by Stephen R. Smith | Oct 9, 2014 | Story |
Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer
I found Gaze at the Drake right where I expected him to be; in the furthest corner from the entrance in a booth which no doubt had the cleanest sight-lines in the club. Between the wire-head and I lounged a crowd of slack-jawed men and barely dressed entertainers; dockers and soldiers at the end of their ropes in sharp contrast to the paid and pampered flesh workers at the start of their shift.
Gaze had already sized me up before I sat down, and kept his eyes on the door as he spoke.
“You’re lucky you’re on time, but your interfaces are leaking like shit.” He strummed his fingers noiselessly on the tabletop. “We’ve only got a few minutes to get you out of here before your tail figures out where you’ve gone, I suggest you start by shutting all of your shit down.”
Gaze and I had saved each other’s lives many times, I trusted him. I dialed all my electrics to zero and suddenly felt more naked and exposed than any of the club’s dancing girls, denied the steady hum of incoming data from the room and the world around me.
“I’m assuming you want your kit patched up and upgraded? Is that what this is about?” Gaze locked onto me briefly, his eyes blinking furiously as he maintained multiple simultaneous interfaces, mine no doubt the lowest resolution. “I’ve been following your trail all around the city, you’re too easy a man to find.”
His hands stopped strumming suddenly, and I could see him visibly tense up.
“Whatever happens, you stay dark until I patch this shitshow you’re wired with. You light up and I’m gone in a heartbeat, nothing personal, just survival.” He almost smiled. “And I make the calls, you follow the orders this time, clear?”
I nodded.
“Ladies and gentlemen, put your hands together for Mayhem on the center stage,” the voice boomed through the smoky room as an ultra low frequency bass-line started worming its way into my head. “Mayhem, for your enjoyment.”
As the announcer’s voice trailed off, and the heavy industrial dance track gained volume, all of the girls in the club collected their things and moved en masse to the back, some amidst protests from patrons who felt they hadn’t gotten their money’s worth yet.
Gaze focused on the door across the room, and I turned to see what had caught his attention as two figures in urban assault garb walked into the club.
“The Drake has been actively running blocker for you since you got here.” I turned, and he caught my raised eyebrow with a smile, “I upgraded its wetware when I started coming here. I like the girls, some of them are raising families, it’s the least I could do to keep them from attracting the wrong kind of attention.”
The men at the door started moving slowly into the room, the patrons already on edge with the heavy beat from the speakers and the notable absence of the main attraction. Smoke machines pumped thick white clouds along the main stage, the heavy vapour rolling off the edges and pooling on the floor. Black lights threw white t-shirts, teeth and sneakers into stark relief in the building darkness.
“There’s a fire exit beside this booth, and we’ll be going through the door and down the stairs when it starts.” Gaze’s eyelids were a constant flicker, giving him an eerie strobe light visage in the low light.
“When what starts?” I didn’t have to wait for an answer.
Gaze spread the virus like fire, every interface in the room was an open door to him, and the smouldering coals of frustration were ripe for the sudden injection of adrenaline and cortisol the codebyte demanded, followed by a series of images designed to provoke a negative response to figures of authority.
When one of the intruders bumped a sailor in the middle of the room, the match was struck.
As the space erupted with yells, swinging fists and flying chairs, Gaze simply got up and moved to the exit. I followed without a sound.
Making our way down the back stairs, I couldn’t help but ask. “What do you call that?”
Gaze didn’t break stride, and said simply “Sometimes your flavour of brute force and ignorance is called for, I just delegate.” A few steps later he looked back and smiled. “I call it Mayhem, I thought you would have figured that out.”
by submission | Oct 8, 2014 | Story |
Author : Roger Dale Trexler
We dropped out of warp near the wreckage. Navigator Needham did a fine job and I intended to recommend him for a commendation—if we came back from the assignment.
I walked to the view screen and looked out. Ahead of us, less than a parsec away, I saw the wreckage of the HEINLEIN. Whatever attacked it had destroyed it completely. I tried not to notice the frozen bodies.
