by submission | Jun 28, 2011 | Story
Author : Jason Frank
I say goodnight to the two suns once they’re down. There’s a chill without ’em. I go to throw something warmer on. I end up putting on one of her old nightgowns; just throw it over what I’ve got on. I freshen up my drink and check on the charging situation. We don’t have a full charge, but we’re on our way.
Back outside I say goodnight to my HUV, her HUV, the HUV port… the mazeracks start crawling out of the little sheds I built them on the side of the HUV port and I say goodnight to each one of them. It’s morning to them, time to hunt. They give me little looks, they don’t get it. Whatever, they’ll be fine.
I make my way over to the little cemetery and say goodnight to everyone. I say goodnight to her last and longest. I tell her I know she’d understand and I cry, cry like a small child, wheezing and everything. Pretty quick my drink is empty. My cup may be defective. I promised myself to say goodnight to the whole bottle before… before I stop saying goodnight.
I say goodnight to everything that I recognize as an individual thing on my way back to the house. Goodnight, goodnight, goodnight…
I put more drink in my drink. The charge is at 97%. I give it a little more time. I put on my favorite song. It isn’t our song, which is better. I can’t listen to it anymore. Damn, I like this song. It’s over; I check the charge and we’re all full. I go back and play our song and say goodnight to all the furniture I bump into walking over to my fully charged blastick.
The damage we did in our day… I haven’t fired it in years, but I kept it. Never know when something is going to come in handy. Our song is really pretty. I start dancing with my blastick, respectfully. We’re dancing slowly and tears are running down my face. I’m pretty sure my blastick is sad too, sad as an object can be. It can’t believe I’m asking it to do what it’s going to do. The song’s winding down and I’m rubbing the stick under my chin looking for a comfortable spot.
Then all hell wrecks into my yard. I run out and recognize Rig’s HUV like half crashed in my yard. I sling the stick over my shoulder and go see if he needs help.
That old boy falls out of the HUV a bloody mess, too bloody for that wreck. He looks up at me and laughs. He compliments my “ensemble” and dies. That’s a very Rig way to die. I say goodnight to him. Then I see six of the most desperate eyed kids that ever had eyes in his HUV. We stare back and forth. I don’t say goodnight to them. The oldest is a dirty haired girl, holds her head like she thinks she’s tough. She says Rig said I’d keep them safe if they got to me.
Two years I was planning tonight and they want me to change my mind in two minutes. Two more minutes and I tell everyone to get out of Rig’s HUV and load into mine over there. We have to get going. Maybe all them goodnights were right. Maybe I don’t make it back here. Maybe I can’t see letting nobody hurt some kids, lost as me and Rig and she was once.
by submission | Jun 27, 2011 | Story
Author : Brian T. Carter
Baritone, protesting groans shudder through the cramped cabin as the shuttle strains against the upper atmosphere’s turbulence. Simon braces himself against the console wondering if he sent the distress call before he set the self-destruct. A rush of white, dense mist engulfs his view out the broad windshield as water drops streak up its surface obscuring his trajectory even more…as if he actually had a planned descent. Getting to the shuttle and off his foundering scout ship was his only concern three whole minutes ago. A heading, besides simply planet-bound, hadn’t broached the immediacy of the situation until now, when he can’t see anything beyond the claustrophobic, gray-white shroud around him. Of course sensors are barely functional probably due to the low position on the maintenance list the escape shuttle occupied.
An expanse of green rolling geography erupts into view as the shuttle plummets out of the cloud cover. “Oh SHI….!” Simon exclaims engaging the breaking thrusters slowing the plunge into the forest below. A peripheral flash of orange draws Simon’s attention and a furrowed brow out the front of the craft as a second pulse breaches the air ahead of him. A percussion radiates from the rear of the craft. Simon’s surroundings are thrown forward then back against the chair as the cabin is sent into a gyre, the view outside reeling into blurred streaks.
He wrenches to dislodge an arm from the intensifying mass bearing down on his body. His fingers in arthritic spasm claw a path along the chair’s arm gaining ground towards the console and survival. Blackness encroaches from the the periphery of his vision. “Argh!” he screams protesting the physical forces against him. His foundering consciousness focuses on the hand willing his outstretched fingers to their target. They gain a hold, pull themselves up along the console pounding frantically on section he prays the stabilizers are located.
The weight reluctantly lifts from his body, blackness recedes from his vision, exhausted muscles collapse deeper into the chair as chaotic thuds begin rumbling through the floor. Simon glances sidelong through the front. A solid jolt from below bounds the view upward displaying the overcast sky and a fleeting glance of a dark shape emerging from the low lying clouds.
