Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer Slow night on the back side of the club quarter. Shouldn’t have taken the bet, but two bottles of wine and Ronny being a tit decided otherwise. So here I am, looking to beat his takings from the main drag, watching the only possible ...

Author: Lachlan Bond I watch on, as the sun begins to expand before my eyes. Slowly, at first, its pulsating shape growing ever-so-slightly behind the Vintusian glass. The radiation waves shake the station, solar winds battering our rapidly failing shields. Alarms blare, ...

Author: David C. Nutt I did a quick scan outside my vehicle. I could see columns of thousands upon thousands of them, spinning fast, trying to ride the thermals up and out of the dust devil. At least half of them are getting shredded by the wind and when pieces of their ...

Author: Morrow Brady Without a backstory, the darker patch at the edge of the busy road went unnoticed. It was being faded to oblivion by layers of desert dust and the enraged rush hour traffic. As my evening walk took me past that patch, near the busy street junction, I ...

Author: RY Jack floated in the observation blister, the void pressing silent against the reinforced plasteel. Earth hung like a chipped blue marble a million klicks sunward. Behind him, the comms array of Lagrange Point 1 hummed its patient vigil, vast silver dishes ...

Author: David Barber The first meeting between aliens and humans had not gone well. The details will never be known, but as the generation ship Pilgrim neared Centauri, it had been met by an alien craft. Imagine the descendants of those first colonists, isolated for ...

Author: Majoki Junko opened the dumpster lid and peered up at the spires of Saint Petersbot towering above. It made the sign of the triple cross and performed its diagnostic ablutions. Only two system alerts pinged. Junko would ignore them for another day. From the ...

Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer The battlefield is littered with carcasses to the point where soil has mixed with ichor to form a gritty green mud that shines as the searchlights swing by. I wave the site teams to either side. “Get the spotlights up! We’ll never find ...

Author: R. J. Erbacher I had just stepped into my shower, having had to wait a full five minutes for the water to become hot enough. It took forever for the water temperature to get up to at least tepid in my apartment. Usually, it was either freezing cold or scalding with ...

Author: Jennifer Peaslee The stale air of the Interplanetary Dynamics office reflected the collective mood of its desk jockeys. Ash Zendar, stewing in a stiff-collared uniform, barely glanced at the form in front of them before stamping approval for a three-cycle visit from ...

Author: S. Douglas Hall Doctor Hibberd’s shoulders slumped and he laid his clipboard on the table. The buzzing at his lab door overshadowed the normal beeps, clicks, and whirls from the lab around him. He ran his hands through his graying brown hair and adjusted his ...

Author: A.R. McHugh Diamonds won her as a child. Looking at sedimentary quartz under 200x magnification, she was fascinated by the possibility of so much clarity, such mineral perfection. Somewhere between her mother’s flashing ring and her father’s relentless pressure ...

Author: Julia Rajagopalan Bertrand Dent knew that the lotto was rigged. Everyone knew. Only paid actors won, or friends of the Lotto Commission. Still, Bertrand stood in line at the Station 14 lotto stand to buy a ticket. It was what everyone did when docking at a ...

Author: Majoki What was I thinking? Tiasmet could not put the thought—the picture—out of her head. The chipmunk with its shark-blank eyes and its panicked keening as the tictocs methodically circled and closed on it. The chipmunk should have been able to easily dash away. ...

Author: Jessica Pickard Once again Sam asked himself why he was standing here, in this field, miles out of town, staring into an increasingly dusky sky. Well he was here for the money of course. God knows he could use that right now. But he was also here, if he was ...

Author: John Adinolfi Caleb lived alone, as did Cole. Caleb by circumstance, Cole by choice. Trina had entertained a variety of live-in partners, but all were short associations. She lived alone. Each of their homes was unexceptional, except for sharing an ...

Author: Hillary Lyon With a well-worn key in hand, Bonnie unlocked the massive front door of her great-uncle Duran’s house. The place sat unoccupied since his passing; it had taken forever for his will to slog through probate. She’d been his favorite family member, and he, ...

Author: Alastair Millar Mandy was pretty, vivacious, and my next door neighbour; she’d pop round evenings or at weekends while my spouse was at work to swap gossip, recipes and just chat. But Marco didn’t mind – “you’re such a cliché,” he’d say, laughing, “her gay best ...