by Julian Miles | Aug 31, 2012 | Story |
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
Space glittered as if strewn with crystals, millions of fragments ranging from a few kilos to hundreds of tonnes reflecting the distant sun. Colonel Defarris turned from the screens, right hand waving in frustration as the left raked his hair back.
“Stop me if I missed anything: Twenty centuries ago, the planet of Salarden was united under a single leader. He decided that the use of range weapons weakened a warrior’s resolve and instituted hideous penalties for owning anything capable of killing at a distance. That has resulted in an interstellar nation that considers any race using ranged weapons inferior.”
Captain Reonid nodded. “Correct.”
“That’s FUBAR.”
“Not really, sir. It’s just strange to us. Their culture hybridises the British chivalric model with the codified society of feudal Japan. The military caste call themselves Ledarnin. They are masters of a new form of interstellar combat.”
Defarris deadpanned: “Space-fu?”
Reonid smiled. “Stilettos.”
Defarris looked horrified. “Transvestite knights?”
“Not shoes; knives.”
“What?”
“The Ledarnin went into space and had to find a new way to melee without breaching what had become a racial psychosis. They started with forms of jousting, then as technology advanced, their ships became their lances.”
Defarris spun and pointed to the screens. “Are you telling me that space-knights charged the Sixth Battlegroup?”
Reonid sighed. “They call them Sunderlaw. Imagine two stiletto blades mounted at ninety degrees to each other. Where the crosspiece would be is the cockpit. The hilt is where the engines are. The ‘blade’ is made of an incredibly dense alloy and is a hundred metres long. The cockpit is housed within enormous armoured shock-damping mechanisms and the engines are immense. Their commanders each have ridiculous cityships called Bowcastles. Each one has a complement of pilots sworn to dedicated service. Wars are settled by chosen champions, fighting one-on-one. The duels take days or minutes, depending on who makes the first error. The skills required to impale a cockpit or disable a drive are precise. The ships of the Sixth Battlegroup were nothing more than slow targets to them. Our energy weapons are useless against the alloy of the Sunderlaws and our shields cannot cope with huge objects travelling that fast; in normal space, there is nothing faster than the mark eleven Sunderlaw.”
“We have armoured hulls!”
“Our definition of adequate armour will need revision. There is vidmon of a Sunderlaw going through the ‘Vanquisher’ bow to stern without slowing appreciably.”
Defarris choked out: “That’s a kilometre. Good god. We’ll have to stand off and bombard Salarden.”
“And only kill non combatants. Their entire military caste is based in Bowcastles and there are hundreds of them. The bigger ones are damn near the size of our Moon.”
Signalman Talloe ran on to the observation deck, message pad in hand.
“Sir! Flash from Earth!”
Defarris took the pad, keyed it and paled as he read out the opening paragraph: “The Bowcastle ‘Dawnheart’ has appeared and deployed two thousand Sunderlaw inside Mars’ orbit. The Lords of Dawnheart have informed Congress that they will perform a ‘Glory Strike’ on Earth unless we recognise the sovereignty of the Salarden Empire.”
Reonid checked the glossary: “That’s using Sunderlaw as manned meteors. They have the speed and weight to penetrate atmosphere with multi-kiloton impacts.”
Defarris sighed. “We are ordered to stand down. Negotiations are underway.”
Reonid looked out at the sparkling remains, his voice sorrowfully quoting an ancient memoir: “When sufficient crosses cannot be found to mark our fallen and blades are at our children’s throats, let the battlefield remain unmarked, for we did not fight. We were massacred.”
by submission | Aug 27, 2012 | Story |
Author : Desmond Hussey
The holy city resembles a colossal dodecahedron two and half thousand kilometers thick. The reflection of a billion suns slip across its twelve quicksilver surfaces as it speeds through space, yet the bowels of the craft remain dark, as it has for millennia.
Then there is light.
