by submission | Mar 20, 2009 | Story
Author : Benjamin Fischer
“How do I feel about this?” Tavare said, repeating Arcand’s question. The hard-faced Spaniard frowned and didn’t immediately answer. Arcand was tempted to open his mouth again, but then Pack Instructor stopped that mistake.
“Arcand! Suit up, you damn mutt!”
Arcand barked his response and hefted his helmet. Squat, matte black and prominently featuring a beat-up pair of oversized wolf ears, Arcand and none of the other Cubs would merit factory-fresh armor until they passed this, the last of their exams.
He lowered the helm onto his shoulders. There was that jarring moment of pitch black, and then the suit’s systems blinked to life. Arcand’s heads-up view was restricted only at the very edges of his vision, where Tavare and the other two Cubs in the Pack lurked.
The tingling of the jacked-in nerves at the back of his neck told him his Mark XI was all up round–one hundred and fifty rounds in his right forearm, sixteen twenty millimeter grenades in his left.
“Cub Three up,” Arcand barked. Tavare was right behind him as Cub Four.
“Alright, mutts,” called the Pack Instructor, somewhere safe and in the rear, “I have one last piece of advice for you. Make it quick–no points for style or technique.”
Arcand mashed his heavy mauling claws together, nervous.
Pack Instructor paused, probably to sip from his ever-present mug.
“The coffee’s only getting colder. Range is red.”
With those words, the heavy blast doors swung open before Cub Pack Sixteen Dash Twenty. The blasted, raped remains of the New Manchester colony reared up before them–an O’Neil space colony that had seen better days but now was nothing better than a combat training ground. Once a verdant parkland, the innards of the long cylinder were a dusty, log-strewn clearcut dotted with hexagonal shipping containers serving as makeshift bunkers. What atmosphere was left was barely thirty percent Earth normal, and the station’s spin was so weak it resembled Luna’s gravity.
Sixteen Dash Twenty moved out in a ragged line, Arcand taking the extreme left flank. Cursory scans of the O’Neil’s interior revealed no signs of life, but Arcand still felt conspicuously naked. Loping along at a half-sprint, he hoped he could trust the pre-mission briefing’s promise of no snipers.
His ears pricked; Cub Two was engaging.
“Small arms, and a squad weapon,” Cub One reported.
Glowing icons of target detections popped up in Arcand’s vision. A running leap, and he was circling around the side of the hostiles.
“Cub Two is down,” said Cub One.
“Jesus,” swore Tavare.
Arcand had no time to comment. Scuttling over a tremendous deadfall, he landed face to face with a hostile armed with a rocket launcher. The man staggered back, just out of claw’s reach, but Arcand was already hosing him with his automatic. The hostile went down with a shriek, and something dinged off Arcand’s helmet. He reactively fired a grenade to his left and the air went pink.
Tavare had found trouble, by the cluster of red icons around a bullet-riddled Lunar Transport container. Cub One called in a medevac on Two, and Arcand readied both his weapons.
Suddenly a pair of small hostiles bolted from behind the container. Arcand fired on the lead, smashing him to the ground.
“No!” screamed the second hostile, who Arcand suddenly recognized as a woman. She dropped to her knees, clutching at the mangled man.
Arcand hesitated.
She looked up at the huge and brutal form of Cub Three. She started to say something but a flurry of high velocity rounds interrupted.
Tavare strode around the container, his forearms smoking.
Later, at Cub Two’s funeral, Arcand answered his own question.
“How do I feel?” he said, meeting his new brothers’ yellow eyes.
“I feel like a wolf.”
by Patricia Stewart | Mar 17, 2009 | Story
Author : Patricia Stewart, Staff Writer
Proteus is Neptune’s second largest moon. When unmanned probes were sent to explore Proteus in 2308, the radioactive decay of uranium-238 into thorium-230 revealed that the moon was not 4.6 billion years old as expected, but was less than 20,000 years old, making it the youngest astronomical body in the solar system. Consequently, GASA decided to send a manned science mission to Proteus in an attempt to understand its origin.
As the SS Verrier approached Neptune from the sunlit side, the majestic deep blue globe filled the foreground of the main viewscreen. Streaks of bright white clouds could be seen in the upper atmosphere rotating slowly around the planet. Well, perhaps “slowly” is the wrong adjective. The clouds only appeared to move slowly because of Neptune’s tremendous size. In reality, clocked at more that 1,000 miles per hour, Neptune has the fastest planetary winds in the solar system. They would be a Category 50 hurricane on an extrapolated Saffir-Simpson Scale. “Head toward Proteus, Mr. Gujarat, and set ‘er down,” instructed the captain. The helmsman dutifully entered the appropriate commands into the navigation console.
The Verrier skimmed above the irregular rocky surface of Proteus like a seagull effortlessly gliding above a choppy ocean. The helmsman selected the flat plains of the Challis Planitia, near Proteus’ North Pole. He oriented the bow of the Verrier toward Neptune and descended vertically toward the moon’s surface. When the landing pads touched down, the ship lost all power. The bridge became pitch black.
