by submission | Jan 28, 2014 | Story |
Author : Willis Weatherford
Weighty darkness pushed in on the edges of the cavern, craving admittance to the subterranean council meeting. Eight faces made ominous by three weeks of beard growth stared across the glowrods at one another. Blued gun barrels, gripped tightly, glinted softly, and the steady flow of an installed stream gurgled up from a crack in the floor, like the last bloody breaths of a dying animal. They were the Remnant.
“Chronos, how long until sunrise at our entrance point?”, inquired Achilles with a quick glance at the timekeeper. Chronos had been an executive before the Excavation and Descent, and owned the only working watch. His detail oriented mind was also adept at estimating the two times that still mattered: sunset and sunrise.
“Five minutes until the sun first touches the horizon.” They had quickly discovered – all of them – that the Excavators could still function in the pre-dawn sunrise glow. Only direct light sent them lumbering underground.
“Good.” Achilles rubbed his heel, injured in a past foray. He had chosen his “Nom de Bellum”, as they called their new names, for just that reason. One of the first things they had done after the Excavation was cut out the subdermal IDNodes and change their names. Both had been crimes against the State before the Excavators emerged. Now, there was no State to enforce the Universal Identification Act of 2063, and any connection to the DataBase was a death sentance.
“We top out in one minute, arrive at the target at 0 past sunrise, extract Citizens 11 and 12 within two minutes, reboard as soon as possible, and hopefully return by 8 past sunrise.” Everyone seated around the glowrods was familiar with this routine by now. Everyone except citizens 7 and 8, now renamed Guns and Bolts, had been on at least one or two successful rescue missions. Guns and Bolts had been on only one, a failed attempt to extract citizens 9 and 10. They had been Guns’ friends. He glowered in the monochrome light, eyes sunken and red.
“Remember,” Achilles said with a new weight in his voice, “more than two is not an option. Gravity will not allow it. Only 11 and 12, nobody else. Ok. Let’s move out.”
Eight pairs of boots stomped through the grey dust towards the surface. At the hatch, they donned tanks, and regulators, and headlamps. The hatch opened, the cold rushed in, and they walked out onto the dark surface. A few miles away, they could see the familiar band of sunlight right where it always was, highlighted on the circular rims of craters. A few steps brought them to the only remaining functional vessel: StateProbe 21. They clambered inside, buckled in, and blasted off towards the earth. As they hurtled through space, Chronos could see the Moon quickly diminishing behind them from one window, and the earth quickly growing in another. They were headed straight for the line between terrestrial day and night, light and darkness. Then he caught Achilles’ eye. The old man, once a maintenance worker at a city park, gave a grim smile, and gave a familiar speech:
“Rescue Mission 5 is underway. May we bring new souls from the terror of light into the safety of darkness. May each man count it a glory to blow even one Excavator off the surface of our planet. May our return add a few more to the the Remnant.”
by submission | Jan 27, 2014 | Story |
Author : Liz Shannon Miller
When she opens her eyes, she expects…
Well.
She doesn’t expect to be in space.
At first she’s floating, adrift, the starlight from far away galaxies flickering into her view as she waves her fingers across the void.
She fell asleep so normally. Well, abnormal for her, because it actually meant sleep. Real sleep, head on the pillow before 3 AM, not worried about the heart palpitations she’d experienced a few weeks before. Not worried about the hundred problems that haunted her, the other hundred things that she used to distract herself from those problems.
As she’d fallen asleep in her bed, for a rare moment, she’d felt peace, escape from the mental disorders and medications she used.
And now, she was here.
It takes her a while to wonder if she’s naked, but when she decides to check, she discovers she’s not. She can’t really focus, though, on what she wears — at one moment, it’s red and black spandex, then baggy orange comfort, then black skintight leather. She shifts, in and out, echoing so many things she’s loved. So many things she hasn’t left behind.
It doesn’t surprise her that the prism through which she saw this experience was the science fiction she loved, because that prism was a prescription engrained into her glasses. But that was simply how she saw the world. The corrective features almost secondary.