Triggered by unseen hands, hidden machines whir into motion performing pre-programmed functions. A complex series of green pinpoints blink on and banks of blue, crystaline eggs flicker to luminescent life. Slowly, the frosty wombs clear revealing sleeping toddlers within.
A sun-like orb flares into being at the center of the craft, illuminating a lush oasis wrapped around the inner walls of the sphere. Twin rivers spiral from an equatorial lake twisting into either hemisphere, flanked on either side by a forest of metallic, tree-like structures rising above dense foliage. Dangling from leafless branches are strange crimson fruit; bulbous, opaque membranes, veined and throbbing with organic fluids. Elsewhere, within a hundred and forty four thousand crystalline eggs, the first born awaken to a new morning.
Years later:
Gay laughter resounds throughout the enormous garden chamber as naked multi-racial youths frolic under the warm eternal sunlight.
A boy and a girl stand alone by the river looking up in wonder at the pear shaped, fleshy masses hanging from one of the metallic trees.
“What are they?” The girl asks.
“They’re the second born..” The boy answers, studying the veins radiating over the membranous orb, tracing them to where they thicken and pulse at the stem.
“From the Old World?”
“Yes.”
“When will they join us?”
“When we’re home.”
They stare at the throbbing fruit. After a time, the girl speaks. “I want to see what’s inside.”
The boy says simply, “It’s forbidden.”
“It can’t hurt to look inside just one. Besides, I’ve seen one fall before,” the girl lies effortlessly, “Long ago. They just shriveled up.”
The boy has no reason to doubt her. There has never been cause to tell a falsehood here. His own curiosity wins out.
Just one. They vow.
Gracefully, the boy scales the thick metal trunk and edges onto a limb. He tugs at the thick, rubbery stem of the nearest fruit, but he cannot dislodge the mass.
“Here!” the girl whispers, waving a sharp stick from a nearby shrub. “Use this.” She lobs the branch up to him.
He plunges the pointed end into the dangling bulb and it bursts open with a gout of reddish brown fluid. The puncture quickly widens from the weight of the sac’s contents and the boy glimpses a figure floating in the remaining ooze. A foreign, earthy odor assaults his senses. He gulps fresh air and leans in for closer inspection.
The figure awakens suddenly, screaming, its pupiless eyes bulging wildly. Startled, the boy loses his grip and falls awkwardly from the branch, smashing his skull against the steel trunk, soaking the turf in dark blood.
Father Rasmussen is yanked from an insensate oblivion into a world of blinding agony as his unformed clone is prematurely awakened in its artificial womb. His undeveloped lungs burn and his body convulses, but his mind is intact, ringing with the last command made by the Armaggeddon Angel who took his life. “Remember”, they ordered. “Remember and teach”. And he does. He remembers everything; humanity’s fateful history, his home destroyed by aliens playing God. He remembers the one hundred and forty four thousand infants found without guile, protected in a vain hope to cure humanity’s Evil. He takes his memories and his knowledge with him as he dies a second time, thousands of light years from home.
by submission | Aug 25, 2012 | Story |
Author : A. S. Andrews
Four months ago, it started. Everyone, everywhere, coughing. Day two brought bloody sores and panic, followed by the aches and fever of day three, the vomiting of day four. Day five dawned to thick, red scales, all over, even where your hair and nails used to be. They itched and burned and nothing helped. Day seven, gone. All symptoms vanished, leaving bald heads and bloodied nail beds. Lots of people died, twenty percent they say. More went crazy. Like the theories – aliens, bio-warfare, terrorists, space bugs from the downed satellite.
“Marry me,” you said three months ago. You slipped me your mama’s ring, and Uncle Joe married us.
Two months ago, Uncle Joe left his chapel for the fields, preaching hell and brim fire. Uncle Joe wasn’t the only one.