Gravity’s hand takes hold dragging the front down, a headlong dive into an immense bark covered trunk. The impact slams Simon into the console. His surroundings pivot from the rear as another wrenching collision thrusts him back into the chair. The sense that he’s the ball in a game of keep away between the forest and the ground passes through his mind. The cabin lurches again, as the front window implodes and he’s engulfed in a flurry of needled roughage, accosted by pine scent. The ship tilts and drops, the branch pulls away delivering a solid fleeing smack across the ridge of Simon’s nose. Gravity exerts itself once more leveling the interior and Simon’s senses as the ground wins the game. Waves ripple through the craft sending protest screams throughout its punished structure.
__________________________
Simon inspects his broken nose in a remnant of the shattered windshield as a stuttered, metallic thunder crowds the short-lived tranquility of the forested floor. He drops to his knees as a battered I-beam shaped ship shears the tree tops above, its engines’ sputterings pounding the air around him. Simon checks his pistol’s power cell, holsters it and bounds off through the trees in the direction of the ship noting he now has two against which reprisal will be exacted, those who attacked his scout ship and the tree that busted his nose.
by submission | Jun 26, 2011 | Story
Author : Julian Miles
“Twenty-nine, twenty-eight…”
She felt the first bead of sweat follow the knap of her close cropped hair before running cool and smooth down her jaw and into her uniform collar. It was so quiet on the bridge; she swore that her exec had heard it.
“Twenty-five, twenty-four…”
Sixty people made less noise than a creeping cat as they watched the dizzying host of screens. Beyond the shutters, warp space sang to their dreams. No-one had slept much in the last eight months.
“Twenty-one, twenty…”
It had taken twenty years to reverse engineer Borsen warp technology, five more to work out navigation. Four years to build the first warp dreadnought. Even now, the Borsen still did things with warp that made grown scientists cry.
“Seventeen, sixteen…”
This was the crux. The first warp dreadnought, Excalibur, hurled like a vengeful spear at the Borsen homeworld, loaded with atmosphere igniters and stealth fighters for a genocide raid to finish the war that mankind was no longer confident of winning.
“Thirteen, twelve…”
Providing the bastardised warp technology brought them out at all, of course. Command had decided that since the Romala debacle, speed was of the essence. This test flight would also be the greatest raid at the furthest distance by the biggest warship ever built.
“Nine, eight…”
She thought of spring in Providence, her daughter playing on the swing while her husband made Irish coffee on the range. This was why they all fought. For all the families, ensuring their children had a world to grow up on and a future worth living.
“Five, four…”
A vibration ran through the two kilometres of the Excalibur, causing wide eyes and white knuckles for every one of the thousand plus crew. She prayed to a god hopefully nearby that they would see real space again.
“One. Phase transit.”
With a disconcerting lurch, the Excalibur arrived in the Borsen system. Sensors awakening galvanized people into frantic motion. They had to be on target in moments. She smiled a thin smile as the shutters withdrew. Time to see what colour your air is, you bastards.
“Oh god. Sir?”
At first, she just could not absorb it. The system had no planets. The reason was right there, waiting. It reflected the distant sunlight from its myriad surfaces, and she was sure that she could see the Excalibur reflected in one of the facets facing them. She gathered herself, years of training and bitter, bloody combat culminating in a defining command moment of grace under pressure;
“Exec. Shipwide, please.”
The general broadcast fanfare rang hollow.
“Ladies and gentlemen, we have arrived and I am sure you see what I do. No-one could have envisioned this. Please, stand down and make your peace with whatever gods you hold dear.”
She regarded it. So big. Could you call something the size of Jupiter a spaceship? The movement and weapons detectors homed in on the behemoth’s one acknowledgement of the Excalibur’s presence. The figures coming from the mass detector alone lit the board red with scale queries. Her second expressed the thoughts of all present with the rendingly appropriate line of defiance, prayer and dark humour;
“Sweet Lord, for what we are about to receive…”
She felt her face become calm as she watched a railgun the length of Texas send a projectile the size of Rhode Island at them. Her words ended the data stream that reached Earth eighteen years too late;
“Dear John, remember me. Raise Millie well. Love from Captain Mum.”
by submission | Jun 25, 2011 | Story
Author : Phil Manning
The light above the door flashed green and she stepped into the hall. Synthetic grass covered the floor, a lush carpet which sprang up, undamaged, after each of her hesitant steps. A vast pool lay in the centre of the hall; the scent of salt water touched her nostrils.
