Note: when I say “just one more post” I do not necessarily imply a short span of time at all. I’m crafty like that.

Also, this isn’t even and RPG post. Fancy that.

The moon was beginning to tint the raw snow blue when he collapsed on their doorstep.
The cabin that Ed and Roger co-owned was so isolated that they could drive the snowmobile in the driveway in any direction for hours and not encounter any evidence of another living soul. They hadn’t seen a human being since they moved out here, and they weren’t accustomed to visitors. Turning this one away, however, would be murder.
His lips were a chalky cobalt color, and his bare hands and feet looked like they had been scoured with steel wool. All he had on were a pair of torn, crusty jeans and a white shirt. When he opened his eyes to plead with them, the web of veins that spread out from his filmy brown irises was like a map of a subway drawn by a paranoid schizophrenic.
Behind him, a long, uniform line of footprints grew progressively more ragged as they approached the house. He couldn’t speak. His throat was frozen just like the rest of him, and they supposed he must have been eating snow to keep from dying of thirst.
They took him inside and wrapped him in one of the blankets that Ed’s mother had sent them as a going-away present. She said they had come from some aboriginal tribe somewhere, and they were authentic, which they guessed was a synonym for scratchy. They were warm, though, and that was what the stranger really seemed to need.
Ed boiled some water in a pitted steel kettle that they never used, while Roger set the stranger down in the enormous high-backed armchair that loomed just beyond the door.
While the kettle boiled, they stood perplexed as the stranger gasped and huddled in the chair, tightening his lean, skeletal frame into it, letting it devour him. He was so cold that when they had brought him in that the temperature had seemed to drop a few sympathetic degrees.
Eventually the kettle shrieked, and Roger, unaccustomed to the noise, flinched before pouring the water into a tarnished tin mug. Ed fished a few bags of primordial peppermint tea out of the bottom-right cupboard and dropped them into the water, then placed them on the mahogany drink-table next to the armchair.
They waited.
At length, the stranger reached a quivering hand out of the folds of the blanket and grabbed the steaming liquid next to him. Ed realized he’d put the tea in wrong, so that the worn strands at the end of the bag had fallen into the mug. The stranger realized this, and reached a hand into the tea to pull it out.
Ed gasped and covered his mouth. The tea was scalding. The stranger, however, seemed to like it. He let out a sigh like he was sinking into a hot bath and let his hand rest in the boiling tea for a moment before throwing the bag carelessly out.
He drank with celerity and avarice. When he was finished, he laid the mug down on the table and curled up, as if letting the warmth swell through him.
Roger broke the silence first.
“Can you talk now?” he asked tenuously. The stranger was so gaunt, so pathetic and frail, and yet he seemed to command the whole room as if he were the only person in it.
“Yes,” said the stranger, in a reedy, thin voice.
“Where did you come from? There’s no one around for hundreds of miles,” asked Roger.
“Can’t remember,” rasped the stranger. “I’ve been walking so long.”
“Where are you trying to get to?” asked Ed.
“I think it must be here,” said the stranger.
Ed and Roger exchanged a look of worry.
“Here?” they asked.
“This is where I ended up,” said the stranger. “It must have been my destination.”
“That doesn’t make sense. Why would you come to see us?” asked Roger.
“I didn’t say I was here to see you. I was just heading for this location.”
“I don’t understand,” said Ed.
“Neither do I,” said the stranger.
He shifted in his chair and Roger and Ed looked at the floor, taking solace from the unfamiliar stranger in the extremely familiar resin-oak floorboards.
“I think you should sleep and talk to us in the morning,” said Roger. “You’re probably sick from walking so long.”
“Yes, that sounds wonderful,” said the stranger. “Only, I’ve been walking so long it almost feels like a dream now that I’m here. How do I know that you’ll even be here when I wake up?”
Ed leaned over the chair. “We’ll be here. Just get some sleep.”
The stranger smiled, his frostbitten face cracking with the unfamiliar movement. He closed his eyes and nestled into the armchair.
Within a few minutes his breathing had slowed and evened, the rasping, frozen-lung breaths of consciousness giving way to a steady in-out.
While he fell asleep, Ed looked over at Roger and asked, “What are we going to do?”
“I don’t know,” said Roger. “I don’t even know what direction we can take him in to find people. We might just have to pack some food and take the snowmobile out along his tracks before the snow can cover them up.”
“I can’t even remember the name of the closest city anymore,” said Ed.
“I can’t remember the names of my parents or where I was born,” said Roger.
They both looked at the stranger, and realized with a peculiar sort of calm that nothing around him seemed to exist anymore. The armchair and drink table, the tin mug and even the floor underneath him had all become indistinct and fuzzy, and they were beginning to dissolve. The only definite thing in the room was the stranger, the blanket now vanishing from his body.
Ed and Roger watched the house and the snow and even each other begin to blur and destabilize as the stranger lost consciousness completely.
“He is dreaming, isn’t he?” asked Roger in alarm.
“We don’t exist. None of us do. We’re part of his dream and now he’s waking up,” said Ed, his tongue vanishing as he spoke and slurring his syllables into incoherence.
Roger’s teeth began to disappear. He reached imploringly towards the sleeping stranger, but it was pointless: he saw his hand dissolve into fuzzy nothingness as he extended it, and the blur rapidly ate up the rest of his arm. He didn’t try to to stop it.

