U

Ringminer's Daughter

By Duncan Shields | September 17, 2013
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer Ringmining attracted a certain kind of personality. Not exactly hermits but beings okay with long terms of isolation. Pairs or groups of people rarely worked the rings. Lena should have known better. Each ringminer scoopship was like a baleen ...
Read More

Junkyard Funeral

By submission | September 16, 2013
Author : Aiza Mohd There’s a funeral being held in the junkyard today. Its mourners come in a neat little line of twelve, proceeding in that beautiful precision of steps that only them bots ever have. When I was young, I learned to tell for myself whenever the girl at the ticket ...
Read More

Lucky

By submission | September 15, 2013
Author : Gabriel E. Zentner Today’s the day. I’ve got my ticket, got my number. Granted, everyone’s got a number. It’s not your standard lottery, and I suppose the odds are so much the worse for that. That being said, the stakes are a lot higher than a few hundred million ...
Read More

Deafening Silence

By submission | September 14, 2013
Author : Adam Levey The pilot, Simon, surveyed the scene of utter devastation all around him. Spent ordinance drifted in the space between thousands of shredded warships, many the size of mountains, with gaping wounds as big as apartment buildings. Ammunition spilled from storage ...
Read More

Birds of a Feather

By Desmond Hussey | September 13, 2013
Author : Desmond Hussey, Staff Writer Tensions are high in the control room as the Pegan ship passes the Moon. Speakers emit a constant chatter of enigmatic chirps, beeps and ultra-sonic tweets which constitute the Pegan language. “You’re telling me, we’ve been in contact ...
Read More

The Alien

By submission | September 12, 2013
Author : Suzanne Borchers Zoe watched the starlit sky reflect off the ship next to her. She touched the smooth metal, and then began pounding it. She pounded the ship’s side again and again. Despite the pain she kept pounding. “Honey, stop.” Derek grabbed her, and held her to his ...
Read More

Jigsaw

By Julian Miles | September 11, 2013
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer What a mess. I’m standing on the fifteen-foot diameter stump of a Redwood, sliced off three feet from the ground as if by a gigantic razor blade. About me, the effect radius covers nine miles. In front of me is the twisted confetti that used to be ...
Read More

Breaking the Wedge

By submission | September 10, 2013
Author : Scott Summers At 18:55 Standard, the Breakwater dropped out of superspace above New Tellis and began jettisoning escape pods into the atmosphere. Leaking oxygen and billowing fire, the ship guns rotated on their axis and fired into the empty space overhead. Torpedoes, missiles ...
Read More

Children of the Sun

By Desmond Hussey | September 9, 2013
Author : Demond Hussey, Staff Writer She appeared as a blazing slash across the midnight sky; a falling inferno, trailing multi-colored flames in her wake. Her impact shook the foundations of the continent, causing minor earthquakes and avalanches worldwide. Forest fires raged around ...
Read More

They Don't Play LCROSS

By submission | September 8, 2013
Author : Connor Yeck Employee entry, Kennedy Space Center: I don’t know if the other guys do this, but I like keeping records so I’m typing some things on my own terminal while we wait. Is personal stuff allowed? The rockets are past the point of alteration anyway, so there isn’t much ...
Read More

Welcome Home

By submission | September 7, 2013
Author : Nils Holst It had been five years since Theo had seen another human being, much less saluted one. “Captain Theodore Holmes of Alpha Company, Third Colonial Marine Battalion?” asked the man with the holopad. He didn’t look up as he scrolled through the UNSS Sargazzio’s ...
Read More

Backup

By submission | September 6, 2013
Author : Amanda Schoen I was at work when the chat program pinged. We weren’t supposed to take personal calls so I ignored it. Two seconds later it pinged again. And again. Oh hell. One conversation couldn’t hurt. My sister’s handle popped up. <Mel, I have some bad news. Dad passed ...
Read More

Runaway

By Duncan Shields | September 5, 2013
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer I suppose if it was anything that drew me to her, it was the scars on her face. Four parallel lines on one cheek. Too precise to be accidental, I assumed, but too faint to be for show. Too far apart to be a bar code, and just near enough to each ...
Read More

Spark

By submission | September 4, 2013
Author : Mickey Hunt "Welcome to the edge of the universe," I said cheerfully. "The very edge." The clutch of tourists easing into my parent's store seemed overawed. At night, part of our sky is lit with nebulae, pulsars, galaxy clusters, and all sorts of stuff, but the rest of the ...
Read More

Plain as Plain Can Be

By submission | September 3, 2013
Author : C.L. Guerrieri I sat at the monitoring bay as he stood there, roughened hands folded calmly behind his stained, dark brown overcoat. His receded cheeks mostly hidden by a thin, graying beard and a matted ponytail, the captain smiled as his thinned eyes squinted out the front ...
Read More

The Morrow Upon Midday

By submission | September 2, 2013
Author : Timothy Marshal-Nichols Dearest, Humblest and most Obedient Sir, Please be informed, as agreed in mutual undertaking, that yourself named Mutch, first name, Alfred, are contracted to duty and that the lease of said duty is due forthwith to expire. Thus upon the thirtieth inst ...
Read More

The Etheronian Situation

By Patricia Stewart | September 1, 2013
Author : Patricia Stewart, Staff Writer It had been four days since the ship’s doctor had quarantined the galley and shut down the deck’s gravity plates, and Captain Carson was becoming concerned. Not about the unwanted patient that was hold up there, but about his ship, its crew, and ...
Read More

Do Me a Favor

By submission | August 31, 2013
It was my lunch break. I was eating my turkey on rye on the roof of the Jefferson Bank Building in downtown Spartanburg just like I had every day for the last fifteen years. That sandwich needed the South Carolina humidity and roofing-tar smell or it just didn’t taste right. I’d never seen ...
Read More

Random Story :

  • The Ride

    Author : Laura E. Bradford “Merging down.” He pulled the …
Today’s Story