by Duncan Shields | Sep 2, 2007 | Story
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer
The green circle of power irised open on the wall, filling the reception chamber with a medicinal glow. A body flipped through, smoking and wounded, over the ledge of the portal and landed wetly on the pads with a thud. The sickly green light of the hole clamped shut like a magic sphincter-ring and plunged the room once again into darkness.
These were the battles. The knights were welded into their suits and connected. They were more of a virus now than a collection of individuals. Volunteering for defense was a one way trip. What started as a human shield of nimble pilots had, over three decades, become a cyborg invasion force of desperate hybrids of flesh encased in metal.
A wrist-gate’s singularity snagged the lab’s co-ordinates again with a stuttering flash before glinting open with a bone-vibrating hum. Another two bodies flew backwards through the circle before being hooked by gravity and pulled down to the mat. The green luminescence looked like the light from a firefly. The tunnel folded inward with an arcing snap that echoed away before collapsing back to the battlepoint.
Each knight looked different. The custom tech was adapted for every warrior with programs designed to accentuate their strengths and protect their weaknesses. Some were huge and some were slight. Some were quick and some were armoured. Some were armed with a vast array of weaponry and some were given a specific weapon they’d shown an aptitude for in training. Then they were sent to The Front. One wave every two days.
Two bodies groaned. One lay still, breathing but unconscious. Two of us and one of Them.
Every person’s body image was augmented with the memetic colourmetal to make their permanent transition to Guardknight as smooth as possible. Battle-scars, trophies, graffiti and tags took care of further individuality as their career spooled out. To this day, we’ve only had eighteen psych-deaths in the waking bay. We’ve done all we can to create happy monsters to protect us.
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by submission | Sep 1, 2007 | Story
Author : Viktor Kuprin
Labor Supervisor SCE-1124 knew there would be extra costs and difficulties keeping the project plans on schedule without the human contingent. Though the Earth mammals were fragile and easily damaged, they had, indeed, proven to be good workers both on the asteroids and aboard his construction ships.
He noticed a small figure standing by his office-pit and recognized it as the Human Trustee. Why was she still here? He beckoned with his main claw.
Karina Hively approached, face downward as xenoprotocol required.
“I thought you would be gone by now, Former Trustee Hively. What do you want?” He clasped his main claw to indicate impatience.
“Please, Labor Supervisor, I need help. I can’t get transportation.”
“How can that be?” SCE-1124 asked. “I’ve seen thousands of human slaves boarding the repat vessels. They seem quite ready to depart as quickly as possible. Why don’t you join them and be on your way to wherever you and your people want to go?”
She began to wring her hands, eyes wide with what SCE-1124 recognized as anxiety and fear.
“My life is in danger. I’ve been hiding ever since the Emancipation. They won’t allow me on any of the ships.”
SCE-1124 would have none of it. “Oh please. Such disagreements can surely be resolved by offering your fellow humans sizeable monetary incentives. I know for a fact that you sometimes actually received precious metals and gems in reward for your skilled management.”
“Great One, you don’t understand,” she pleaded. “They won’t take my money. I tried, but it’s no use. They want to kill me!”
Tapping his main and secondary claws, SCE-1124 considered. “Why don’t you perform that custom that makes all things good again. What do humans call it? Yes, an apology. Apologize, then you can go with them.”
Hively began to sob. “They’ll never forgive me. They remember when I ordered the cull in the nurseries, the rations-and-oxygen adjustments.”
“Ah yes, yes! You were the one who reduced our project costs for both slave nourishment and atmospheric recharges,” SCE-1124 recalled. He trembled with glee. “I must admit that I didn’t believe humans could live on such little food and oxygen. And only three out of ten died, if I recall correctly, those weak ones we didn’t need. Now that was a very effective business decision, one of your best!”
She covered her face with her hands and fell to her knees. “Please, Great One. I’ve always been loyal …”
SCE-1124 waved his main claw. “Now, now, Former Trustee, the Emancipation Treaty did terminate our business relationship. You and all humans are free to find new work on Earth, or Alpha Centauri, wherever. The transport’s been paid for. It’s out of my claws’ reach, you know. So, I wish you the very best of success in your future career endeavors, and thanks so much for your exemplary professionalism. It’s been a pleasure!
“Oh, and don’t forget that any human detected onsite after today will have to be disintegrated. Now shoo away. Shoo.”
