by Julian Miles | Mar 20, 2012 | Story |
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
Life shouldn’t be this easy to take. Flick a switch and listen to the muted swoosh of a section spitting its atmosphere into vacuum. Of course, it’s not so easy for those losing it. The agonies of the dying beat against my mind and reduce me to retching spasms.
Two days ago I returned to the Eden Range to find we had been taken over. I do not know which of the twenty-five thousand colonists was the mule, but the Klansaard Wyrm is difficult to detect when it has wrapped itself around the spine and ossified its redundant body. The colonists would have been unaware of the creeping horde that the single host liberated into the ducts. Thankfully the Klansaard need living hosts, otherwise I’d have to pilot the ship into a sun to ensure the infestation was destroyed.
Hosts are distinguishable by a very upright posture and a marked aversion to retinal scanners. They don’t know about the primary marker. Any psionic in contact with a host will ‘hear’ an ‘echo’ on the thoughts of the host, where the Klansaard is controlling its puppet with so much subtlety that the host is rarely aware until the paralysis sets in.
“Danny! Danny! Don’t do this, we can get you help!”
That’s Captain Amelia Thurrock. She was my lover and encouraged me to get formal training for my mental abilities. It seems so wrong that her encouragement is the thing that means I have to kill her and she will never know why.
As soon as I came onboard, I felt the echoes within all around me. I clambered out of my travel gear but kept my biosheath on, preventing any entry for baby wyrms. Then I made my way to one of the emergency stations that all ships have since the Infestation of Apella a century ago. I have the command codes and after authorising myself and sealing the station, I contacted the Second Fleet cruiser that had brought me here for advice. The conversation that followed was wracked with sobs and crying on both sides, but in the end, there were only going to be deaths. We cannot afford to take chances.
Except for me, who is guaranteed clean but will be quarantined for six months anyway, no-one on the Eden Range can be permitted to live. At least my prompt action has saved the ship from destruction. The thing I will never forgive myself for is having to do this section by section. The death agonies of the whole ship at once would turn me into a vegetable.
Recovered at last, I straighten up and flick the next switch as my tears rain down.
by Stephen R. Smith | Mar 19, 2012 | Story |
Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer
The detective stood just inside the tape at the doorway to Grant’s office and surveyed the carnage.
Deep maroon fluid had been spattered over most surfaces, some of it obviously while still under pressure as it had reached the ceiling several meters above his head from which it now dripped from the elaborate tin relief.
A medieval suit of armor lay scattered about, the pole axe formerly adorning it now buried deep in the hardwood of the floor.
On one side of the blade lay two dark colored hands severed none too neatly at the wrists. On the other side stood the burnt remains of the Senator’s desk, recently extinguished and still smoking. Partially embedded in the smoldering furniture an incinerated corpse lay in repose, unnaturally shortened arms outstretched.
“Not much left of the Andy is there?” Detective Sykes shook a chemical cigarette from a pack, thumbed the igniter and sucked it noisily alight.
“Carter, you lift an ID off the inhibitor?” Sykes blew almost colorless exhaust into the air as he waited for the forensics agent to respond.
“Yep. One of Grant’s domestic units. Serial’s only a partial, but it matches the prints and there’s plenty of tracer in all the Andy juice to corroborate,” he waved around. “I’ll write it up. No human donors to the crime scene, so unless the Senator wants to shake the insurance company down for the cleanup and a new desk, I’d say we’re pretty much done here.”
Sykes turned his back on the room and addressed the figure lurking in the shadows of the hallway behind him.
“Senator, I think it might be best if you cleaned this up privately.” He took a long drag on his cigarette and continued. “This makes three of your Andy’s we’ve found diced up this year. Now another dead Andy doesn’t matter much to me, but if those equal rights bleeding hearts get wind of this…”, he left the thought hanging.
“We’ll clean this up internally detective, your concern is duly noted.” The Senator’s voice dripped with derision. “Once you’re satisfied no real crime has occurred here, my staff can get to work.”
Sykes chuckled, “Bit morbid don’t you think, having your Andy’s clean up what’s left of one of their own?”
Grant rolled his eyes, “Please, detective, it’s not like they actually feel anything, the bloody things barely think.”
“Still, Senator, someone got in here and did this. We’ve seen other cases besides yours, all Andy’s, so you might not be worried but it is a serial offender we’re looking for. If you know anything, or think of anything,” Sykes produced a card from his breast pocket and passed it to the Senator, who accepted it with apparent disinterest.
“I’ll be sure to let you know detective.” Turning he spoke over his shoulder as he walked away, “Let yourself out, will you?”
—
Levi turned off the paved road onto little more than a dirt lane between the trees, slowing as he guided the old hauler towards the farmhouse near the river and parked in the barn behind.