“What the…,” exclaimed the captain as the low intensity emergency lighting activated, giving the bridge a red hellish appearance. “Mr. Kelheim, what happened?”
“Unsure, Captain,” replied the Chief Engineer. “I’ll have to look at the main power grid.” He unbuckled himself and headed toward the equipment locker. “The backup batteries will provide life support for 48 hours. Hopefully, I can get the main power online before then.” With the captain assisting, they began to systematically work their way from the generators toward each of the ship’s primary stations. They replaced several overloaded power couplings and disconnected all nonessential systems. After four hours, they were ready to reset the circuit breakers. They all breathed a sigh of relief when the ship’s lighting came back on. They could hear the whine of the air circulation pumps as they ramped up to maximum. However, when the main viewscreen came online, the bridge lighting appeared to flicker rapidly. When they looked at the viewscreen, they could see Neptune rotating at an unbelievable speed. In the background, the sun was flashing like a strobe light as it was rapidly rising and setting as Proteus whipped around Neptune several times a second.
The helmsman turned toward the captain, “What’s going on, sir? Why is the universe going so fast?”
Realizing what was happening, the captain ordered, “Prepare for immediate take off. Get us off the surface, fast! The universe isn’t going faster, Mister Gujarat; we’re going slower. Apparently, there is an extreme time dilation effect on Proteus. That’s why the radioactive isotopes showed it to be so young. The flow of time has practically stopped here.”
Once in space, the Verrier returned to normal space-time. Neptune’s white clouds were again moving lazily across the upper atmosphere. The stars appeared motionless behind Neptune. “Contact Earth,” ordered the captain. “Find out how much time has elapsed.”
Even at the speed of light, it took the radio transmission four hours to reach Earth, and then four more hours for the answer to return. The year was 2395. The Verrier had been declared lost 85 years earlier.
by submission | Mar 15, 2009 | Story
Author : Adam Zabell
The Einsteins aren’t allowed to pilot the ships because they’ve all got some manic desire to fix the universe. Save Gandhi, kill Hitler, vote in Florida or Minnesota or Puerto Rico, stuff like that. There’s even one who wants to kill Lincoln. For the greater good, she says, which confuses me. But then, there’s a reason I’m a Pilot.
My dossier calls me “a creative but unoriginal thinker.” Plus, I take orders well. And I’m one of the favored pilots because I don’t mind the nightmares you get after skipping out of your place in time. For all their smarts, the Einsteins still can’t explain the nightmares. Hell, they can hardly explain how a ship stays in sync with the local geography. “The universe likes keeping her atoms where she left them,” is about the best I’ve heard when I manage to get them talking. Which isn’t often; the Socrateases don’t like us mixing.
The truth of the matter is that everybody has a Fix, even the Pilots. Why else would anybody volunteer for the Service? They know I read golden age sci-fi and they think my Fix is interstellar travel, so they won’t assign me to anything after 2500CE. I’ll never get to see Alpha Centauri, but that’s okay. Long as I keep my nose clean, they won’t dig deeper into my psyche, and it’s easy to be patient when you sail the timeline.
For six years I made sure that I stuck to script from injection to ejection, and that impeccable record means my handlers have gotten lazy. It also means I’ve gotten the flashiest of pre-space assignments: counter-assassination duty for Stalin. I spend a lot of time in the early-mid 1900CE, concentrating on the US and CCCP.
My contraband stays under the 200 gram tolerance and I stay unseen, or at least anonymous. Sure, my Fix doesn’t always work. I guess the authors who get my presents are at least as worried about paradox as the Socrateases who debate the missions. A lot of my trips to New York and Michigan during the 1930s don’t seem to have any effect. But I just left the 1975 serial “A Martian Named Smith” in 1958 Colorado. Checking my dossier, it says they won’t assign me to anything after 2200CE.
by Patricia Stewart | Mar 6, 2009 | Story
Author : Patricia Stewart, Staff Writer
Although born of desperation, it certainly seemed to be an ideal solution. Volcanologists had concluded that a devastating eruption of the Yellowstone Caldera would occur within ten years; fifteen at the most. To make matters worse, the seismological data, the spectrographic analyzes of the volcanic gasses, and the escalating pressures within of the magma chamber, all indicated that the inevitable supereruption would be Titanic, that’s with a capital “T.” In fact, it would likely rival the “Great Toba Event;” the largest volcanic eruption in the last 25 million years. It was predicted that hundreds of thousands would die in the immediate aftermath of the explosion. As catastrophic as that would be, it was insignificant compared to the loss of life that was predicted as a result of the volcanic winter caused by the trillions of cubic meters of tephra ejected into the atmosphere. The consensus opinion of the “experts” was that the Yellowstone Event would likely threaten the very existence of mankind. So, by now you’re probably wondering, dammit, what’s the ideal solution? Why, the Hephaestus Geothermic Siphon, of course.
