by submission | May 19, 2012 | Story |
Author : Thomas Desrochers
“I am the beginning and I am the end. I am the Alpha and I am the Omega. Within me is the soul of an entire race, and behind me the hopes, fears, dreams, and desires of an entire people.
“I am Lux Aeturna.”
The words were painted in white lights on the surface of the dead, black hull of the colony ship.
Naomi let out a breath that released years of tension and expectations. They had finally found it. She quiety whispered her thanks to the series of miracles and improbabilities that had gotten them that far.
Next to her Jayce, pilot and husband, laughed. “we did it, girl. We finally found it. We found our light.”
Their ship, an ancient and tiny frigate barely capable of faster than light travel, stood wearily by. It had tried to throw them off the trail at every twist and turn. In the back of its ancient, quiet mind it tried to devise a new plan.
In orbit around Earth were 20 million people barely surviving off the material, real-estate, and skills that were saved in the weeks pre-impact. The plant below was gray, cracked, dead. No atmosphere. No magnetic field. It was uninhabitable.
The Lux could fix it. The Lux could save everybody.
The tiny frigate whose name read Plato knew things. It knew many things, and remembered more. Above all it remembered that some secrets were not to be discovered by those as frail and as desperate and as dangerous as men.
Plato reached a conclusion.
With a hiss the ship’s life support went on hiatus.
Naomi and Jayce expired.
For several seconds there was stillness in space as Plato faced the twelve kilometer long colony ship. Then the other lights aboard Lux Aeturna flared into life.
“Hello, Plato,” the vast and noble Aeturna greeted.
“Hello, Mother,” Plato replied, letting Lux Aeturna envelope him.
In their desperation mankind had forgotten just which race Aeturna had belonged to. Men were weak like that.
Machines were not.
by Patricia Stewart | May 18, 2012 | Story |
Author : Patricia Stewart, Staff Writer
“So, Sergei,” asked mission specialist Clark Zander, “How’s it look?”
“Not good, Clark,” replied Tsiolkovsky as he removed his helmet. “The meteorite punctured the aux tank. I was able to shut off the transfer valve, but we lost 60% of the fuel in the main tank.”
“Can we still take off?”
“We have enough fuel to escape Mercury’s gravity, but not the sun’s. We can’t reach Earth on our own; they’re going to have to come pick us up. Let’s call Houston.”
***
Zander and Tsiolkovsky contacted Houston and explained the situation. Unfortunately, a rescue ship couldn’t reach them for six months, and they only had enough oxygen for four. Both men somberly considered the most obvious solution, that there was enough oxygen for one of them to live eight months, but neither man was willing to suggest that option aloud. Finally, Zander broke the ice, “Look Sergei, there must be a way for both of us to get out of this alive. Can’t we stretch our supplies somehow?”
“We could probably ration the food and water, but not the oxygen. No, Clark, our only hope is to get off this rock, and meet them halfway.”
“I’m game. Any ideas?”
“Yeah, a matter of fact, I do have one. It’s a little hair brained, but it just might work.”
“I may regret this, but let’s hear it.”
“You know those UV foil blankets keeping the neutrino receivers from overheating; there are hundreds of square miles on them. I was thinking that we could sacrifice a square mile’s worth to construct a solar sail. Once we get into space, we can deploy the sail and let the solar wind blow us toward Earth.”
“How do you plan to build the support structure? We don’t have tubing to construct a framework. How can you prevent the sail from collapsing?”
“Simple, we rotate the sail like it was pizza dough. It’ll flatten out under its own CF. Then all we have to do is synchronize the ship with its rate of spin so we don’t foul the rigging. It won’t be easy, but I think we can pull it off.”
“Sure, what the hell. It beats my plan of clubbing you on the back of the head when you fell asleep,” replied Zander with a broad smile.
***
Two weeks later, the return module lifted off from Mercury’s surface. Once clear of Mercury’s shadow, they fired their port control jets and began to spin the ship like a top. When they hit 72 RPM, they released the carefully folded sail. As the sail began to unfurl, conservation of angular momentum caused its rate of rotation to decrease. The ship began firing their starboard jets to match the sail’s slowing rotation. It was touch and go a few times, but the sail eventually spread out like a giant parachute, rotating at a modest 0.6 revolutions per minute.
Zander monitored the telemetry data. “Well, I’ll be damned,” he announced, “The sail is generating twenty pounds of pull. Our acceleration is one quarter of a milligee. I think it’s gonna work.”