Her yellow skin gleamed under the harsh fluorescent light, a simulation of a life bringing star long extinguished. The yellow skin was tattooed with a swirling mixture of codes and writing blended together to create an alien set of tribal markings.
On the edge of the pool a dull grey box began to shake and break free of the floor. Rising up to the height of her chest two black cables emerged from the sides of the box. The box’s grey exterior began to darken to an earthen brown and the once smooth surfaces were now scarred with texture. The cables snaked on the floor until she stood in front of the earthy pillar then lifted into the air to attach securely to her temples.
She took handfuls of earth and began to rub them slowly onto the top of her skull. Instead of falling to the floor the earth clung to her strands of hair. As she placed more of the mound of earth onto her skull her hair began to rise. The hair formed the outline of mountains and valleys which shifted and writhed, filling with trees and vegetation. When the mound was half broken away she stopped placing the earth onto herself. Taking small handfuls she cast the earth out over the pool. Islands and continents were shaped, shifting against one another before coming to rest in odd and beautiful land masses. The cables fell from her temples into the pool. They swirled and drifted beneath the surface of the water. Waves crashed against the newly formed land further changing and shaping the formations.
Sitting beside the pool she hummed as she cropped at the synthetic grass with her hand and tossed random handfuls of her harvest over the pool and newly formed surface. As her humming grew louder, the tune became more complex. The shape which had formed on top of her skull began to slow in its growth. The markings on her skin began to shift, dancing in and around each other. Changing patterns, words, codes, language swam on her skin. She opened her mouth and broke into a crescendo of song which harmonised with the sound of her humming still echoing throughout the hall. Small creatures began to appear in the mountains and valleys which sat upon her head. The patterns on her body danced up her skin and disappeared into her temples. Blue electricity crackled above her head as her body drained itself of the markings. The small creatures began to evolve; some grew wings, others leapt for the pool, and they began to hide and hunt. A small group began to think and stumble forward, upright and afraid.
She finished singing and started to whistle softly as she stood and reached for the shape now pulsating with life atop her head. As she broke the shape away from her skull it fell into four pieces. She floated each one toward a different area of the pool and the newly formed pieces of land. As life began to take hold and shape itself she slowly walked around the pool, whistling soft gusts over the once empty surface.
by submission | Jun 24, 2011 | Story
Author : Z. J. Woods
There seemed nothing wrong with the guy when he backed through the door. A little nervous, maybe. A little too long since he’d shaven. But otherwise? And for whom were such descriptions untrue?
Sloan produced glasses from a breast pocket and fingered them up the bridge of his nose. He put a fist over his mouth, cleared his throat. He said, “What can I do for you?”
The guy swung a denim sack up onto the counter. He untied it, reached in, produced books. Four books. Four hardcovers bound in honest-to-god cardboard and paper. Sloan pressed his glasses against his face, hard, for a moment. He watched as the guy arranged the books beside one another. Carefully.
The guy said, “I wanna — I need to, to sell these.”
“Well.” Sloan took up the rightmost, navy blue, thin, maybe two hundred pages, maybe less. He opened to the title page. It’d been torn out — not an unexpected defect. “Well,” Sloan said, “this is a lot of books,” and in fact he hoped he could endure the expense. “I could give you more if there were dust jackets. But, still –”
He brought the blue book close. On the front cover, near the spine — a dark rectangle, maybe damp. He pressed a thumb into it, pulled away and met resistance. Pressed thumb and forefinger together once, twice.
He set the book down.
He said, “You stole these from a library.”
“No — no,” the guy said. “They were — in a library — before. Before before.”
“That’s relatively new glue,” Sloan said, pointing. “There was a barcode there.” He eyed the rightmost corner of the counter, the telephone. “I can’t take these.”
The guy did not look up. Had not made eye contact since entering. He set about stowing his books. “Then — I guess — I’ll take these somewhere else.”
“No,” Sloan said. He reached for the phone.
The guy contemplated for a moment. For a moment Sloan was still, three fingers on the plastic handset, wondering if he’d misjudged, if the guy had a weapon after all. He began to withdraw.
The guy turned and ran.
He was halfway to the door when the shotgun pump stopped him.
Every time Sloan looked down that foreshortened barrel he became convinced that it had rusted more since the previous time. But what did it matter? The nice thing about a shotgun was that it could do enough from five paces mostly regardless of its general state of repair.
The guy turned, slowly. He held the denim sack to his chest. Now he made eye contact with Sloan, or with the cycloptic weapon; it didn’t seem to matter. He said, “Fucking — readers. Goddamn fucking readers.”
