by submission | Dec 23, 2007 | Story
Author : Matthew Green
There were rumors of course, most were squashed, but on a ship full of soldiers with nothing to do but watch the stars go by, rumors happened. It was like getting cleaning detail, no use trying to prevent it, just grab a space suit and scrub.
The most prevalent was that the war was over a year ago and the ship was just squashing various rebellious factions that hadn’t got the news. Higher-ups didn’t let the lower-downs know this because that would result in a drop in efficiency. All very scientifically tested and all that. People spreading these rumors brought forth facts such as how little equipped the pockets of rebels were and how each trip between hold outs took longer to get to. Most were wiped out and the rest were getting harder to find. That explained the lack of any form of action for several months now.
Another, more frightening rumor was that they had miscalculated when the ship had sling-shot around that black hole. Somehow we were slung into the far reaches of… somewhere and didn’t know where home was. That one scared me the most. As a maintenance tech, I was privy to the storage holds of the ship, and I knew we only had enough food in stock to last six months at most. The commander told us that mail transmissions had been turned off so the enemy couldn’t triangulate our position. That was four months ago and by now everybody knew the truth; burst transmissions couldn’t be tracked that way. The rumor mill liked to churn that one out during the late shift. I used to like working at ship’s night. Some people complained about having to step outside and brush off the antenna arrays and scrub out the various vents and sensor assemblies, but I enjoyed it. It got me out and moving, and I liked the view. Well, I used to like the view, now I just wanted to live under a sky again.
I heard another voice that I recognized. “Hello Roy,†he greeted.
I was on cleaning detail, again, and turned toward the suit that was approaching. He waved one gloved hand at me as I stared into his gold visor. Suits didn’t display the occupant’s rank like normal uniforms did.
“Dave?â€
“That’s me, me matey.†He said in his pirate voice.
“Damn man, they said you were dead.â€
“That was the rumor.â€
I turned back; the brush I had been using had drifted to the end of its tether. I retrieved it with a practiced move and resumed brushing dust off the antennas. They coated easily out here in the nothing.
“Don’t bother, at our speed it’ll be years before we’re close enough to use that.â€
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by submission | Dec 22, 2007 | Story
Author : Debbie Mac Rory
Dear John,
How are you? Such a stupid way to start a letter like this. You’ll probably never get it anyway, and even if you do I’ll never know your answer. But I hope you’re well. I just wanted to say I’m sorry. You were right. But I don’t think I would have made any other decision.
I know when you first met me, sitting at the space port, staring up at the sculptures of shinning metal and watching the scurrying of their army of workers as the next flight was prepared, that you thought it was a kind of fascination on my part, a poor planet bound creature held enraptured by the shining towers. You thought that if you offered me some small part of the stars, a part of you, strange and exotic and alien with the memory of a thousand stars seen from the bridge of your ship, that I could be happy, and you could keep me with you.
And for a while I was content, truly I was. We would lie in the rose-gold dusk of day-start, as Filha’s pale light faded and Mãe began to rise. I would lie with my head on your chest, listening to the beat of your heart, and the echoing chamber of your chest, and hear words as you would have spoken them on your own world, before they reached your lips to become words for my ears.
But for every story you spoke, for every star in my sky that you pointed too, and told me of the peoples who lived there, the ships that passed by, I wanted, I needed to see them for myself. I listened to your cautions of time warps and life spans; how my race wasn’t equipped for the rigours of travel. But you could never understand what it was like for me, what it was truly like to be condemned to a planet bound existence and watch the lines the great silver ships traced across the sky. You offered me visions and remembrances of visited worlds; but the ships offered me the stars themselves.
So I’m writing this letter to say, you were right. The stasis is harder on my body than any other member of the crew, and when I was woken for this phase, I didn’t recognise the person looking back at me. My once flame coloured hair has turned grey, my face is lined. I still pass as fit for the helm but I know now I won’t make it to step out onto the next port.