The corpse had been scorched and burnt almost beyond recognition. It lay facedown on the charred street, hands raised in an attempt to protect its face. It sent plumes of steam swirling into the blurry grey sky and, consequently, the face staring down at it.
“Blast pattern looks like a cone, sir. Definitely a long-range deal, too,” said Constable Evarin. “The perp knows how to use fire. I didn’t even think it was possible to off someone from so far away with nothing but fire.”
Lieutenant Garamond stood up.
“Looks like the guy’s front is just as badly burned as his back, sir. He wasn’t running at first,” added Constable Syrion “And the perp must have kept the fire going for a while if he burned both sides. I’d say at least ten seconds.”
Lieutenant Garamond painfully blinked the sleep out of his eyes and said, “I think we should consider the possibility that the fire wasn’t even the cause of death.”
There was a quick silence.
“Sorry, sir, what?” asked Constable Evarin.
Lieutenant Garamond sighed, looked around at the ring of police barriers, sniffed in the cold night air, and said, “I don’t know if the burns looks intense enough to kill someone on their own. It would be pretty easy to conceal a few projectiles in the space of the blast, too.”
Sergeant Noril stepped closer to the body. “Why would anyone do that?” he asked.
Garamond looked away from the body and turned to Sergeant Noril. “Noril, there are so many reasons for that I don’t even feel like I should have to tell you.”
Noril smiled tightly. “I knew you weren’t that exhausted. I guess you could use something legal like the fire to conceal something more illicit, if you want to think like that. But if you want my highly professional opinion, that’s too much thought to put into a street murder.”
“Alright, sure. But if this wasn’t a street murder, we’re going to have to take this into consideration,” Garamond replied. “We have to get someone out here to identify the body. Syrion, call someone from yard.”
“You want me to get someone to detect what they used here, sir?” asked Syrion.
“That’d be great too,” said Garamond. “But I don’t think any of our detection mages are going to be happy about getting up this late.”
“They’re just going to have to deal, sir,” said Syrion.
Garamond turned back to Noril and murmured, “I like him.” Noril smiled.
“Sir, I’ve gotten pictures from just about every angle,” said Constable Evarin, putting down the recording scroll he’d been holding. “Do you want me to chalk him?”
“Do it,” said Lieutenant Garamond.
Evarin dug another scroll out of the pocket of his Watch coat and began muttering vague words off of it. Noril sipped his coffee.
“Some day we’re going to have to figure out how to put bigger spells on those scrolls. We can’t keep losing time because our detect mages can’t be bothered,” said Garamond darkly.
“Then they’d be out of a job and they’d start striking. Mage strikes are damn ugly,” said Noril.
There was a small flash of light around the body, and a dull white outline settled around it.
“Clear,” said Evarin. “We can pick him up.”
“Get us a stretcher over here,” barked Sergeant Noril.
A medical crew sprinted over from the sidelines of the police zone. They set a stretcher down next to the body and eased it into their arms, face-up, making sure to support it in case its charred joints snapped. When they placed it on the stretcher, Lieutenant Garamond noticed a vague glint on its chest.
“Stop,” he ordered. They did.
He reached over to the body and touched its chest. A blue symbol vaguely sparked in response.
“Shit,” he groaned. “They marked him. He’s warded.”
Sergeant Noril looked over at the corpse. “Son of a bitch. I guess we know it was planned now.”
“And we’re never going to find out how this happened. If they warded his clothes against psychometrics, we’ve got no lead.”
“We’ve got some ideas. Don’t kill yourself,” said Noril.
“Oh, sure. This could be a Red Mage because they have access to fire spells, and it could be a Salamander because they can breathe the stuff. That’s not much of a lead,” snapped Garamond.
“It could be a drake,” said Noril, looking over Garamond’s shoulder.
“Drakes have been banned for seventy years,” Garamond shot back.
“Plumes of flame like that have been banned for a hundred.”
“Alright, but you can find those on scrolls. Drakes are the size of horses.”
“Yeah, but there’s a drake fang on the ground a few feet back. That’s quite a bit of evidence,” said Noril.
There was a quick silence.
Garamond turned around and picked up the blackened tooth, turning it over and over in his hands.
“Can’t ward something that small, el-tee,” said Noril smugly. “And it doesn’t matter how good your plan is if your smuggled drake’s tooth flies out while it’s spitting.”
“I feel like I should promote you and put you on day watch so you’ll stop stealing my thunder,” murmured Garamond, still eyeing the tooth.
“You’d never get anything done without me.”
Garamond handed the drake fang to Constable Evarin. “Get some psychometrics on this by yesterday. I want to know its whole history up to and including tonight.”
He turned to Noril. “I need a drink,” he said. “And you’re going to buy it for me.”
Noril smiled. “I’m just guessing this is for upstaging you.”
“And being a generally unlikeable bastard, yeah.”
“Firewhiskey, then.”
Lieutenant Garamond laughed bitterly.

