by submission | Jun 19, 2012 | Story |
Author : Andrew Bale
It’s the worst watch in the ship. Kitchen, reactor, sanitary – anything is better than staring out this damn window. It’s so bad you have to pass a psych check before they let you do it, and everyone keeps trying to fail. This job is worse than being crazy. Damn right it is.
It was a bright idea, launching a colony fleet instead of a colony ship. One ship is all or nothing – one big failure and everyone dies, no place for survivors to go. Five ships give us redundancy, a much better chance for at least one to reach landfall, and since each one is only loaded to 80% we could lose a ship potentially without losing a man. Five ships ballistic on the same vector, gently orbiting around a common axis, checking on each other, waiting for that time to fire the jets and make a new home.
But then we lost a ship.
There was no warning, no distress calls. One day Isis missed its comms check, and when someone looked out a port, the whole ship was dark. The remaining ships conferenced, no one could make contact with it. Gaia reported that Isis had a large impact of some type in one habitat module, but the hull appeared to have sealed around it. No one knew where it had come from, a rock that size should have shown up on radar, and no one could figure out how a hit in that location could have killed the entire ship.
Two days later, Isis launched a shuttle. No lights in the cabin, no communications, just a tin can floating from Isis to Shakti. Shakti observed protocols, met the shuttle under arms and with containment. They said it was empty, and everyone figured the launch must have been a quirk, the result of some random signals in the dying computers.
But then Shakti went dark, while we watched. Power went down, primary, secondary, emergency, all at once. For a day or two there were occasional flashes of light from inside, most of it seemingly random, although at least one person lived long enough to flash SOS, probably the only Morse they knew. And then nothing.
Two days after that, Shakti launched two shuttles. One at Gaia, the other at us, at Mary. Dark, both of them. They weren’t allowed to dock, so they just floated there outside the bays. A couple days later, ours turned back, but Gaia’s is still there – some bright nervous guy improvised a missile, destroyed its engines, so the cursed thing still floats alongside, occasionally banging off the hull.
Okay, so maybe THAT’S the worst watch.
But ever since then every ship has mounted a dark watch, a pair of eyes from each living ship on each dead one and on each other, every minute of every day. We watch, hoping to find a clue to what happened, or to what will happen. We used to be afraid of more shuttles, but only for a little while. Because then we realized the real thing to fear.
One year, six months, eighteen days until planetfall. When we drop our landers, will they drop theirs? We cannot stay in these ships forever, but there will be no stalemate on the ground. If they land, what will we choose?
One year, six months, eighteen days. That is exactly how long we have to wait. That is when we find out if we get to live. Until then, we watch, and we worry, and we pray.
Mother Mary, watch over us.
by Duncan Shields | Jun 18, 2012 | Story |
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer
I blinked twice to fast-forward the counter-person to the ticket purchase but nothing happened. She still stood there behind the counter, asking me again if I had packed my bags myself. I blinked again. Nothing. I sighed. They were using real people.
That’s how much of a backwater dive this planet was. I couldn’t wait to leave. Real people? That wasn’t even retro anymore. It was almost slave labor.
“Yes, I packed my bags myself.” I answered.
“Passport, please.” She said.
I mentally shunted my passport over to her computer. I didn’t get the okay in my peripheral vision. Her system must be slow. We looked at each other with an expectant pause.
“Sir?” she asked, hand out. She was growing impatient.
Oh no, I thought. Seriously? Totally analogue. She was expecting actual physical paper printed in some sort of booklet. I had read about it. It might have been in the package I received for my Earth tour but I must have assumed it was a receipt or something.
“I don’t have it.” I said, lamely.
“Well, sir, you won’t be able to leave the spaceport without it.” She replied smugly. I got the feeling that every time this happened, she chalked a point to herself and the other luddites who believed in an old way of operation. Ignorant tourists like me must make their days a happy place.
Some planets had themselves a belief that cranial implant software was evil and led to a lack of privacy. I could see where they were coming from in some ways. I mean, that’s why I was here. I wanted an offline vacation package.
“Take a seat over there, please.” She said, pointing to a bench with six other pale men sitting on it. Bewildered and lost, they stared at their dead feeds for information. There was a public terminal inset into the wall with ‘email’ that would let me access the UniNet but it would take days for my peers to respond to my requests in that way.
It was going to be a long wait.
Stupid backwater planet. I’m never coming back here.
by submission | Jun 17, 2012 | Story |
Author : Brian McDermott
“What’s the market?”