But on my phase, when I’m alone on deck, I’d adjust the filters and watch as pinpoints of light streaked past. I capture images of distant nebulae and far reaching galaxies to gaze over when I’m in my cabin. I won’t reach them, but I’ve gotten to see them all. And it was so worth it.
Love, Calice
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by submission | Dec 21, 2007 | Story
Author : Pyai (Megan Hoffman)
Anton set the hypernav coords to just beyond the rim of debris.
“Aren’t we cutting it a bit close, Captain?” a thick gravelly voice came from behind him. Silverlo, whose face was a mess of scars, wrinkles and facial hair, frowned at him.
“That’s the point. The closer to the wreckage the better we are hidden. I want us in and out with minimal detection.”
“They’ll detect us hitting the hull of one of the derelicts…” his co-pilot muttered beside him. But Siverlo would do as Anton said. That was why he was still his co-pilot after 15 years, one war, two divorces and an alcohol shortage.
The hypernav kicked in and Anton closed his eyes. Watching the view window made him nauseous. Space sickness, they called it. He should be used to it by now. Towards the end the small ship made the usual rumblings it did as it was slowing, and with a loud POP in his ears they dropped into normal space again.
Anton opened his eyes in time to see a large scrap derelict hurtling at them. Or more appropriate, they were hurtling at. Silverlo let lose a string curses as he jammed hard on the control panel. One moment they were rushing towards the debris growing larger in the view window, and the next they were out of its path. Anton forced his muscles to relax. Yeah, that was another reason why Silverlo was still his co-pilot.
He could feel Silverlo’s glare on his back, but ignored him. His gaze was fixed on the small tugship coming out to them.
“T6703 to Unidentified Spacecraft. Identify yourself,” crackled the communication over the wire.
Anton smiled. “Negative. Not until you come through our lower hatch.”
There was silence. The hull resounded when the tugship latched onto the lower hatch door. Anton was there when they opened the hatch in the floor, and when Sergeant Ames stepped up.
And then Anton smiled, extended his hand. “Sarge, you made it.”
The other man shook his head. “Risky move, Anton. I couldn’t believe you hypernavved to inside the rim.” There was respect in his voice.
“No other way. Did you bring the supplies?”
Sarge nodded. “How is Mother doing?”
“Fine. Sarah’s kids are always over at her place. Jyn and I visit when we can, but it’s always a mad house.”
While he had been talking, Anton lowered a cable down the hatch and someone below in the other ship attached a large crate to it and tugged on the rope. One came up, and attached below it were three others.
Anton’s eyes opened wider in question. Sarge shrugged. “News that the rebellion still exists has filtered in. Somehow we ended up with more donations this month than ever before. Our biggest donor this time was the United Newfoundland Orchestra.”
Anton chuckled. “Since when did we stop being pirates and start being rebels again?”
The other man just smiled.
Two minutes later the tugship was firing “warning shots” across their hull, as they hypernavved away.
What no one had told them was that it was refueling day on Citrix, and the cargo lanes were longer than ever. So the coords that they usually hypernavved to were currently occupied by the hydrogen tanker UBX771. Anton still had his eyes closed as they hit the hull of the tanker. The ship exploded into metal bits, and the crates burst open. A halo of violas, bows and flutes floated outward, and they say it rained cellos on Citrix for a week.
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by submission | Dec 16, 2007 | Story
Author : Chris McCormick
The finest moment of my whole life was when I stepped off that ship. When we finally found each other in the arrivals lounge, her utterly uncomplicated joy was mirrored by my own. Two friends since forever, separated by years of space travel. There was no shyness whatsoever in our extra long hug. All the years of missing, yearning, and desire for each other’s company poured out as we clutched eachother tightly. Our sweet embrace loosened and we paused just a moment, smiling wildly, looking into each other’s sparkly eyes. This led without any awkwardness to a kiss, which lasted longer than a kiss between friends should have. We pulled apart and laughed, still holding each other at arms length; the laugh the first sign that we knew we had crossed a line.
