by submission | Apr 18, 2012 | Story |
Author : Ian Hill, of 14
The crimson clothed hunter stood leaning against a large boulder smoking a cigar lazily, his pointed brown fedora angled towards the ground to ward off any unnecessary light. His outfit was a mismatched black and red military formal with large collars and buttons, it gave him quite a distinct look.
“Oi, there’s one.” came the soft voice of his partner, Alexander Flynn.
The hunter nodded slowly and brought his rusted metal and wooden rifle up. Quite an old bolt-action firearm, but he was proud of it. He had even named it the Norbrück. Peering at the sky he looked for what Alexander had indicated, and finally found it. A singular long squid-like entity floated loftily through clouds, looking around lazily with a single wide eye. It had a thin, almost invisible, chain anchoring it to the ground. These creatures were called the Avial by the locals, magnificent beasts said to keep the planet from falling into the vast void of nothingness known as space.
Shouldering his antiquated rifle the hunter peered through the slightly offset scope. “Probably a five, maybe even six hundred pounder.” he said quietly and did a quick mental calculation. “That would fetch around 10,000 credits with the Keitl.”
“By all means, shoot it.” said Alexander excitedly, looking at the squid in anticipation.
“I plan to, son.” replied the hunter evenly.
The Avial traced lazy circles in the sky ponderously, it was a wonder they even managed to stay afloat.
After a few seconds of steadying his rifle and controlling his breathing patterns the hunter let loose a single round. The bullet sailed through the air in a minor arch and eventually impacted the squid-like creature directly in the side, sending it spiraling out of control. The Avial folded in upon its self and careened towards the ground. After many seconds of falling the squid contacted the ground with a sickening thud, the two men surged towards it to claim their prize. Stepping over rocks and leaping across crevasses the hunter and his partner located the gelatinous body of the dead creature with its thin chain trailing off into the distance.
“Good shot.” said Alexander, crouching beside the Avial with wide eyes.
“Easy shot.” the hunter amended. “Get that thing compressed and packed up, I want to make it back to the Hinterlands before night to bag a couple of snow whales.”
With a brief nod Alexander set to work at storing and preserving the game.
The hunter cycled the bolt and chambered another round in his rifle, peering up at the sky which had grown ominously dark.
“How big do these things get, Alex?”
“I dunno. There were some stories from this planet’s mythology that spoke of some many miles wide.” he replied in a bored tone still working on the Avial.
A huge chain with impossibly vast links appeared on the horizon, spiraling up into space and eventually connecting to an enormous blue spear-like blotch which was descending quickly towards the surface.
“How much do you think that one would fetch on the Keitl market?” asked the hunter in a queer tone.
Alexander looked up slowly, searching for another of the squid. His eyes finally widened in understanding.
Soon enough the giant Avial blocked out the whole sky, extending long tendrils of electricity towards the hunter and his partner.
“I think I’m going to need a larger caliber.” said the hunter matter-of-factly.
by submission | Apr 17, 2012 | Story |
Author : Jason Frank
Breikf was heading back with a fresh beer and he looked over where they had the lead space man all trussed up so anybody wanted could get a kick in. Everybody got in a bunch, looked like. Breikf sure had, but just then something in the cool of the evening and the beers got him thinking. He set down by the space man.
“You understand me?” he asked.
“I do,” the space man said.
“You know this is all your fault, right? All this that just happened and all that that’s going to happen now is your fault.”
“I most assuredly do not know that. We simply came here_”
“We weren’t always this hard. It was you all made us this way.”
“We have had very little contact with your people.” the space man said.
“You know what a dog is, right? I’d call my pup on over to show you up close but he’d damn likely try to get his share of you.”
“We are familiar with your companion species.”
“That’s good, you being familiar and all. That helps me get this story across. See, my dad always said there was one sure way to turn a dog mean. You start with a free dog, one can go anywhere any time and do what it wants. You make that free dog a chained dog, twenty foot of chain. Make that twenty foot chained dog a fifteen foot chained dog. Make that fifteen foot chained dog a ten foot chained dog. Make that ten foot chained dog a five foot chained dog and that five foot chained dog’s a mean one, no doubt about it. Now see, what you all done, what you started on long before you came down here, was cut down and cut down how much we could get around. You blocked us off at the end of the old Milky and then pushed us back till we just had this solar system. And now you come on in here? That was a mistake. Didn’t work out too well for you, did it? You ain’t dealt with dogs as mean as us.”
The bound and bruised alien said nothing.
“And now you see over there, you see that big ship of yours, biggest we ever seen? See that taking off? Well we stuffed that ship wall to wall with the meanest dogs we got. Now they’re heading back to whatever kind of fleet you got out there with their distress signals all on blast. We’ll see what happens up there now. Dog will hunt.”
