Author: Caius Finswith “The trick is you can’t look right at them: not like you ever could,” my partner said. It was my latest job on Parrhesia 9 and it was all about the exotics. Transporting everything from radioactive waste to actual grass-fed beef, I’d seen just ...

Author: J. P. Roquard Dirk blinked in the bright activity of the bridge. Weapons, comms, dispatch, engineering, even the navigation and FTL stations were active. They were not all needed, but nobody wanted to miss the action. A brilliant planetrise unfolded above them all: ...

Author: Hari Navarro, Staff Writer A man stands behind a woman as she stands with a pint in her hand and stares at a wall. It’s an old wall, an ancient wall and he cocks his head as he watches. Inhaling, the man ponders as he carefully erects his words and he saddens. ...

Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer This alleyway used to be the entrance to an underground car park, now reduced to a metre-width track between piles of rubbish and makeshift dwellings. Toward the back, there are furtive movements. Out front, the only movements are the ...

Author: Amelia Brown On the first day of the transport job, I stepped off the docking bay, heard the door seal airtight behind me, and then the ship jumped. Which came as a surprise to me. I was supposed to be the one flying the ship. And I hadn’t sat down yet. Not to ...

Author: Adrian L. Cook Avian changed rapidly, seemingly at will. The cobalt blue feathers shielding her arms shifted to red, with crimson ends, the tip of each slightly darker, slightly shinier than the rest of the feather. She fanned her feathers, flexing her wings. The ...

Author: Sebastien Lacasse They washed up sometime in the middle of the night, people said. Swollen as rags with seawater and all aglow beneath milky starlight, their bodies glistened as they crawled onto the wet sand and plopped down once free of the surf. The creatures ...

Author: David Barber Your grandfather kept the luck locked away, says my father. It’s Martian, or at least it was found here. No, don't touch. The storm rocks the rover, our headlights lost in the swirling dust. We won’t be going anywhere. My father, down from Phobos. ...

Author: Scott Porter It was a harsh but beautiful land. Larry stood on the ridge overlooking Homestead Valley. All around him were the bare, fantastically weathered shapes of the Gyrating Mountains. But on the slopes below, vineyards were showing early clusters of grapes, ...

Author: Hari Navarro, Staff Writer She loves him and he loves her. But here on the stagnant, barely lapping, crust edge of the great acid sea, love is something suppressed. A meaningless and functionless thing to be stuffed away as far as possible from the hearts that ache ...

Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer It really wasn’t clever. Every time that she went out, they followed her together. On Tuesday morn when she went out, she carried a huge white bag. Not unusual when going to shop, but laden enough to sag. She sallied boldly round the ...

Author: Robb White The black hole first appeared in Aaron Jesperson’s upstairs room Thursday night and seemed nothing more than a fuzzy donut, a “wobbly thing,” according to Emma, when she went in to look for him. She found him in the kitchen swearing and holding his hand ...

Author: Keith Downey Crammed as he was into the middle seat of Row F between two gargantuan human specimens, Zim wasn’t sure that he could even reach the tesseract in his pocket, let alone activate it. Excess tissue, barely contained by overworked athletic pants, reached ...

Author: Irene Montaner She wandered along time caring for the dead. No galaxy was too big, no planet too insignificant. Everything that had ever lived within the boundaries of her universe was worth of her attention, regardless of whether it had existed for eons or ...

Author: J. David Thayer I lay in my hospital bed with both arms crushed and my face and eyes cut to pieces. A loose timber from a logger swatted my Jeep into a drainage ditch. The accident should have killed me, but I survived. Didn’t feel like it. Well-meaning people, when ...

Author: R. J. Erbacher Another excursion. Another plane flight. Another jungle. He called Stacy his heedless girlfriend because she didn’t care what anybody thought. Probably not even him. She didn’t want vacations like your average girlfriend. Never a weekend in the ...

Author: Hari Navarro, Staff Writer She slides the ornately embossed door aside and enters the first-class stall. It’s empty but for a man, he barely stirs as he reads aloud from a menu. “Calvados Glazed Roast Duck with Apple Sauce.” “William.” “Miss White.” The ...

Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer The pavement shimmers gently in the afternoon heat. The baristas have been reduced to serving nothing but iced coffee. “944,013.” Alec looks up to see someone with a vaguely familiar face take the seat opposite, then a waft of cigarette ...