I swear to god I have a post coming along. But the game’s starting to get complex, so this will have to tide you over for now.

I showed this at a show today. My attempt at Joyce stream-of-consciousness and black humor.

The only way John could pass the exam was by cheating. The teacher never seemed to realize that he wasn’t a bad student; he just couldn’t remember things. He had it in writing, too: a very formal letter from his very formal doctor explaining that he had amnesia lexigraphica, a debilitating form of short-term memory loss that rendered him unable to retain things he saw in writing, which had been acquired in an automtive accident in his early childhood. As he only had the letter in writing, John had completely forgotten it existed, and whenever he tried to explain his condition to the teacher, she told him he would have to bring a written letter from his doctor explaining his condition or she could only assume he was making it up. Thankfully, the same accident had somehow altered John’s sight centers so heavily that he could extraphysically project his vision anywhere he wanted to, so he could read the answers to the test that the teacher kept on her desk and frantically write them down before he forgot them. The teacher knew about his talent, because he had demonstrated it for her once (one of his many attempts to convince her of his condition, which naturally only gave her a reason to be paranoid) and tore her hair out over it. She had many ways of preventing John from reading the answers, which included leaving them facedown on the floor or writing them in mirror-script. But she couldn’t kick John out of her class for cheating, because nobody believed her when she talked about his talent, and she definitely couldn’t leave the answer key at home, because if she did she wouldn’t be able to leave class early with all the tests graded to feed her monstrous nicotine addiction. She had considered keeping the test key at home, but she had heard horror stories about smokers falling asleep in bed, and she was a narcoleptic. So the arms race between John and the teacher continued every exam day, with the teacher glaring at him like a hungry owl and guzzling coffee to keep herself awake, and they both knew it was completely ridiculous until the day she finally snapped and left the key at home. John failed the test, and she finally had proof of his talent, so she triumphantly went home, tests in hand, fell asleep, and asphyxiated on smoke from the tests her cigarette had lit up because she had trusted her giddiness to defeat her narcolepsy. None of the class particularly cared, except for John, who cried until he completely forgot about her death because he had only seen the notice in writing.

The mindblind came off with a rush, and Formic’s pupils contracted crazily as a hallway full of fluorescence collided with his retinas.
He coughed once and steadied himself against the wall, and then turned towards his new employer.
“Why the hell did you have to do that?!” he rasped.
Sovia smiled. “We don’t want you to know the location of the facility. You’re going to stay here now.”
Formic sputtered. “What about my kids? My wife?!”
Sovia gave him a long, appraising look. She burst out laughing.
“That’s good, Formic. If you’re already joking you’ll be fine here. No worries.”
Formic chuckled a little bit. They would never have let a man with commitments work here.
“Let’s get going,” said Sovia, still giggling a bit. “You need to learn the ropes before you get to work.”
“Alright.”
Formic shook off his head to throw off the last aftereffects of the artificial unconsciousness Sovia had stuck him with and followed her down the cold-lit hallway.
“The Black Rock Health Center has a biosafety level of six. That means no active worker can ever be allowed to leave, no air from inside can ever escape, and we have to get all of our water from an independent purification plant. We don’t take risks,” Sovia said.
“This was all in the contract, right?” asked Formic. Formic liked to read things pretty thoroughly before he signed up.
“Yeah, but people are usually drawn in by the pay.”
“That was definitely a big part.”

