminated his fingers, and turned the complex recognition circuitry embedded in their tips into a sparkle of fingerprint fireworks.
His message read, simply:
UNKNOWN STAR / CRAFT. CO-ORDINATES 1955:1565 b-SECTION. MOBILITY LOW ALTHOUGH MEASURABLE. SIZE INCALCULABLE. SUGGEST SENDING CRITICAL RESPONSE TEAMS 4 AND 6. WILL CONTINUE MONITORING AND REPORT AS NECESSARY.
He tapped the key that added his details. He paused before hitting send. He re-read his message and thought of the panic that might ensue. It was war time, sure enough, but to add to the confusion? He could be hailed for securing the nation and for doing so without causing panic or fear. He sent his message to one of the numerous storage files that he had secreted around the communications network, and gathered data.
The final pulse of energy that Darin registered was not light as known to him, but rather its inverse, invisible dark energy that reached Earth in a stream about as wide as a human hair. It punched through the focusing lens, taking microseconds to travel through the length of the telescope and out of the eye piece. Darin grunted in surprise as the energy pulse seared a path through his brain, cauterising a worming scar through his tissues. He fell from his chair, his final thought not of love or family, but only a nagging regret that he should have risked the panic of the nation and released his message from its secure folder after all.
Innumerable miles away, against the textured velvet backdrop of space, the orb winked out of existence, appearing seconds later, to those who cared to look, light years closer to Earth. Its surface boiled with energy, as if it was alive and the taste of death on its tongue had piqued its curiosity just enough for it to want to try again, perhaps on a larger scale.
by submission | Jun 29, 2011 | Story
Author : Samantha L. Barrett
Dan shoved his hands deeper into his pockets, trying to ward off the freezing mid-January air as he walked to his roommate’s bar. A middle-aged man stared at him unabashedly as he walked by. Dan almost stopped him—this had been the seventh person to look at him like that today (and the 39th all week, since he’d started keeping track), and since he didn’t think there was anything outlandish about his appearance, it was starting to get creepy.
He ducked into Bill’s and shut the door quickly. Bill saw him from behind the bar and began pouring him a beer as he hung his black down jacket up in Bill’s office. The bar reeked of cigarettes and fries, and the football game blared loudly on the flat screen. Dan scooted through the packed, dimly-lit room to the seat Bill had marked with his drink.
“Do I smell?” He asked Bill.
“Another one, huh?”
“Seven today. Do I have toilet paper hanging out my ass?” Dan leaned in and scowled, “Did you draw a penis on my face while I was sleeping again?”
“Unfortunately not. I don’t know, Dan; maybe you look like someone.” He glanced over his shoulder as someone hailed him. “Cover Jessie’s shift on Friday?”
“Sure.”
Bill sidled away to fill the guy’s pitcher. Dan took a sip of his beer and watched the Steelers’ touchdown attempt; Roethlisberger connected to Ward on the third down and he cheered with the rest of the bar.
“Too bad they’ll lose in the playoffs. They had a good team this year.”
Dan looked down; it was the girl sitting next to him. She watched the field goal attempt and half-heartedly slapped her hand on the bar when they made it.
“Excuse me?”
She turned. She was very pretty, with bright blue eyes, curly brown hair, and a long, straight nose.
“The Raiders’ll win this year. Sons of bitches.”
“The Raiders are doing terribly.”
“I know—makes for a nice underdog story.”
Dan stared at her. “Are you psychic or something?”
“No, Ioanna.”
“Sorry?”
“Ioanna. With an ‘I’. It’s a really popular name since the actress Ioanna Miller. My mom loves her.”
Dan had never heard of Ioanna Miller. “I’m Dan.”
Ioanna choked a little on her run and Coke. “You wouldn’t be Daniel Rodriguez, would you?”
“Have we met?”
“Just now.”
“No, I mean: before.”
“You know my roommate,” she said quickly.
“Who’s that?”
“I don’t know.”
Dan frowned. “Is there something going on? People have been acting weird all day. Was I on America’s Most Wanted or something?”
“No, um, sorry. I’ll stop bugging you.” She left a tip for Bill and fled to the restroom. Dan almost went after her, but he knew Bill wouldn’t be happy if he crashed the women’s room.
After the game, Bill switched on the news; the headlining story was about a Japanese physicist. Dan didn’t really pay attention until Bill poured him another drink and nodded toward the screen.
“Crazy shit, huh?”
Dan glanced over. The physicist was talking with the busty blond anchor, and the marquee on the bottom read: “TIME TRAVEL POSSIBLE.”
