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 Clint Wilson | Aug 30, 2012 | Story |
Author : Clint Wilson, Staff Writer
Well… here goes nothing. You’d think that when inventing a time machine I’d try it out on a few test subjects first. But just because I’m one of the smartest people I’ve ever met doesn’t mean I’m the wisest. Besides… I’ve been drinking pinot noir… lots of it.
I check the parameters one last time. Yup, the beam is zeroed in on me. No turning back now. Here we go. Engage accelerator… big sip of wine… there’s the hum of the reactor.
Ah, what’s to worry about? I’m only jumping a measly minute. No chance of paradox there… no one here but us chickens. Heh heh. “Make it so Number One!” My inebriated state almost causes me to miss the button, but I manage to hit it with my thumb.
I am surprised by a green flash. The clock had just clicked to 12:36… and there it remains. “What the…?” I wiggle the wires on the back of the beam dispenser. I shake the monitor array. Another sip of wine, this one smaller. Hmmm, doesn’t seem to be anything amiss here. Finally in frustration I pound the keyboard with my fist, causing the phrase, $%^&tybhuijnoo9876 to appear… followed by the machine’s response of, “Invalid Command”.
Then the clock clicks to 12:37, and there is another green flash. And I’m suddenly beside myself… literally.
“Oh what the mother hell?” I ask the exact copy of myself.
My other self answers, “Ha, I didn’t think it worked at first… but this, this is an entirely unexpected result!” Then he raises an identical wine glass and takes a swig.
Right away both of us eye each other, knowing exactly what the other is thinking. Then in unison we say, “Great way to make wine!” We clink our identical glasses, followed by large simultaneous guzzles.
Then the clock clicks to 12:38 and another one of us appears. “Oh shit,” exclaim the first two of us. I fill our glasses from the nearby bottle but the third me doesn’t require it yet as his glass is still nearly full.
He takes a long swallow and then looks at the two of me. “Anyone have any idea of how we got stuck in this perpetual loop?” The other two of us look at each other confused and then shake our heads.
12:39, another green flash. The fourth me appears confused. At least his glass is full. My bottle is getting low. Remembering my store in the other room I excuse myself, but by the time I return with a couple new bottles there are six of us. The others are mumbling drunkenly… but making no progress that I can discern.
We might have eventually solved our plight but then the crazy one, number fifteen or sixteen I think, suddenly does something highly unexpected. He picks up the beam dispenser and hurls it across the lab, smashing our life’s work to bits on the floor. “What are you doing?!?” the other twenty-five of us scream in unison.
“Just wait,” he says, holding out his hands. “Just wait a minute!”
The clock clicks to 1:02, another green flash, and another stumbling, mumbling wino, too smart for his own good, appears in the lab. “Damn,” says the destroyer of our machine. “I thought that would work.”
Everyone else groans. “Wait!” says the radical. “I have another idea.” We all look at him hopeful yet doubtful. “If we kill the original it has to stop repeating!”
I swallow hard amongst the unsure mumbles of my other selves and exclaim, “Yeah but how are we going to find him now?”
by Duncan Shields | Aug 29, 2012 | Story |
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer
‘Captain’ Hugh Manatee floated in the darkness of his chamber monitoring the remnants of his unsuccessful first strike. The bodies of his crew waved lazily in the current of the ammonia ocean that claimed them. It wouldn’t be long before the cameras themselves were compromised.
Back before Earth was destroyed, being an Earthling meant you were from Earth. Now that Earth is long-gone, being an Earthling meant to be like an Earthling. Greedy, fun-loving, militaristic, and tribe-like. A hoarder and a glutton for new experiences.
A fleet of pirates that called themselves The Earthlings had sprung up and was now scouring the galaxy, currently led by Captain Hugh. A group of aliens bent on violence and the pursuit of treasure through theft, battle and salvage. They had no uniform to fit the wide variety of legs, arms, eyestalks, beaks, and slugfeet but a pale blue dot was prominent on all of them, the symbol of Earth. The dot was on their ships and flags as well.
Pirates with many limbs and some with only a few. Pirates with hard bones and with exoskeletons. Pirates with tentacles and with articulated mandibles. Jelimorphs, hellicorns, annamen, retreads, and silicates. Every now and then an esper became corporeal, risking truedeath to join the fight and get a slice. All of them different but all of them poverty-stricken, uneducated and violent.
It’s the glowing catfish moustache of ‘Captain’ Hugh Manatee that gives the only light here in his personal quarters, his lower lips tracing through the dust on the cabin floor. He’s looking down through the monitors at a failed invasion.