It dawned on Formic.
“Wait, what the hell am I going to spend it on?!” Formic asked.
Sovia cackled again. “Once your two years are up, we let you go with an altered hippocampus. You’ll remember nothing about what you did for the last two years, but you’ll remember that you agreed not to, and you come away a multibillionaire, so it’s all good.”
“Alright. As long as we have that cleared up,” said Formic.
“You’ll spend most of your time here in a hazmat suit. Only a few areas are considered safe for habitation outside of your suit. The outside hallways are one, the rec area is another, and the sleeping quarters are the last. All the labs are hazmat zones. I hope that’s alright.”
“Also in the contract,” said Formic.
“You’re good at reading,” said Sovia.
“Thank you.”
“I’ll go ahead and assume you read the whole contract. It was all in there.”
“Sounds good. Do I have any free time before I start?”
“You’re hitting the meat lab first for a test. You’ll stay there until we transfer you to something bigger. You shouldn’t be in meat longer than three months.”

They reached a flat white door, reflecting kaleidoscopic swirls of fluorescent light. Sovia stopped in front of it.
“It doesn’t have a handle,” said Formic.
“Step in directly in front of it,” said Sovia. Formic did.
An opaque booth slid up out of the floor, completely enclosing him. A ceiling piece shut over him.
“Please remove all of your clothes,” said Sovia’s voice. She was standing right next to him.
“How did you–” Formic sputtered.
“I’m a con. Take off your clothes.”
“What do you mean?” Formic slipped off his shoes hesitantly.
“I’m a hologram and everything you’ve heard me say has been the product of an AI. Take off your clothes.
Formic took off his shirt. “You could have just mentioned that.”
“We can’t have a centralized AI over Turing level 4 in the facility in case it goes crazy. Sorry if I’m a little imperceptive,” she said.
“I didn’t mean to offend you or anything,” said Formic, taking off his pants and underwear.
“Don’t worry about it. Take off your socks.”
Formic took off his socks. Sovia faded out of existence.
The front wall of the booth opened. Formic stepped through a little self-consciously.
He entered a tiny, dark room. Hanging on the wall was a blue-latex body suit. Formic gratefully slipped it on, and then pulled the clear-faced helmet over his head.
The door on the far side of the room opened with a pneumatic hiss.
He walked through. A big red sign over his head said, “HAZARDOUS MATERIALS AHEAD. DECONTAMINATION IS MANDATORY.”

Sovia was waiting for him on the other side, along with a crew of five men in hazmat suits.
A glass screen divided the room. On the other side sat a male human in a hospital gown. He stared dully at the floor, his arms and legs hanging limply at his sides.
Formic swallowed.
“So this is meat lab,” he said.
“Yeah,” said Sovia. “He’s a human with no higher brain functions and a heavily beefed-up immune system. We grow them in vats.”
“And then you kill them,” said Formic.
“We’re a bioweapons lab. What do you expect us to do, throw pies at him?”
“I don’t know if I can do this.”
“The machine is pretty easy to use,” said one of the men. “You just need to get the hang of a clean injection. We’re hitting the sausage with a non-mutative strain of ebola today. If it goes well we might get it upstairs.”
Formic stared at him. The tester’s face was invisible behind the mask.
“I mean, I don’t know if I can go through with this.”
Sovia sighed heavily. “Formic, you signed up for this. It was in the contract.” “I don’t think I looked this far ahead. This is fucked up.”
“He’s a bratwurst, man. You don’t need to feel any guilt for killing him. He isn’t really alive in the first place,” said one of the other testers.
“He’s a human!” said Formic.
“Here we go,” murmured one of the testers.
“Hey, man. We all said the same thing. Cut the FNG some slack,” said the first one.
Sovia looked at Formic very, very hard.
“Formic, nobody likes having to do this. It’s morally abhorrent. Even I understand that. But if we don’t give up some of our qualms, we’re all screwed.”
“This is bioterrorism! How is this going to save us?”
“We got some clippings of the verd by refugees in Almaty. It has human DNA.”
Formic’s eyes widened slightly.
“We think we almost have the verd’s genome decoded, but if we don’t get at least a proto virus ready to kill it by the time we have the genome cracked, the virus isn’t going to be ready by the time the verd eats us all. It’s already the size of Mongolia and it’s not going to stop growing until every single cell in its mass has been destroyed.”
“So we’re doing this all for the best.” said Formic bitterly.
“If we don’t, the whole world gets eaten by algae,” said Sovia.
Formic closed his eyes and took a very deep breath.
“That’s the spirit,” said Sovia. “The first one is the hardest.”

The syringe plunged into the subject’s neck with a soft hiss.

((Fuck you all, it’s still yesterday. Here’s a story.))