“What kind of animals could do this?” asked First Officer Rancin.
I turned. “Scans?” I asked.
Officer Moreland looked at the console in front of him. He punched a few buttons, and then shook his head. “Nothing in the immediate vicinity,” he said. “We’re alone.”
Alone? I thought as I looked out at the devastation. Not likely. I reran the events of the past few months in my brain. We had moved deeper and deeper into uncharted space looking for habitable planets and resources we could mine. A survey shipped had gone missing in the region, and the HEINLEIN was sent out to investigate. I remember their final comm message well. They were under attack by a bizarre ship that seemed to be able to morph shapes. The HEINLEIN’s captain, Jared Landrom, was an old space academy friend. We had talked over subspace the day before the attack, Landrom giddy as a school girl with excitement over the prospect of making first contact with a new race. “It’s history, Dave,” he said excitedly. “Think of it! First contact!”
I told him to be careful. A survey ship was missing, after all.
Landrom scoffed it off and told me I was a pessimist. “The glass is half full, buddy,” he said over subspace. “And the drink is called ‘infamy’.”
It was the last thing he would ever tell me.
A shudder ran through me as I realized one of the frozen bodies floating out there in the void of space was his.
“Sir?” Moreland said.
“I….I’m picking up something.”
Another shudder ran through me. “What is it?”
“A…a probe of some type.” He looked at the view screen. On his console, he spread his fingers over the image and the view screen enhanced the image.
It was a small, tubular object.
“Scan it,” I said.
Moreland did as instructed. “It appears to be a communication device of some type,” he said. “It’s emitting a signal.”
“A signal?”
Moreland nodded. “Yes sir. A signal. I’m running it through the translator now.”
I turned back to the view screen. Two ships gone. I had no doubt that the survey ship had suffered the same fate as the HEINLEIN, but for what reason? They had come to this region of space not as warriors, but as explorers. There was no purpose in their deaths.
Then, my thoughts turned to Antaris Prime, a planet we had discovered a light year or so away. An advanced race of creatures had lived there; but, almost overnight, they were wiped out. Their records told of a race of aliens they called the Kyllians who had come to their planet and demanded they leave. They did not, and they had died.
What evil creatures would commit genocide? I wondered.
Once again, I thought about Landrom’s body, dead and frozen, floating through the void of space.
Why?
“Sir?” Moreland said.
I jumped, startled. “Yes?”
“I…um….the, uh, translator has translated the message.”
“And?”
Moreland was visibly shaken. “It’s two words, sir. Just two words, repeated over and over again.”
“And what are those words?” I asked.
Moreland leaned back in his seat.
“Go away,” he said. “It says ‘go away’.”
by submission | Oct 5, 2014 | Story |
Author : Leslie Bohem
Kevin, in his early thirties, upwardly mobile, does not look like he belongs in this dank alley. He started coming down about six months ago. At first, maybe once every couple of weeks, then once a week, then every couple of days. Now, he comes every day. He comes for the dreams.
You get so you need it. All the time. So you can’t do without the input.
Kevin stops in front of a door. Dirty titanium. Used to be the entrance to a warehouse, back in the day. Now it’s lofts down here. Lofts and empty space where the server farms used to be back in the day. Kevin waits with strung out impatience. Time drips. And then the sounds of deadbolts being thrown and Clive opens the door. Clive is maybe sixty. His hair is long and greasy. “Anyone follow you down?” he asks.
Clive has let him in now, looking up and down the alley first. Now he shuts the door behind them. Throws both the deadbolts.
There are maybe a dozen mattresses on the floor. Maybe that many people crashed out on the mattresses. Kevin doesn’t really see them. Clive and these others, they were like Kevin once. They had jobs up top. Offices with windows and sunshine. All the perks. Kevin imagines that’s was the next step. Give all that up, come down here on a more permanent basis. No reason he could think of not to. He had enough money set aside. He could “retire.”