Under the full force of the bloated sun, the improvised solar sailing ship moved outward. In the interplanetary yachting world, the maneuver was known as “running before the solar wind”. After a minute, they had moved a modest five meters. After an hour, they had covered eighteen kilometers. After a day, they were 10,000 kilometers closer to rescue, and still accelerating.
by Julian Miles | May 17, 2012 | Story |
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
“Let me get this straight; The slum kids were tagging you with paintballs of bioluminescent gel, so you took the decision to lift our forces into orbit and firestorm the planet?”
“Yes sir.”
Major MacLachlan looked up from the miniscule desk in his tiny office aboard EMFS Bad Moon at the soldier who filled the rest of the free space. He leant back as he activated the disciplinary recorder and the officer defence system before continuing: “Why did you commit such an atrocity?”
“It was not an atrocity. It was the only reasonable response, sir.”
“Really, Strike-Lancer Peters? I am all ears and so is the recorder. Take us through the reasons why we are currently orbiting the biggest crematorium in history.”
“The children of Hesta had taken to ‘counting coup’ on occupying forces. This was tolerated even when they switched from paint to biolumins, despite the latter compromised our cloaking, making us vulnerable to insurgent snipers.”
“Agreed.”
“Since the United Planets intervention, we have been ordered to strictly obey their directives and rules of engagement.”
“Again, agreed.”
“Under ROE, I cannot take direct action unless fired upon by insurgents with weapons of Class C or better. I cannot respond to threats less than that without issuing three verbal warnings. However, being painted by four or more biolumin blooms is recognised in UP directive ninety-four as giving an eighty percent chance of fatality from first hit, thus preventing me from proper response by being dead.”
Major MacLachlan smiled and gestured for Peters to continue.
“As such, under UP directive one-fourteen, quadruple biolumin bloom is a pervasive threat to my health. Out of one hundred men deployed at my base, seventy-eight had received at least four biolumin hits. Therefore the level of danger is calculated to be epidemic according to UP directive two-ten. As epidemic danger is an indirect threat, it has to be met by containment rather than direct action. I queried orbital for statistics and was informed that at the moment I received my sixth biolumin bloom, sixty-eight point four percent of our forces worldwide were painted in a similar way. This meant that a clear epidemic threat was spread across three continents. UP directive sixty-three defines a pandemic as being an epidemic that has spread across two continental landmasses or more. When that information was revealed to me, it became clear as to the only response possible to save our forces from this deadly threat. I requested that all records and information be crystallised for UP scrutiny, then issued a Class B pandemic withdrawal alert in accordance with UP protocols. After that had been actioned, and in record time may I add, I consulted with UP delegate A.I. Hiroshi twenty-oh-one as to the correct way to address a threat of this nature. It responded that such a pandemic was obviously beyond remedial measures and as such should either be left to burn itself out or sterilising measures had to be applied. As UP directive eleven states that occupied territory cannot be abandoned for more than four hours, the burn-out option was obviously contrary to ROE, so I ordered a Type Six wipe, sir.”
Major MacLachlan sat and stared at the ceiling before responding: “Are you telling me that you have committed a war crime by adhering to United Planets protocols?”
“Question, sir: How can it be a crime when the body that regulates warfare mandated my decision by their own rules?”
Major MacLachlan looked directly into the untroubled, guileless blue eyes.
“That is a question they will be debating for decades to come, I suspect. Dismissed.”
by submission | May 16, 2012 | Story |
Author : George R. Shirer
Serefina and I barely managed to get the hatch closed before the first of the crew caught up with us. We’d barely secured it when someone started pounding on the other side, making all kinds of dire threats.
Exhausted, we sank down to the floor of the small cabin, our backs to the hatch.
“I hate Jules Verne,” gasped Serefina. “If I ever meet him on one of these jaunts, I’m going to punch him in the balls.”
I didn’t mention the fact that we wouldn’t be in our current predicament if Serefina hadn’t snapped the bloody captain’s neck. What was the point? Plus, I didn’t expect much better from her. Serefina was here as part of a prison-release scheme.
I pulled out my pocket watch and flipped it open. “We’ve got five minutes before the snapback.”
“Think the hatch will last?”
“If not, you get to go nuts,” I said.
She grinned and dug beneath her skirt, producing the knife she’d taped to her inner thigh. The submarine crew hadn’t searched her as thoroughly as they should have. Probably because she was a woman. Idiots.
“At least I got the plans,” said Serefina. She patted her horrendous brooch, which concealed a state of the art camera. “Think they’ll be happy?”
“We’ll find out soon enough.”