“Thirty years, he’s saying,” Bill continued. “Sack of shit. Be cool, though. Where would you go?”
Dan shrugged, “Don’t know. Something famous, I guess—the moon landing or Washington crossing the Delaware.”
“Imagine seeing Bob Dylan as a kid. Fucker wouldn’t know what you were staring at.” Bill smirked and shook his head as he filled another pitcher.
by submission | Jun 28, 2011 | Story
Author : Jason Frank
I say goodnight to the two suns once they’re down. There’s a chill without ’em. I go to throw something warmer on. I end up putting on one of her old nightgowns; just throw it over what I’ve got on. I freshen up my drink and check on the charging situation. We don’t have a full charge, but we’re on our way.
Back outside I say goodnight to my HUV, her HUV, the HUV port… the mazeracks start crawling out of the little sheds I built them on the side of the HUV port and I say goodnight to each one of them. It’s morning to them, time to hunt. They give me little looks, they don’t get it. Whatever, they’ll be fine.
I make my way over to the little cemetery and say goodnight to everyone. I say goodnight to her last and longest. I tell her I know she’d understand and I cry, cry like a small child, wheezing and everything. Pretty quick my drink is empty. My cup may be defective. I promised myself to say goodnight to the whole bottle before… before I stop saying goodnight.
I say goodnight to everything that I recognize as an individual thing on my way back to the house. Goodnight, goodnight, goodnight…
I put more drink in my drink. The charge is at 97%. I give it a little more time. I put on my favorite song. It isn’t our song, which is better. I can’t listen to it anymore. Damn, I like this song. It’s over; I check the charge and we’re all full. I go back and play our song and say goodnight to all the furniture I bump into walking over to my fully charged blastick.
The damage we did in our day… I haven’t fired it in years, but I kept it. Never know when something is going to come in handy. Our song is really pretty. I start dancing with my blastick, respectfully. We’re dancing slowly and tears are running down my face. I’m pretty sure my blastick is sad too, sad as an object can be. It can’t believe I’m asking it to do what it’s going to do. The song’s winding down and I’m rubbing the stick under my chin looking for a comfortable spot.
Then all hell wrecks into my yard. I run out and recognize Rig’s HUV like half crashed in my yard. I sling the stick over my shoulder and go see if he needs help.
That old boy falls out of the HUV a bloody mess, too bloody for that wreck. He looks up at me and laughs. He compliments my “ensemble” and dies. That’s a very Rig way to die. I say goodnight to him. Then I see six of the most desperate eyed kids that ever had eyes in his HUV. We stare back and forth. I don’t say goodnight to them. The oldest is a dirty haired girl, holds her head like she thinks she’s tough. She says Rig said I’d keep them safe if they got to me.
Two years I was planning tonight and they want me to change my mind in two minutes. Two more minutes and I tell everyone to get out of Rig’s HUV and load into mine over there. We have to get going. Maybe all them goodnights were right. Maybe I don’t make it back here. Maybe I can’t see letting nobody hurt some kids, lost as me and Rig and she was once.
by submission | Jun 27, 2011 | Story
Author : Brian T. Carter
Baritone, protesting groans shudder through the cramped cabin as the shuttle strains against the upper atmosphere’s turbulence. Simon braces himself against the console wondering if he sent the distress call before he set the self-destruct. A rush of white, dense mist engulfs his view out the broad windshield as water drops streak up its surface obscuring his trajectory even more…as if he actually had a planned descent. Getting to the shuttle and off his foundering scout ship was his only concern three whole minutes ago. A heading, besides simply planet-bound, hadn’t broached the immediacy of the situation until now, when he can’t see anything beyond the claustrophobic, gray-white shroud around him. Of course sensors are barely functional probably due to the low position on the maintenance list the escape shuttle occupied.
An expanse of green rolling geography erupts into view as the shuttle plummets out of the cloud cover. “Oh SHI….!” Simon exclaims engaging the breaking thrusters slowing the plunge into the forest below. A peripheral flash of orange draws Simon’s attention and a furrowed brow out the front of the craft as a second pulse breaches the air ahead of him. A percussion radiates from the rear of the craft. Simon’s surroundings are thrown forward then back against the chair as the cabin is sent into a gyre, the view outside reeling into blurred streaks.
He wrenches to dislodge an arm from the intensifying mass bearing down on his body. His fingers in arthritic spasm claw a path along the chair’s arm gaining ground towards the console and survival. Blackness encroaches from the the periphery of his vision. “Argh!” he screams protesting the physical forces against him. His foundering consciousness focuses on the hand willing his outstretched fingers to their target. They gain a hold, pull themselves up along the console pounding frantically on section he prays the stabilizers are located.
