by submission | Sep 10, 2013 | Story |
Author : Scott Summers
At 18:55 Standard, the Breakwater dropped out of superspace above New Tellis and began jettisoning escape pods into the atmosphere. Leaking oxygen and billowing fire, the ship guns rotated on their axis and fired into the empty space overhead. Torpedoes, missiles and railgun shells hurled away from the cruiser, pushing it farther into the planetary gravity well.
Ten seconds after opening gambit, a ripple in the vacuum signaled the arrival of the Talcani cruiser. The ship had intercepted the Breakwater as it went super at the edge of the galaxy. With no place to run, the Breakwater had taken its licks and set a course for the closest defensive system. Jumping into New Tellis orbit was a bold move — one that would lead the Talcani cruiser into the heart of humanity’s presence in the galaxy.
To Commander Mason, it meant one thing: The enemy could not survive this exchange. He watched the enemy cruiser’s engines activate, a sharp burst of ion propulsion meant to correct the ship’s oblong position. It was one of the few advantages they had over the Talcani: for all their advances in weaponry and ship design, they still couldn’t fly worth a damn. They paid dearly for it now as explosions erupted across the cruiser’s backside.
A warning siren sounded from the bridge console.
“Shields!” Mason shouted.
Nearby space wavered before erupting in crystalline blue as Talcani combat beams assaulted the shields. One of the first technologies they had stolen from the enemy still proved their greatest ally in the war that followed.
Mason was beginning to wonder how long the shields would hold when a thick, golden beam — a ray of liquid sunlight — flashed past the bow on a collision course with the enemy cruiser. Planetary defenses. The Talcani pitched to port, still under the Breakwater’s guns, into the blast. Mason watched the cruiser’s portside armor disintegrate.
He had braced for a return volley when the ion thrusters stopped firing.
Mason narrowed his eyes. Talcani never gave up, even in dire straits.
“All crew evacuated, Commander,” someone reported.
“Get to your own pods,” he ordered.
Shadows dashed through the smoke. Mason ignored them. The enemy tactic piqued his curiosity. A warning light on his personal overlay signaled another beam rising from New Tellis.
Suddenly, a soft red glow shimmered around the Talcani cruiser. Mason thought they were prepping for super when he caught the faint outline of a shape.
A wedge.
Realization struck him. Sucking a breath, Mason scrambled for the weapons control panel, punched an override and took aim at the side of the wedge. Missiles and gunfire careened toward the target. The rails hit first, illuminating the shape in full form. Mason swallowed. He had done all he could.
The second golden ray shot past the bow, but instead of shredding the cruiser it split on the wedge. Fragments of the beam sheared the Breakwater’s shield. Metal groaned. Mason felt the hull above him tear away. The force of the vacuum hurled him into silent space, tumbling wildly.
As the cold air crystallized his flesh, Mason was rewarded with a gratifying sight: the missiles impacted at full force, misaligning the wedge, and the remainder of the beam skewered the cruiser through the middle.
His last vision before the vacuum took him was a glimpse of the atmosphere above New Tellis, where two dozen escape pods, glowing like tiny fragments of starlight, made their way toward safety.
by Desmond Hussey | Sep 9, 2013 | Story |
Author : Demond Hussey, Staff Writer
She appeared as a blazing slash across the midnight sky; a falling inferno, trailing multi-colored flames in her wake. Her impact shook the foundations of the continent, causing minor earthquakes and avalanches worldwide. Forest fires raged around her crater, burning for weeks before the fire crews could extinguish them.
She certainly knew how to make an entrance.
My “extensive” knowledge of meteorites, asteroids and comets made me one of the few specialists called in when the impact zone had been deemed safe, but nothing could have prepared me for what I encountered there. My experience did not include fallen angels.
As steam from the last water-bomber was blown away by hot winds, she was finally revealed, lying at the bottom of a crater seven kilometers in diameter and six hundred meters deep. Initially, we had to wear protective goggles just to look at her as well as heat-shielded coveralls. She still glowed like the surface of a star and emitted broad spectrums of light, heat and radiation. It was utterly improbable, but there she was, a being of pure solar plasma born within the heart of a Sun.
It sounds cliché, but I fell in love as soon as I saw her. That’s the only possible description for the profound waves of breath-taking awe and raw emotion that overwhelmed me as I gazed into that crater. Love is an inadequate word. How can any human emotion approach the glory of her being?
