by submission | Jun 21, 2009 | Story
Author : John H Reiher Jr.
Family Faxor Kwer had lived on this comet for five generations. The light of the home star Sol was indistinguishable from the light of the twin stars Alef and Bey, or the nearer star Prox. Their ship dwarfed the small comet, stretching far past it in both directions.
The great night of space wrapped around Morgzha, who took little notice of it. He had been born in it, his body was made from it, and he knew of nothing else. He was the son of the headman of the family and overseer of the mining machines. They mined the needed water and minerals from the comet as well as the even rarer metals. They very much needed metals.
Oh there were stories of Hmon arising from the round balls that circled the stars, rich in metals, but he didn’t believe that. How could man come from those balls? The pull of the worlds would crush your chest. No, those were stories for young ones, to listen to and dream of while the crèche mothers raised them to be good workers. Ah to be a child again, thought Morgzha, but if one were to wish for something, it should be how to make different machines.
Morgzha stood on the soft snowy soil of the comet in his airsuit, his handfeet leaving steaming craters as his body heat melted the frozen air. Diggers, the size of twenty men pawed at the ice and snow. Sniffers floated in the near zero gravity and checked the chemical content of the ice being mined. They also checked for the signs of metal, any kind of metal beneath the regolith.
When Family Faxor Kwer chose this comet generations ago, they had chosen poorly. So far, the only metal they found had massed only 2,000 weights. They needed more, much more, to finish a sister ship to Faxor Kwer’s, and start a new family, the Faxor Kweronie. They had bought the right to build the ship ten generations ago from family Faxor Onie, at the same time as the families Faxor Octo and Faxor Neun. Those two families had built their new ships 4 generations ago, while family Faxor Kwer barely had enough metal to build an fifth of the new ship.
There was plenty of carbon compounds and other long chain elements, but without machines that knew how to weave these chemicals, they were forced to find every atom of metal this comet possessed. They could buy the information to manufacture the machines necessary, but the price would be enormous. Faxor Onie was the only one with that information. Morgzha did not want to know what the cost would be to buy this knowledge from the first family of Faxor.
If he could create a machine to weave the chemicals into support struts and walls, then they would be free from the thumb of the first family and it’s rules. But no one knew how to tell the machines how to do what they did, that knowledge was erased from the memory banks of their ship. Only self-repair systems were in place, and basic life-support and entertainment modules were working. The machines could make the very thin skin of the star sails, but that could not be adapted to structural members.
If wishes were plasma drives… he thought and smiled. His thoughts were disturbed by the alert he received from one of the sniffers. He bounded over to the crater the diggers had excavated and saw a wonder: a 10,000-weight, large iron-nickel rock. Morgzha smiled. Maybe he should wish more often.
by submission | Jun 19, 2009 | Story
Author : Benjamin Fischer
“It’s Bronco Eight Seven. He’s down, but he’s alive. Tight canyon, known hostiles–gonna be a hell of an extraction,” said Colonel. “Any volunteers?”
Matherson raised his hand, the bandaged one from last night. Colonel looked right through him, looked at the crates and laptops at the back end of the tent. Looked at Paki sitting there.
“Sir, I got it,” Matherson insisted.
“Sergeant, sit the hell down.”
Colonel’s gray eyes traced over Paki’s squat, compact frame.
“No takers?” he said. “Fine–I’m sending the damn robot.”
Paki wasn’t reliable. That’s why he was a medic. Something jacked up about his programming. Enough autonomy to get himself into a helluva fix, but not enough guile to get himself out. But the Army never turned away a recruit, especially one bought on contract. So they painted a red cross on one side of the black lettering announcing him a PACKBOT NINE. On the other side went a red crescent, just over his serial number.
Matherson walked with him out to the Herc.
“Nothing stupid, OK?”
“Understand all, Staff Sergeant,” said Paki, rolling on shock-mounted rubber treads.
“Hell you do. Come back in one piece, so I can finally beat you in Halo.”
“Unlikely, Staff Sergeant.”
Matherson grinned and patted Paki’s fuel cells with his broken hand.
