by submission | May 9, 2012 | Story |
Author : Alla Hoffman
Derrick woke up to the sensation of his lungs running out of air. The pod was dark, but he could see a weak greenish light filtering through the glass. He pounded on the lid frantically; something must have gone wrong with the cryo system. Maybe the power had gone. It was startling how much it hurt, like needles pushing through his lungs. It seemed halfway to forever, but eventually there was a crack and someone’s fingers appeared, prising up the lid. Derrick tried to help, startled by how weak and dizzy he felt. He’d never defrosted this rough before. The air tasted delicious, the light hurt his eyes, and as he collapsed gasping over the edge he took a moment to enjoy it.
He was in a windowless metal room and for some reason his pod was dripping wet beneath his fingertips. It was crowded and someone was kneeling in front of him. “Can you hear me?”
Derrick nodded and tried to reply, but his lungs weren’t done sucking down air. As his eyes focused better, he saw a pale, serious face resolve above a military uniform. He didn’t recognize the insignia. He tried again. “Where am I?” He pushed himself up, felt his legs nearly buckle. “I wasn’t supposed to serve another tour. They told me they’d thaw me when it was over.”
“You’re onboard The Waker.” The officer was frowning. “We found you while scouting in zone B6.” Upon seeing Derrick’s blank look, he added, “Spain.”
Derrick looked at him for a moment, searching for the joke, and laughed even when he didn’t find one. “What are you talking about? What’s to scout?”
The men wallpapering the room exchanged glances.
“Not another one,” someone murmured.
The officer in front of him didn’t answer, instead asking, “Where are you from?”
He stepped out of the pod, holding onto the edge for support. “Doesn’t the accent give it away? Tennessee.” Silence. “America?” Another exchange of glances.
He searched their faces for recognition. “Did something happen? Is the war—” He cut himself off. Maybe he’d been captured. Or drafted again.
The officer sighed, and took a moment to reply. “Why don’t we continue this conversation in sickbay.”
Derrick nodded tightly. He needed some help walking; something must have gone wrong with cryo. Maybe they shelled the city. All the halls were enclosed—he realized he must be on a ship of some kind. It was big enough that he couldn’t feel its movement.
They wound down a series of corridors until they reached an infirmary. He didn’t recognize half the equipment, and the other half looked out of date.
“Please, take a seat.” The officer who had escorted him, probably the captain, stepped back and fell into parade rest as a medic came forward to take his pulse.
The medic raised an eyebrow at the sluggish beat of his heart and twisted to face the captain. “Sir, did we find him in the old city? The odds of finding more remnants were supposed to be slim.”
“Old city?” Derrick felt his throat tighten, and the captain winced.
“There…was an event. Quite some time ago. Sea level has risen since then.”
He realized he was shuddering. “Sea-level? How long has it been?”
The captain looked down, and Derrick was already getting sick of the way no one wanted to meet his eyes. “We don’t know when you were last awake. But no one has called this area Spain for at least two hundred years.”
by Julian Miles | May 8, 2012 | Story |
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
Whales have long been creatures that inspire awe in humans. When we discovered them out here, that mystery only deepened. At what far distant point, and how, did a star-roving behemoth come to dwell in the oceans of Earth? The xenologists used the Latin word for star to name the new family group, from which the common name, Astruma, came easily.
I’ve been herding these monstrosities for a decade and even now, they fascinate me, take my breath away and make me feel so small. My ship, the ketch ‘Fairtrade’, is an old tub, lumbering her thirty metres about on long-obsolete gravitic cores and having to hitch a ride on transluminal haulers to get between herds. The lads in the new cutters, all dash and sleek and barely fifteen metres long, ridicule me at every opportunity until a herd needs gentling or a bull gets surly. Then Petey Mendez and his rustbucket get to be real popular.
Like now.
I don’t know which wag christened the bull of the Epsilon herd ‘Moby’, but he gave that damn great beast a heritage it seems to be determined to live up to. Like my granpappy said: “Name things with care, for names bestow as well as limit.” Today the one hundred and sixty-seven metres and Lord-knows-what tonnage of Moby has stove in two cutters and cracked a relay station. He’s royally peeved at something and no-one wants to go out and play.
“He’s coming round the asteroid, Petey. Must be doing nigh-on eighty knots.”
