by submission | Jun 23, 2013 | Story
Author : Mae Thann
“Akita General to base, do you read me?”
A crackling voice finally answered. “Base to Akita General. Report.”
“I have visual on Target Cougar. Akita Pack is out of reach. Request permission to pursue alone.” From my vantage point near the edge of the forest, I felt more like a cougar, watching my prey as it fed in the meadow.
“Is target alone?”
“Affirmative.”
“Permission to pursue. Be careful: she’s dangerous.”
I pulled the locket out from under my shirt – they’d kill me if they knew – and kissed it. “I know. Hail the emperor; Akita General out.”
She was all mine. I’d been hunting her for a good third of my career and now she was here, just within my reach, ready for my revenge. Reaching for my plasma pistol, I kept as low as I could amongst the tall, waving grasses while my target ambled on. It was almost aggravating, really. I was used to the chase, the thrill. Would all my work wind down to an easy shot to the back?
I clutched the locket again. No, we were going to see each other face-to-face. This rebel captain was going to pay for my sister’s disappearance five years ago and she was going to know it. I announced my presence. She whirled around and, quicker than the speed of light, drew her own plasma pistol.
I felt the blood drain from my face, whether from shock or anger, I don’t know. Her eyes widened likewise, but I gave her no chance to respond. I rushed her, keeping her gun away from me, but losing mine in the struggle. Finally, I had her down. My knife over her throat, her gun to my head, the locket dangling between us.
“I don’t want to,” she said.
My throat constricted. “Neither do I.” I drew a shuddering breath. “Hail the emperor.”
Half of the bloody locket now rests in a war museum. People have speculated, created wild tales.
But none of them ever guessed that I’d walked away with a broken heart and my sister’s blood on my hands.
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by submission | Jun 22, 2013 | Story
Author : David Kavanaugh
YOUR SPECIES NEEDS YOU!
That’s right, you! All of you brave men and women out there who watched the skies light up on January 8th and felt your hearts swell with rage, passion, and love of species. Never forget that day, brave humans, for the Silvers certainly will not! Honor the memory of those fallen. Enlist today, receive your Flock Implant, and join the ranks of the heroic Skyforce. Launch into orbit… and into history!
Or do you want to be left behind when all your friends have enlisted and are valiantly soaring through the enemy ranks? When victory is ours, do you want to be the only one on the block without a good-luck Silver toe to hang proudly about your neck?
We know you do not want that! We know you are better than that, braver than that!
And our Flock Implants are safer than ever, now delivering a feeling of euphoria as they join your consciousness with your unit. No more migraines or depression! Now you battle in the skies a seamless unit, a bird on the wing with its brothers and sister on either side to support it, and never feel lost or alone again. Or is your individuality worth more than the survival of the human race?
The only question you need to ask yourself is this: Are you a true patriot, or aren’t you?
So what are you waiting for? Report to your nearest recruitment center today, and help save the world!
Brought to you by the United Skyforce.
Skyforce, Taking Back the Earth!
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by Clint Wilson | Jun 21, 2013 | Story
Author : Clint Wilson, Staff Writer
The thick, tightly packed blue grass bristled and rippled. From high above it was a smooth endless plain of vegetation, a shimmering inky velvet blanket stretched over a planetary sea.
As the two small white suns rose in the northeast, numerous tiny yellow heads appeared from their holes in the indigo fields. Long undulating segmented bodies quickly followed them. The legless creatures poured forth and slithered over the rough blue grass. And there they lay, somehow existing in this hostile environment, with less than 0.0009 atmospheres of pressure, and no liquid to breathe.
Despite the distance of the tiny suns, the creatures soaked up plentiful energy for their daily feed. Writhing and shimmering atop the floating blue fields they drank more than their fill.
By general appearance they were nearly identical to one another, besides the pubescent youths having two more segments than infants, and the mature adults two more again. Yet there was one who stood out from the others. It sported an artificial band, a blue strip of organic material, teeming with microscopic electric creatures, rearranging themselves thousands of times a second, sending radio waves pulsing down through the layers of the planetary ocean.
