The missionaries crossed the dull gray landscape slowly, their buggy straining with the weight of their supplies, even at this low gravity. Easy targets. Eunomia was well past its boomtown days. The ringwoodite deposits, rich in hydrates, had all been depleted and shipped across the Belt. It was a cruel irony, then, that generations later… Continue reading Easy Targets
Playing the Odds
Officials said that while the long period comet would pass within the moon's orbit, the chances of it striking the Earth were only 1 in 3,000,000. They'd been saying it all summer. When the news was first announced it went through the usual media blitz, cycling down after a few weeks and then reemerging at… Continue reading Playing the Odds
The Reckoning
She had a black hole for a heart, or at least that was the rumor. When you go around calling yourself The Reckoning, rumors like that are bound to follow like famine follows a locus swarm. In truth, she had no heart at all, just a pump. And a backup. There was no black hole,… Continue reading The Reckoning
Scavengers
Deadeye saw it first, no surprise. We rode toward the smoke. Loud Mouth couldn't stop giggling, interrupted every so often by that disgusting clicking noise the stump of his tongue made against his uvula. I ran my palm over the smooth end of my left arm, which terminated at the mid-forearm. It was an interstellar… Continue reading Scavengers
My Summer Vacation
"Next up is Leighton Decker." Leighton walked to the front of the class, dragging her feet as she walked so that her polka-dotted boots—her favorites, though entirely out of season—scraped loudly against the coarse carpeting. Twenty-three blank faces stared at her in wait. By the end of the year she'd be able to perform the… Continue reading My Summer Vacation
Star Child
Yensuensu'suneasun—Yensu, for simplicity—awoke in a bath of bright silver light. The long night was not over; it was too early to wake. He stretched his proto-limbs against the strong thin filaments of webbing and the syrupy fluid within the interior of the pod. He did not know the word mother, but that was what his spindly… Continue reading Star Child
Modus Vivendi
Despite his cracked ribs and the burnt flesh above his hip, Seiko managed to laugh. "Do you know what your problem is?" Astrid didn't answer. She was busy dragging herself away, leaving dark red smears across the cold floor of the Second Law's bridge. "You're not prepared to die." He laughed again, but it morphed into… Continue reading Modus Vivendi
Tête-à-tête dans les Toilettes
There were two stalls, and the first was occupied. Ambassador Han preferred to use the toilet in private, but he didn't have time to be choosy. Something wasn't sitting right in his stomach—probably those ugly land lobsters they served raw last night. Damn outworld food. He finished his business and reached for a sanitary square,… Continue reading Tête-à-tête dans les Toilettes
Terraplant
“What’d you say your name was?” “Garbenzera. Rick Garbenzera.” The director turned his gaunt, thin-lipped face to his assistant, Miranda Spring, a woman with soft features and a hard voice whom Rick would have just as easily accepted to be 25 as 40. He got a mentor-protege vibe from the two of them. They both… Continue reading Terraplant
In Need of Forgiveness
Luther kicked in the cathedral door. It was the only part of Concordance Station that was permitted to forego the triple-redundant locking hatchways required of all other passageways—granted by popular vote, the fools. His left arm was dead below the shoulder, and his right was preoccupied keeping pressure over the fresh hole in the side… Continue reading In Need of Forgiveness
Warmup Pages 