It’s back. Started a week ago. Difference is, not everyone gets sick the same day. It’s all the same symptoms – coughing, sores, fever, vomiting, scales. Except this time, on day seven, the scales get hard and yellow. And the whites of your eyes yellow and your pupils grow bigger and bigger, until your whole iris is pitch black. People are dying all over, lots of them before they even yellow. Some just disappear. Vaporized, they say.
You’re yellow now, and I have fever. “Let’s go out,” you say, “there’s a party.”
“An end of the world bash?”
You shrug. “Maybe this world.”
We go, we drink, we move through a strange crush of bodies, everyone sick. After, we sit stargazing in Uncle Joe’s field. He’s not preaching today – too weak. The Milky Way glitters above, same as always.
“Uncle Joe – he said to pray,” I say. “When it started up again.”
I think of Uncle Joe’s face, pained and red. He’d clasped his hands together and nodded at me, before another shudder came.
You smile. In the starlight, your eyes are reflective black orbs, surrounded by golden halos. “It’s not over yet,” you whisper. I want to ask what you mean, what you might know, but your soft kiss silences me, the coolness of your scales startling all over again. I close my eyes. “Until death do us part,” you say.
I start to speak, but cough instead. Your hand slips away. When I open my eyes, you’re gone, just like all the others who yellowed. Vanished. I scoop dirt, sifting it through my fingers. It’s gritty and dry, slightly sparkly, smells metallic. No hint of you left.
More theories, no answers. Teleportation, apocalypse, some freak hiding in an underground bunker, laughing. Damn freaks.
Uncle Joe died today.
I’m yellow now, sitting here where we last sat, staring at the stars, thinking of you. I see a shooting star, wish for life. Kiss my ring, it vanishes. Sky pulses, stars flash. The Milky Way shifts, changes, rearranges.
I see it now, written in the stars; my choice. Leave or die. But I have no choice. Wait for me. Until death do us part.
by submission | Aug 21, 2012 | Story |
Author : Sam Davis
“Ray, I’ve got proof! Come quick!” Leeroy’s voice came through the sheet over the doorway that ineffectively kept the July heat isolated to the livingroom. I wanted to go back to sleep but something in his tone dragged me from the comfort of my cot. I pushed past the sheet and began to yell.
“Goddamnit, Leeroy! Can’t a fella get a moments peace around here without…” Then I noticed that the ever present sound of static that typically emanated from the ‘space-radio’ was gone. It had been replaced by a noise that didn’t quite seem to all fit inside my ears. I stood, dumbfounded for a moment until, not uncharacteristically, Leeroy broke the pseudo-silence.
“It’s aliens, Ray! Gotta be. I been broadcasting math, just like you said would work. Sure as shootin’, it did work!” His excitement was palpable but I tried to bring him back down to Earth.
“It is probably just some malfunction from the cell tower over on Ol’ Riley’s place or somesuch.” As if the cosmos wanted to spite me, at that moment the noise stopped and through the windows of the doublewide came a blue glow like nothing I had seen before. The screen door snapped open, banging against the cheap aluminum siding, revealing to us a ship.
Of course there was no stopping Leeroy. Before I could stop him, he was out the door and waving eagerly at the ship. More concerned for Leeroy’s well-being than for my own, I followed him. We stood, in awe for several moments before the blue glow died.
Suddenly, three beings stood before us. There were no lights or noises like you always see on those late night made for T.V. movies. They just appeared. Small, lanky, and despite popular cinema, not naked, the aliens stared at us. It seemed like they were waiting for something. Of course, they didn’t have to wait for long before Leeroy opened his mouth.
“W-e-welcome to Earth! I am Leeroy and this here is my pal, Ray. I’ve been sending out the signals!” He pointed to himself and then to the ‘array’ he had cobbled together from stolen satellite dishes. No sooner had he done this when the foremost of the three pulled out a ray gun and shot poor Leeroy into dust.