Two thousand kilometers below, in the depths of the western plain ice core city Phalanzedqua, scientists gathered around the meeting hub. Their eyeless heads pulsed as intake valves processed the thickly compressed methane rich seawater. Pinhole ejection ports on their backs bled black waste, it permeated their thick liquid atmosphere all around them, but it mattered not as they were completely without sight. They communicated through the electrical impulses of their microscopic symbiotic partners.
The head scientist linked his whiskers into the receiver ports of the main bio-computer. The machine, technically alive yet artificially grown and completely unaware of its function or duties, made millions of calculations per second. The scientist, known as Yachmaa, read the data through his whisker tips. He suddenly addressed the others and communicated.
“Quite incredible. It seems that the Yellow Quaxannai migrate all the way to the atmospheric ceiling,” Yachmaa paused for dramatic effect, “and then they breach the surface and leave the liquid!”
There were pulses of disbelief from around the hub. Yachmaa suddenly transmitted the data he had thus far received from his artificial band, attached to the unwitting creature days ago on a gutsy mission to the upper third. Everyone had been well trained, and protected by their pressure skins. Yet they had nearly missed the entire rising pod and had only gotten lucky with this straggler. Yet there he was, now sporting their tracking device up above the ceiling, transmitting valuable data from an unexplored frontier. The group floated transfixed, studying the spectrum of the alien habitat with its undulating fields and twin hot points.
Suddenly a bizarre flying creature swooped from the sky and snatched one of the Yellow Quaxannai in its hooked talons and then soared off with its long squirming meal.
Far below they all hovered bewildered as one of the scientists asked, “In the name of the core dweller, what in the world was that?”
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by submission | Jun 20, 2013 | Story |
Author : Kevin Richards
I stepped up the walk of the gravel drive, breathing in the cool, quiet night air. Ringing the doorbell, I was greeted by a sharply dressed woman with a pleasant smile. “I’m here for the party,” I said, pulling the invitation out of my jacket.
“Right this way.” We went down a hallway, and she opened the door to a ballroom. Balloons and a banner marked the door. I stepped inside, eager to meet the guests.
I’d spent some time trying to look nice for this. I had gone shopping and got designer skinny jeans, new sneakers, a silk black tie, crisp white shirt and a tailored blazer. “Evening,” I said amicably as I stepped into an empty room.
A bar sat in one corner, and tables with an assortment of hors d’ouevres sat on one wall. The only other person was a man slumped in a wheelchair. His only movement was to dart his eyes suddenly to me. Without moving a muscle he looked shocked.
“Party is a little dead professor,” I said. “Perhaps you should have sent the invitations out a little sooner. Says today’s date alright, the 28th, but it’s a bit of an issue since you sent these out on the 30th.”
“To tell the truth, I wasn’t expecting anyone.” The professors synthesized voice sounded bemused.
“And, trust me, you weren’t disappointed. At least in my timeline anyways. This one seems much more interesting. I like it already. Champagne?” I popped the cork and poured two bubbling glasses.
“I’ll pass. We have a lot to talk about.”
“Indeed we do. In fact, I’d propose a toast- to you professor, for laying the groundwork that made this possible.” I drank a generous amount, grinning. “I’d expect this place to be packed. If travel backwards along this timeline is possible, where is everybody? I even went so far as to get 2009 Summer Quarter GQ so I’d look appropriate.”
“Perhaps it’s because you are the only person in this timeline to travel backwards this far. Or maybe the only backwards time traveler ever.”
“Interesting. Anyways, I thought I’d give you this.” I reached into jacket and removed a stack of papers. “Copy of Klein and Li’s paper on String Theory. Won the Nobel in ’34. They cite you quite heavily. See, you aren’t so much wrong as you-”
The doors burst open. Two men in black suits marched in. “You! With us! Now!”