Eventually, a framework coalesces around her. A ship. She’d never been the best driver, or maintainer of automobiles. But she pilots this ship like a pro as the cockpit comes together, as she finds herself gripping the wheel. She’s a fabulist, she knows that a spaceship wouldn’t drive like a car would. But she’s at the helm, and she’s ready to go.
Through the stars, she soars. She never expected to be in heaven.
But she is.
by submission | Jan 18, 2014 | Story |
Author : Bob Newbell
The Landreb fleet didn’t travel across space. It simply appeared suddenly and without warning in low Earth orbit. One of the fifty starships fired an energy beam that obliterated an uninhabited islet in the Dodecanese Island chain mere moments after the vessels appeared in orbit. Less than a minute later, the following message was heard in dozens of languages on every radio and television frequency:
“Leaders of Earth, we are the Landreb. We are prepared to lay waste to the entire surface of your planet. Your only chance to avoid this fate is for the heads of state of the countries comprising the United Nations Security Council to meet with our representative at the United Nations building in New York City in precisely 72 Earth hours.”
I was part of the Secret Service detail assigned to the President. The Landreb representative entered the room on four stubby limbs. Its head towered two yards above its body. Think of a giraffe whose legs had been swapped with those of a German Shepard; that was this thing’s rough outline. It shambled across the room in an ungainly encounter suit. It seemed weighed down by Earth’s gravity. There were no introductions or other pleasantries.
“We,” the thing said in what sounded like English but was somehow being simultaneously spoken in the native languages of each of the world leaders, “are at war with a species we call the Soontet. The rivalry between our race and theirs is old and deep and there can be no peace until one side or the other is annihilated. Your world holds the key to the survival and victory of the Landreb race.
“Deny us what we demand, and your world will be destroyed. Comply, and we will give you technology it would take your species centuries to develop. For the survival of our civilization as well as your own, you will turn over to us this entire planet’s supply of Sanderson’s Old Fashioned Mustard.”
The dignitaries looked at each other with confusion. The President raised his hand and started to speak. The alien whirled on the American before he could utter a word.
“The yellow!” the Landreb insisted. “Not the spicy brown! Soontet physiology is resistant to the spicy brown mustard. And no competing brands! Our bioweapons researchers insist it must be Sanderson’s!” We had no choice but to capitulate.
And so the global economy shifted almost entirely to the production of Sanderson’s Old Fashioned Mustard. Sanderson Condiments, Inc. became the world’s most valuable company even as protesters picketed their factories and corporate offices, calling their executives and employees war criminals for being complicit in genocide.
After three years, the Landreb announced that the war was over. The weaponized hot dog and pretzel accompaniment had destroyed the Soontet. The Landreb kept their word about sharing their technology. Disease has been mostly eradicated. The planets of the solar system are now dotted with colonies that are on their way to becoming cities. We have journeyed outside the solar system. And we have encountered other intelligent species. Many regard humanity as a race of genocidal maniacs because of our role in the Soontet extinction. To others, we are a laughingstock, having become an interstellar civilization thanks to a third rate table condiment. And the pervasive sense of shame that has become the norm of human culture, the notion that one’s race is both monster and fool, has never diminished in the strange and morose years that have passed since we have made our way to the stars.
by Duncan Shields | Jan 17, 2014 | Story |
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer
Their blood was like a cross between egg nog and hollandaise sauce.
Their skin was like bacon jerky. Their internal organs tasted like pecan pie filling with veins of peppermint running through them. Their muscles tasted of tarragon and blueberries. When they died, a wave of acid coursed through their brains, turning it into a tangy orange slurry. Their bodies, obsidian licorice toeclaws to grape-flavored head crests, were delicious.
Appearance-wise, they looked like rooster-faced cactus lobsters with too many white eyes and huge octopuses growing out of their backs.
With so many appendages, they had no right side up. They walked on claws or snaked along on tentacles as they deemed necessary, head always rotated to look forward.
At night, their bioluminescence made them look like mutant Christmas trees. They couldn’t turn it off. Worst camouflage ever.
They looked like HR Giger had Lovecraft over for a drunk drawing contest and Tesla had lit it up.
