by Roi R. Czechvala | Mar 28, 2012 | Story |
Author : Roi R. Czechvala, Alumnus
Only bits remained. Three stars, a bit of blue and two stripes, one red, one white. They left it to fly in mockery of the country they had defeated. Theirs was a country that valued pride above all. To lose face was worse than death. To them, the abused flag represented the decadence, weakness of the defeated. To fly such a rag was meant as a slap in the face. From the other side of the black, wrought iron fence, MSG Ray Coulter saw it as a sign of hope.
As he descended the steps to what had been an underground parking garage, thirty two men came to attention. “At ease. I’m not a fucking officer.”
“No, but you’ll do in a pinch,” someone joked. A ripple of laughter washed over the men.
“Knock it off.” He removed a set of greasy Carhartts, revealing a chameleon skin uniform beneath. He settled a tan Ranger’s beret on his head and paused the uniform’s camouflage. “They’re getting lax, now is the time. We go tonight.”
The men jockeyed for position around a battered banquet table as he pulled an Army issued computer from his pocket and smoothed it out on the pitted surface. It sprang to life showing an aerial view of the Asiatic Command compound. Red x’s marked their intended firing positions. “I want the MK19s placed here and here. Johnson, did you get that 203 fixed?”
“Yeah Sarge. Good as new.”
“Good. That gives us six. Twenty rounds each. With an automatic grenade launcher front and back; three hundred rounds each and three men with 203s on each flank, here, here and here,” he said, tapping the computer with a grimy finger. “We’ll have the place levelled before they know what hit them. The rest will provide covering fire for a hasty withdrawal. Don’t fire unless you have to. Conserve rifle ammo. When the shit hits the fan, the slopes will be on us like white on rice and we don’t have ammo to spare. Make those shots count. Questions?”
Most shook their heads or grunted in the negative. A tentative voice spoke up. “Hey Sarge, I know the place is filled with chinks, but it still doesn’t seem right to dest… OOOF.” He was silenced by a jab to the gut amidst muttered requests to “Shut the fuck up.”
“Any other questions?” Master Sergeant Coulter asked through gritted teeth.
“Uh… no Sarge. Sorry Sarge,” the duly chastened soldier gasped.
“Right. Let’s move out.”
MSG Coulter, crouched behind the MK19 crew on the compounds south side. He clicked his teeth, opening the company freq and subvoked, “This is Blue One. Cardinal positions report by the numbers, over.”
“Blue Two east. Patrol. Two men and a dog. Machine gun nest thirty metres forward and left my position. Over.”
“Blue Three north. Machine gun nest thirty metres my twelve. One Tank. It’s hover skirts are deflated and is grounded. It appears to be idling. Minimal threat. Over”
“Blue Four west. One nest. Two man one dog patrol passing my right. Coming your way. Over.”
“All right. Grenadiers. Take those nests out first. We don’t need to be lit from the rear during withdrawal. One round each. White One north. Frag tank first, nest second. On my command.” Coulter choked up uttering one single word. “FIRE.”
A Ranger, a decorated combat soldier of the Army of the former United States, a man used to divesting others of their birthdays, Master Sergeant Raymond R. Coulter, wept openly as the delicately rounded portico of the White House crumbled under a barrage of high explosive grenades.
by Julian Miles | Mar 27, 2012 | Story |
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
As the battle collapsed into bloody massacre, I paused and looked at the sword in my hand as violet blood hissed and evaporated in acrid clouds of blue smoke. The brutal simplicity underlying the centuries of field testing sang through my mind until my breathing slowed and the sterodrenalin pumps shut down, leaving me with only one heartbeat again. I turned and walked through the blood-seared streets of what had been Brighton, up the hill to our raid camp at the old racecourse. A few moments privacy; so precious.
They came from the far away, looking for a new world to conquer. They watched for centuries then worked on us for decades, sowing doubt, fear and resignation via media manipulation and a series of global wars, recessions and ecological disasters. By the time they actually showed up, Earth was in a sorry state and the population in some parts nearly feral. We were disorganised, factionalised and ready for something. The saviours from beyond descended, ending our mass murder capabilities with technology that seemed like magic. They were hailed as the precursors of humanities’ golden age by those they had bought, unwittingly or not.
After ten years, they struck. Mankind became a commodity and the bleak ephemera of occupation blossomed across the continents. We had no guns, no bombs, and no tanks. We had melted them down to build beautiful cities to mark the era of peace at last.
My father was a sword maker, an anachronism in that new enlightened world. He contested that with words I can still hear now: “A sword is more than a weapon. It is the ultimate expression of individuality, an art form so practiced that all that remains is finding new materials to express it in.”