“Who the hell are you? What the-” The suit on the right snatched the stack of papers, and the one on the left slapped a cuff around my wrist. What looked like a solid steel bar molded around my wrists. There was a prick on my neck and everything began to slow. Pointing back, they yelled “You didn’t see anything!”
As I was dragged from the room, everything fading, I heard the professor’s synthesized voice, “Or perhaps Time Travel is better regulated than most industries…”
by submission | Jun 19, 2013 | Story |
Author : James Zahardis
Ambassador Xiao, with decades of political service and negotiation of the Nigerian Treaty still evoked an inauspicious “Is this the best we’ve got?” when it was Worldcast that he would be sent to Arizona. He was a paunchy sexagenarian, whom one would expect to find on the golf course–not stepping off a combat glider into a Red Zone.
Xiao saluted General Allistar who pointed to the monumental basalt a quarter-mile away. Xiao switched his aviator sunglasses to binocular mode and shut his eyes. The preceding week reeled before him: his office with its shadow boxes brimming with medallions; his cup of Masala chai that went cold; and the live-feed of the sky over the canyon lands south of Flagstaff, as spacetime was broached.
Xiao opened his eyes. Cathedral Rock encompassed his field-of-view. He walked toward the rock.
“You want backup?” the General asked.
“It’s best if I do this on my own.”
Within three-hundred meters of the rock’s base the invaders appeared. Xiao retained his composure despite their crab-like forms, and multitudinous, undulating feelers.
“We expected Grays–not creatures out of Lovecraft or Bosch…” Xiao thought as they approached. Intelligence suspected they were foot soldiers. A larger one had a ‘boom-tube’ strapped across its back: it looked like a flute, yet a pulse from it disintegrated a jet squadron. Several horseshoe crab-size aliens clamored at Xiao’s feet. He noticed a red glow near his breast pocket originating from a stylus-shaped object in the tentacles of one of the aliens.
“Scanning for weapons? A bio-analyzer?” he wondered.
The aliens vanished. A downdraft wafted an odor into the canyon that reminded Xiao of cheap plastic Halloween costumes.
An eight-foot tall monstrosity materialized in front of him.
“A chimera!” the ambassador thought, staring at the alien’s reptilian-looking body, humanoid posture, and tufts of tentacle in place of a neck. Its face was mouthless and covered with obsidian disks. A cat-sized, spider-like creature was at its feet. It strode forward and looped a chain around Xiao’s neck. The tentacles of the chimera undulated and Xiao felt an odd sensation in his brain.
“Qan-tho’manos, representative of Dis–sympathies for battle-fallen offered,” the chimera-like being communicated.
“I am here on behalf of the President of the Republic of Sino-America and the United Nations of Earth. We welcome you and regret our unfortunate initial encounter,” Xiao replied.
“Dis from fringes observed–great cruelty of your race did learn–darkly dream of your humankind Dis spawn and minds of artists poisoned–a relief over Qlz’drn City on Great Sky-Vault your races brutality depicts,” Qan-tho’manos communicated.
Qan-tho’manos paused. The ambassador saw his reflection, like tiny tadpoles in oily pools, in the representative’s obsidian disks.
“Blended all Dis from galaxy sentient creations–life-code sacred in mutability infinite–last war humans–soldiers bearing life-code corrupted–killing efficient–abhorrent–now Dis came must.”
“But we negotiated peace an–eh–”
The ambassador’s mouth fused together.
“War for generations Dis not have–this peace to you extend we.”
The ambassador fell to the ground. His arms and legs were contracting and his epidermis hardening.
“Myranx your race becomes–humility learn will–servitude to Dis.”
Xiao was now a crab-like creature with the vestige of a man’s face. His final human memory was of the Nigerian Conference, when he negotiated world peace and ended the deployment of genetically enhanced troops; his final human emotion was compunction, realizing it had come too late.
END