Named for the Greek god of volcanoes, the Hephaestus Geothermic Siphon consisted of three major components:
• The massive Sigurðsson-Björk subterranean endothermic induction “vacuum” to remotely suck the heat energy from the magma chamber,
• A ring of Carnot enthalpy exchangers surrounding the caldera, and
• A gigantic array of microwave broadcast dishes to beam all of the heat energy into space.
Basically, it’s the steroid version of the system that’s been used by the Republic of Iceland to generate electricity since the mid twenty second century.
The construction of the Mega-Siphon was put into high gear as dozens of nations pitched in to help. However, because of the complexity of the project, the accelerated schedule, and the lack of adequate full scale experimental data, there were a few unforeseen operational “glitches” when the Siphon was powered up for the first time. Apparently, there was an overload in the Jónsson Alignment Compensators, which caused the endothermic vacuum inducers in Montana, Colorado, and Utah to change their focus angle. As a result, the Siphon ended up sucking heat from the Earth’s molten core, rather than from the caldera’s magma chamber. The excess heat energy then caused an uncontrolled chain reaction in the Helmholtz transfer regulators. Well, I guess I don’t have to tell you what that means. Any third grader knows that without the regulators controlling the rate of energy transfer, the Siphon goes berserk. With all the fused relays, it took over a month to shut the Siphon down. In the meantime, it sucked so much heat from the Earth’s molten core that it solidified. Now, you’re probably thinking “that’s bad,” and you’re right. The Earth needs a liquid metal core to sustain its magnetic field. Without a magnetic field, all kinds of vile charged particles from the sun and outer space can reach the surface of the Earth, and wreak havoc on a perfectly good planet, not to mention ruining your summertime vacation.
But fret not, my friends. I am told that our scientists are now working on a Celestial Angular Momentum Converter, which will bleed off orbital energy from the moon in order to remelt the Earth’s metallic core. Of course, as the moon looses angular momentum, it will begin to spiral downward toward the Earth. But again, no worries, because the scientists have assured us that they are pretty certain they can turn the Earth’s core liquid again long before the moon actually crashes into us. It certainly seems to be an ideal solution. Stay tuned.
by submission | Mar 5, 2009 | Story
Author : Todd Hammrich
The first thing to hit him upon waking was the metallic taste in his mouth. Every morning it was the same taste. It told him the machines inside his body had been working again; cleaning, scrubbing, scraping and sterilizing. It was the symbol of his life. Sterile.
He got out of bed and admired his physique. His body was muscled and smooth. He was the ideal image of man, someone’s ideal anyway. It amazed him how fluid-like his movements were as he strolled across the room. It was the machines again, always the machines. They had sculpted his body to look like this so he could do the work required of him. Their work.
“Good morning. The time is 8:05. It is time for breakfast. Your nutrition solution is awaiting you at the table.” The sound issued forth from hidden speakers all around the room and followed him as he went into the dining room. “Today’s schedule is full. You must work quickly to fulfill your quota.”
His nutritive solution tasted slightly bitter to him this morning. A clear sign his body was in need of some essential materials for the maintenance of the machines that scoured his body of all ailments. It occurred to him then that maybe they weren’t ingestible by humans, but he knew that none of the material would get through his body. The machines would undoubtedly absorb all the harmful material before it got through his stomach.
On a whim he decided to take the day off. “I don’t feel like working today computer. Please re-schedule today’s activities for another time.” His voice sounded like the rasping of tissue paper, not because anything was wrong with him, that would not have been permitted, but because he used it so rarely. He would go out walking he decided. It wasn’t necessary, he knew, but it brought him pleasure to see natural world outside his small habitation complex. He liked the thought that Mother Nature was reclaiming her world without the aid of any machinery.
“If you are certain. We will carry on tomorrow then. Do not go out of range of the transmitters. Enjoy your walk.” The computer knew him all too well. It had probably already known he would not be working that day anyway. He knew that it had when he found his hiking pack by the door already prepared.
The outside air was clean and lacked the bite of reprocessing chemicals permeating his enclosure. A perfect circle of plant life surrounded his dwelling, exactly 10 meters from the walls. Machines were very precise. His complex sat on a small hill overlooking a ruined city, the walls and streets of the ancient world decomposing at an accelerated rate because no one was there to stop them.
It was a strange thought that struck him then, a sadness that threatened to overwhelm him. “I am the last. The last of the human race.” It was so terrible that he knew he would not be able to bear it. Immediately he dashed across the open space and through the trees trying to get out of the receivers range so that the machines inside would lose power and he could die.
Before he made it even halfway there the machines released a wave of chemicals into his blood stream that calmed him. He stopped, forgetting what he was doing. After many long minutes striving to remember he made his way back to the enclosure and decided he would work after all. The computer made a silent tally: Attempt number 3650. The machines kept track of everything.
