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.
by Stephen R. Smith | Feb 26, 2012 | Story |
Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer
Lewis sprinted the last few yards across the wasteland and dove head first into the trench. He clutched his rifle tight against his chest as he lay in the dirt, chest heaving, heart pounding out of sync with the artillery barrage overhead.
Move, Lewis, get up and move.
A shell exploded nearby, showering him with sticky blue dirt. Ears ringing he pulled himself to his feet and, hugging the facing wall of the trench, half walked, half ran forward. He didn’t stop to pick a direction, didn’t reason which way was most likely to take him back towards friendlies, he simply ran.
Minutes stretched like hours, hours like days, energy weapon discharge cracked overhead and a constant pounding of artillery kept a beat and kept it strong. Lewis just ran, rifle clenched in his fists like the lifeline basic had taught him it would be.
His legs burning, eyes stinging from the smoke, Lewis ran past an advancement point in the trench. Here, a tee intersection had been cut out, hardened spray-plastigel buttressed the sides and a downed landing craft bridging the trench above blocked out what little sun was visible overhead. The trench continued on the way he’d been heading, but another trench met at right angles, heading towards the enemy. From ahead Lewis could hear gunfire, and not just the staccato blast of the enemy’s shard guns, but also the heavy thump, thump, thump of energy weapons like the one he still clutched white knuckled.
Lewis didn’t stop to think, just turned and ran towards the gunfire.
Within moments, he found himself at the back of a frightened young man huddled into a slit in the wall of the trench. If not for his shaking and the barrel of his weapon protruding, he might have run right past him.
“Soldier, let’s go, cover me.” Lewis barked at the frightened young man, glancing furtively along the trench.
“Sir, s-s-s-sir,” the soldier stammered, “I’m out of ammunition sir. I’m no use to anyone now sir.”
Lewis paused a moment, thinking for the first time of his own weapon, and the moments before he was sent diving for cover in the trench. He thought of the impotent whine that meant his rifle was fully discharged as well. Listening, he realized the staccato cracking of gunfire from farther up the trench had also stopped, and not even pausing to think he pulled the shaking soldier out of the hole in the trench wall and barked simply, “Barrel up, cover me.”
Together they marched up the trench, one empty rifle and one empty heavy repeater pointed towards an enemy they hoped was more scared than they were.
Within minutes, they stepped past a haphazard barrier of crates and plasteel panels, and found themselves staring down three of the enemy soldiers, guns levelled, mandibles clacking, multifaceted eyes reflecting the two commandos back a thousand-fold.
Lewis didn’t hesitate, just jammed the barrel of his rifle into the closest face he could find.
“Surrender. Surrender or I blow your fucking head off.” The force of his words for the moment drove out the fear in his heart.
Seconds ticked away like hours before the enemy soldier tossed his weapon aside and bowed down into the dirt.
“Surrender”, it said, in poorly translated mechanical English, “please, surrender.”
Lewis and the still shaking soldier stood over their prisoners for hours before reinforcements came up the trench and relieved them. Lewis walked twenty or so meters away from his prisoners before vomiting into the dirt.
by submission | Feb 24, 2012 | Story |
Author : Krista Bunskoek
Racing down the barren street, she grinned like an escaped fugitive.
She’d done it. She’d done it again!
Taking away her network privileges! Ha!
It only fueled her flame. With more time to plot, to create, to be on her way to feel the thrill of freedom. Freedom once more!
And, well, what she really missed were her friends.
They hadn’t disconnected her ‘vital’ Education network. Parents!
Ha. She’d figured it out, of course. The tiny loophole in the code. The connection to the house network. She’d worked on it every day, chipping away like a rock hammer to stone. She found the way. Undetected – the network still showing her as grounded.
Her parent’s schedules. Easy-peasy. The small security changes made after her last breach – child’s play.
Then there was the house alarm. The multiple levels of security. This took some time, and a few errors which she laid squarely on her brother. But she figured it out. There was always a way.
With the house network hacked, she owned it.
Turning off the front door alarm, she was out!
Freedom!
It was dark. It was silent. It was the thrill of the forbidden.
No one went out at night. It was unsafe.
She was out, and it felt good.
Now she had to be quick. She had to make her way down the street to Alexi’s house. She was late. She hoped he got her message.
It was chilly. It was strange. The slight breeze left icy kisses on her cheeks. So this is what night feels like, she thought.
A street lamp flickered. She darted from its range.
Glancing upwards, she raced in awe.
Stars! Not one or two, but hundreds, no – thousands! Her heart skipped a beat. She thought briefly of her parents. Wondering for a second if she might find their space station flying in orbit.
It was live. It was real.
Mesmerized, she felt like a small part of this enormous universe.
This was freedom. This was like nothing she’d experienced before. This was like nothing left to loose.
A sharp breeze whipped at her, snapping her back to the hunt. She had given Alexi a specific time, and she could not be late. Too risky.
Her stealth instincts kicked in again, she focused on the pursuit.
Alexi’s house.
A rock. Solid and heavy.
Hurling the rock in the air, it banged in perfect precision on Alexi’s bedroom window.
No response.
Wait. A shadow.
Was it Alexi? Was that a signal?
Too late.
The front door opened. Alarms.
No.
She stood frozen.
Too late.
The compliance police. Trapped.
She was put in the back seat of the extended unimobile, and zoomed silently to her house.
Her parents stood in the doorway. Glaring in disapproval.
Elana was sent straight to her room.
Deflated.
Defeated.
Dismally crushed once more.
She would always know, though, the thrill of freedom. A freedom so frightfully on the edge. A freedom so real, so rare.