They were only around five feet tall but they were fierce warriors with complicated weaponry and wildly intricate martial arts.
Their death rituals were strict. Bodies were buried in the ground, water, or space but they were not to be disturbed. They would awaken during a rapture-like moment far in the future, it was said, unless they’d been interfered with.
Well, we were locked in a contest of extinction because they were delicious. We were devils incarnate to them. Our side hardly had to supply us with rations. The enemy was like a buffet to us.
Imagine a stinky pinkish monkey that ate all your dead. Now imagine lots of them, snacking on your comrade’s brains and moaning with pleasure like it was dessert.
There was no room for diplomacy. It was a fight to the death.
And we were winning.
by submission | Jan 16, 2014 | Story |
Author : Ian Hill
“Please, I don’t want to be here. Just- just help.”
The voice was distorted and compressed, only decipherable after being ran through an extensive quality recover system.
“I need- I need to leave. I don’t want this.”
The message went on for about a minute, a minute of this pitiful man pleading for a savior from some obscure corner of the universe. The message itself had been effectively packaged and sent out, transmitted by some sort of long range device that was calibrated to fall in line with most modern equipment.
The first receivers, a contingent of far flung Keitl defense platform operators, decoded the message and listened in discomfort. They glanced back and forth at each other uneasily, wincing every time the reduced man issued forth a piercing wail. Once the eerie distress signal was over they all stood in silence around their small space station’s primary computer, internally deliberating on what to do.
Procedure was clear. Any border defense soldiers were told to remain at their postings no matter what kind of external stimuli they were faced with. However, this message chilled them to the core. It came from a largely empty area and was so genuine and charged with terror. Some of the Keitl wanted to know what was causing this trauma, others merely wanted an excuse to leave their selfsame environment for a brief respite.
Eventually, the group of eight decided to temporarily shift the platform to automated controls and set off toward the message’s point of origin via an emergency pod. They all gathered their sparse equipment that encompassed everything from mandatory side arms to single use white phosphor flares to clear-faced gasmasks.
Soon, the small crew had climbed aboard the cramped pod. The navigation officer input the message’s coordinates and the bullet-shaped chunk of reinforced metal shot out from its magnetic cradle, off into the void beyond. The journey was uncomfortable and jarring, but after only a few hours the impromptu ship ignited its reverse thrusters and automatically docked in one of the asteroid’s seemingly abandoned bays.
The Keitl soldiers crept out of their tiny vessel, firearms gripped tightly in their gloved hands. The asteroid base was decrepit and covered in a layer of frosty dust. Everything was cold, icy vapors issued up from the metal decking with every step forward. The utilitarian architecture was built around what appeared to be a natural cave that tunneled through the lumpy asteroid’s core.
As the crew slowly moved forward through the rusty maze of frozen metal they stuck to the shadows and made sure every room was clear before progressing. The Keitl were effective, naturally militant people that did things right the first time.
Before long they had reached the dead zone. All the lights were destroyed and the lack of life support was painfully apparent. The soldiers lit flares and tossed them forward at equal intervals, covering every dark corner with blinding white light. Making progress became exponentially slower, but they refused to split up.
After a few minutes one of the women of the group spoke up. A device at her side indicated that they were growing closer to the message’s point of origin. Systematically, they searched through all the surrounding rooms until they reached a large round area with a basin-like floor. The smooth decking was an inverted cone with a drain set in the middle of the concave point.
The eight peered around the eerie room as the woman with the beeping device strode around, listening intently to the pulsating chirp. Eventually, she came to stop at a single point.
“This is where it came from.” she said softly, bending down to peer at the iron shackles that were chained to the ground mere feet from her.
“There’s no one here, let’s uh- let’s go.” one of the soldiers said, turning to push open the heavy door that led out into the corridor beyond. It didn’t budge.
Predictably, the eight frantically searched for a way out. They kicked at the door, felt along the walls, but soon realized that they were stuck. Their heated conversation degraded into pleas for help, high pitched shouts that echoed throughout the abandoned asteroid station ominously.
Somewhere in the dark there was a soft clicking noise as another message was sent out into the void.