It wasn’t her physique alone that inflamed my heart, though by human standards, she was a goddess, voluptuous and impeccable. She was gigantic at first, a humanoid roughly four meters tall, curled into a fetal position on a bed of molten granite. Her body pulsed and rippled with the vast, untamed powers churning within her. Dark “sun-spots” moved in hypnotic patterns over volcanic skin. The surrounding air seemed alive as heat waves bent her light into a shimmering, prismatic aura. I had never seen anything more transcendently beautiful in all my life.
It wasn’t her beauty alone that impassioned my soul, but something else, some unseen, life-giving energy that radiated from her infusing everything around us. Within days, the charred forest began to send forth new growth. Animals returned and flourished in abundance, drawn to her budding, verdant oasis. The ground beneath her had cooled and crystallized into a dense bed of multi-colored migmatite interspersed with precious gemstones.
But she was dying. We watched helplessly as her light slowly ebbed away. It was as if she was pouring her life into the world around us, healing the wound she had surely, inadvertently created.
My heart was breaking by immeasurable degrees, but there was nothing we could do. Over the course of several weeks I remained with her and simply wept, daring each day to draw nearer to her cooling and shrinking body, praying for some miracle that would rekindle her fading life-force. As scientists scuttled and tested, recorded and analyzed like knowledge-hungry scavengers, my constant tears evaporated off my red and blistered skin, yet I remained vigilant. No one dared to stop me and, eventually, I could lie beside her.
Not once had she stirred, but for the gentle motions of her belly, rising and falling with each breath, each weaker than the last, but as her final exhale of hydrogen and helium leaked from her, now shrunken, metallic form, her luminous eyes opened and seared into mine. In a blinding moment of unparalleled revelation, we became united in cosmic understanding and recognition. We had both been born of the same light – two Children of the Sun.
by submission | Sep 8, 2013 | Story |
Author : Connor Yeck
Employee entry, Kennedy Space Center:
I don’t know if the other guys do this, but I like keeping records so I’m typing some things on my own terminal while we wait. Is personal stuff allowed? The rockets are past the point of alteration anyway, so there isn’t much to do.
Hoping my first project goes smoothly.
I guess it’s ironic or something to say that, as we’re trying to crash our hardware into the moon. But if we’re lucky, LCROSS* will give us a look at how much water is up there, and the impacts will throw up a cloud or maybe something even better to analyze. It’s hard trying to explain to my parents why this isn’t a waste of tax-money.
*LCROSS (Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite—we just know what it does, the details of acronyms tend to be forgotten around here)
We’re at the one minute mark, no one’s talking. It’s just like the movies.
There’s the first hit. Someone claps and we watch the figures. Second hit. Everyone’s cheering. It’ll be a while before we know anything, but the hardware made it, that’s all that matters.
I’m typing this in the evening.
It was a good day at the office, and we’re heading out for the night to celebrate. Further results will be checked tomorrow. There might’ve been bigger impacts than we thought, and are tracking an object heading out from the moon that could be a crater fragment. Should burn up. Still can’t believe I work here.
It’s morning. No one came in today, but I’m alive, which is good.
I think most of the cities are gone now. I’m sure we would’ve retaliated the same way, if a rocket had come through the roof of our world and landed in our president’s bed. The Lunars (some like the name Moonies (ugh)), are very scientific from what we can tell, and are sending a good deal of our own planet into the air for study.
Final note: mission success, results show water on moon.
by submission | Sep 7, 2013 | Story |
Author : Nils Holst
It had been five years since Theo had seen another human being, much less saluted one.
“Captain Theodore Holmes of Alpha Company, Third Colonial Marine Battalion?” asked the man with the holopad. He didn’t look up as he scrolled through the UNSS Sargazzio’s personnel list.
“Yes sir,” croaked Theo. The Sargazzio’s voice recognition software had failed over a year ago, he hadn’t spoken in months.
“Where’s your commanding officer?”
“I’m the only soldier aboard this ship sir. The rest of my battalion died on Ignis Magna.”
The man frowned and clicked off his holopad. He looked a bit soft around the middle. Too much time behind a desk.
“There were over eight hundred men listed on that manifest. You’re the only one left?”
“Yes sir,” said Theo. “Seven soldiers made it to the dropship, but I was the only one the Sargazzio’s autodocs could save.”
“You, ah… seem to be taking this pretty well captain.”
“It took the Sargazzio five years to get back here sir, I’ve come to terms with a few things. When will I be redeployed?”
The man shook his head and beckoned for Theo to follow him.
“I am Martin Ortega, or Admiral Ortega I suppose, if you insist on titles. I was promoted from postmaster to high admiral this morning for the express purpose of welcoming you back home. We don’t have much of a need for admirals these days, but we figured you’d appreciate the gesture.”
