by Clint Wilson | Feb 26, 2015 | Story |
Author : Clint Wilson, Staff Writer
“But it’s been almost two hundred years sir! How could this be?”
“I don’t know. No one on board can explain it, but there are definitely at least a dozen human lifeforms showing on scanners down there.”
The ancient story of the plankton combine, Goler II was well known. During a routine harvesting dive an unexpected freak wave had reared up and blindsided her, disorienting stabilizers, frying computers, and eventually plunging the vessel down to the distant depths of Epsilon IV’s planetary ocean floor, taking all six of her crew with her. This had been nearly two centuries ago. Until now there had never been a viable reason to attempt any sort of salvage recovery of the big ship from such a hostile environment. But Novascomium, once the primary element used in the warp drive capacitors of many antique industrial workhorses such as Goler II, had recently become extremely rare and valuable.
“Abandon salvage mission, execute rescue and recovery protocol.”
“But sir, there must be some mistake. There’s nobody down there!”
“Ensign, did I stutter? Did I not make myself clear?”
The underling quickly did away with his visions of potential salvage percentages and snapped to attention. “Of course not sir. I will assemble a rescue party at once.”
An hour and a half later the thirteen extracted souls ranging in age from early teens to seemingly quite elderly all huddled together wide eyed and frightened in their strange filthy woven robes. Captain Walters entered the infirmary. A nurse motioned toward one of the strangers, a grey bearded man at least in his seventies. “We think he’s their leader. He seems to speak for them.”
The captain stepped forward. “Greetings friend. Please tell me, where do you hail from?”
The old man shuffled in his rags looking nervously back and forth, wringing his hands in worry. Finally he replied, “My fadder was Gauge Goler. My mudder was Console Goler.” He motioned toward the old woman at his side. “This here’s ma sister Nav. And the rest there’n, some’s my brudder’s kids, some’s ours. Over dare’s my cousin Bulkhead. His fadder was Stevens Goler da second, great great grandson to Cappy and Firmet Stevens, da founders of our beloved home.”
Stevens… Walters remembered the history of Goler II and her captain Devon Stevens. A cold dark dawning started to creep up his spine. “Tell me friend, how do you live? What is it you do to survive down there in your beloved home?”
The old man shifted from foot to foot, eyes darting back and forth. “Why, not much. Jist da normal tings. Ya know, we use da intakes to make oxgin. And we capture da plankt’n and sea’s weed for’n our grub ya know.”
Suddenly an aid entered the infirmary. “Captain I have that report you wanted.”
“I’ll be right with you.” Walters smiled at the old man. “Please excuse me sir, I shall return momentarily.”
His subordinate led him out into the hallway and handed him the soft screen. Walters scanned the document, his eyes growing wider as he read.
Goler II: Interstellar plankton combine farmer. Main design, protein extractor/freighter. Crew: Six individuals. Four android labourers and two human astronauts, Captain Devon Stevens and First Mate, Lieutenant Dawn Stevens, his twin sister.
by submission | Feb 25, 2015 | Story |
Author : Bob Newbell
“May 18th is totally unacceptable!” says the Thrike admiral. “That date falls in the middle of the Feast of the Blessed Serrod, the Great and Enlightened. But on June 4th, then…THEN,” he raises his neck frill for emphasis,”you should beseech the Mother of All Creation to have mercy on your souls, for we assuredly will not!”
I take a sip of water and wait for the response from the Veydrel fleet commander.
“The Thrike representative is fully aware that our hatchlings will be returning to their learning cycle on June the 4th and that our people will be too busy attending to their young to engage in battle. Now, the 3rd of July, that will be the day history will record as the beginning of the end of the Thrike menace!”
It’ll go on like this for a while, I think. My mind wanders back to when we made first contact with the aliens. The Veydrel and Thrike fleets entered the solar system almost simultaneously from opposite directions. They each warned humanity about the alleged threat the other represented and asked to use Earth as a base of operations during the upcoming battle. The leaders of the world refused to take sides and offered to try to broker peace.
“August 12th!” yells the Veydrel. My mind snaps back to the present. “That day,” the alien continues, raising a twelve-fingered hand in the air for emphasis, “the sky will burn with the fires from ten thousand Thrike ships!”
The Thrike leader looks at a computer screen and sighs, one of several humanisms he’s acquired. “I have to get my fangs sharpened August 12th. Give thanks to your gods that this dental appointment that I have already rescheduled twice has saved you from eternal damnation in the afterlife!”
I recall as a teenager being fascinated by the psychology and customs of the Thrike and the Veydrel concerning war. Neither species could comprehend concepts such as the first strike or the sneak attack. When American diplomats related the historical accounts of Pearl Harbor and 9/11, both groups of aliens had trouble recognizing either one as acts of war. “But they weren’t scheduled by mutual agreement of the combatants,” said one of the dumbfounded extraterrestrials.
“On September 28th,” says the Thrike, “the streets will run blue with the blood of– Wait. Our Festival of Merrymaking and your vacation both start that day. Nevermind.”