Breikf set a short spell but didn’t talk more. He finished up his beer and got up to get another. The captive didn’t talk either. He imagined the fleet’s reactions. It was likely that their plan would succeed. Little preparation had been done for situations like these. No standard responses to unreasonable barbarian advance had been formulated. He thought about this wild horde tearing out across the civilized systems he had loved so well. These images did what a hundred some steel toed boots couldn’t; the space man quivered with weeping.
by Clint Wilson | Apr 16, 2012 | Story |
Author : Clint Wilson, Staff Writer
Shore leave at last! Ensign Pull Crimson was wide-eyed as he made his way through the dirty bustling streets of Port Tidaria. Thousands of aliens, both humanoid and otherwise shaped, filed past the endless teahouses, massage parlors and juke joints.
A human hand reached for him out of the throng and a familiar voice cut through the alien dissonance. “Come on Crimson. You better keep up!” The seasoned spacer, Lt. Jaxon was right. The young ensign followed through the masses, feeling some jelly-like substance smear his pant leg. He knew his inexperience with the port and its inhabitants could land him in serious trouble if he didn’t watch himself.
But he continued to revel in the blessed freedom that three days off of that depressing gray tub brought to his worn out brain. All he wanted to do was find a safe environment, and party the night away, maybe strike up some friendly relations with a female spacer or two if he was lucky.
They broke out of the main throng and found themselves on a slightly less populated street. Jaxon pointed ahead. “Up there, about a kilometer, is a senior officer’s club.” He grinned. “I can sign you in as long as you promise to behave.”
“Sounds good Lieutenant, as long as they’ve got booze and broads I’m a happy guy.”
“No problem there kid.”
Suddenly Jaxon’s face went serious and he patted his belt buckle. “That son of a bitch!”
“Who?” asked the young ensign.
“That fat hunk of crap Tidarian customs officer back at the elevator. He never gave me back my ID chip!”
Crimson knew how serious this was. Without it Jaxon was flat broke, and neither of them would get into the officer’s club. “Oh man, we have no choice. But it’s such a long way back. And we’ll have to fight that crowd.”
Jaxon thought of the prospect of dragging the young ensign back through the sea of aliens again and then thought better. “Never mind. It’ll be quicker if I go alone. You go on ahead to the club. Get in line. Tell the doorman what happened and that I’m on my way.”
Pull Crimson looked up the long street, suddenly unsure.
Jaxon saw his expression and reassured him. Pointing he said, “See the gold skyscraper on the right? It’s on the first floor. You can’t miss it. Just go straight there and don’t talk to anyone along the way!” With that he turned and was quickly swallowed up in the crowd.
Crimson carried on warily. This seemed like the longest kilometer ever. Suddenly the crowd thinned considerably as the road dipped momentarily into a dark hollow of older looking ramshackle shops. And as he made his way past the open mouth of a steamy alleyway he heard a small voice.
“Please mister. Please help me, I’m so scared and lost.”
Crimson stopped and turned to see a little human girl, perhaps four or five, standing there crying in the shadows. Tears streaked her dirty cheeks. He looked up the street toward the gleaming gold building, then back the way he had come. No sign of Jaxon yet.
“Please mister,” she pleaded again, her lip quivering.
The Ensign’s heart melted and he stepped into the shadows. Bending down he rested his palms on his knees and raised his eyebrows. “Who are your parents sweetie?”
It took the shape shifter less than a second to open a huge mouth lined with rapier teeth. And there was hardly a muffled yelp as a sudden fountain of warm blood sprayed out into the street.
by submission | Apr 15, 2012 | Story |
Author : Bob Newbell
A thin cloud of red dust trailed behind Orton’s motorcycle. I’m running out of time, he thought to himself as he rode across Cydonia Mensae. The temperature was already down to -40 degrees Celsius and continued steadily dropping. The sun would be setting in less than an hour and it wouldn’t be safe to be outside after dark. Even after almost two decades of economic malaise, political disintegration, and finally open warfare, Orton had a hard time believing how seriously the situation on Mars had deteriorated.
It hadn’t always been that way. After the Nanotech Revolution of the twenty-eighties, space travel finally became cheap, fast, and safe, and while habitats in Earth orbit and on the surface of the Moon had their appeal, Mars was the true frontier. The cycle from flags and footprints missions to destination for wealthy adventurers to scientific outposts to genuine communities had progressed quickly, catalyzed by inexpensive and reliable space technology and the promise of a new beginning.
Orton slowed his motorcycle to a crawl and looked behind him. No sign of pursuit, he thought. A sensor sweep would have been much more accurate and comprehensive, of course. But a scan would have given his position away instantly. Even with the motorcycle’s stealth devices operating, it was a miracle he had eluded detection this long. He could just make out the dome in the distance. It would be so easy to simply upload the information he was carrying. It would be equally easy for any number of rival factions to intercept, decode, and quickly act on that information. He thumbed the accelerator and made for the dome.