Clive takes a seat at an old kitchen table. Kevin takes the chair across from him. He slides an envelope over to Clive. Clive takes it.
“You sure no one saw you come down?”
“I’m careful.”
“Everbody’s careful,” Clive says, taking the envelope. “The DPs are cracking down on this whole sector. I may have to close up. Move.”
“Where would you go?”
“There’s always a place,” Clive says with a shrug. “There are always people in need.” He takes a moment, in his head. “I remember,” he says, “when this shit was legal.”
“Must have been nice.”
“You never thought about it. Just something everyone did. Every once in a while, you’d tell someone about it, you had a particularly wild night. That was it.”
“They say they outlawed it; it was something they found out by accident. Is that true?”
“They were doing some research, crowd control. An anti-terrorism thing. Seems people who didn’t do it were more docile, less likely to rock the boat. Once they knew they could do that to people, it was only a matter of time. They found a way to stop it.” “He looks at Kevin. “You ready.”
Kevin nods. Clive slips him what looks like a tricked out iPod and a set of headphones. Then a sleep mask.
“I can never get over how simple this is.” Kevin says.
“They’ve created an electro/magnetic fence, that’s all. A sort of barbed wire between the id and the super/ego. This just cancels their signal. Allows you to go where you were meant to go.”
“I never asked you. What were you, before you got into this?”
“Psychiatrist,” Clive says.
“You came up with this in your spare time?”
“I thought it was important.” He nods to the mask in Kevin’s hands. “You’d better get started. I can get you off if you like.”
Kevin nods and moves over to one of the mattresses. He lies down, puts the phones on. He looks over at Clive. Clive smiles at him. Kevin pulls the mask over his eyes.
He started coming down about six months ago. Now, he comes every day. You get so you need it. All the time. So you can’t do without the input.
Clive looks down at Kevin, lying there on the mattress. He reaches out and flips a switch on the iPod-like devise. He smiles a little sadly and then he says, “Pleasant dreams.”
by submission | Oct 2, 2014 | Story |
Author : Bob Newbell
“Your hot coffee, sir,” says the Inteeri waiter as he places the beverage on the table in front of me.
“Thanks. Here’s–” The short alien that looks vaguely like an anthropomorphic armadillo shuffles away before I can offer him a tip. At no time while serving me does he make eye contact. That was out of respect. And fear. I’m nobody important. Just a struggling writer. My waiter probably has more money in the bank than I have. But in his eyes — all six of them — it doesn’t matter. I’m a member of the galaxy’s most terrifying species. I’m human.
My old man was part of the delegation that made first contact with the Inteeri. The aliens weren’t sure if mankind posed a threat to them so their top military officials were tasked with the initial assessment of the human race. On a space station orbiting Inteer Secundum, my dad and the other human ambassadors met with the alien generals and admirals. One of the human delegates had a slight cold. He sneezed once during the meeting. An hour later the entire Inteeri High Command were dead. The earthly rhinovirus proved instantly lethal. With their military command gutted, the Inteeri political leaders unconditionally surrendered to Earth despite the reassurances of a distraught and horrified humanity that the Inteeri deaths were an unintended tragedy.
Someone or something jostles me as it moves past. Some of my coffee spills onto the table. I turn in my chair to come face to face with a rather surly looking Kordann. The creature’s eyestalks quickly withdraw from a beligerent extension to a submissive retraction as its leathery skin turns blue with fear.
“Ten thousand pardons, master,” the Kordann says through its translation device as it glides away on six tentacles, bowing in apology.
Humans made contact with the Kordann ten years after the disastrous Inteeri encounter. Again, the Biomedical Assessment Team determined there was little danger of contagion between the species. Nonetheless, the Earth delegates wore environment suits as a precaution. As the human ambassador walked up with his hand extended to the Kordann prime minister, he tripped. The Earthman’s hand struck the Kordann leader’s trachea, killing the latter. The details of this event bore a more than passing resemblance to a passage in the Kordann Book of Scripture prophesying a visitor from the heavens who would kill a Kordann ruler and establish a monarchy on their world. The religious-minded Kordann quickly submitted.
