Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer Is all I hear. On a world where everything uses parts of the visual spectrum humans don’t, we’d have been better off staying away. Far from its star, the eternally-twilit forests of Modbiaent XIV are protected by interstellar law and, ...

Author: David C. Nutt “Any chance I can talk you out of it?” “Nope.” Dan glanced at a small three by five card he was holding in his palm. Michael raised an eyebrow and pointed to the card with a quizzical look on his face. Dan smiled. “It’s just a motivational phrase I ...

Author : Philip Berry Jake, aged nine, was found with his hands deep in the inverted workings of a 3rd generation litter picker, behind a mineral refinery by outer orbital. He was a mile from home, and it was an hour before bed time. The ten-legged picker had been tipped ...

Author: Steve Smith, Staff Writer Jodi pushed open Jane's door, knocking while it was already swinging inwards and waited until it had closed behind her before speaking. "Next Tuesday at quarter past noon he'll have stopped Bob McKibbon's heart." The announcement was ...

Author: Sam Davis The wind swept down the valley, once dotted with trees but now covered in soot and ash, and rolled through the trench causing Elijah to pull his coat tighter around him. It didn’t help much, it really never did when winter set into southern Kansas. It was ...

Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer The last words my Pa said to me were: “Down where the rocks run free, and the colours run like blood.” Not the traditional deathbed wisdom for the young buck, but certainly something to stay with one. After seventeen years of prospecting, ...

Author: Hari Navarro, Staff Writer “Now I have a little time to think”, she whispers to herself without moving her lips. Nothing new in that. Her escape pod lays upon a forlorn acid plain. A monotonous mountain-less sweep interrupted by nothing but the cusp edge of newly ...

Author: KevS I sit nursing the beer, the bar noise a background thrum. The place is full of tech voyeurs. My Fingers absentmindedly circling the jack at the back of my skull. I used to grow my hair to cover it, now, well now I simply don't give a fuck. I'm a remnant of ...

Author: Rick Tobin Joshua Vergiften shuddered, strapped within his tired, bruised ship plummeting through heavy cloud cover over colony UW26, an indistinct recent colonial outreach from Earth’s solar system. His goal: fresh provisions and clean water from a source he had ...

Author: Richard M. O'Donnell, Sr. Frank Blair woke up confused, but that was okay. Confusion in the morning was normal, a challenge. His caseworker used that word a lot. “Frank, you have challenges and that’s a good thing.” So when the robot woke him from his night-night ...

Author: Logan Thrasher Collins Anabelle and Enrique lived on Mars in a prim antebellum cottage with white walls. Each morning, Enrique emerges and dusts away the maroon regolith which accumulates on the walls during the nighttime. He typically wears lime green overalls and ...

Author: Philip Tudball “You know what the worst part of it all is?” Harper reflected “It’s the codpiece. Definitely the codpiece. I mean the food is rubbish and my health plan is currently non-existent” Harper picked another louse from his hair, just to reinforce the point ...

Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer The bright lights seem colder, shining from tall glass towers, set against a sky made starless by clouds. Nearer are the lights that adorn the forest of Christmas trees on the plaza above. Closer still are the control boards that flicker ...

Author: Hari Navarro, Staff Writer The Dentist turns onto Fremont Street. Pausing, he slips a hand beneath the lapel of his jacket and massages the laudanum that eases the needles that scratch in his chest. The double-action Thunderer that hangs at his hip will feel ...

Author: KevS I watch them squabbling like vermin. Vicious, pathetic vermin. 3 months ago they arrived, answering the beacon. In 2 months they exhausted the food. Like vermin they have numbers, so I watch, I wait. In the first month, they harvested rocks, heating them ...

Author: Philip Tudball We explore. As a species, it is both what we do and defines who we are. It is what we have always done, since the first of us gazed outwards and wondered. We took ships and travelled out into the unknown, planting our flags on distant shores. The ...

Author: Rick Tobin Charlene, a bubbly, buxom blonde graduate student from Rutgers, acting as a freshly appointed aide-de-camp to a hatchling President, turned sour overnight. Her daily briefing notes were disheveled, poking from her leather daily briefing binder, held close ...

Author: Mark Joseph Kevlock "I'm finished at last." Tommy pulled Mariel by the hand as they ran through the nearby woods. "I've retrofitted the structure with twin rocket pods sufficient to achieve orbit." Mariel did not know what her best friend was talking ...