The space station was deserted, silent save for their footfalls echoing through the corridor. The sound had nearly driven Theo mad on his long flight home.
Ortega paused in front of a viewport, looking out at the massive hull of the Sargazzio. The pinnacle of military engineering when she was commissioned over eighty years ago, the ship had sixteen twin-mounted flak cannons, eight large-coil railguns, a suite of countermeasure lasers, four Grindlewald drives capable of sustained .9c, and enough life support for a full mechanized battalion. She had gone out accompanied by much pomp and circumstance, stuffed with soldiers and armed to the airlocks. She had come back a battered hulk, an ancient behemoth limping into dock on quarter power with holes the size of watermelons punched through her hull.
“The war is over,” Ortega said. “The treaty was signed the year before you landed on Ignis Magna, but even at near-light speeds most planets didn’t get stand-down orders for another couple years. The riots started when they declassified the casualty lists. Billions dead for no reason. The Colonial Defense Force was dismantled, the arms cartels overthrown. We’ve been at peace ever since. For decades we’ve kept this station operational, waiting as the warships trickled in. Waiting for you.”
“Me?”
“Your battalion was the last. After we’re done here the station will be demolished and the Sargazzio slagged. The world has moved on, the war is ancient history.”
Ortega turned away from the viewport and walked toward the receiving room.
“What happens now?”
“You’re discharged,” Martin said. “Let me be the first to congratulate you on surviving the Long War, now described as the biggest fuckup in human history. You’ll be in the media spotlight for a while, journalists and network commentators wanting to talk to the last returning soldier. But after a couple weeks you’ll be old news, and everyone will forget. You’ll see – things have changed. You may have only aged ten years, but the world you knew fell by the wayside decades ago.”
Silence filled the room.
“Did we win?”
“Does it matter?”
by submission | Sep 6, 2013 | Story |
Author : Amanda Schoen
I was at work when the chat program pinged. We weren’t supposed to take personal calls so I ignored it. Two seconds later it pinged again. And again. Oh hell. One conversation couldn’t hurt.
My sister’s handle popped up. <Mel, I have some bad news. Dad passed away.>
It was the sort of thing that warranted a phone call, so the words could dissipate in the ether. Instead they lingered in fuzzy black print on the screen.
Had he been sick? I didn’t know. It’d been eons since I called home.
Well. That was something.
I logged into my personal server and sent every picture I had. <When’s the service? I’d like to be there.>
The screen said my sister was typing. It took ages. I expected directions to the funeral home, the date of the ceremony. But when the screen blinked, her reply was short. <That’d be nice.>
She logged off without another word.
Well…people coped with grief in different ways. Maybe she just needed space. There’d be an obituary. Something in the paper that would have the details. I opened the browser and kept a tab open to the local paper.
It seemed disrespectful to just go back to work. Maybe I should hit a bar. Or call my sister back. There were probably things to do before the service…
But I couldn’t tear myself away from the computer. My sister might need space, but I just threw myself into work. There was something comforting about coalescing data. I’d been doing this for…I don’t know how long. A while. It’d become rote.
I took regular breaks to check if Dad’s obituary had made the paper yet. Nothing. So I sent a chat request to my sister until she responded.
<No, himself.> It was free to go in and get the scan, to store a copy of your memories on a hard drive. Accessing them later, now that got tricky. Most folks agreed to work for the storage company. Contract basis. Who wouldn’t do a year of labor—or ten, or a hundred—if it meant immortality?
And there were laws. You weren’t a piece of software; you had rights. You got email. The Internet. All the commercials showed happy families chatting away with their loved ones on their laptops. Some even set a place for the computer at the dinner table. What more could you want?
<Why?> It made no sense. You made your backup before you died. You didn’t even need to know how it’d happened, no memories of agonizing pain to haunt you. Most people spent their time plugged in anyway. They just carried on. Forever.
She paused. <It’s late. I should go.>
She logged off, leaving me to reread our stilted words, longing for a program that could parse them for deeper meaning.
Somewhere along the seventeenth time I checked the paper, the obituary popped up. It was short and sparse, each word measured against the cost of printing it:
Jean Phelps passed away at the age of eighty-six.
That wasn’t right. He’d just celebrated his seventieth birthday. We set the smoke detector off because I’d lit seventy little candles on the cake.
I read on:
He is survived by his wife Marie Phelps-Sanchez and his youngest daughter, Stephanie. His eldest daughter, Melanie, passed away sixteen years ago. He will be missed.