Closing the outside doors first, he returned to open the trunk and smiled at the worried face staring up at him.
“Come out Doris, you’re safe now.” He helped the still shaking android from the trunk, careful not to disturb the caps on her neatly severed wrists.
“First thing we’ll do is get you some hands grafted back on.” He pulled two empty fluid bladders from the trunk, then his portable transfusion unit and carried them to the workbench that filled one side of the room.
Doris followed him, blinking as the dim sodium lights were eclipsed by brighter halogen work-lights. Levi turned to face her, reaching out to probe gingerly at the cut at the side of her neck. Doris flinched at the raised hand, but stood her ground.
“That bypass should seal up nicely in a few days.” Turning back to his bench he continued, “With the inhibitor gone there won’t be any trouble getting you over the border. I’ve got friends up there that will find you a place to stay.”
Levi looked through the collection of hands floating in jars as he talked, looking for a good match.
“Couple of days, Doris, and you’ll be home free.”
Doris hugged herself with her truncated limbs, watching Levi.
“Free,” was all she said. “Free.”
by submission | Mar 18, 2012 | Story |
Author : Kyle Hubbard
Humans are remarkably ugly.
The kylhu child had never seen a real one before, so it stared with morbid fascination at the man on the stage. The human marched back and forth on two legs, bellowing and waving his bizarre limbs in grand, sweeping gestures. He was speaking a local kylhu dialect, but not very well; he did not meet the right vocal pitches, he paused frequently to suck in air, and his body language was all wrong.
“Come see aliens from all over galaxy!” he was shouting. The surrounding kylhu seemed confused and a little afraid as the human made his speech. The kylhu race rarely saw anything from off-world, as most space travelers felt that Kylh’on had little to offer them. It was a dry, desolate planet with harsh weather that spanned most of the solar rotation. The carnival had arrived on an optimal cycle, but it was unclear what they hoped to trade for the entertainment they provided.
The child began to wander the fair, marveling at the sights. Various alien life forms were on display inside metal cages, glass tanks, and fenced pens. As much as the child wanted to take its time looking at them, the carnival would be leaving soon, so it had to be quick if it was going to see them all.
Scurrying from display to display, the child stumbled blindly into the leg of a large creature. It looked up and up until it recognized the alien as the human it saw earlier.
“Greetings, young one,” the man said in the same barely-coherent kylhu dialect he used before. “You like fair?”
Nervous, the child said nothing.
“You like candy?” the human continued, though the final word was unfamiliar. He reached down and presented a pink, fluffy substance. “Cotton candy,” said the human in a language the child did not understand. “Human food. Try.”
Curious, the child took a small piece of the fluff and tasted it. The flavor was very strong, which the child disliked at first, yet it found itself ingesting a little more. Before long it was eagerly consuming the stuff, unable to stop itself. The child felt ill, yet it kept eating and eating until the pink fluff lost its color, and the world faded to black.
–
“You awake yet?”
It took the child a few moments to recognize the noises as words, but it could not decipher what they meant. Its vision returned slowly, and it let out a sickly gurgle, feeling queasy and disoriented.
“‘Bout time,” said the voice. The kylhu child peered around its surroundings and found itself trapped inside a metal cage. Everything nearby was grey and shiny, unlike the familiar orange sands of Kylh’on.
A figure approached the cage, causing the child to back into a corner. It recognized the figure at once: the human from the carnival.
“Have a nice nap, kiddo?” said the man, but the child did not understand him. The human crouched down and tapped lightly on a metal bar. “Sorry about this,” he said. “Your kind don’t have much in the way of currency. None we can use in the colonies, anyhow. But you… You’re something special. The colonies are just itching for a new display, and I think you’re it. You’re gonna put us on the map again, little guy.”
The young kylhu shrunk even further into the corner, its little body quivering. It wanted to go back home. It didn’t like this place.
The human exhaled and rose to his full height. “Buck up there, champ,” he said. “You’re in show business, now.”
by submission | Mar 17, 2012 | Story |
Author : Thomas Desrochers
I found her on my way home from a party. She was sitting in the middle of the park’s square in the four shadows of the four streetlights, and she was hugging her knees to her chest as if her life depended on it while her head was tucked in behind it. Her hair was short, dirty like her face and the nightgown that seemed to be all she was wearing.
She was pretty.
I sat down three feet in front of her, legs crossed. It was a little chilly out, and a storm was moving in, kicking up leaves and dust before it.
“You’re going to get cold,” I said. “Would you like my coat?”
She made a noise like a whimper and hugged her knees tighter. She whispered something, but it was lost in the wind.
I leaned forward. “What was that?”
