by Patricia Stewart | Sep 9, 2010 | Story
Author : Patricia Stewart, Staff Writer
After unimaginable losses, The Earth Alliance was still unable to breach the Draconian military installation on Hydrae II. The fortress sat safely within a walled city that was protected by sixteen electrostatic cannons strategically placed around the perimeter. When fired, the cannons projected an attenuated subspace energy wave that caused the electrical bonds between atoms to vibrate out of control; similar in some respects to the way microwaves cause water molecules to vibrate in order to produce heat. When the spectrographic sensors identified the target material, the electrostatic cannons fired a specific frequency wave to break the appropriated atomic bonds, i.e., either metallic, covalent, or ionic, depending on whether the material was a metal, polymer, or ceramic. Once the bonds were broken, the object harmlessly disintegrates into its constituent atoms. Any atoms that might be intrinsically harmful, such as radioactive ones like uranium and plutonium, were repelled by the nucleonic deflector shield. Conventional military tactics appeared useless against the Draconian defenses.
After months of brainstorming, a young chemist proposed an unorthodox solution. Although few senior scientists thought the plan would work, it was eventually approved; mostly because nobody could come up with anything better.
A few weeks later, a 250,000 ton computer controlled space freighter was brought into geosynchronous orbit above the Draconian installation. As dawn approached, the on-board computer fired its massive thrusters to begin the deorbiting sequence. The new flight path caused the ship to drop vertically downward toward the military installation. When the freighter passed the Kármán line, the Draconian spectrographic sensors detected the exterior PICA shielding of the spaceship and the electrostatic cannons began to fire. As the covalent bonds were destroyed, the phenolic impregnated carbon layer instantly spalled away. The spectrograph and cannons continued to rapidly detect, and subsequently attack, the successive layers of the ship. Seconds later, the titanium support structure disintegrated. Then the silicon and oxygen atoms were ripped from the fiberglass insulation. The interior sub-structure, including the aluminum bulkheads, copper wires, steel nuts and bolts, etc., progressively disappeared as their metallic cohesion was lost. Eventually, the cannons reached the cargo holds. Wooden crates filled with solid potassium, coal, and sulfur were all vaporized in quick succession. Finally, the oxygen and hydrogen fuel tanks, the nitrogen purge tanks, a briquette of metallic sodium, and the steel engines were all atomized. In less than a minute, the ship was gone, and the sixteen electrostatic cannons powered down. The Draconians cheered, and mocked the Earthlings once again for their continued impotence.
But slowly, the original momentum of the plummeting ship continued to carry the cloud of dispersing atoms ever downward toward the Draconian fortress. The atomic gasses rolled into the city and through the streets. Finally, when the sodium atoms contacted the morning dew they started an exothermal reaction that caused the oxygenated atmosphere to spontaneously react with the thousands of tons of carbon, potassium, and sulfur that had once been inside the cargo hold. In a tumultuous fireball that could be seen from space, the payload exploded with the force of a nuclear bomb. The churning mushroom cloud turned itself inside out as it swirled upward from the leveled city. This time, there were no Draconians to mock the Earthmen.
by submission | Apr 21, 2010 | Story
Author : Angela Reese
I looked up as the door slammed open. “Boss? Bad news?”
“Oh, just one more set of forms to be filled out and added to the packet,” she grumbled, handing me the folder. “Honestly, it is getting harder and harder to get permission for human drug trials. Every time I blink, there are new regulations and restrictions!”
“What is it this time?” I started looking through the paperwork – nothing too complicated, just several pages of requirements that had to be confirmed. And… “Water contamination? What’s this?”
“Oh, someone on the committee read an earlier study in which the results were questioned due to some trace chemicals in the native water supply. Now we have to supply filtered water in any trials of oral medications.” She sat down at her desk and started pulling up files, smirking. “Luckily, I saw the same study, which is why our budget already includes a supply of filtered water. We do have to get all these forms updated to show that, though.”
“And, of course, no one has made the forms available electronically,” I sighed. “You’d think technology was all in our imagination sometimes, the way it gets ignored.” I started filling in the specifics, then handing the forms over for her to sign. “We should be involved in developing and testing entertainment technology. As long as it isn’t actually useful, it’s hugely popular and gets funded for eons.”
She finished signing the paperwork and took the folder over to the scanning station. “At least we can send them back electronically. Let’s be thankful we don’t have to physically send them several hundred miles; we’d be waiting forever.” The papers finished feeding through the scanner, and I took them back from her for filing.
“How long a wait do you think we’ll have?”
