by submission | Mar 3, 2012 | Story |
Author : Ion
Jim was excited. He gleefully danced about as the elevator slowly squeaked downward. He was thinking about the popcorn he had saved from that convenience store he found a few weeks back and how this would be the perfect opportunity to pop it. Its not like he hadn’t found other tapes before, he had a collection of hundreds, many brought back from the brink of destruction before the elements or radiation could get to them. They kept him company. They reminded him of the time before the bombs. Most of all though, he learned things from them.
He had been camping that Autumn. Trying to get in one last trip before winter set in. Sure he had an emergency radio, but who would contact him? The blasts were so far away, they didn’t even wake him up. No one there to worry about him after that. On his way home things slowly crept in. Everything was rubble. They few people he did come across, were not pleasant.
He tries not to think about it now, as the elevator reaches its destination. He is too excited about this tape. Nearly all the news stations had been destroyed. All but this one. He had seen it in a commercial in one of the last tapes he found. WKQQ, Channel 8 news, reports live from its headquarters in Midtown Nebraska. Such a small town. Really out of the way for most people. Sure, it had been looted to the ground. All the food gone, no books in the library, but who would take tapes without the equipment or electricity to watch them? Jim was lucky in that respect. No one would laugh at his solar truck now.
He urges the popcorn to hurry up and pop as he begins diagnostics on the tape. He is in luck, it is in good condition and will not have to be restored. Good old Midtown. No one would hold a grudge against Midtown. He pops it in as the popcorn finishes and has a seat. He presses play on the tape labeled “Presidential Address 10/17~”. He watches as the news runs for a minute, but then is interrupted by an emergency broadcast. This is it he says to himself, on the edge of his seat. This is where I will finally find out what happened. As if confirming his suspicions the president sits at a cluttered desk in what looks like a very sturdy bunker. Jim listens as the president talks about a computer network and watches as the president begins to pick up objects off the desk and assemble them. Is that toilet cleaner? And bacon? His heart sinks and he begins to suspect this is some kind of parody. But the president goes on. What is all this about sharing? Leaked information? What is the president doing with all that stuff on the desk?
These questions race through Jim’s mind as the president drops the bombshell. He is giving up. The whole world is giving up. There is no way to combat this new threat. The president pauses to assemble a particularly difficult part of the device he is building. During this pause realization sets in. The president is building a bomb. Out of household components. The information has been posted all over the internet. They cannot stop it. They’re giving up.
The president wishes Jim the best of luck and presses a button on the top of the device. The tape is interrupted with static. Jim sits alone.
by submission | Mar 2, 2012 | Story |
Author : J.D. Rice
“Icarus to Daedalus! We have primary stabilizer failure! Repeat, we have primary stabilizer failure! We’re losing altitude. Please advise!”
The lieutenant was shouting, screaming into his microphone, trying to raise his voice over the sound of his ship as it careened off its intended arc. Their test flight was supposed to bring them in a slingshot around the Sun before launching into deep space. Daedalus had been given the higher, safer arc through the Sun’s coronasphere. Icarus meanwhile had apparently strayed too close to the Sun and was now plunging towards its surface. The historic irony of the situation was not lost, even in the midst of crisis.
“Icarus to Daedalus, please respond!” the lieutenant shouted, trying his best to steer the ship up, away from the ever growing solar horizon, and back on its intended arc. Bolts rattled, engines roared, warning lights beeped and blared all over the cockpit. It was everything the lieutenant and his copilot could do to keep themselves from plunging directly into the Sun. As they continued to try to hail the Daedalus, their eyes met briefly. Each saw the look of cold acceptance dawning on the other’s face.
“Damn!” the lieutenant said, tossing his microphone aside. It was like something out of a nightmare. They’d trained for this mission, run countless simulations. They’d calculated and practiced every detail. They were ready. And despite all that, they found themselves in a hopeless situation. The cockpit was getting ever hotter, ever closer to the bright, burning star below. There was nothing the two men could do but steer into it and accept the inevitable.
“Wait.”
The lieutenant checked his instruments, ran the numbers in his head. It might work, but they’d risk being boiled alive in the process.
“Take us down!” he shouted.
“We’re not giving up yet!” his copilot answered.
“No, take us down! Take us closer! We can increase our speed and take a different arc out!”
The copilot said nothing, but just looked at his superior in disbelief.
“The computer can plot the course, just do it! That’s an order!”
Knowing there was no time to argue, the copilot nodded. Believing it to be the last act of his life, he turned Icarus’s nose down into the horizon and set the engines to full burn. His grip on the steering controls tightened, as the sweat on his hands evaporated at a rapid rate. His hands, his face, even his lungs felt like they were on fire. Inertial dampeners began to buckle, causing the man to feel himself pinned to his chair. He could barely keep the ship on course as his vision began to fade. Seconds, minutes passed as he clung to consciousness, almost wishing that death would simply take him and end it all. Any second their wax and feather wings would finally burn up, and Icarus’s journey would be over.