I froze, petrified, waiting for my turn to come and prove Reverend Peters right-dust to dust. But it didn’t come. Instead they began to speak. Well, I say they spoke. It was more like a cat and a belt buckle in a dryer being tossed down a well. I shook my head, trying to indicate that I didn’t understand. One of the creatures came up to me so quick that I didn’t even have time to flinch. He slapped me right across the face, which I am fairly certain wasn’t entirely necessary, and then skittered back to the group. The dryer started up again but after a second or two, the dying cat transformed into understandable speech.
I can’t put into words what they said. Instead of translating their words into English, I simply understood what they were saying. I can only imagine they had a device or some alien ability that allowed us both to understand each other.
They explained that due to some anomaly in space somewhere along Leeroy’s transmission trajectory, his voice, his bumbled attempts to explain math, had been carried through space-time. For about 300 years, “the daemon in the ear”, as near as I can translate, had been speaking to them. Many of their people, traditionally long lived and peaceful, found the constant noise to be so annoying that wars were started and for the first time in centuries, suicide was considered.
As they explained all this, I sat in my recliner, after offering them a beer of course. Occasionally I paused them to ask a question for clarification and then they would resume the tale. Once they concluded, I asked if there was anything I could do. They told me to dismantle the communications equipment and go about my life. And try to make sure no one transmits from this point again.
Of course, I agreed. You don’t really disagree with aliens with disintegration rays, now do you? Then they kindly said they were going to be on their way. Sorry about my friend and all that. Then one of them shot the microwave.
Just in case, they said.
by submission | Aug 18, 2012 | Story |
Author : Thomas Desrochers
People don’t want to feel anymore, not beyond petty happiness. They don’t read to expand their minds or learn or come across the emotional depth that real art brings about. People read their shallow books about overcoming some petty obstacle, about being special, about fucking some person because that’s what love is about after all; They watch their holograms filled with sex and violence and childish plots. They listen to music that has fewer different notes in it than I have when I speak one damn sentence. Dancing is just sex with clothes on. Paintings and sculptures are just a shade of vomit passed off as beauty.
Nobody appreciates art any more. Nobody will go and seek out art for the enjoyment of it, for the sake of expanding horizons. We care more about establishing colonies than we do about aesthetics. Do we even have a culture worth spreading any more? Where does that leave the artists of the world?
Skyl bit the bullet last week. He tried to, at least, but you can’t really bite something that’s going six hundred meters a second. He only succeeded in shattering the back of his throat and the base of his spine, the poor idiot. He was in a coma until an hour ago. He’ll be six feet under in another hour.
Coralee went a month ago. She drank herself to death on 160-proof liquor, and I don’t think I really blame her. Her last act was to vomit into a seven hundred year old Stradivarius, just to make a point. She was right when she argued with me and said that people would mourn the loss of the person more than the violin. And really, they wouldn’t miss the person at all, so what was the point any more?
My wife. She died a year ago. She was selling her paintings on the street, pieces that rivaled what now collect dust in the Louvre. A man took a disliking to her taking up street space and stabbed her, then set fire to her and her paintings. The authorities said he was mentally ill and there was nothing to do for it. I went by his house last week. He’s still there. She was just an artist after all.
Why am I telling you this? Easy. I want you to have context, to know why I am going to do what I am about to do. I want you to understand the emotions behind the piece of art that you are about to become. Nobody will be able to ignore you – or me.
The muscle relaxants have well and truly kicked in by now, though I’m sure you noticed that, just like I’m sure you noticed the mirror above you and the fact that you are completely naked. I hope you don’t mind the lights – I need them so that I can see your skin while I work.
It wasn’t hard to get ahold of a good supply of razor blades, and while you slept I traced out everything that needs doing. You are going to be beautiful. You are going to be absolutely beautiful.
Be happy, be happy like me. You are the canvass, I am the artist, and we are going to make history. We are going to bring art back to the people, make them see again what they are missing.
I truly am sorry that I’ll have to take your eyes out, though. They’re very pretty, but I can’t have you turning me in to the authorities. That wouldn’t do at all. No, not at all.