The weight reluctantly lifts from his body, blackness recedes from his vision, exhausted muscles collapse deeper into the chair as chaotic thuds begin rumbling through the floor. Simon glances sidelong through the front. A solid jolt from below bounds the view upward displaying the overcast sky and a fleeting glance of a dark shape emerging from the low lying clouds.
Gravity’s hand takes hold dragging the front down, a headlong dive into an immense bark covered trunk. The impact slams Simon into the console. His surroundings pivot from the rear as another wrenching collision thrusts him back into the chair. The sense that he’s the ball in a game of keep away between the forest and the ground passes through his mind. The cabin lurches again, as the front window implodes and he’s engulfed in a flurry of needled roughage, accosted by pine scent. The ship tilts and drops, the branch pulls away delivering a solid fleeing smack across the ridge of Simon’s nose. Gravity exerts itself once more leveling the interior and Simon’s senses as the ground wins the game. Waves ripple through the craft sending protest screams throughout its punished structure.
__________________________
Simon inspects his broken nose in a remnant of the shattered windshield as a stuttered, metallic thunder crowds the short-lived tranquility of the forested floor. He drops to his knees as a battered I-beam shaped ship shears the tree tops above, its engines’ sputterings pounding the air around him. Simon checks his pistol’s power cell, holsters it and bounds off through the trees in the direction of the ship noting he now has two against which reprisal will be exacted, those who attacked his scout ship and the tree that busted his nose.
by submission | Jun 26, 2011 | Story
Author : Julian Miles
“Twenty-nine, twenty-eight…”
She felt the first bead of sweat follow the knap of her close cropped hair before running cool and smooth down her jaw and into her uniform collar. It was so quiet on the bridge; she swore that her exec had heard it.
“Twenty-five, twenty-four…”
Sixty people made less noise than a creeping cat as they watched the dizzying host of screens. Beyond the shutters, warp space sang to their dreams. No-one had slept much in the last eight months.
“Twenty-one, twenty…”
It had taken twenty years to reverse engineer Borsen warp technology, five more to work out navigation. Four years to build the first warp dreadnought. Even now, the Borsen still did things with warp that made grown scientists cry.
“Seventeen, sixteen…”
This was the crux. The first warp dreadnought, Excalibur, hurled like a vengeful spear at the Borsen homeworld, loaded with atmosphere igniters and stealth fighters for a genocide raid to finish the war that mankind was no longer confident of winning.
“Thirteen, twelve…”
Providing the bastardised warp technology brought them out at all, of course. Command had decided that since the Romala debacle, speed was of the essence. This test flight would also be the greatest raid at the furthest distance by the biggest warship ever built.
“Nine, eight…”
She thought of spring in Providence, her daughter playing on the swing while her husband made Irish coffee on the range. This was why they all fought. For all the families, ensuring their children had a world to grow up on and a future worth living.
“Five, four…”
A vibration ran through the two kilometres of the Excalibur, causing wide eyes and white knuckles for every one of the thousand plus crew. She prayed to a god hopefully nearby that they would see real space again.
“One. Phase transit.”
With a disconcerting lurch, the Excalibur arrived in the Borsen system. Sensors awakening galvanized people into frantic motion. They had to be on target in moments. She smiled a thin smile as the shutters withdrew. Time to see what colour your air is, you bastards.
“Oh god. Sir?”
At first, she just could not absorb it. The system had no planets. The reason was right there, waiting. It reflected the distant sunlight from its myriad surfaces, and she was sure that she could see the Excalibur reflected in one of the facets facing them. She gathered herself, years of training and bitter, bloody combat culminating in a defining command moment of grace under pressure;
“Exec. Shipwide, please.”
The general broadcast fanfare rang hollow.
“Ladies and gentlemen, we have arrived and I am sure you see what I do. No-one could have envisioned this. Please, stand down and make your peace with whatever gods you hold dear.”
She regarded it. So big. Could you call something the size of Jupiter a spaceship? The movement and weapons detectors homed in on the behemoth’s one acknowledgement of the Excalibur’s presence. The figures coming from the mass detector alone lit the board red with scale queries. Her second expressed the thoughts of all present with the rendingly appropriate line of defiance, prayer and dark humour;
“Sweet Lord, for what we are about to receive…”
She felt her face become calm as she watched a railgun the length of Texas send a projectile the size of Rhode Island at them. Her words ended the data stream that reached Earth eighteen years too late;
“Dear John, remember me. Raise Millie well. Love from Captain Mum.”