And then they saw black skies ahead, stars shining faintly, then brightly before them. The heat dissipated. The shaking stopped. For the first time in what seemed like ages, they could hear themselves think. Icarus had survived her journey, with the lieutenant and his copilot intact.
“Icarus to Daedalus…” the lieutenant sighed. “We made it. Superstition be damned, we made it…”
Nothing but dead air come back over the line. There was no sign of the Daedalus anywhere. Somewhere along the line, she’d lost her flight path as well. But unlike Icarus, she had not emerged on the other side of the star.
Daedalus was gone.
by Clint Wilson | Mar 1, 2012 | Story |
Author : Clint Wilson, Staff Writer
Agent Rockton was all on his own here in the heart of the city. He appeared no more than a shadow, creeping stealthily through twisting service alleys under the cover of the ink black night that hung perpetually above this remote rock that had at one time been a federation outpost.
He paused and held his breath, his back flat against a stone wall. He heard footsteps. This was good. It would only be one of the Mumphet people running this errand or that for its master Slug. Had Rockton heard the sucking sliming noise of one of the actual enemy approaching he would have had much more to deal with. He watched the short hairy being pass by, loping along with a sack of some supplies or other tossed over its shoulder. Poor buggers, they’d been enslaved for generations. He felt badly that so many Mumphets would have to perish as well when the shit hit.
Once in the clear he began to move again. Almost there now. His visor’s readout showed him that he was but meters from the city’s center, his ultimate destination. Might as well do it by the book. There ahead was a decorative fountain that spewed stale smelling brackish water. That was ground zero.
After a quick scan he stole across the open square and then dove to the wet pavement and rolled into the shadow of the fountain’s edge. He procured the receiver from his backpack and slid it as far as he could under the stony lip of the fountain, then engaged the timer. The 10:00 hours began to tick backward. That was what he had, ten short hours to make it on foot, out of the city and across kilometers of rough terrain to a safe distance from the blast.
As he slid out and stood up he heard a click behind him. He froze, and heard the unmistakable sound of a Mumphet grunting into a universal translator. The words in Common were instant and mechanical. “I have a high caliber energy weapon aimed at your back. I must warn my master, you have done something. What is it you’ve put under the fountain?”
Rockton held his hands out, fingers splayed. He spoke into his own translator and was honest and direct. “You’d be wiser to go get any family you want to save and leave this city at once.”
“Turn around intruder.”
Rockton turned to face his short hairy assailant. He could tell the young Mumphet was scared.
Yet it raised its weapon threateningly and asked, “Is it a bomb?”
“No my friend. It is a teleportation receiver, but in a few short hours it will bring a thermonuclear device that will destroy everything here. The people who are sending it are far away, in another star system. They can’t be stopped, and the receiver cannot be turned off. Heed my words, get your family and run.”
The Mumphet was not quite convinced. “What if I just shoot you and then smash it to bits?”
“You can’t smash it; heck you can’t even move it. It’s held in place by wormhole forces, it would be easier to move the whole planet.”
Suddenly the Mumphet stepped back and said, “You know there are other Slug cities on other planets; this won’t get them all.”
“I know,” Rockton replied. “But it’s a hell of a good start.”
The Mumphet smiled. “I’d love to converse further, but I need to rescue my family.” And with that he turned and disappeared into the night.
Rockton began to make his way out of the city.
by Julian Miles | Feb 29, 2012 | Story |
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
Imagine a frontier settlement from any decent cowboy film. Then substitute troops of the Galacta Navir for every cowboy. Make the planet it sits on something beyond arid and set the humidity to nearly zero.
Welcome to my world: Rumbleday; the planet under the Clervoy Orbital Refreshment Facility. A mean hunk of dust and rock under a pitiless sun that has only one real moon and twenty-eight fake ones.
I’m Paladin Anderson Brent and I’ve just woken after returning to town from a trooper’s disciplinary hearing late yesterday. The Galacta Navir likes to keep its troopers keen: Inter-battlegroup rivalry is encouraged and the “Cleansweep” bonus scheme adds a lethal frissance. It also means that off-duty rucks are invariably messy.
It’s ten before fourteen on a thirty-nine hour day and the chime of the mainline is an unwelcome interruption of my sleep-in. At least Arty sounds unhappier than I am: “Tabitha just called from Galadriel Port; the elites of Chevalier de Anjou just landed.”
“Okay, Arty. Looks like Chantilly is in for a high rolling week.”
“Anderson! I told you a week ago. Chantilly is full of Fils de Maginot elites!”