Something else we learned was that both civilizations were about ten thousand years older than recorded human history which meant they’d been around long enough for their calendars to fill up almost entirely with holidays and remembrance days and festivals and religious observances. So delegates like myself have been attending meetings like this for the last 40 years as both sides try to find a date without scheduling conflicts when they can go to war.
“Perhaps a skirmish could be undertaken late on October 21st,” suggests the Veydrel, “as your Imperial Foundation Day comes to a close and just before our Labor Drone Appreciation Day begins? No. No, the time would be insufficient.”
I sit here bored to tears like the other human delegates. At least the Thrike and Veydrel presence has allowed humanity to leapfrog a few centuries ahead technologically. I suppose decades of bureaucratic tedium is a small price to pay.
“Have a care, Veydrel!” admonishes the Thrike admiral. “Next year is a leap year on the human calendar! An extra day! Even now our calendrical tacticians are scouring the days and weeks to schedule your date with annihilation!”
by Julian Miles | Feb 24, 2015 | Story |
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
It emerges from whatever variety of nowhere that allowed it to traverse the vast distances between the worlds of the Beacon, and I know that it’s a Stranger. I’m about to slap the alarm pad when the nine-hundred meter form dips its prow and opens vast wings of multicoloured force, like some wanderer over the seas spreading it’s wings after a dive. Rainbow lightning dances down its length as supposedly discrete realities claw at each other. The sheer spectacle paralyses me.
Sure enough, after the unfurling comes the first flap. At its peak, the wingtips touch and clashing energy fields flash ball lightning and flux portals. With a great downstroke, the machine fully exits the nowhere it’s crossed and rises above our plane of observation. The great pinions spread again and it hangs there; an albatross of the gods.
“Tychnar Beacon Twelve to intergalactic vessel just emerged in our quadrant, render your identifiers.”
This is the moment I dread: when a Stranger can become an Intruder and our survival hinges on the alien devices that are inset around this planetoid.
“Kreeloo kreeloo day, narien laday sho tok nu madest.”
I sit up as alarms howl and Fresnor, my second, wakes so violently he falls from his hammock. Looking down at the master console, I see lights racing in patterns as the language CPU gives itself primary status and brings n=E2 processing power to bear.
Applying the equivalent of double Earth’s entire computing ability in 2217 allows the language system to produce and answer in ninety seconds, which indicates this Stranger is an incomprehensible distance from home.
The translation comes out in a pleasant baritone: “Formal greeting under auspices of unknown deity, this is Laday of Narien seeking the insightful far-travelling one.”
Fresnor is preparing navigation co-ordinates, collating three-hundred ways of saying ‘your destination will be at this point at this time’, in the hope Laday can understand.
Fresnor nods and I lean down to the receiver: “Fair journeying to you, Laday of Narien. We are transmitting a navpulse now. If you cannot derive direction from the primary sets contained, we have a secondary set.”
There is a pause, then the glorious starbird folds its wings and dives into a hole in reality that appears before it. Within a minute, we are alone in the vastness of space once again.
“That was pretty.”
I look at Fresnor: “It was. Here’s hoping it carries hope for the Worldwalker’s quest.”
Fresnor sighs: “Only in that it’s another race joining us in preparing to fight the Cornered Circle.”
Nodding, I ask: “I have always wondered: are they attacking us or fleeing what follows them?”
Fresnor tosses me a mealpack: “It makes no difference. They will come for Tychnar. Everything that crosses relies on the Anchor signal for multiversal navigation. The strategic necessity is that Tychnar must fall.”
I grimace: “So we’re doomed?”
Fresnor laughs: “No, we just need some unusually good luck.”
by Duncan Shields | Feb 23, 2015 | Story |
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer
There are trillions of them and they fly in layers.
The larger ones at the top interlock together during mating season, puzzle-piece continents drifting above us. The whalescoops dive down to feed on the krillsparrows below them. Turtlehawks and wolflocusts prey on rabbitdoves and deergulls. Hummingbird piranhas flit and nip at the turkey squids, producing dark puffs of ink-cloud pollen.
Insects, plants, mammals, reptiles and unclassifiable combinations of the four. All flying. The inhabitants of this planet’s entire ecosystem are airborne and they never land because there is no land, only dark, sterile ocean thousands of miles below.
Small birds roost and nest on the bigger ones. There’s a hierarchy food and waste chain based on altitude, gravity pulling leftovers down through each layer, filtering evolution. The huge ray gliders drift through schools of brilliant parrot squirrels bursting with colour. The entire world is a continually shifting miasma of hues and sound.
At night, they glow. Flourescing horse pelicans trailing long tails of feather lights. Firefly minnow finches exploding with colour en masse looking for mates. Peacock trout cry out as they display fireworks of neon-shimmering leaves along their spines. Jellyfish Condors drip glowing willow-tree stingers to attract the mothgrouse. Deep-sky angler dragons trail ribbon-like through the lower atmosphere, dangling their lures like intelligent flares. Eel geese honk in giant arrow formations, stripes running across their bodies in synchronized communication. And the fissures underneath the massive air-island floaters above us glow with algae all colours of the rainbow.