“68.23 bid for a hundred thousand.” Joh said.
The price of Iridium was rising. And out here in the farthest sector, a place the whole galaxy said was populated by floogbags and rim-holes, my little collective was one of the only sanctioned metals traders on our back-orbit exchange.
The planet Gestaglon had Iridium coming out their yim-flangs. In most systems, Iridium was as valuable as a hooloon fart. But on Caldux, they used it in everything. When those two planets went to war, Caldux stopped buying. The price of Iridium fell like it was caught in a gravitational vortex.
Then last week everything changed. Gestaglon and Caldux began negotiating a treaty. The financial universe was suddenly interested in Iridium and I had a cootch ton of new clients.
“Goldy’s on my comm. He want’s to know what to do?” Joh shouted.
“Tell every client to keep buying.” I said. “This fargminx will be a two bagger in five minutes.”
Everyone and their pleasure-bot knew Iridium would double as soon as the treaty was signed. We were beaming the live holo of the signing ceremony to the center of our trading floor. The Calduxian Gov’nors looked like a bunch of yug lickers in their colored helm-jacks while the Gestaglian Politmongers stood scratching their bilge-sticks. They were already blathering about new beginnings and peaceful coexistence. Our whole trading floor was watching. None of us could tell you what Iridium looked like, but today it was the most important hootch in our universe.
“83.54 for five hundred thousand. If we’re buying on the house account, now’s the time!”
“Not yet” I said.
We watched the ministers on the holo present the treaty.
“92.32 for two hundred million! I’m gonna buy!”
“Not yet” I said more forcefully.
On the holo, the Calduxians were just about to sign the treaty.
“Why the floog are we waiting?” Joh blurted “ We got Goldy bidding 103.43 for a billion!”
As calmly as I could, I leaned over to Joh and said, “Sell it to him.”
Joh looked stupefied. “WHAT? You want to SELL? Naked short?”
“Yep. From the house account.”
“Sell to Goldy…our own client?” He shot back. “It’s unethical and suicidal! When the treaty is signed the price will…”
“It already doubled!” I screamed. “Sell or I’ll shove a fargminx up your rim-hole!”
The whole room watched Joh hit sell. No one inhaled. No one exhaled. Then every eye shot straight to the holo. And our tiny, back-orbit, rim-hole company was short 1 billion units of Iridium.
It only took another thirty seconds. When the Calduxians signed the treaty, the Gestaglians were offended for some far sector, floogbag reason. Just as I guessed. Those bungsackers hated each other for eons. Blasters were drawn, chaos exploded, and our holo went blank.
Joh turned to his screen. “All trading suspended in Iridium!”
For three seconds on that tiny trading floor you coulda heard a wolabat break wind. Then it was pandemonium. Everyone was cheering. Guys were hugging androids. Androids were hugging lamps. I popped the bottle of Dom I’d been saving, shocked I hadn’t whizzed my pantaloons.
“Iridium will be back to 20 tomorrow. And the whole galaxy will be snarked. At us.” Joh said looking like a man who got kicked in the hoohoo while winning the lottery.
“And we’ll cover our short position and be rich.” I replied, “Besides what’d they expect? Out here, we’re all just a bunch of floogbags and rim-holes.”
by submission | Jun 16, 2012 | Story |
Author : Brian McDermott
The hall was cavernous and dark. At one end, standing on a ledge, were the two high ranking Gondrian Council members. Doxenag, an elder, and young Watuu, newly appointed to his position.
Doxenag called out. “Come forward.”
A light flashed and an entrance revealed a Gondrian Commander of considerable age. His imposing physique and swagger boldly disagreed with his years. He slowly stepped forward into a circle of white light. He shimmered before the the cabinet members in his cobalt battle dress.
Doxenag hardly moved while Watuu shifted nervously. Doxenag spoke firmly.
“You are here because you have killed…”
The Commander interrupted, growling, “I know why I am here.”
Doxenag calmly continued, “Because you have extinguished the lives of thousands. You have stolen their last breaths and sent them to their beyonds.”
The Commander hissed while he quickly surveyed the hall.
Doxenag raised his voice, “For this killing, you are to be commended. You have killed well and all of Gondra will sing the praises of Commander Hikkol for generations. But as every cycle must find its end in a new beginning, so must yours. You are to be relieved of your command. The glory of the kill will no longer be yours.”