This could never be taken away, and she knew it.
by Julian Miles | Feb 23, 2012 | Story |
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
Hadrian’s bloody Wall. Originally built to keep the Picts out when the Romans finally realized my ancestors were too surly to civilise. Since then it’s been used in books and films, every damn time to keep something nasty in the North from overrunning the lovely people in the South.
I’m standing on it tonight as repair crews struggle to conjure up the unobtainable with swearing, prayers and gaffa tape. Alison and I are peering down the scopes of Bursinger S3 minimissile launchers, looking for the faster ones in the endless shuffling horde coming towards us up the M6. A six lane shooting gallery where speeding is deadly. The longer period ‘infected’, the faster it moves. An easy selection process because the faster ones are smarter too. They can organise the newer reanimates into inhuman pyramids for others to climb. It’s happened twice and thankfully we had working flamethrowers on the sections where it happened. Now we have constant monitoring and helicopter gunships. But there is always some twit who doesn’t clear the napalm zone in time and ends up as trooper flambé de jour.
“You realise that we outnumber you?”
Alison does not take her attention from her eyepiece. Her tone is conversational. I keep my attention focussed as well.
“We’ll keep fighting. Eventually you’ll run out of meat and decomposition will get to you.”
She pauses and looks over her scope into the mob before squinting down the eyepiece with intent.
“Hello Gantiur.”
Her minimissile zips into the shuffling crowd and I see a figure try to dodge before it is reduced to a shambling lower torso and legs.
“Friend of yours?”
She grins nastily.
Alison’s world was reduced to ashes by their sun doing something unexpected. They had enough warning and managed to transmit their consciousnesses intergalactically. On Earth they found compatible hosts in the recently dead. They were clumsy at first and by the time they had figured out how to control their new bodies, they were cannibalistic to repair decomposition damage to their hosts. Most never progressed past that stage. The few who did were indistinguishable from full humans.
Alison had been my partner in and out of the military. When the ‘zombie apocalypse’ occurred, we got called back. Then she died in a transport chopper crash. All we knew was that she disappeared in the Highlands and returned two months later suffering from ‘amnesia’. I spotted that she had changed and she was among the first to come clean. At first there was hatred; but eventually, surprisingly, sympathy had arisen because the Metharran plan had gone so hideously wrong.
The bestial traits their civilisation had suborned for so long manifested when linked to the memory remnants of humans, unless the human had died with an emotional bond. That enabled the new reanimate to rapidly achieve full sentience; to become a Methuman. But the loss of that bond sent them immediately, irretrievably bestial. Our mixed defence unit has pets, cars, relatives, ornaments, books and the whole range of things that full humans can become attached to. The Methuman call them Sanity Totems. Each Methuman keeps their totem near them and protects it with insane dedication. Because without it they are no better than any of the plague of reanimates that are assailing the world.
I am Alison’s sanity totem. She has had a minuscule device implanted in her head, so that when my heart stops beating for more than five minutes she will be explosively decapitated. Until then, we have a strange love to keep us warm as civilisation crumbles.
by submission | Feb 22, 2012 | Story |
Author : O. Alexander
I open my eyes. They burn after another restless night, filled with nightmares. Three weeks in the jungle, playing deadly cat and mouse games with a neo-leftist demolition squad, can have that effect.
I get up and walk unsteadily into the bathroom. Looking into the mirror, dark fear swells within me.
The Incident.
It is never far from my mind.
My man lost. A village massacred in retribution. Innocents slaughtered. I stood by, silent.
I pound both my palms against the hard porcelain sink, the pain clearing my head for a moment.
The One World de-brief begins at 9am. No time for regrets now.
Moving back into the bedroom, the TV is showing another cratered launch pad. This time they hit a base to the West. A primitive bomb again, crippling another launch facility.
I dress quickly and walk outside. The protestors just beyond the fence notice me and a swell of hatred is hurled in my direction.
“No to human murderers,” a strained female voice rises above the others.
My squad is part of an experiment. We are the first biologicals One World has allowed into front-line combat on its behalf in thirty years. With the rise of autonomous fighting machines, and the breakthroughs in Moral-Software that soon followed, war became a wholly non-human affair for the developed world three decades ago. Then, last year One World’s autonomous forces proved incapable of pacifying this jungle insurgency. The genetically enhanced locals proved too tenacious and clever for the agile machines.
Our baseline human squads have a good record in the test so far, giving the insurgents a series of bloody engagements with no civilian casualties. An Autonomous Witnessing Unit, the size of a small bear walking on four legs, is sent out with each squad. It records and reports the squad’s interactions with civilians and combatants back to One World.
The Incident happened in a zone too dangerous for communication transmissions. The images from the village remained inside the AWU when Owens attached the armor piercing explosive to its underbelly. The report we later filed told the story of our squad coming onto an atrocity clearly committed by our enemies. My job today is to walk the Council through that report, to keep the Baseliner’s record clean and my men off the gallows.
———-
Thirty minutes later I sit at the center of a drafty room, surrounded on three sides by elevated podiums. I watch as the colorful One World uniforms file in. When the last seat is filled, I sit up straight and prepare for my testimony. The room grows silent. A minute passes. Then five. No familiar words of welcome from the Director. Just silence.
Panic slices through my stomach. I stand, taking two steps backwards. Four strong arms meet me. I try to whirl, to run. The strong arms jerk me off my feet, carrying me to the far wall. One of the hands fumbles in a pocket, then holds something cold and metallic to my head. I am instantly paralyzed. They place me in a stiff chair. A metallic cap is fitted to my head. A screen descends from the ceiling.
To my horror, my skull under the metal cap seems to split in half. It happens smoothly. Mechanically. Without pain. Connections are made under the cap. A jungle scene appears on the screen, showing a view from just outside the village. The huts are still intact. Miller is just ahead on the trail. I remember this view. It is mine.
As the image leaps to life, I fear it is the end of mine.