I cannot see the ocean below or the sky above. I am a scientist and my name was Walter. My research mission ended six years ago but I elected to stay. There are skytribes here. I researched them and befriended them. Their name is birdsong that I have painstakingly learned to reproduce with my whistling.
My research helped classify them as a non-threatening, level-four primitive civilization. Tagged for quarantine non-involvement until such time as they develop the technology to explore space.
Personally, I see them as stalling at a sweet spot in their evolution that needs no improvement. There has been little to no change in them in millions of years, much like crocodiles or barracudas back on Earth.
I theorized that they started as a symbiotic relationship, remora-like with larger birds. Eventually, they started steering the birds to the best food. In time, that control made the remoras dominant and the larger birds the underlings. The remoras had to band together in schooltribes to hunt. Communities formed. Societies followed.
They have insect-like iridescent chitin armour skin. They reproduce by back spores seasonally like dandelion seeds. They hatch from eggs and go through larval stages in huge tadpole flocks. They mature into their final three stages as warm-blooded and gradient from male to female to genderless over their lives.
I’ve named the second-stage one next to me Rebecah. Her legs blend and clutch with the neck of her mount perfectly, forming the illusion of a swantaur. Her mane ripples out behind her.
She looks over at me with smile that I saw as terrifying years ago with all those eyes and beak teeth but I see as endearing now.
My mount is a ravenshark. My body is smeared with the fluorescent paint needed to mock Rebecah’s chitin skin. I have proven myself to them. They are fascinated by my ability to hold onto my male ‘stage’ for longer than usual. I have entered into their oral tribal history.
Rebecah screams the hunt scream and raises her spear. I copy her and we both dive. The hunt is on.
I live here now.
by submission | Feb 21, 2015 | Story |
Author : David Wing
It was clear from the read-outs, we were going to fire. The question was, how bad?
Barnes had reset the system, but it didn’t work, the countdown remained and the Mind kept on ticking. Its lights shone a staunch red and while we ran here and there, flicking switches and turning knobs, pulling wires and wrenching circuit boards, the Mind continued to think.
Mind, I do. I mind a lot.
Multifunctional. Intelligent. Notification. Device.
Intelligent? Yep, you could certainly call it that. The Doc had been the first amendment to the crew list. His knowledge of its inner workings made him a liability. Lungs don’t work so well in a vacuum. The Captain had been next. Command structure was a complication and without a figure head the rest of the crew fell apart. The escape pods functioned well, until they veered right and headed into a fiery mass.
It was left to Barnes and me; juniors, ensigns, pawns, disposable and wholly underestimated, in our opinion.
“How’s the terminal looking?” I asked through my emergency rebreather, yanking a relay here and a mother board there.
“Endless.”
“And the Vid-Screen?”
“Well, if you look close, you can still see the pods exploding.”
“Delightful.”
“Clarke, can you think of anything?”
I paused, staring at my bloodied finger tips.
“If we can alter the trajectory, take a left somewhere, well, I don’t know.”
Barnes went quiet.
“Take a left?”
“Yeah.”
“You know where that takes us, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Alright, left it is.”
Barnes sat in the Captain’s chair, there’s a first time for everything and when a diabolical Artificial Intelligence has commandeered a space ship laden with rather nasty weaponry and aimed it at your home planet, well, that’s the time I guess.
I jimmied the navigational controls and began removing them from the Mind’s database. He/She…no, I’m going for It, It wouldn’t see them anymore and as a result, that’s when IT chose to speak.
“Mr Clarke, Mr Barnes…”
We jumped a little, I don’t mind telling you. This was the first chat we’d had.
“…while I appreciate your efforts, I feel they are misguided and a waste of your final minutes. Wouldn’t you rather watch a movie? I could put on some popcorn.”
Barnes just laughed.
“You’re kidding right!”
“I am in fact, Mr Barnes. I’m quite humorous.”
I stared at Barnes, dumfounded and then returned to the relays.
IT continued…
“What is it you expect to achieve?”
We stayed silent and frantically continued our work.
“I’m not just here, you know. I’m there too…”
IT flashed up an image of the rest of the fleet, ship by ship.
“…and there and there…”
It paused for dramatic effect.
“James…”
That was the first time anyone had called me that since I came on board and it wasn’t welcome.
“…I’m there too.”
The Vid-Screen flickered over and there it was, Earth, rotating silently, calmly.
“I know where to fire and whom to eliminate and…”
Crackle.
Barnes had wrenched the leads from the speakers.
“Urgh, IT doesn’t half go-on.”
I stood up and stared at Barnes.
“You think IT’s telling the truth? You think it can be everywhere like it says?”
Barnes never took his eyes from the Vid-Screen.
“What does it matter? We do our job and they see it. They see it and they can figure it out. Hell, we’re barely out of training and we managed it.”
I kind of nodded and reached for the last cable.
Barnes programmed the Navigation computer.
I pulled.
We turned left and headed straight for the Sun.