While the world was scrapping the architectures of war, Dad was making swords from the new materials provided by our visitors. When the day came and their technology shut down or turned toxic everything that had been created using those materials, he found that forging had destroyed the essence that allowed them that control. From that moment, his forge in the wilds became the only light of freedom for a long, dark time.
I’ve been fighting since I was six. My enhancements went in at puberty. That was twelve years ago. They want our planet so badly that they have to try and claw us from it piece by piece. They just cannot understand our intransigence as they are so developed that personal combat is alien to the majority of them. Funnily enough, those of them that become adept at melee invariably join us.
My thoughts are disrupted by Captain Thomas’ call from outside my bivouac;
“Forgemaster Illaren! We are ready.”
I sigh and close the etcher. My memoirs are a piecemeal hobby. But I open it again to close the chapter as it should be, with another quote from my father: “They may have studied us for decades, but they didn’t learn a damn thing about mankind.”
by submission | Mar 26, 2012 | Story |
Author : J.D. Rice
“I really want to take this fork and stab it through your chest, Mr. Johnson.”
“That’s nice, Sam. Now please eat your food.”
The boy eyes me with his cold, twitching eyes, fork hand ready to strike, bits of gravy smothered chicken still stuck between the prongs. A few of the other residents at the table watch with mild interest, wondering if I’ll just smile and wait like I always do. Somehow, they think eventually I’ll break and show some actual fear. After a moment’s pause, Sam sits back down and starts in on his mashed potatoes.
“I wish you would have stabbed him, Sam,” a smallish boy says. “It would have been cool to see Mr. Johnson’s blood everywhere.”
“Thanks, Pete,” I smile. “But you guys should probably drop the subject.”
All the boys nod and start talking about the newest video game they picked up on our last outing. My boss tells me that this kind of group home treatment is a revolution. When he was a counselor like us, they used to have one staff for every three or four residents, just to keep the peace. With the advent of behavior modification chips, my partner and I can keep track of almost twenty residents between us. The boys have no choice but to behave themselves, despite what twisted things may be going on in their minds. The chip takes care of that.
After our meal, we walk the residents back to the house where they complete their evening chores and head to their rooms for the night. Once all is done, my manager regales us with stories from the old days, stories of residents locking themselves in bathrooms, peeing on the floors, running off into the woods or onto highways. He tells us of the attacks and restraints and of sending kids off to detention, to be locked in cells like animals. It’s all amusing and all degrading. The things these kids had to endure at the hands of the state were unthinkable.
As I begin to droll on about how much more humane our current system is, my manager gets a troubled look in his eye, as if he doesn’t approve. I explain how much better things are, how the children are allowed to be themselves, not forced to conform to society’s norms. The chips protect others from their violent nature, but they are allowed to hang on to their identities, their thoughts and wants and needs aren’t challenged by some religious or philosophical dogma. We respect them while protecting others. And as soon as the children are adjusted to the chips, we send them home, safe and sound.
It’s the perfect system. Perfectly safe. Perfectly humane. I don’t see how anyone could object.
***
Sam arrives home three months later and doesn’t hurt a fly. His mother is amazed at the change in his behavior, all thanks to the chip. One day, he sees girl about his age walking down the street. He imagines what it would be like to see her lifeless body in a ditch.
“Only a matter of time,” he thinks. “This chip has to break down eventually.”
by submission | Mar 25, 2012 | Story
Author : Thomas Desrochers
Bertie was a kind looking old man of eighty who had more wrinkles from smiling than anything else, and who looked like he always had a joke on his mind. He wasn’t particularly tall, though he was clearly handsome once. His shirt was plaid and tucked into his pleated khaki pants.
Drene was taller than Bertie by a few inches, and although she had begun to look rather severe in her old age of seventy five she had a friendly smile ready for anybody and everybody. Her hair was perpetually in a white ball around her head, a hair style reserved only for the old, and she was always sporting a pretty, if not plain, heavy-cut, and old-fashioned, dress of some sort or another.
Bertie and Drene had no children or grand-children left planet-side, and to make up for the lack of company would spend every afternoon sitting on their apartment’s front steps watching the people go by. Sometimes Bertie would read the news on his computer, and Drene was usually knitting something colorful and vibrant – today it was a scarf.
“It’s rather nice that they learned how to control the weather,” Drene commented one day. “Though I do miss the rain sometimes.”
“Mm,” grunted Bertie. “Never feels quite the same any more. Always too temperate.”
“Oh hush,” Drene told him as she rummaged through her bag for a small gauge needle. “You’re always finding the bad things in the new tech. You should just be happy with change for once.”