Dead faces stare back at him through the personnel monitor cams, skull-holes hollowed out by crabs. Each pirate dot-tag wrapped around collarbones furring with pink algae. Fistfuls of lariats and breathing tubes stick up out of the ground like exposed wiring. Acid is perforating the gun barrels and disintegrating sword blades. Long strands of ammonia-weed are reaching up through ribcages.
First pick of the spoils, said the recruitment packages. But only to the survivors, it left unsaid.
This planet’s race had protectors. As soon as the Earthling pirate ship arced into orbit and dropped its shuttles, a wave of raw power had expanded out from the closest moon, ringing the other moons like chimes. Too late, the ships realized that the moons were automated sentries. The reverberations destroyed the shuttle’s orbits and guidance systems, forcing them down into the steaming, chemical ocean.
There were no survivors.
More shuttles would not be sent. A memorial service would be held in the mess hall for the fallen comrades. It was quite a huge loss, almost twenty-five per cent of the current crew. They’d been tricked into a quick assault by a seemingly defenseless target. Too good to be true. Captain Hugh berated himself.
Down on the surface, the planet’s dominant life form, red and child-like, played happily and innocently around exposed outcroppings of diamonds, gold, and valuable minerals. A pirate’s dream of booty.
They’d have to recruit hard for the next six cycles to make up the difference in crew before another attack run. And find a way to deal with those moons.
The captain floated in silence in his dark cabin by himself, scanning the nearby systems for likely ports to get more volunteers and maybe some moonsplitters.
by submission | Aug 28, 2012 | Story |
Author : Nick Lewandowski
Lucy sat at her usual table, skimming the news on her phone.
It was therefore some time before she noticed The Crazy Man.
Youngish, with rumpled clothes and dark, tortured eyes. All together he looked like someone who spent a great deal of time on airplanes, particularly trans-continental flights, and therefore found it exceedingly difficult to get a decent night’s sleep.
Drug addict or artist, she decided, though he was awfully patient for a drug addict.
“May I help you?”
“Lucy Curtis?” he spoke with an accent Lucy didn’t recognize. Vaguely Eastern European. He rolled the “L” gently and pronounced the “U” like the deep “oo” in “loose.”
“Yes?”
“May I ask you something?”
“Have we met?”
“Perhaps. In a manner of speaking that is to say.”
Lucy set her phone down.
He took the seat across from her without asking permission. When he spoke next his voice was hushed. “I am something of a writer hoping you would listen to my idea for a story, to see if it would be well-received from your demographic.”
“My demographic?”
“Young women with radiant eyes.”
Had he been clean-shaven and had his breath not smelled suspiciously of refined ethanol Lucy would have been flattered. That did not stop her from blushing furiously.
A strange thing to do in front of a drug addict-cum-writer.
“What would you say,” he began, “if someone told you a story about a woman. A woman very much like yourself, who a certain young man loved very much. The most important difference between this couple and yourself being they understand their world, their whole universe, in fact, is just one in an infinite series of universes.
So when a terrible accident takes this young woman’s life her lover will travel from world to world, universe to universe, that is, seeking the variation that is most like her, hoping he may once more bask in the glow of her smile, if only for the briefest moment. Because only then will he find peace.”
At the end of this breathless monologue a heavy silence hung in the air between them, like a corpse dangling from a hangman’s noose.
Somewhere behind them mugs clinked on a tray.
The young man stared at her with his dark, tortured eyes.
By now Lucy had gotten the distinct impression he was neither a writer nor drug addict, and whatever the real purpose of this conversation might be it was certainly not market research.
She smiled weakly. “It sounds lovely. Very romantic.”
His expression softened. Some of the color returned to his face. “Thank you,” he said. “Thank you very much.”
He reached into his coat and removed a small, ornate pistol.
Lucy’s jaw dropped. Her mouth and lips began forming that fat “O” shape that is a pre-requisite for all full-throated screams of terror.
“Thank you so very much,” the man said, so softly this time that his lips hardly moved and truth be told it was more a long sigh of relief than an actual sentence.
He squeezed the trigger just as Lucy started screaming.
A bolt of lightning (in retrospect that’s what Lucy believed it most clearly resembled) shot from the barrel. For a brief moment the man became a black, vaguely-human form shrouded in pale red light.
Gradually the glow receded.
When it had faded out entirely Lucy was out of air. She was not finished screaming, really. Not by a long shot considering she now had a charred human skeleton for company. Her vocal chords simply refused to resonate any longer.
And worst of all, she realized, he was SMILING.
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.