It was a freak accident.
Everything was moving very, very slowly. With a sort of lazy terror, Wesley watched himself, inside his venerable Ford, drift across the packed snow on the side of the highway. The air tasted like car heating and sweat, and the blood pounding in Wesley’s ears was almost enough to drown out the Neil Diamond he’d popped in the tape player.
It was the tape that had killed him, he realized. If he hadn’t put the tape in at that exact moment, he would have been paying more attention to the road. He would have made the curve. He felt a boiling hatred for Neil Diamond rise up in his chest like heartburn, but that was ridiculous. Neil Diamond hadn’t killed him; Wesley had killed himself.
There was, naturally, a tree on the side of the road. And, naturally, he was headed straight for it. Apparently it wasn’t alright for him to spin out and get back on the road; he had to die in a flaming crash.
His terror morphed into disinterested disembodiment as the the car got closer and closer to the tree, its wheels losing grip on the slick ground, wet with the first thaw of the season, and then, just as it was about to impact, he realized that it was about to get really bad.
The car hit the tree, and then everything was crunch, crash, get out, get out now before the gas tank goes up, and oh god no, his arm was caught between the seats and he was going to die. He was definitely going to die.
But then there were hands. Hands, pulling him free from the wreck, stretching the seats apart and yanking him out of the twisted ex-car.
“Jesus Christ,” said the hands. “I just saved your life.”
“Yeah, thanks. Run,” said Wesley.
“What?” asked the hands. Then, “Oh, right. The gas tank.”
Wesley picked himself up and sprinted. White heat plowed into the back of his neck, and the shockwave lifted him slowly off his feet and dropped him at the edge of the highway.
“Jesus Christ,” said the hands. “I just saved your life.”
Wesley sat up, slowly. His arm was alright, just twisted. It didn’t look he had any injuries but a few cuts on his face from the windshield.
He looked back at the wreck.
“Do you think it’s still a car?” he asked, his voice slurring a bit.
The hands didn’t say anything.
“I mean, by its definition a car is something that gets us places. If it can’t move, it isn’t a car. But it’s also got a shape associated with it, which that piece of metal still loosely fits. So what is it? I guess you could say it’s in a state of duality. Maybe that’s what makes it so dangerous. Not the shrapnel or the oil, but the fact that it’s both a car and a lump of metal at the same time.”
The hands still didn’t say anything. Wesley realized the snow was eating through his jeans, so he stood up.
“No, don’t. You’re in shock,” said the hands hastily.
“Bullshit. My name’s Wesley Tanner Norris and I’m 58. I’m driving from Portland to Vancouver to meet a girl I met on the internet. Her name’s Haley, she’s 19, and she likes Sonic Youth.”
The hands didn’t say anything.
“Stop not saying anything,” said Wesley. “It’s freaking me out.”
“You’re welcome,” said the hands. Wesley grinned.”
“Sarcasm. That’s better. Thank you for saving my life, hands.”
“Hands?”
“That’s all I ever saw of you. I’ll probably just think of you as hands until I look at you.”
“Look at me,” said the hands.
“Okay,” said Wesley. He turned to face the scruffy twentysomething on the ground behind him. “And now I can see you’re a scruffy twentysomething. But for a second, while my brain was replacing your hands with your whole body, you were two things at once.”
“Did you hit your head in the crash?” asked the scruffy twentysomething.
“I usually talk like this,” said Wesley. “Thank you for saving my life, scruffy twentysomething. What’s your name?”
“Eric Topley. But people usually call me Junior.”
A red flag went up in Wesley’s head.
“Why Junior?” he asked hesitantly.
“My dad was Eric Topley Senior. He died in Vietnam.”
“I’m sorry.”
I don’t mind being Junior,” said Eric, a little indignant.
“I mean your dad. Sorry to hear about that.”
“It was twenty years ago. Doesn’t really bother me,” said Eric. “He’s historic, though. One of the most high-profile fragging cases.”
“Oh, shit,” muttered Wesley.
“Sorry, what?” asked Eric.
“That was me. I killed your dad.”
“What? No way. It must have been some other–”
“Some other Staff Sergeant Eric Topley, 132nd Infantry, 1950-1972?” asked Wesley, burying his face in his hands.

The snow fell, muffling the dead silence with more dead silence.

“I’ll give you a ride to the closest hotel. After that I’m going to forget about you completely,” said Eric.
“Yes, sir,” said Wesley.

So I’m pretty burned-out today because I spent it all working on this monster. Here it is.