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by J.R. Blackwell | Aug 31, 2007 | Story
Author : J.R.Blackwell, Staff Writer
The Sisters of Light arrived for my mother when I was eleven years old. Their robes flashed like light in a storm, shifting and unexpected. My mother welcomed them into our home. She knew why they were there but she acted like it was just a social call, smiling like they were old friends.
My mother had been a devotee of the order when she was a girl. Many proper young women became devotees before the war. Mother said that in her time, girls could leave just before they took the Oaths, before they would be sealed into service, the claws embedded in their skulls. Her parents thought that she could secure a good marriage coming from the Order, and they made great financial sacrifices for her proper upbringing. She got her good marriage, not to a wealthy man, but to a noble one. Then the war broke out and the Sisters sought old devotees for service.
Getting out of service was easy for folk that had money, that could pay the tithe towards the war effort that ensured members of the family could stay home. Father and mother hadn’t been able to pay the tithe to the government that year. They had lived on a blank hope that no one in our family would get chosen by the lottery for service. My father told me that it hadn’t been the first year they weren’t able to make tithe, but it was the only one I remember.
Two Sisters came into my home that day. Overkill. It was more than enough to convince us. One would have sufficed, a young disciple would be enough to make it known that my mother was to come, but they wanted to make a point, they wanted the family, the neighborhood to understand the price.
My mother served them tea they did not drink and gathered a pack of possessions she knew would be stripped from her in days. She called sister and I to her and hugged us. She gripped my shoulder so hard I thought I would cry. She said it wouldn’t be long before she came home again and not to worry. After ten minutes, the Sisters announced in their one, hard voice that they would be leaving now. My mother held my fathers hand until she was out the door. My father clasped the empty air, his hand opening and closing, watching the ship of the Sisters depart.
Two weeks later the Sisters sent a letter inviting my sister to come to school. My father burned the letter in front of us. We watched it smolder in the bathtub, the paper curling and glowing till it turned to cinders.
“If I went, do you think I would see mom?†asked my sister.
“No.†I said “I don’t think we’ll see mom again for a long time.†I didn’t tell her that we might never see mum again, that she might die in the war. Nobility can’t be drafted, but my mother wasn’t nobility. She had just married nobility.
When I was old enough, I applied to military school. When I entered service, my family could petition the government to return mother. My father begged me not to go. He hit me for the first time when I told him my mind couldn’t be changed. It took him a day, after I left, to petition the government for my mother. They returned her after I had served a year, after I was committed fully and her mind was gone.
They gave my family back an empty shell.
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by submission | Aug 30, 2007 | Story
Author : Viktor Kuprin
October 30, 1961 – Five aircraft rose into the arctic sky from the Olyena airbase, headed northeast over the Barents Sea, towards the frozen wastes of Novaya Zemlya Island. The largest plane, a roaring turboprop Bear bomber, carried Vanya. The most beautiful, a silvery Tupolev-16 loaded with cameras and recording devices, followed the Bear. Americans called the Tu-16 “Badger”. Its Russian aircrew knew it simply as “Tupol.”
Inside the Tupol’s teardrop-shaped observation domes, Instrument Operators Pakulin and Kuchevsky tended their equipment and counted the minutes.
“Did you notice Pilot-Commander Strukov?” said Pakulin.
Kuchevsky nodded. “He wasn’t quite his giddy self, was he? An improvement, if you ask me. I think he’s looking forward to meeting Vanya.”
Pakulin stared out towards the blue sky and ice-strewn sea beyond the dome’s plexiglass. “Who isn’t?”
Strukov’s voice came over the intercom. “Attention. Approaching Zone C. Make all instruments ready,” he ordered.
“Da, Comrade Commander,” both men replied. The well-practiced sequence of toggling switches and closing circuits began. Pakulin could feel his heavy SMENA cine-camera hum as its film came up to speed. Kuchevsky prepared to trigger the banks of stop-motion cameras.
The Badger tracked north over the sea, while the Bear carried Vanya inland across the Sukhoi Nos, the “Dry Nose” Peninsula. Inside other aircraft, within bunkers and fortifications, behind walls of stone and rock, thousands waited for Vanya.
“Mark! Everyone, goggles on!” Strukov shouted. Miles away, Vanya fell free from the Bear bomber. The huge plane turned back toward the sea in a dash to safety. From Vanya’s flanks emerged a 54,000-square-foot parachute, to slow the descent enough so that the Bear would not be sacrificed.
Strukov counted down: “Pyat. ChetÃreh. Tree. Dva. Odeen. NOL!”