In that moment, free of any emotional baggage we managed to express what we hadn’t been able to for so many years at the same pod, imbibing information together, sharing ideas, and having adventures. I had always had other girlfriends, and she had always been busy with her applied nanotech studies. Eventually she’d got her degree and then all of a sudden she was leaving to the colonies in a matter of days, without any kind of warning. Of course we had both known that the day was coming when she’d eventually have to leave. That was the only smart career move.
When that day came we both felt a confusing hole that hadn’t been filled. Something between us was left undone. Those last few days were bitter sweet moments; we wanted to spend the time together having fun, but of course neither of us felt the least bit like having fun. “This is it,” we thought together with teenage melodrama, “this is the end of our friendship.” I cried so damn hard when she left.
I don’t want to talk about the days that followed my arrival at the colonies because it hurts too much. Suffice it to say that neither of us knew or understood the status of our relationship now. It lurched awkwardly between friendship and relationship and the dark hounds of paranoia and insecurity were lurking in the shadows ready to tear it to shreds. We tried to fix it with sex, but the afterglow from all those years of pent up sexual tension only lasted two days. That was probably the stupidest thing we could have done, but also inevitable.
So we sat on the wall watching the pretty lights dance in the distance eerily. All of space hung above us, it’s lonely, alien magnitude so poignant for us now. “It’s amazing,” she said in a numb voice, staring into the distance, “I can change the fabric of matter with a small piece of technology and the power of my mind. I can create any object I want. But I can’t fix us.” The frustrated way she emphasised the word “us” told me we were both stuck in the same head place. All the technology in the modern worlds couldn’t help two breaking hearts.
“Well,” I said, taking a risk, “we could always try to fix it by fucking again.”
Luckily we both giggled, and there it was; the spark of our friendship was still alive right there in that giggle. We looked at eachother, smiling softly, the eerie lights dancing on our faces. She reached across, and we held hands.
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by submission | Dec 15, 2007 | Story
Author : James Smith
Nothing but killers. They came screaming soundlessly out of the Oort and Mercury Station was gone. My wife swallowed a handful of pills when the remains of Venus fell across the Moon.
The Dyson sphere lays empty, reconfigured into an enormous laser. I remain behind. I am the firebreak between them and our fleeing caravan. I began the power-up this morning, and four years behind me the sun will soon strike the lens now moving into position. The light will cohere and lance through my relays to the diamond core of Jupiter, naked and polished for the purpose. Jupiter’s Lightning will strike some fifteen lightyears out, punch through their sun and cause a cascade effect, ending in a supernova. Before their world is consumed, seas will boil, and the very air will catch fire. Perhaps the man who ordered that first attack will watch his own wife burst into flames and, if he is a man, may be given to regret.
I have not had a body in 145 years, but my sensors register the throb and hum of this station. I am reviewing a video of my wife. I’m wondering why, at the last, she felt the need to first grow a body. So many centuries and we still don’t trust our senses, no matter how superior to the initial five.
The cameras float everywhere, of course, and calling up the file was easy. I watch my wife uncap a bottle with three-day-old hands, an action she hadn’t performed in almost two hundred years, on an object no one’s used for a hundred. I cross-reference with file footage from a family picnic. Yes, she re-grew the body she had when we first uploaded– aged, liver-spotted, sagged and broken. She killed herself striving for a kind of pride we haven’t had need of in a century.
Once Jupiter’s Lightning fires, it will be another sixty years before the light of their exploding star reaches me. Their homeworld will be ash while I still run this station, and for good measure I will once more pump the remains of lonely old Sol into deep space, long after the threat has passed.
I look at my wife on the slab, and superimpose her on top of the picnic footage. Her corpse lays along the blanket where our food is placed. I am not in the picture; I am holding the camera. She and our children appear to reach into her flesh and pull out plates piled high with food.
Across the chasm of centuries, over the expanse of her own dead body, my wife smiles at me. I miss her. I miss the electronic susurrous of the sum of human knowledge, underpinning reality. Somewhere in the depths of me, I ask myself if I will accept handshake from the second relay. Without accepting, the beam will reach Jupiter too dissolute to make the final, murderous journey out of the solar system. I deny handshake and power down. Come and get us.
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