———————————–

Amvi-Zalath was rising.
“Not a bad view, is it, lieutenant?” asked Commodore Sephrelin. His executive officer, Lieutenant Zumethi, nodded mutely, keeping his grizzled face on the planet below.
The bridge of the warship Retribution buzzed with activity as the first rays of Amvi-Zalath’s light punched through the cold fluorescence of the ceiling lights. It was a welcome sight, even if it was only emanating from the viewscreen. Zalamath bridges tended to be buried in the middle of their ships where it was harder for the enemy to get at them, so there weren’t any real windows.
“We should have radar contact soon,” said Flight-Major Sephrelin. “Until then I want all the strike craft docked. Frigates stay on silent running until the capital ships are vulnerable.” Zumethi nodded curtly, and then turned to the bridge and barked, “Frigates stay on silent running and strike stays docked until first radar contact.” There was an immediate buzz as the comm officers relayed the messages to the lower decks and the frigate group.
“You realize they’ll probably see us before we see them,” said Zumethi, turning back to Sephrelin. “They’ve got radar dishes planetside and a lot of scouts in the system.”
“That’s what I’m banking on, lieutenant,” said Sephrelin, wearing what could be called a smile.
“Nearing projected sighting zone,” yelled a navigator. “We should have radar contact in one minute.”
The Retribution drifted further around the planet.
“T-minus thirty seconds,” yelled the navigator.
“Split the frigate group into two flanks behind us,” ordered Sephrelin.
“T-minus fifteen,” yelled the navigator.
Zumethi barked out the order in shorthand.
“T-minus five.” A note of anxiety entered the navigator’s voice.
The comm officers relayed the order.
Then everything happened at once.
A chorus of voices called out, “Radar contact!”
Sephrelin roared, “Formation advance! Strike craft launch!”
“Composition of enemy fleet looks like three refitted heavy freighters, ten refitted medium freighters, and fifty refitted pleasure craft. Armaments unknown,” called a comm officer. “All inbound.”
The viewscreen blipped, the calming, peaceful view of Amvi-Zalath fading and being replaced by an enormous sensors map. A cloud of red triangles poured towards the green rectangle of the Retribution from both flanks, followed by a neat line of ten red diamonds in the center. Behind the diamonds at a safe distance came three red rectangles.
“We need strike craft out here ASAP,” Sephrelin murmured to Zumethi.
“They should be launching right now.”

“Come on!” snapped Group Commander Vethrai. “We’ve got twenty-five bogeys on each flank and they’re not waiting for us to finish our coffee!” The pilots were already pouring into their ships. “Remember, sandblasters launch first! Bombers mop up the frigates once it’s clear! Stay awake out there and we’ll all get through this!” he added.
He made sure all the pilots were off the floor before clambering into his gunship. He shut the door behind him and hurried, hunched-over, to the cockpit, where he strapped himself in and slipped the life-support mask over his head.
He tapped the comm button on the side of the mask and said, “All gunners, copy.”
Eight “copy” responses came back to him. He flicked the green switches indicating all his gunners were functioning. Eight green Zalamath-shaped lights flared onto his viewscreen.
“Alright,” he said on the strike group channel. “Sandblaster group is clear to launch. Bombers hang back until you get the signal. All ships, copy.”
A chorus of “copy” responses echoed through his headset. Nobody reported a malfunction.
“Launch all ships.”
The launch crews heard the command and opened the tubes. Vethrai felt the vacuum begin to pull on his gunship and braced himself.
The ship clamps opened. His ship slipped out of the launch tube into space.
Everything was quiet for a split second, and then his combat viewscreen flickered into life. On his radar, he saw dozens of green squares pour out of the warship all around him. Each one was a Sandblaster Flak Gunship, a top-of-the-line fighter-killer. No green triangles. That was good. The bomber pilots were still hanging back.
On the main screen, he saw space. The massive bulk of the Retribution stretched out in front of him, flickering green every time a sizable weapon hit its shields and vaporized. He was on the right flank, so he’d probably be seeing the enemy fighters about…
…now. Twenty-five of the red triangles were angling towards his side of the warship, and he got visual contact on the first one – a badly patched-up pleasure craft with two industrial-grade autoguns welded onto its underside.
“We’ve got bogeys inbound. Break formation and pick your targets,” he called onto the radio. Around him, the fifteen or so sandblasters okayed and broke off, speeding towards the approaching fighter group.
A voice crackled onto his headset.
“Chief, we’re in weapons range already. They’re coming on pretty fast.”
“Alright,” he replied. “Weapons free. Fire at will.”
Immediately, orange flashes lit up his screen. He sped towards the nearest target and put a lock on it for his gunners – on their radar screens, the fighter would appear with a red circle around it. As he did so, three other circles appeared around other nearby fighters, showing that his gunners had found some of their own targets. He continued towards the first fighter.
The pilot must have seen him, because it made a quick turn down towards the planet and then shot forward under the gunship. Vethrai flipped the sandblaster over backwards and accelerated until he was directly over the fighter. An orange flash ripped out from the top turret of the ship, and he watched the fighter narrowly dodge the flak explosion. The next two turrets fired, and the fighter was caught between two explosions and crippled, its engines burning out as flak shredded them.
Vethrai wheeled around and turned back to the main battle. His sandblasters were making quick work of the fighters – their shrapnel pods turned space into hell for unshielded ships. He sped towards the fight.
The first fighter he passed was being pursued by a gunship, so he let it go. The next one he saw was dogfighting with one of his ships. He darted towards it, and all of his turrets fired at once.
It wasn’t even a fighter anymore. There was a split second of dull, silver shrapnel illuminated by orange flame, and then the fighter was an unrecognizable mass of twisted armor.
The last few targets blipped out.
“All clear,” said Vethrai. “Launch the bombers!”