I do the conversion in my head while wishing herdsman usage of Earth nautical terms would cease. Astruma use a chronophasic ability to move. It seems rude to measure something about transposing time and space in yocto-increments in such an archaic way.
Oh well, time for the Mendez secret weapon. I cue the audio and let it play. The dichotomy of using such tranquil beauty in the face of such incredible danger is just so Zen. I close my eyes and let the song take me away.
I paid a fortune for this recording. Captured in the depths of the Mariana Trench, the song of a thirty-two metre female blue whale lasts for a couple of hours. I have a hundred kilowatts of antique valve speakers rigged between the inner and outer hulls. The outer hull of all ketches is high-ferric alloy; they were the last of the deep space ironsides before ceramics, laminates and sleight fields redefined shipbuilding.
I lie peacefully meditating in the biggest man made amplifier ever to grace the void as Moby eases his charge and heaves-to alongside. Before the hour is out, I have the entire three hundred plus herd hanging motionless about me, all exactly aligned to my ships’ bearing and all completely tranquil.
As the recording finishes, I open my eyes to see a single ebon eye the diameter of a cutter regarding me through the cockpit veiwports. In that moment, we share something that surpasses all fumbling communication attempts. I see the intelligence behind his eye and he sees whatever he sees in the tiny creature in the metal tube that makes noises that reach so far into both our ancestral memories.
Homo Sapiens and Mysticeti Astrum stare at each other for a minute or two more, then he blinks and moves off. I watch his glistening hide stutter by.
Ahab would have understood, although I doubt he would have sympathised.
by Stephen R. Smith | May 7, 2012 | Story |
Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer
Drax left the party early, as he often did, dragging two beautiful young things into his elevator and up to his sprawling office to ‘admire the view’, occupying as it did the entire top floor.
Heels came off outside the elevator, dresses somewhere between the roll up garage doors that opened onto the observation deck and the hottub where the rest of their clothes disappeared.
Drax smiled. His empire afforded him such luxuries, and as he watched the girls sink into the tub amidst the rainbow cycle of the spa lights and the thunder of high pressure water, he didn’t try to remember their names, or what drugs they’d been fed once he’d picked them out. Someone would clean them up in the morning and they’d no longer be his concern.
He poured himself a sambuca from the bar and wandered outside.
“Are you going to wear that suit in the tub sugar?” The blonde one spoke around the brunette’s head, nibbling an earlobe and eyeing him coyly.
“It’s Italian, and custom, so no, sugar, I’m not.” His tone was brusque, but her wide pupilled eyes didn’t waver.
From his jacket pocket, a rhythmic vibrating attracted his hand by reflex, and he barely had time to curse before the phone was at his ear.
“This had better be good,” his tone icy, “I’m busy.”
From the speaker there was only digital gibberish, broken by the occasional unintelligible syllable.
Drax walked away from the noise of the tub and out in the open air of the rooftop, hoping for a better signal, but the call went dead. He stood staring at the word ‘unknown’ on the display, half expecting it to ring again when motion in the sky caught his attention.
There were several blocks between his building and any others nearby, but something had just crossed between the two in front of him. A moment later a bird streaked past beside him, wings fully extended and climbing at an impressive rate as it circled behind him and out of sight.
“Baby, we’re thirsty,” the voice distracted him, and as he turned he lost his footing and stumbled, putting one hand on the ground to catch his fall as four feet of matte carbon fiber wings ripped through the air where his head had been, then gone so quickly he’d wondered if it hadn’t been a hallucination.
Staggering to his feet, he whirled in circles, trying to find the attacker in the night sky, the downcast deck lighting creating large blind spots that left him blinking.
There was a sudden rushing of air, and the bird attacked from behind again, one set of talons dug deep into his shoulder as the bird flapped madly trying to lift him off the ground, but as powerful as it was, he outweighed it two hundred pounds to twenty, and shrieking he swung his free arm at the creature until it let go and soared back into the darkness.
Bleeding, he staggered towards the open door.
There was a throaty rush and bright flare as the bird used powered thrust to gain altitude. The attack itself was silent. The bird swept back its wings, balled its talons into fists and thrust them out before its body as it dove, striking Drax in his mid back at nearly three hundred kilometers an hour, instantly crushing his spine.
His mouth opened in a silent scream, all the air having been driven from his body as he was forced to the ground, his legs useless.