“I was assured that a decision would be made as soon as these additions were submitted. Given how urgently this drug is needed, I’m certain we’ll get approval. After all, it has to pass the human trials before we can move on to the next stage. Are we set to go?”
I nodded. “The water and food supplies were fully stocked as of this morning, and the habitat has been cleared of all workers and debris. We’ve installed tech and entertainment to match their level, and I checked the security system myself yesterday. We can leave for Earth to start collecting human subjects as soon as they sign the approvals.”
by Roi R. Czechvala | Mar 17, 2010 | Story
Author : Roi R. Czechvala: Staff Writer
The Crimson Dawn hung in geosynch above the besieged planet. Far out of reach of the meager defenses the primitive populous threw at them.
“Skipper, another salvo is being launched.”
Captain Dimitri Sardukar gave a bored sigh; “Viewer.” The bridge of the ship dissolved and the captain and crew seemed to hang in empty space. Even after years as a staff officer, the sudden switch to VR still unnerved him.
He watched as a seven missile volley rose from the planets surface. He watched as the stages of the chemical rockets fell away. He watched as the impotent atomic warheads spent their energy fruitlessly against the ships absorbing Tesla Field.
“Enough is enough. Ensign contact fleet. We are dropping. These savages need to know with whom they are dealing with.”
Klaxons blared throughout the ship. Armoured marines scrambled for the lifter ships. The captain himself took personal command of a lifter, and was the first to ground on the surface of the planet they had dubbed Circe.
The assault ships formed a perimeter around a massive stone complex. A walled palace. Stunned guards at the gates watched in awe as the huge marines emerged. The awe soon resolved itself into anger. They opened fire as the marines approached…
Dimitri joined his retinue of eleven men in raucous laughter as bullets impacted armour and fell to the ground as harmless lumps of jacketed lead.
“Open fire,” Dimitri ordered, growing tired of the futile display.
The detachment of guards was reduced to shapeless mounds of burned flesh under the searing blast of plasma fire. The men stormed unopposed into the massive building, followed by their swaggering commander.
The interior was one massive chamber carved from a single piece of a marble like stone. The walls shimmered with iridescent colours. In the centre of the hall upon a raised dais a huge throne stood. It was occupied by a diminutive figure, almost human in a vaguely elfin way. At the base of the platform a contingent of similar creatures stood unarmed.
“There will be no need for your crude weapons.” The diminutive being waved a careless hand and the marines were quickly disarmed by his personal guard. “Nor your armour,” just as quickly the men were denuded. “Allow me to introduce myself. I am Viceroy Creed. Welcome to…,” he smiled disarmingly, “Circe.”
Stunned to immobility the men stood in rigid fear.
Outraged, Captain Dimitri Ulyov Sardukar turned on his minute tormentor, his face flushed with rage. “I command…”
“You command nothing,” the alien leader snapped viciously.
“I have ten ships…three thousand marines, trained killers ready….”
“There are no ships, there are no marines. Not for much longer anyway…,” he quietly informed the captain.
With a dismissive wave of his hand, Creed turned to his coterie. “Amusing aren’t they? Their worlds will make a unique addition to the Empire.”
“Make them comfortable for the time being. Tell the kitchen there will be twelve for dinner.”
He turned and faced the deflated Fleet Captain. “Remind the chef, I like mine rare.” He graced the men with a quick winsome smile. Rows of pointed teeth flashed wickedly in the waning light. The Viceroy turned and walked lightly from the room.
by submission | Feb 26, 2010 | Story
Author : KJ Hannah Greenberg
Snazzle considered, as she queued up, among the morning roses and goldenrod, that members of the machinists’ men didn’t take warmly to her puttering about their racks and chargers. Despite the technicians’ protest to the contrary, whenever she brought Little Guy to honk among the geese and ducks, those mechanics shuddered and pushed him and Snazzle away.
It was not so much that Little Guy emptied enough corn onto the ground for all of the barnyard’s critters, let alone the fowl, as it was that Little Guy picked up the heifers in the same way that more typical offshoots might lift a puppy. While they labored on their harrows and on their seeders, those lab guys slit their eyes at Snazzle and her kin.
Those thinker-tinkers especially got antsy when Little Guy wandered over to their self-propelled sprayer; they blamed that unit for her tot’s physical prowesses. They hadn’t known that Snazzle’s baby had snacked on foxes and on wolverines long before he tottled.
Rather, those applied science guys figured that a strong dose of nitrogen had altered Little Guy’s chemistry such that his xylem, which flowed among the cells of his mental engine, leaked out in almost organic guttation. The agricultural artisans reasoned that Little Guy performed feats during the day because at night his stomata remained closed. They hadn’t counted on his need to cuddle with his mama.