“You heard the commander, right? Stop the chat and prep for launch!” ordered Group Commander Ivrither. “We’ve gotta hit those frigates or it’ll take all day to get planetside!”
He strapped into his bomber and slipped on the face mask. “All clear?” he asked.
The pilots gave the all clears.
“Launch all ships!” he ordered.
The launch tubes opened, the clamps let loose, and the bomber group shot into space like bullets from a gun.
He hit the vacuum and gunned his drive, shooting out past the nose of the Retribution, and flew towards the enemy frigate line.
“Alright, stay in formation until you see me break!” he yelled over the comm. “The second wing is coming around on the left, so you concentrate on the frigates on your side. And stay the hell out of Retribution’s line of fire.”
The bomber wing sped towards the line of makeshift frigates. Ivrither zoomed in a view on his main screen and scoped them out. They were all freighters with welded-on armor and missile racks. A few of them had autoguns, but he wasn’t too worried about their targeting.
He turned towards the furthest one on the right.
“We eat them up one by one from the flanks in while Retribution wipes out the middle, got that?” he asked. “Nobody tries to win any medals outdoing their wingmates.”
The wing rogered him.
“Fire at will once in range,” he said.
The wing closed on the frigates. Ivrither saw his missile range circle encompass the first one, and launched his first two missiles. They were sub-nuclear, but forty of them at once got the job done.
The wing launched simultaneously, and then broke off to pass over the frigate, which went up in flames, all forty of the missiles delivering their payload. It burned for a moment, and then exploded violently, enveloping the bombers in red light for a moment and then fading to black.
“Chief, I think we’re overestimating their shields,” said one of his pilots.
“Think so too. Don’t waste too many missiles. One per ship should be enough.”
The wing was coming around for another pass, and there were only seven frigates left.
Six, he saw, as two of the Retribution’s railguns gutted the middle one in a flash or iron-blue.
Ivrither armed another missile, waited for his circle to intersect with the frigate, and fired.
This time, only fifteen got through. The autoguns got lucky a few times, and two of the missiles hit the shields and did nothing. It was still enough to knock the frigate’s engines out.
“It’s down,” said Ivrither. “Leave it and move on to the next one.”
The bomber wing swept around, and a spray of autogun fire ripped towards them. The pilot behind Ivrither took a hit, his ship veering out of the formation, its right side erupting into flame.
“Terysil! Copy!” barked Ivrither.
The reply came back muffled but reassuring.
“Just took a graze, but my missile bay is fused. I’m heading back,” said Terysil.
“Go ahead,” said Ivrither. Then, to the rest of his squad, he said, “Nobody get cocky. They’re junk, but they’re armed.”
The wing took another burst of fire, with no hits. It was obvious, though, that they wouldn’t be able to close on the frigate in formation.
“Alright, break!” yelled Ivrither. “Missiles hot, fire at will!”
The wing’s careful formation disintegrated, each ship flying a different direction with the same destination. Ivrither sped off toward the frigate’s underbelly, armed two missiles, and fired.
The missiles hit the frigate at different times, so the shields took care of more of them, but it was enough to leave it half-functional.
“Reform for the next pass!” ordered Ivrither, but was interrupted by his viewscreen. The three remaining frigates flickered and turned white. They had broadcast a surrender.
“Alright, get back inside. No nukes today. Let’s let our frigates take care of the big freighters,” ordered Ivrither.