Behind him the bird flapped its wings in slow, sweeping rhythm, hovering in an ungainly fashion, glass eyes irising in and out, watching. It then gripped him by his unfeeling ankles, dragged him sobbing and scrabbling across the rooftop to the nearest parapet and hauled his flailing body over the edge.
Man and bird fell together for a few moments in a macabre lovers’ embrace, before the bird disengaged, spread its wings and rode the thermals back into the night sky.
Drax was no longer a concern, someone would clean him up in the morning.
by submission | May 6, 2012 | Story |
Author : Jeri Otero
She’s so beautiful. Just lying there with her eyes closed. All that long black hair, still in its long curls even after last night. Lashes like feather dusters, lying against her skin. She has those slightly turned up eyes that are almost Asian. Strong cheekbones that look almost Native American. Full lips. But not too full. Her skin is that beautiful golden tan that no tanning booth could copy. She’s lying on her stomach. She has an athlete’s body long, and lean, and toned. She’s so perfect. Long thin fingers on beautiful hands. Pianist fingers with short nails. “You can’t play piano with long nails,” she’s always telling me. Today they are bright purple. She does love color. Almost as much as music. She has such tiny feet. And couldn’t you just write a sonnet to those calves? How can she be so perfect? She says she was just made that way. I suppose so. I look at her and, sometimes, I wonder which one of us is real. We both breathe, our hearts pump, our hair grows. We each worry in our own way. We make love like wild things. All needing. Taking. Giving. I just have to bless technology. Thank those geeky gods. I wish I could just look at her for days. Of course I can’t. Who could? I’ll just slide slowly off the bed so as not to wake her. It’s so hard sometimes, but I have to turn off and plug in.
by submission | May 5, 2012 | Story |
Author : JD Kennedy
The bridge of Earth’s first colony ship, Columbia, was a beehive of activity. The newly awakened ship’s officers were carefully reviewing the system readings at each of their stations. Captain James Branson sat in his chair admiring the efficiency of his crew. They were all relying on their training while they worked through the fog from a century of cold sleep. It seemed like just yesterday when they left lunar orbit. The ship’s automated systems had taken them to within a week of mankind’s first direct encounter with a planet around a distant star.
Aboard the ship was a very precious cargo – 250 carefully selected men and women that would establish the first human colony on an extra-solar world. Other than the ship’s bridge crew, they were still in cold sleep. Once the ship entered orbit around New Terra, they would be awakened in a preset order based on their role in establishing the new colony. Awaking them all at once aboard the cramped ship would put a strain on the ship’s resources since a landing site has to be prepared before the big ship could safely land to unload the considerable supplies they brought with them.
As the crew settled into their routines and the fog slowly began to diminish, excitement began to grow. The historical significance of what they would soon do was not lost on a single crewman. They would be immortalized by all of humanity as the ones who started Man’s expansion in the universe.
All of those thoughts were suddenly interrupted by an unexpected voice hailing them on the radio channel intended for communications between Columbia and her landing craft. The comms officer, Lt. Keller, had been running through her system checks and had the circuit patched to the bridge speaker instead of her headset when the call came in.
“Columbia, this is New Terra. Please respond.”
All activity stopped as each crewman stared in disbelief at the speaker above the viewscreen.
Several minutes passed before the hail was repeated. This time Captain Branson nodded to Lt. Keller. She hesitated a moment before responding.
“This is Columbia. Um, please identify yourself.”
“This is New Terra. Is Captain Branson there?”
“This is Captain Branson. Am I to understand that you are hailing us from New Terra? Please explain.”
“Yes, sir. We are an advance team on New Terra. You see, 40 years after you left, we discovered the secret to faster-than-light travel. It took many more years to build a manned ship capable of safely reaching here. Sir, it took us just over a year to make the same journey that took you a hundred years to make. A dozen of us have been here for several months preparing for your arrival, but FTL ships cannot yet carry the amount of material you could. I think you will be pleased with our preparations. You will be able to land Columbia just a few days after you achieve orbit.”
Captain Branson sat in silence for a few moments before responding.
“Very well. Needless to say, this is a bit of a shock for us. By the way, what is your name?”
“I’m Captain James Branson. The fourth. Sir, I am your great grandson. I am looking forward to meeting you when you land.”