A United Mars, he thought as he cruised across the rough terrain. That had been the dream. A global republic? A confederation of domed city-states? A true and literal democracy? It was strange how the past’s vision of the future seemed so unforgivably naive. As the sun descended deeper into the horizon, Orton noticed tiny flashes in the distance. In the thin Martian air, nearly microscopic machines were surveilling and, when opportunity presented itself, attacking. All the major factions had fleets of these innumerable, artificially intelligent drones. The flashes were drones being destroyed by a rival’s countermeasures. This microscopic, airborne war raged round the clock, as the tiny, flying robots fought, were destroyed, and were replaced minutes later by new models with revisions and upgrades based on their predecessors’ failure. It was this front in the vast, internecine conflict and not the engagements of men and their bulky vehicles and weapons, some argued, that would determine the outcome of the war.
Arriving at last, Orton piloted the motorcycle into the dome’s narrow airlock and breathed a sigh of relief. In ten minutes time, the data he carried would be scrutinized by military intelligence. Would it make any difference? Time would tell. The interior door of the airlock opened with a click. Orton stepped through. The atmosphere was only marginally different from that outside the dome. He took off his respirator and inhaled tenuous air into lungs engineered to extract oxygen directly from carbon dioxide. He withdrew the translucent, nictitating membrane from his eyes and hurried to deliver his report.
by Patricia Stewart | Apr 14, 2012 | Story |
Author : Patricia Stewart, Staff Writer
Shortly after 13:30 on 11 April 2112, the HMTS Temporal Voyager left Roches Point in Ireland. Its mission: to resolve some unanswered questions concerning the sinking of the RMS Titanic.
“Time flows like a river,” lectured Dr. Cassandra Simon to her lone passenger, Dexter Hollenbach, a reporter for London’s Daily Holograph. “You just can’t sit in the lab and say ‘I want to witness Abraham Lincoln’s assassination’. You have to set up the Temporalgraph within a few kilometers of Ford’s Theater. Even closer if you want to pick up audio. That’s why we need to start this temporal journey at Roches Point, it’s the last time that we knew the exact location of the Titanic.” The large monitor above the control panel showed an image of the Titanic weighing anchor on its way to the North Atlantic. “You see,” continued Simon, “despite the fact that there are 200 years separating us, if we can maintain identical spatial coordinates as the Titanic, the Temporalgraph can stay focused on her as she sails east. A sort of cat and mouse trek through time.”
“But you said we could hear conversations on the bridge,” noted Hollenbach. “That image is hundreds of meters above the funnels.”
“True,” conceded Simon. “That’s because navigation is being controlled by the computer, for now. It’s programmed to keep us close enough that we won’t lose the time-stream. When we get nearer the collision event, I’ll transfer navigation to my control so we can sync-up spatially. It takes intense concentration, so I don’t want to have to do it too long. Be patient Mister Hollenbach, you’ll get your story.
***
The chronometer read 23:25, 14 April 2112. “We’re ready, Mr. Hollenbach,” announced Simon. She reached across the navigation panel and pressed the manual override button. “Okay,” she said, “I have control. Now, let’s get onto the bridge.” As Simon simultaneously fine-tuned the navigation and temporalgraph controls, the image on the monitor zoomed downward past the forward funnel and penetrated into the bridge.
***
Captain Smith confronted his first officer, “Will, I say it’s too dangerous. Bring her to a complete stop. You can set the trans-Atlantic speed record next trip, when you’re in charge.”
“But Captain,” protested Murdoch, “the Titanic is unsinkable. Think of your reputation. The world is watching us.”
***
“Why is Murdoch pushing so hard?” asked Hollenbach.
“The 1912 Disaster Hearings discovered that Murdoch had bet 20,000 pounds that the Titanic would set the trans-Atlantic speed record on her maiden voyage,” replied Simon. “That was a fortune back then. But nobody thought he’d risk the safety of the ship over it.”
***
Captain Smith stood his ground. “I won’t risk the lives of…”
“Has old age softened you that much, Edward?” retorted Murdoch as he saw his life savings disappearing. “Or are you just a damn yellow bellied coward.”
“I am not a coward, and I won’t be mocked by the likes of you. I’m in command…”
“Save your excuses, Captain Smith. It’s probably better that King George knight me for bringing glory to the Kingdom, than some tired old man whose time has long passed.” Murdoch turned and left the bridge, shaking his head in disgust.
Captain Smith pondered Murdoch’s words for a minute, and then turned to his chief officer, “Full speed ahead, Mister Tingle.”
***
“That’s unbelievable,” said the astonished Simon. “Are all men that egotistical? Are they so wrapped up in their self-centered lives that they’re willing to risk…” Simon’s tirade was cut short when the HMTS Temporal Voyager slammed into an iceberg and sank within seconds.
