Retirement
They turned Valerie off this morning.
Nothing flashy, nothing officially announced. Two grey-suited daemons came in, picked up her sprite and walked out with it. When I went to the dorms to investigate, her room was blank, no sign that she had ever been ...
The General
Lieutenant General Macy McMurphey Delane dreamt of meeting his nemesis.
It was a bit of an obsession. He imagined that, across the star-clustered chasm of drifting space dust, on the far edge of the galaxy, there was another command center probably ...
Distance
A month before reaching Europa, Heather woke to an e-mail from her grandfather. Her grandfather hated e-mail, so much so that she'd been shocked when he asked her to teach him so they could talk while she was away.
He hated cameras even more, so ...
Crey
Jack hated the Minotaur. Ever since he'd gotten off the silver bus to basic training at White Hook, the Minotaur had picked on him. At the Imperial recruitment office, Jack was told that he had some of the highest scores on physical, mental and ...
Bazaar
Kema Port. Hot, dry and dusty in general; the uncomfortable atmosphere an unavoidable side-effect of the equatorial location of the port. A walled city, surrounded on all sides by sand and rock, Kema is unforgiving. However, Kema the city is ...
Tau Ceti II
Tau Ceti is a yellow-orange star slightly smaller than Earth’s Sun. It’s approximately 11.9 light-years away, in the southern Constellation Cetus. It has three planets. The most notable is the second planet in the system, Ketos. Ketos ...
Balcony
There are people in the depths of this city that have literally never seen the sun. They live in artificially lit shanty-arcologies and depend on shipment piracy for survival. Whatever they can’t grow hydroponically, they barter from the city ...
Jigaboo
“See? Look, I said already. It don’ hurt.â€
Herb watched again as the bump on Tommy’s hand faded from pink to grey then back to pink each time he clenched his fist.
“Well it’s up to you, buddy,†Herb sounded sceptical. “but it ...
The Coma Chip
"...every person in my family," said Burt. "I'm the only one who hasn't plugged it in, but I know what will happen if I do."
"Why don't you get rid of it?"
"I can't," he said, and the weary lines in his face almost masked his ...
Fight, Farm Boy, Fight
The Hum
At first I thought it was the viewscreen. The tiny, flickery viewscreen from a public matterfax at the Sont Mikaal gate station, with its scratched plastic case and the smudged dust of a dozen systems. A dozen systems' cargo terminals, anyway. Free patterns ...
Wzn Izfzuv Tells You How To Live Your Life
Wzn Izfzuv Tells You How To Live Your Life
This rotation, when I tell you how to live your life, we meet two Newflyers "“ newly infatuated individuals high on emotion. Let's fly right in, shall we?
Dear Wzn,
I've been ...
Syndie
The subject of this image has a real name, but by custom, he uses a 'messenger-name': Jay. He's moving on foot. The ground is broken and rough: with no road, he had to leave his vehicle behind. It'll be one more day before he has the first in a ...
…is Hard to Find
The girl out of the tank before lunch is Lila. Trip around the network shows the last of her bloodline petered out twenty years ago. Cryos are all from before the Patent Wars, so their sequences are in the public domain. The company turns a nice side profit ...
Janeing in The Slums of Bessport
The musky odor hit Tanith the moment she stepped through the portal; man smell. It always got her queasy and excited, made her yoni tingle and moisten.
She marched with purpose down the wide debris strewn avenues, lined with derelict ...
The Rise and Fall of the First Shi Empire
Something in the way she…
Jerry and I stood in the locked room looking through a large window at the woman in the hospital bed. The door next to the window led into the room, it had a green light over it showing it was unlocked.
"I'm not going in there", Jerry said. "Becka's gone! ...
Man of the Clattering Past
He's from the time before the bio-enhancements, before organs could be grown from a single cell. Age hollowed him out, and though his plastic face looks young, he's just a shell. When I lean on his chest, I can hear what I imagine to be ...
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