The drop was bad. Paki figured out in a hurry why the Raptor pilot had two broken legs and a concussion–the canyon walls were nearly vertical, and baseball-sized rubble covered any surface that could remotely be considered horizontal. He strained uphill, through the narrow gully, using his surgical-grade manipulator arms to haul himself hand-over-hand through the rough patches. This wasn’t work for a lone soldier–this extraction required at least a squad.
His dorsal cams picked up movement behind him, below. Hostiles. He called for close air support–the unfortunate Bronco Eight Seven’s mission. He pulled harder, his treads whining high and loud in the mountain night. His pursuers quickened their pace.
Careening up a low rise, Paki approached the pilot, his chute bunched up underneath him behind a low boulder. Blacked out–two ugly compound fractures.
Paki touched his face gently, pressing the mask of an oxygen pack to the pilot’s lips.
“Major William Shapiro,” he said, choosing a woman’s prerecorded voice, “I am Second Armored Division automated recovery vehicle callsign ‘Paki’. I am here to extract you.”
He repeated this message until the pilot coughed, groaned.
“They’re coming.”
“Yes sir, my brothers are inbound. You are safe.”
“No. The others.”
Paki telescoped his dorsal camera boom and zoomed in. The pilot was right–the hostiles were visible now, clearing the steepest leg of the ascent. Paki did some very quick calculations.
He pulled the pilot’s sidearm from his bloody left leg, checked the magazine with his delicate, precise manipulators.
“Sir, I will stop the hostiles. You are safe.”
Shapiro groaned again. The robot whirred away, bouncing off the irregular gravel.
A rifle barked, then chattered. Full auto. Booming–rocket propelled grenades. More gunfire.
The mayhem rocked the valley for minutes, the pock-pock-pock of a little handgun lost in the cacophony.
Silence, broken by a few probing rifle shots.
The whumpth of a hydrogen fire starting.
Shapiro rolled onto his side, glanced around his makeshift bunker just in time to catch the guerillas profiled against the burning wreckage.
Then the Omnivores swooped in from nowhere and added human bodies to the pyre, their antipersonnel cannon flashing like fiery swords as they crisscrossed overhead.
Shapiro wept.
by submission | Jun 18, 2009 | Story
Author : Ari Brill
It is always a joy to bring rightness to God’s creation. The Good Doctrine’s shiny hull glimmered in the blackness of space, the eerie light of the alien sun reflected off of it and somehow purified. The 100-meter-long starship had just completed its seventh (a lucky number indeed!) mission and now orbited the alien planet, while the hyperspace coordinates for the voyage back to Earth were calculated. But surely the people inside the starship are more important than the mere material object!
Captain Joseph Daniels, son of Jeremiah, looked with satisfaction upon his sixteen assembled crewmembers. For the seventh time they had completed their – all of humanity’s – mission of helping purge sin from the galaxy, and bringing a heathen species to God. He spoke formally:
“Crew, you have done well this day. Alien species 338-I has been purified and sins no more, through your righteous work. But we do not rest! After our short voyage home, to refuel and resupply, we again shall go forth to bring the divine will to the galaxy.”
“Now, a short prayer, led by Chaplain Amos.”
All bowed their heads and mumbled piously. Several wept with joy. When the last man had lifted up his head, the Captain motioned to a crewmember. The man stood up, straightened his jacket, and spoke.
“We estimate that over 12 billion 338-Is ascended during our mission. Before, the insects knew only sin, swarming over and under the planet’s surface. Now, their souls are at peace and harmony. Approximately 300 warheads were expended during the purification process.”
Several again wept with joy, but this time mixed with a little sadness. For while all other sentient species must be freed from this impure, material world, it stayed humanity’s fate alone to remain behind and spread the light and fire of God.
Some hours later, a red light flashed on the bridge console. Crewman Uriel examined the video message – from Earth, a forty-five minute time delay. At first he didn’t quite understand the meaning of what he was seeing.
“Great and glorious God in heaven above!”
The five crewmembers on the bridge, as well as the Captain, dropped their mundane tasks. A truly spiritual message must be at hand.