“I have to stay in the center.”
I looked around. The city rose up all around us, towering over the trees. On each corner of the park was one of the four towers – two hundred stories each of pristine carbon, steel, and silicon and home to four million people a piece. She was sitting exactly in the middle of all four, at the center of sixteen million lives.
“Why?”
“Because I don’t want to be alone any more. I’m surrounding myself with people.”
I felt something catch in my throat. It’s so easy to be left behind and forgotten these days. I was like her once, sometimes I still am. There are some things that drugs can’t cure. I hadn’t imagined the tattoo on her wrist that marked her as broken, that read ‘Schz5-105014.’
At some point people stopped trying to even pretend to care about the schizophrenics, the manic-depressives and psychotic depressives, the hallucinators and day-time dreamers and the happily mad men and women of the world. Bag them, tag them, drug them, and if they cause trouble, neutralize them. That was the way society dealt with them any more. Cures are for the healthy, after all. Homelessness and poverty was easy to fix, but other problems? Too much work.
I hugged my knees to my chest, rested my chin on them, mirroring her. “It’s bad right now, isn’t it.”
She nodded her head, an almost imperceptible movement in the half-dark.
I wanted to tell her she wasn’t alone any more, I wanted to tell her that I would help her through this and help her through life and, if she wanted, through death. I wanted to hold her and run my fingers through her hair and whisper to her that everything would be alright.
I ran my hand over the rough scar on my wrist where I had burned my mark off and melted the electronic tag. MD5-103331. Manic-Depressive, fifth order. Most severe. Dangerous.
I couldn’t tell her that she wasn’t alone, I couldn’t help her or hold her or whisper in her ear. She was dangerous, like me, like all of us. She would draw attention, have me found out. I would be evicted back to one of the homes, I would lose my job and my friends. I just couldn’t do it. I stood up and left her sitting there in the middle of nothing, fat drops of rain beginning to fall like so many empty tears.
I saw in the news reports that they found her body after the storm, wet and cold and limp and empty.
They burned it with the rest of the ones that always turn up after bad weather.
by Patricia Stewart | Mar 16, 2012 | Story |
Author : Patricia Stewart, Staff Writer
The Judge yawned as he seated himself at the bench. “What are we doing here, Mike?” he asked the bailiff.
“Your Honor, we are hearing the civil case of ‘Captain Taylor versus Solar System Transportation, Inc.’, a dispute over wages due for a cargo run from Earth Station Tango to Alpha Centauri base.”
“Fine,” replied the Judge as he turned to address the plaintiff. “What’s your claim, son?”
“Your Honor, I left Earth in 2248. It was SST’s first interstellar commercial payload, and because of the hardships, they agreed to pay me a bonus of 100,000 credits per year. I returned eleven years later, in 2259. Therefore, they owe me an extra 1,100,000 credits.”
“Sounds straightforward,” noted the Judge. “So,” he continued as he addressed the defendant, “why haven’t you paid the man?”
“Simple relativity, Your Honor. Due to time dilation during the 0.95c portion of the trip, Captain Taylor only aged three years. Therefore, we are only obligated to pay him an extra 300,000 credits.”
Damn, thought the Judge to himself, time dilation makes my head ache. Why can’t these lawyers foresee these types of issues and make provisions up front. All this ambiguity was begging for litigation. “Okay,” he lamented, “let me see the contract. Court is adjourned until this time tomorrow.”
The following day, the Judge resumed his position at the bench. Without preamble, he announced, “I find for the plaintiff. However, the award will not be 1.1 million credits. It seems that in section 102, paragraph 22, the contract stipulated the adherence to the Space Transportation Act of 2203. Apparently, it’s one of the older Acts written to protect non-union pilots from disreputable transportation companies. It states that pilots must be compensated 60 credits per shift hour, or 0.2 credits per Earth diameter traveled, whichever is higher. Therefore, at the hourly rate, the six month, or 1244 shift hours, round trip to Titan would pay 74,640 credits. On the other hand, based on the distance traveled rate, the 1.486 billion miles round trip would pay only 37,480 credits. For decades, the hourly rate was the only one that mattered, since the spaceships of the era traveled so slowly. However, when star ships were developed, no one at SST thought about updating the terms of their standard contract.” The Judge grinned as he looked the CEO of Solar System Transportation, Inc. and his panel of high paid attorneys. “You see where this is going, I suppose?”
The CEO became pale and his eyes rolled upward as he fainted, toppling over his chair.
“Ah, I see you do,” remarked the Judge with a smile. “At the rate of 0.2 credits per Earth diameter traveled, I rule for the plaintiff the sum of 1.32 billion credits for the 52.5 trillion mile round trip to Alpha Centauri. ”