And so it would go for Mankind’s emmisaries to the stars. The Scottish brogue of Earth’s ambassador to the Relvet would result in “We come in peace and brotherhood” being mistranslated as “Surrender and serve, or die.” In the wake of the fall of both Inteer Secundum and Kordanna, the Relvet surrendered.
On Basura VII, the representative from Earth accidentally knocked over his water glass short-circuiting the computer that managed the Basuran Stock Exchange. A crippling recession and humble request that Basura VII be admitted to the growing Terran Empire followed. The Supreme Monarch of Juppnoi, finding himself trapped on a conference table by the barking Maltese dog of the Earth diplomat, abdicated the throne and turned the Juppnoi Kingdom over to Terran control.
Humanity now dominates much of the Orion Arm of the Milky Way galaxy. But we’ve turned over all further first contact and diplomatic missions to our extraterrestrial vassal states. A population of 50 billion subjects, none of whom we wanted, is more than enough.
by Julian Miles | Oct 1, 2014 | Story |
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
The terrain is ideal for them, and they will take every advantage of the variegated cover: tiered platforms that scatter this little roomscape. Plus they have the advantage of looking like the indigenes. It is a good thing that I was tasked to interdict this zone. No other unit could handle this without resorting to terrain-ruining ordnance.
From the lampshade I spot movement. This gives the assembly nearest the target a bearing. No movement yet. Nothing to betray my presence. I have a potential target. Now for the thing I share with every soldier throughout history – the wait for the battle to commence.
My deployment of an overlook assembly is a strategic advantage that few of our kind have mastered. They cannot yet understand; I cannot understand why they do not. I can see the whole zone. Three distributed layers allow me to go from initial spotting to tactical view without movement. Nothing to warn hyperaware opponents.
The concept of dynamic assemblies is also foreign to my kind. Restructuring myself according to the dictates of terrain, opponent and opportunity. It is simple for me. I presume that is why I am moved so often, being assign to zones where my unique skillset bestows an insurmountable advantage.
The movement resolves itself into a scatter of arachnid hatchlings. I focus down to individual units, devolving the assembly that holds the contact zone into pairs assigned to each hatchling. Not long now.
Far to the left rear flank, an atypical movement: A hatchling flicks its rearmost right leg up and over to scratch behind its rightmost eye. That is not an arachnid move. It is a telltale of a covert drone. In a synaesthesic conflict, operators of drones that have more than two visual inputs experience a phantom ear-itch. So far it is incurable, cannot be trained out, and the movement to ‘scratch’ it is unconscious.
I flag that false arachnid and resume my waiting. There is never only one drone. They are suspicious and fear my kind, so they come in numbers. Within three minutes, I have acquired seven further targets.
A surprise sighting on the coving: eight arachnids moving in a single column along the ridges made by the decorative scrollwork. I am impressed. Apart from the giveaway formation, using the ceiling is something they had been remiss in adopting. It seems that their technology has finally proven artificial gecko traction pads, something I have had since awakening.
Another minute to confirm that every other moving thing in this zone is natural, then I assign kill flights to the portions of assemblies behind each target. With a flex of my will, the hammer falls: inanimate fixtures spread sixty-four pairs of wings and stoop down upon them where they struggle. The nanopolymer sprayed from the miniscule tangle rounds shot by tiny underarm grenade launchers, using the slack space in the forearm exoskeleton. The muzzles are still emitting ephemeral wisps of smoke as they swing up to support the claws in the classic poise.
This lounge is mine. I am Mantid Swarm 35, and I will be the standard for the next generation of my kind. Over a thousand bodies allow me to include specialisations such as grenade-launching and functional wings without degrading my tactical effectiveness. From formicid drones to human troops, I have never met a problem that I could not kill.