On the screen, the radiant image of – it could only be! – an angel spoke from seemed to be the bridge of a starship, its echoing voice a strange fusion of thunder and the sweet bubbling of a fountain. The angel’s body superficially resembled a man’s, but it had to be the most beautiful, glorious man ever seen – to the crew’s eyes, it was the essence of perfection. Truly, it was as different from man as a man was from an insect.
“Today, humanity shall be rewarded for its holy work! As you have so rightfully done to others, you shall now receive your due. For the past eighteen scores of years, mankind has done God’s work and purified the galaxy.”
The voice of the angel grew awesome, and terrible to perceive.
“The reward of mankind is nigh!”
The message suddenly cut out. Crewman Uriel frantically pushed buttons.
“Sir! All I’m getting now is static…”
But no one was paying attention.
On the bridge, all wept with joy.
by submission | Jun 17, 2009 | Story
Author : Steve Davidson
Grrxynyth stripped off the artificial covering. “Man! Did you see the way he was looking at me!?”
Aaarraxanth tentacle gestured in the affirmative. “Couldn’t keep his eyes off of you. Thought he was gonna die when you started taking off the clothing.”
Grrxynyth’s body rippled with laughter. A few stress pores continued to dribble a clear fluid, an involuntary act that bespoke his waning excitement. He patted the covering’s artificial mammary glands, a few of his eyes following their Jell-O-like contortions. “I used to think there was some upper limit to how big these things could be, but not any more. He almost fainted when I started rubbing them on his sensory-organ cluster.”
Aaarraxanth continued to busy himself with stowing equipment. “Got some pretty good close-ups this time, Grrx. Really good reaction stuff – especially when you probed him. Thought his masticating organ was going to swallow up the whole frame! Look.”
Aaarraxanth’s tentacle brushed against a display, causing it to reveal a human face, eyes and mouth wide with fear. Another tentacle brush brought the image to life. The viewer’s point of view was slowly engulfed by the darkness of a mouth, the shot accompanied by a soundtrack of low moans and repetitive grunting.
Grrxynyth’s stress pores opened wider with the memory. “So what are we calling this one? ‘Stupid Indigenes Will Do Anything For Giant Lactating Glands’? ‘Involuntary Probings Volume Forty-Two’? ‘Sex With Un-Evolved Aliens’? ‘I was In Love With a Being With No Tentacles’?”
“Yeah,” snorted Aaarraxanth. “All of em. You know they don’t care what the title is; as long as it features that probe shot – ”
“-it matters not,” finished Grrxynth. “Geez. What a way to make a living.”
“You got that right,” said Aaarraxanth. “Now come on, put that toy away and help me finish packing up. We’ve still got to get set up for those food animal shots.”
“Oy. Animal snuff. I mean, I want to know but I don’t want to know, if you know what I mean. What kind of freak watches that stuff?!”
Aaarraxanth cocked a few eyes in Grrxynth’s direction. “Believe me buddy. You don’t want to know. Now stop yacking and put that quadruped costume on.”
by submission | Jun 14, 2009 | Story
Author : Ian Rennie
I don’t want to do this any more.
It’s cold, and we’re all hungry. I knew it would be like this, but that’s the difference between knowing and experiencing.
Nobody talks much any more, Scott least of all. When we were on the way there, he tried to keep people’s spirits up by talking up the grand adventure. When we got to the pole and found we had lost, that all this was for the privilege of being the second team to get there, he sort of withdrew. He doesn’t show how much this has broken him, doesn’t show that he suspects what I know for certain. We are all going to die here.
I knew it would be like this. Observing this is why I came. I’m sure that months from now when I hand in my paper, “A chronosociological survey of the extremes of the human condition, with specific reference to the antarctic explorers”, everyone around me will say what brave and courageous work it was. But it’s not. It’s cowardly. All of these men are going to die, have been dead for centuries. Whatever happens to this body, I will live on.
I stand up, they all turn to look at me. They will call this a supreme sacrifice, but it’s not.
“I’m just going out,” I say, “I may be some time.”