Snazzle shook her filaments in answer to that imagined discourse. Little Guy no more possessed hydathodes, through which he could express excess water, than he did any other means of transpirational pull. His mutant state meant that he would be, forever, forced to evaporate fluids through his tongue. To wit, he left his main orifice open. That he swallowed whole sheep or goats during his ambulations was accidental.
Consequently, Little Guy considered their jaunts to the ranch occasions for seeing and tasting animals. Snazzle, however, saw those journeys as opportunities for borrowing utensils she needed to create a system of secondary growth, of activated vascular cambium for her child.
To Snazzle, circumstances are caused by vicissitudes, not karma. Solutions derive from effort, not from self pity or blame. Ennui means lack of faith. Feelings of victimization mean not trying hard enough.
The thought of having to rupture Little Guy’s epidermis in order to accommodate his growth left her discolored and dried, but Snazzle was resolute about helping him. In the end, she would help him form cambia on the outside of his phloem.
Such direction would necessitate Little Guy ingesting a few horses and a couple of the farmer’s sons, but it would solve his metabolic quandary. Thereafter, Little Guy could cross pollinate with any woody vine of similar genetic material. The couple could produced mobile, flowering grandchildren for Snazzle and could rid the farm of its rat problem, its cats, its donkeys, its llamas and its prize elephant.
by Stephen R. Smith | Feb 19, 2010 | Story
Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer
Levon leaned against the shower tube, letting the jets of water assail his body from all sides. As the sweat of the previous night’s activities rinsed away, the more subtle indicators of his exertions seeped in. Both his head and kidneys ached from the soup of chemicals he’d drank, sniffed and injected with the woman now sleeping naked in the next room.
Warnings pulsing dimly in his periphery reminded him that his kidney augments were still on standby, sifting and analyzing the foreign bodies in his bloodstream. An amber warning flashed, the proximity alarm on his equipment locker had been triggered. His company was awake, the message flashing red as she tried the door.
Levon flipped through and discarded most of the blood-work findings; street grade meth, cocaine and a too high level of alcohol, but the last one stopped him cold. A battery of tranquilizers had been automatically disarmed, all bearing Federated P.D. chem tags.
“Shit. She’s a cop.”
In an instant water droplets were evaporating in a jet of warm air and kidney grafts went into overdrive, flushing his system clean and pumping in Epinephrine.
Exiting the shower he could hear the woman padding around the bedroom, his sub-dermal grid-work of sensory pickups and Faraday shielding twinging as a transmitter narrow-banded a short range encoded transmission. Not only was she a cop, but she had a partner nearby.
Opening the door he found her perched on the end of the bed, tanned shoulders and arms exposed above the bedsheet she’d drawn around herself.
“Hey baby, look at you,” her words slurred together into a sound like a sneeze.
“Hey,” Levon moved to the closet, the auto-bolts retracting as he reached for the handle, “back in a sec.” He slipped through the door, closing and letting it lock securely behind him.
He’d converted the walk-in to a safe room when he’d started renting the sixth floor apartment. The low level lighting reflected dimly back at him from the kevmesh that coated the inside of the cramped space, uneven thicknesses of the dark green ultraweeve armor pooled on the floor where it had run as he’d sprayed the layers on.
He could feel a mass of people thundering up the stairwell at the end of the hall.
He pulled on overalls and a jacket and jammed his feet into a pair of Magnum Ions. Overturning a crate in the middle of the room he slung his shoulder holster and perched in a squat on the box like a bird, face down to his knees. He thumbed the release tabs on two canisters glued into the floor on either side of him and covered his face with his hands. The canisters ticked a few seconds before geysering upwards, thick jets of liquid spattering off the ceiling, foaming and filling the space, securing his hunched form in a bubble of packing foam.
He felt his cocoon shake, knowing that his bathroom had just been blown out the side of the building. A second set of explosions tipped his pod sideways, and Levon braced himself as a final eruption jettisoned the entire closet shell out the newly formed hole in the building, launching it through the window of the much nicer lofts across the street.
Levon had barely stopped moving before he blew the cocoon seals and stood up, the force separating the two halves neatly, leaving a man shaped impression in each.
Stepping through the broken glass and window frame, he surveyed the damage outside, his apartment now just a jagged tear in the brick facade of the building. Below, his shower poked out the side of a cargo van, vaguely phallic in a glittering mess of LED advertising and shredded metal.
Turning, Levon faced a startled couple sitting up in bed. Stepping past them, he helped himself to a piece of toast and a slice of bacon from the breakfast tray forgotten at their feet.
“Don’t get up,” he grinned, “I’ll see myself out.”