Thirteen-thousand feet above the icy, stony plain, the largest thermonuclear device in the history of the world exploded. Four-thousand times more powerful than Hiroshima, the triple-layer fission-fusion-fusion reaction created a fireball over four miles in diameter. The flash of white light was visible 1600 miles away.
For Pakulin and Kuchevsky, for all aboard the Badger, it was the light from hell that would not stop. The entire horizon was a blinding wall of white heat.
The shock wave threw Pakulin forward, his oxygen mask smashing against the plexiglass dome. Spitting blood, vision blurred, he heard Kuchevsky screaming and felt the man’s hands slapping.
“Fire! I’m burning! Help me!”
The acintic glare of electricity arced from the floor. Pukulin instinctively kicked at the loose cables, his boots pushing them apart. He yanked a fire-extinguisher off the cabin wall, aiming its white spray at the wires and Kuchevsky’s still-smoking pant legs.
Kuchevsky sobbed, pointing toward the mushroom cloud risen seven times higher than Mount Everest.
“Look! They’ve killed the world!”
And yet, despite the nuclear scars inflicted by Vanya, remembered afterwards as the “Tsar Bomba,” life on Earth carried on.
But as the world healed, the bomb’s powerful X-ray pulse raced across the depths of space. Forty-six years later, in the star system called 26 Draconis, someone took notice.
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by submission | Aug 29, 2007 | Story
Author : Lirael
“What’s your name?”
“Butterfly. Butterfly Phoenix.”
“Well, that’s a stupid name.”
Butterfly heard that a lot. Being only five years old, she took the insults rather well. She never even thought to change her name. She loved it. Her mother told her that her Daddy, a famous airship pilot, had given it to her when she was born, and that he’d renamed his ship just for her. Butterfly often saw her father on the television and in the newspapers, standing proudly next to his ship, the Butterfly.
Captain Phoenix ran one of the most successful trade companies on the planet, and stood at the head of an entire fleet of airships. The money poured into his accounts, and his personal accountants divided up the profits.
Being five, Butterfly wasn’t interested in the money or politics of her father’s company. Those were grown-up things. Instead, Butterfly liked to watch her father’s ships on screen. Seeing the beautiful colours of the decorated sails that they used, the flags, and the bright, shimmering designs painted across their hulls gave her a sense of pride.
The pilots and crews were always immaculate in uniforms of different colours, each individual to their ship. Those ships were her inspiration. Butterfly spoke of nothing else. Her mother, a patient, gentle woman, did her best to interest Butterfly in things more appropriate for her age and gender, but she simply refused. For her last birthday, Captain Phoenix had given her a small model of the Butterfly, and today, she had brought it to school. She’d been thrilled when someone noticed it.
“I want to fly one of my daddy’s ships someday. See, this is the one he flies now. It’s named after me.”
“I know that ship. It’s on my daddy’s plasma all the time. Captain Phoenix is the greatest airship pilot in the world!”
“I know! He gave me this ship for my birthday.”
“He did not!”
“Did too!”
“Let me see it, then!” By now, a crowd had clustered around Butterfly, and the dark-eyed boy who had approached her. Butterfly shook her head, her black hair swinging back and forth over her shoulders.
“No, I’m not allowed to let anyone else touch it.” She turned away to shield her prize, and the boy gave her a push.
“Let me see!”
“No!” Butterfly stepped back, and squared herself. The boy pushed her again, but Butterfly didn’t move. She held her ship in one hand, and balled the other into a fist. “You leave me alone, or else!”
“Shut your mouth, Butterfly! If you won’t let me see your stupid ship, I’ll just take it!” The boy lunged at Butterfly, and reached for her ship. Shocked at his boldness, she stumbled, and he took hold of her model, ripping it from her hands. One of the flags broke off, and clattered to the playground pavement.
“You broke it!”
“Hah, this piece of junk was going to fall apart anyway!” Lifting it over his head, the boy hurled Butterfly’s ship as far away as he could. It smashed into the ground, and shattered. Butterfly felt a lump form in her throat, and her eyes burned with tears. Without thinking, she took that fist she’d made, and launched herself forward, striking a punch across the boy’s face, his nose crunching from the impact.
The playground monitor was upon them in moments.
“Butterfly! You broke poor Darrin’s nose!â€
“Yes, well,†Butterfly paused, giving Darrin a cold stare, “that piece of junk was going to get broken sooner or later.â€
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