Hikkol would not hold his tongue, “If you believe I am done you are a fool.” He quickly reached into his boot and produced a pulser unit. For one moment, the only sound in the massive room was the hum and echo of the pulser’s activation sequence.
Watuu called out nervously “You cannot do this Commander! You are sworn to obey superiors!”
Hikkol growled, “I knew what you planned to ask of me. To never again revel in the glory of the kill. But reveling in that glory is what I am sworn to do, youngling. And I have two deaths left to give. Beginning with yours.”
As the Commander aimed the pulser towards Watuu, Doxenag casually waved a hand and the white light enveloping Commander Hikkol shifted to a hazy blue. As the light thickened, Commander Hikkol’s body began to fail. His legs crumbled, his arms collapsed into his torso. Within seconds he was dead.
Watuu turned to his superior in disbelief. “Gondrian Commanders are renowned for their adherence to the hierarchy. Yet he choose to ignore your orders and you knew he would!
Doxenag spoke calmly, “Gondrian Commanders are trained to kill. From the moment they are identified as younglings and assimilated into the Academy. They are awakened in death. With every kill they draw life to themselves. The kill is all. To take away the kill is to take away meaning. It is the only thing they are trained to do”
Watuu wondered out loud, “If that is so, then every Commander who is to be relieved will reject their proceeding.”
Doxenag was impressed, “Yes. Which means every Commander will directly disobey a superior. A crime punishable by death.”
“So, every Commander dies in their proceeding.” Watuu looked at the fallen Commander Hikkol, “Has any Commander ever accepted their proceeding?”
Doxenag turned to him, “Only one. He still lives. Yet continues to kill, destroying those of our own kind.”
Watuu cocked his head, “Why?”
“Because…” Doxenag’s eye caught a faint glimmer of the hazy blue light as he spoke, “…it is the only thing I am trained to do.”
by Julian Miles | Jun 15, 2012 | Story |
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
He’s sitting in the car waving without a clue as to what’s about to happen. Below me, the repository window opens and a man who only wants to make a point by scaring the most powerful man in the world is about to make history.
I manifest the wormhole with a wide entry funnel because he’s not a great shot. The bullet enters the funnel just off-centre. It whips down the hyperdimensional tube, momentarily everywhen and nowhere. For years to come, veterans passing this place will duck as they hear a bullet going by. My concentration slips and the suction from the wormhole pulls his head backwards after the bullet hits. That’s going to get me a reprimand, but does handle the one event aspect our projectionists couldn’t explain.
Time to be elsewhere before the grey on the grassy knoll realises he’s been pre-empted. Affairs route me automatically while an indirect delivers my brief into mind.
Herr Hitler is raving again, his high-pitched diatribe audible over the U-boat’s engines as it flees for Argentina. Herr Muller is trying to calm him down while Herr Brunner is making love to Fraulein Braun in the aft torpedo room. The vessel is stuffed with art, gold and enough war criminals to make Weisenthal sing hosannas. The entire crew are all hardened Schwarze Sonne. Given the amount of stuff on board, making this vanish with everything is going to take some ingenuity. Scuttling it as planned will not work. Too many bits of crap to crop up at inopportune moments.
I run a direct to my disc, high above me. It routes my suggestion uptime and passes permission back within moments. No delays for decision making when you can monkey with time. I push the disc into a stable high orbit and have it charge and push a locus attractor through an in-system warp. Now for the wet bit.
The water ahead and just abeam of the sub is cold, dark and crushing. I manifest the wormhole as soon as the shock of the water registers. I feel unconsciousness pull at me as U-3531 vanishes into the tunnel along with some surprised fish and several million gallons of Atlantic. With the last of my will I iris the tube closed. Three hundred thousand kilometres above Sol, a U-boat appears in a brief cloud of steam before starting a searing fall.
Time to be elsewhere before I drown.
I appear somewhere dusty and hot. Orientation yields New Mexico but no brief. I’m just starting to dry out when a direct initiates.
“Ten, we have a problem.”
“Really? Do tell.”
“We’re not omnipotent. To prove it, Eleven has just frisbee’d a grey dropship. Made a mess of him but ruined them. Need you to fetch him and finish any survivors.”
“You don’t sound too upset. Has he unravelled another unknown event aspect?”
A chuckle comes over the feed: “He’s way ahead of you now. This one is a whole unprojected event. You’re fifteen clicks outside Roswell in June forty-seven. You have carte noir to completely mayhem the event. As a consolation prize, One says that you can take the gloves off and just have fun.”
Somedays I love my job.