Bertie set his paper-thin computer down on his lap and watched the people who walked by. “What about all the surgery and cosmetics? Can I complain about that?”
“Oh Bertie, why are you always going on about this?” Drene sighed.
“Because,” he exclaimed. Then, softer, “It’s sad.”
He watched the people go by. They were tan, perfectly so; They had well-proportioned noses and attractive cheek-bones; Their eyes were all blue or green, their hair blond or black to match; There was no fat on their bodies, just electrically stimulated and grown muscle; Nobody was taller than anybody else – the women were all five feet and ten inches tall, and the men were all six feet and four inches; Everybody had tattoos, though on closer examination they were really just different variations of the same popular thing; Everybody had perfect teeth and their clothes were all fashionable, albeit very similar.
“It’s sad,” Bertie said again. Everybody was the same at first glance, and sometimes even on closer inspection. “Kids these days.”
“They’ll grow out of it.” Drene paused her knitting to pat him on the leg reassuringly. “We did, after all.”
“Yeah, well,” Bertie grouched. “You’d think kids would learn more from the silliness of people before them.”
He turned back to his news. Long-range faster than light was finally ready for commercial use. Saturn’s Erys space station had finally reached twenty million people, and was continuing to grow. NovaCorp was finally beginning to harvest the core of Venus. The last veteran of the Gulf War had died. A senator had been caught having an affair.
Funny, he thought to himself, how some things never change while everything else is moving and changing and never stopping.
Bertie’s phone rang. He looked down at it and smiled, answering with a “Well, hello there.”
“Hi grandpappy,” a happy child’s voice giggled. “Daddy says we’re going to come visit!”
He smiled. Some things never change.
by submission | Mar 24, 2012 | Story |
Author : M. A. Goldin
Elise had been bellowing at the comms for two minutes. Where the hell was he?
Keeper McDermott scrambled into the room and fell into a chair before the console. He wore worn clothes and a week’s whiskers. “Sorry, I was just tinkering with the electrical shielding in my bedroom.”
She glanced at the readings on her screen. “Keeper McDermott.”
“Yes?”
“You were making it worse.”
“Really? You don’t say.”
“Since you kept me waiting, I’ve been through your systems.” She frowned. “Beacon’s fine, so I don’t have to get a repair team out there right away, but you’ve got an awful lot of screwy in there.”
“Wait, Boss –“
“Shut it. You’ve got unauthorized electronic devices wired all over the place.” She made a face. “Audio files called ‘creepy’ and ‘moaning’.”
“They draw zero power.”
“You’ve got abnormally high electric fields in most of the living quarters and the repair shop.”
He fidgeted. “They’re barely above background, really.”
“You’ve got a subroutine in the air processing system that’s intentionally causing random backups in your ventilation.”
“I like breezes.” Behind him, a door slammed violently shut.
“Uh huh. And now I see there’s… thinning in the exterior insulation? Re-directed heat ducts? Are you crazy?”
“It’s just a couple of cold spots, no big deal.”
“Cold spots! What the hell are you doing to my Beacon?”
“Nothing! Don’t you get it?”
She slumped back in her chair and crossed her arms over her chest. “Clearly, no. Explain.”
“Please, don’t send a repair team.” He ran his face through his hands. “I’m fine. The station’s fine, I just –“ he sat there, staring at the console without really seeing.
“Keeper?”
“The weird feelings, the slamming doors, the moaning, the cold spots.” He looked up at her, his eyes pleading. “It’s better than the silence. Better a Beacon with ghosts than alone on a dead rock.”
Elise chewed her lip. Let him wait a little. “Had to send a crew out to Beacon 113 last month. New lightkeeper.”
McDermott looked confused. “Yeah?”
“The old Keeper wasn’t dead, so it never tripped the bio sensors here. Only reason we knew something was off was he had the oxygen cranked way, way up. Son of a bitch had drilled a hole in his skull. Big one. With that plus the oxy, he was blissed out of his mind when they got there. Walked out an airlock when nobody was looking.”
“Holy Christ.”
“So now I’ve got an emergency boat headed out there with a new Keeper. You got any idea what that costs? Company’s probably going to take it out of his life insurance.” She glared at McDermott. “Am I going to have to do that twice in one month, Keeper?”
“No, ma’am.”
She stared at him through the screen, trying to see the man through bad lighting and a billion miles of interference. The Beacon would run fine, if need be; would he?
“I suppose ghosts are better than tripping balls till your Beacon explodes.”
McDermott blushed and tugged at a piece of hair behind his ear. “Yeah.”
“You get any other ghosts out there, ones you didn’t make, you tell me. Let me send your replacement on a slow boat.”
He smiled, nodded. “Yes, ma’am.”
“San Martin out.”