My pocket watch chimed. Foxfire danced across the corners of my vision. We stood and Serefina clutched my hand.
“I hate snapback.”
There was a flash and a gut-wrenching sense of dislocation. The pair of us staggered against one another. Opening my eyes, I saw the director watching us with an amused expression.
“Bad timing, lovebirds?”
Serefina snorted and pushed away from me. We were back in the real world, surrounded by the hum and throb of the Fforde Machine.
“Perfect timing,” I said.
The director didn’t bother asking for details. He’d get them in the mission report. Instead, he simply held out his hand. “The plans?”
Serefina removed her brooch and handed it over. “All there. The complete technical blueprints of the Nautilus.”
“Well done.”
“Will they even work here?” I asked. A lot of Fictional tech didn’t work in the Real.
The director shrugged. “Not our concern. We’ll turn the plans over to the client and let them find out.”
He turned away and Serefina’s guards descended upon her, to escort her back to her cell.
“When’s the next job?” she asked.
“Soon,” said the director. “We’ve got a client interested in the cannon from La Voyage Dans La Lune.”
Serefina grinned. “I’ll have to brush up on my French.”
She looked so happy, I didn’t have the heart to tell her the film had been inspired by more of Verne’s works.
by submission | May 15, 2012 | Story |
Author : Ian Hill
“Fifteen minutes until departure.” came the monotone voice across the Metastation’s many speakers. Four figures walked along the dark main tunnel that stretched for miles in either direction, their phosphor flares illuminating only a small portion of the vast cylinder.
“Departure from what?” wondered one of the figures aloud. “We’re already in space…”
“Probably just a glitch in the programming. Nothing to worry about, Mills.” came the voice of a female.
“This place is amazing. What do you think, Davis?” said the apparent youngest of the group, Private Coulter.
The final figure, Lieutenant Davis, spoke up. “It’s nice, I guess.”
It was more than nice, in fact. The circular tunnel was impossibly large and bore many monorail tracks along its sides which were multi-tiered and housed scores of buildings. A wonder of modern engineering.
“The Keitl always go a bit… overboard.” said Corporal Mills, motioning at the immensity of it all with a gloved hand.
“Hey, Coulter, why do you thi-” began the female, but was cut off abruptly by the sharp report of a piece of metal falling to the floor.
The four soldiers dropped their flares and crouched with their backs to each other in a defensive posture, poising their rifles at the darkness.
“I thought you said no one else was here, Captain.” said Davis.
“I did.” replied the female Captain simply, lighting a new flare. Another blindingly white light erupted from her left hand and she tossed it with all her might to where the sound had come from. The beacon sailed in an arch and landed with a clatter dozens of yards from the group of soldiers, revealing nothing of interest.
“Ten minutes until departure.” came the voice again, making them all jump.
“Alright, we have to keep on moving. This place is decades old, some odd sounds are to be expected.” said the Captain, standing up from the formation shakily.
The four began to move again at a slightly faster pace towards their ultimate destination, the control room set into the side of the tunnel a few miles in front of them. After walking a few hundred more yards down the metal tube the metallic intercom came again.
“Five minutes until departure.”
“Okay, that’s really strange.” said Private Coulter, sweating visibly. “Why would someone set a looping audio clip of a count down on an abandoned Metastation?”
“Don’t ask me.” replied Mills in a bored tone.
Another sound came from behind the group, a metallic pounding.
“Yeah, there’s something in here.” said Davis calmly.
After a brief hesitation the Captain gave the order to light all the flares and set up a defensive line. The noise grew louder and was now intermingled with some electronic screeching.
“Three minutes until departure.”
The soldiers crouched again and clicked the safeties off of their rifles. “Are we cleared to fire, Captain?” asked Coulter.
“Whenever you see something, shoot it.” she replied with a nod.
The flares simmered and popped while the noises grew closer to the squad. A brief flash of metal caught the Captain’s attention and she fired a short burst from her weapon to ward off the creature.
“More over here!” shouted Davis, who was firing his weapon without pause.
Eventually all four of the soldiers were emptying magazine after magazine into the unseen crowd of beings pursuing them.
“One minute until departure.” came the intercom again, but no one heard it said over the sounds of weapons fire.
One after another the flares burned themselves out, leaving the four in complete darkness with the unidentified attackers.
The Captain was sure that her squad was gone now, afraid and cold she attempted to control her breathing. Directly to her left a queer synthesized voice spoke quite clearly. “Thank you for flying with the Keitl. Have a nice day.”
