The sun was just coming up over the foothills between the distant angular forms of the archologies. It tinged the sand and snow orange and pink. Marsha stood atop the smoking hull of the downed mech, listening to the screams from within. The bent cylinder of a hydraulic actuator prevented the escape hatch from opening… Continue reading Four Graves
Tag: Fires
A Taste of Vengeance
The morning sky is black, thick with the ash spit from the stacks of the trawlers. The metal-plated machines stretch two kilometers straight upward, maybe more, with wide bases that could cover my entire village twice over. They hover on a cushion of plasma and crawl across the surface in long, ponderous paths, harvesting the… Continue reading A Taste of Vengeance
Freerider
Elijah tried to be somewhere else in his mind. Anywhere else. But he couldn't do it. Even trying to hold the idea of imagining he was somewhere else was a stuttering and disjointed struggle. The pain was too much. Too intense. Too absorbing. He should have been dead a long time ago. Instead of walling… Continue reading Freerider
Helping Hand
Shivam awoke to strange constellations. Red stars that didn’t glimmer, looking not so far above the tops of the Western white pines. Then he felt a tremble in the earth like an orchestral brass section playing dissonant chords in infrasound somewhere just out of sight within the dark forest. There was a Behemoth ship overhead.… Continue reading Helping Hand
Oxygen Leak
Working and living on a Sunrise sat was actually a pretty easy gig. If you could drive a bus—even an automated one—you could fly a sat. Gus had been up here for four months and barely lifted a finger. It was great. He looked out a porthole. Below, the sun's last rays cast stark shadows… Continue reading Oxygen Leak
Throw Away Your Body Parts
The fires that night were so bright that I got out of bed thinking it was sunrise. I pulled up the time out of habit, and when I saw the hour I leapt from the fold-out to the balcony door and slid it open in one explosive movement. My conapt was on the 177th floor.… Continue reading Throw Away Your Body Parts
Godsend
Spiro sat at his Steinway classic grand piano. It was black and polished like volcanic glass, and darkly reflected his scowl. One hand softly tapped out a sullen melody while he smoked what would be his final cigarette with the other. Beside the empty music rack sat a handheld coilgun. It only held a single… Continue reading Godsend
A Little Luck (and a Lot of Violence)
It was worse than she'd feared. Denver had more wires and tubes of pumping fluid running through him than her starship engine. But there was no time to be cautious; a whole legion would be descending from their orbital dropships on the next pass. Whatever Phia was going to do, she had to be gone… Continue reading A Little Luck (and a Lot of Violence)
Right on Schedule
Lena sat up gasping and reflexively covering her heart with one hand. She swallowed bitter bile, and with it her temporary confusion. It had only been a dream. No. Not only a dream—she was slipping into lucidity—a terrible memory from a lifetime ago. She had been twelve. Her smile was crooked and her bangs were… Continue reading Right on Schedule
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