Now the folks out here have an unwritten agreement with local command: troops from rival factions never refresh in the same hemisphere. That goes double for elites. While the old adage about being kept in cages and fed raw meat is only true of aardfangs these days (and they don’t get refreshed, they get shot), it is a useful gauge for the mentality of elites.
Just then, my priority line beeps so I put Arty on hold.
“Paladin Brent. This is Paladin Deems. I’ve had to send the elites of Martelons de Lille to Chantilly as the elites of Kriegsturm rolled into Orleans.”
The world skews and my vision blurs in momentary fugue. We have three elites from the Garde Francais partying hard in my town. In fairness, it was one of the least dangerous options. A trio of elites from the Mord und Totschlag would have been armageddon crazy. The Garde were bad but had this flamboyant streak that led to shows of non-violent mayhem in amongst the usual carnage. You might wind up with your town repainted and needing Diogenes to find the virgins, but it was better than smoking ruins and random limbs.
I’m just reaching to reconnect Arty when I hear the distant sound of small arms fire. They let the elites off-ship armed? Tomorrow someone in Downship Protocol is going to have a procedural amendment they will never forget.
I scramble into the den and bring up the surveillance of Main Street. It’s beyond control already. Bodies litter most flat surfaces and worryingly, a couple of vertical ones. Eight vehicles burning along with two saloons. Time to dry them out. I open the crash cabinet and press the blue button.
The inhabitants of Chantilly withdraw calmly to their danger rooms as the klaxons sound. Three minutes later I power down the grid and drain down all the tavern pumps and water pipes. A minute after that, the meteor deflection field around Chantilly activates and the temperature starts to climb.
Three hours later the last elite in Chantilly keels over from heat exhaustion. We drop the field, start the grid, refill the pumps and spend a while dumping floppy elites into transports.
The early years of Rumbleday were marred by collateral fatalities. Now we can isolate each town and remove all fluid supplies. Everyone loses the will to party when the temperature hits 330 Kelvin and all the liquids have disappeared.
by submission | Feb 28, 2012 | Story |
Author : Asher Wismer
Jack realized he’d been shot. The pain lanced up his leg, shooting through his hip into his chest, and for a moment, he thought that another of the flying bullets had struck home. Instead, the pain receded, only a slight twinge as his armor took over and tightened around the wound, and he took two steps and launched himself into the sky.
The flying drones surrounded him. He ignored them — they were more for distraction than for damage, and they couldn’t do anything to his armor anyway. At the apex of his jump, he activated the graviton thrusters and powered over the building, turned at speeds that threatened whiplash, and landed with a bone-jarring thump on the roof.
The drones pulled off, not programmed to operate in the building’s defense sphere. For a moment, Jack was safe; he flicked the auto-medic on and felt relief as morphine flowed into his leg. Not enough to slow him, though; he took a quick look around and saw the stairwell door, which shattered under his foot.
Down the stairs and into the main lab. Around him, the lab’s automatic defenses activated and he shot them out, one by one, wincing as electricity slammed into his armor and flowed around the Faraday shell down to the floor.
Behind him, the main door cycled open. He spun and leaped behind the wreckage of a desk as the security team, themselves encased in armor, opened fire. They had weapons that would cut through his armor like butter. Instead of waiting for a break, he scuttled to the side and blew a gaping hole in the wall ahead. Before he fired his graviton thrusters, propelling him through the side of the building, he activated the contingency bomb and let it fall to the floor.
He was three floors down from the lab, falling fast, when the entire lab floor vanished in a pounding explosion.
The graviton generator saved him from pancaking on the pavement. Emergency vehicles circled into the parking lot, and for the moment, no one noticed him, standing up in the bulky armor that added two feet and one thousand pounds to his small frame. The comm in his helmet pinged.
“Did you get it?”
“Couldn’t get my hands on it,” he said. “I had to blow the whole floor.”
“That’s not what I paid you for.”
“That’s all I could do,” he said. “At least no one else will get it.”
“Fine,” the voice said. “Come back for debrief. I want to see the tape as well.”
Jack signed off without answering. Someone shouted and he started to run. Nothing on land except another armor unit could catch him when he went flat out.
It would take a few hours to fabricate the tapes, showing a much larger force in the lab, proving that he couldn’t get the virus out before he had to bail. His employer didn’t need to know that he never intended to steal it, but to destroy it. The virus was a horrible thing, and he knew personally what it would do if his employer got hold of it. He would never leave the armor, would die still inside it after, he hoped, a productive life, long or short.
Inside the armor, Jack felt the itch start up in his lower back, even though there was no skin there to itch. He ignored it; it would go away in time. His leg would heal as well, inside the metal skin that had replaced so much of his body.
Better this way, Jack thought. Much better.
