Mike was nervous, you could tell by the stains at the armpits of his shirt, and the way he kept shifting, causing that awful gown to rustle. He coughed, if only to make the little man with his chart speak up.

“It is hard to put this,” he started, in a ...

The pills didn't work. Private Dawns was still unable to recall anything that might help. Stuck between an ambush and a colony outpost somewhere off the Z sector of Alpha Centauri, Private Dawns had nothing but her rifle and the training she'd been put ...

"Tell me what it is you do, Mrs. Adam, In your own words."

"Well," she said, and leaned forward onto my desk. "I deal in luxury goods. One specific luxury good." She smiled. "Obscurity."

"That seems a strange way to say it. Usually one ...

Mary passed the town’s graveyard, her eye on the mobile facility parked in an empty lot. The line trailing out from the small trailer door was already thirty deep, but a rush of people was only a few steps behind her.

Linda turned ...

The witch is bony, skeletal, his spine in a permanent curve. His liver spotted hands tap on his rubber console, fast like shuffling cards. He cackles with glee, casting his code-spells. The only light in his little cave under the mountain is the ...

I am miles underwater. I’m the only human competing.

I’m riding a ten-foot cretaceous seahorse named Cheval. I pronounce it ‘shovel’ as a private joke. No one here would understand the mispronunciation.

There are ...