“Remaining enemy frigates have surrendered and the bomber groups are back in Retribution’s bay, sir,” said the sensors officer.
“Good,” said Captain Eqrephel. “Fan out and advance on the freighters, but stay close to the Retribution. We want those autoguns to take some missiles off of us.”
“Yes, sir,” said the navigator.
The frigate slid under the Retribution. Seven of its fellows spread out on either side of it, dark except for the tiny amount of radar and radio they needed to communicate with the fleet.
“Think they’ve seen us, ensign?” Commander Eqrephel asked the sensors officer. That would be a potential disaster.
“If they have, they’re covering it pretty well, sir,” said the sensors officer. “They’re advancing on the Retribution at full combat speed.
“Good. Wait for weapons range.”
The red rectangles on screen moved closer and closer to the Retrbution, and every time they blinked forward, they came a little closer to the blue circles around the frigate group.
“First ship is entering firing range on the right flank, sir,” said the sensors officer.
“Wait for them all to enter all the circles. We’ve got time.”
“Yes, sir.”
The second one entered range, and then the third one. They edged closer until they were in the boundaries of all the blue circles on screen.
“Sir, all capital ships in firing range,” said the sensors officer.
Commander Eqrephel took a deep breath.
“All power up!” he roared. “Weapons hot!”
Lights all around the deck winked on immediately. All around them, their fellow ships flashed into brilliance, their gun coils glowing blue.
The capital ships did not falter.
“Weapons warming up, sir. T-minus twenty seconds until they’re all hot,” said the weapons officer.
The capital ships opened up. Red missile lines appeared on the sensor screen, streaking towards the Retribution.
“T-minus ten seconds.”
The missiles smashed into the Retribution’s shields, enough getting past the autoguns to do serious damage. The shields flashed and flickered.
“Weapons hot, sir,” said the ensign.
“Fire all main weapons!” ordered Commander Eqrephel immediately.
All eight railgun frigates fired all seven of their railguns at once.
The first metal rods to hit the ships vaporized on their shields, but the majority punctured the overwhelmed energy fields, smashing through floors of hull and eviscerating the freighters. The first capital ship was completely pulverized, its electricity failing, leaving it to drift hopelessly. The second ship took several hits to the underside, where its fuel lay, and exploded almost immediately, showering the surrounding ships in scrap metal and light.
The third ship still weakly functioned, firing its remaining half of a missile rack at the frigate group.
“Prepare to fire again if they don’t surrender,” said Commander Eqrephel.
The ship stopped firing and winked out of existence.
The bridge was silent.
“They had a jump drive. They’ll be halfway to Xoria by now,” groaned Eqrephel at length.

“I can’t believe this,” said Commodore Sephrelin. “How did we have such bad intel?”
“Intel was perfect, sir. We got every move they were going to make except for that one,” said Lieutenant Zumethi.
Commodore Sephrelin fumed. “They’re just going to get patched up and rebel again. We can’t win this.”
“We just have to do our jobs, sir,” said Zumethi. “And they still have a force planetside. If we don’t take care of that they can bring ground weapons to bear, and we don’t want that.”
Sephrelin stood still, his head bowed, for a moment, and then he composed himself.
“Right. Get our dropships in atmo and take care of the ground force,” said Sephrelin.
“Yes, sir!” barked Zumethi. Turning to the bridge, he yelled, “Launch dropships and begin the ground operation!”

———————————–

Good ol’ military science fiction. This is just the first half of the story. The second half isn’t even started yet.

Isatri will be up soon.

Haha, no, the blog isn’t ending. Nor is Earth 6047, yet. This story is called The End. Get ready for some depressing, far-far-far future science fiction

This is a super first-draft, and I really need feedback. Go!

Nova Terra Mk. XVII, in the year three trillion four-hundred seventy-seven billion eight-hundred forty-two million four-hundred thirty-nine-thousand six hundred and sixty-seven, anno domini, located in the third reengineered Milky Way close to the Universal Energy Reservoir, was the most fuel-efficient planet ever constructed.

The universes sank into final, entropic oblivion eons later, but it all feels too short when you’re immortal.

Here’s an interlude. I was challenging myself to write sitcom-type dialog and humor. It got a little out of hand.

Claude stepped into the elevator, and held it open for her as she entered behind him.

Crunch.

Here’s a story.

The sign on the door said:

Methilda Kundalini: Practitioner of Holistic Medicine
Psychic Services, Tarot Readings, and Aura Inspections Available

There were no degrees on the walls. Of course, this was because Methilda Kundalini had never felt the need to earn such paltry material possessions. She was a psychic, after all, and a psychic did not need such foolish trappings. It was about helping people, not making money, after all. The seven-hundred dollars of admission were simply for the heavy taxation and posh office. That was all.

There was a large white quartz in one corner (this particular crystal has an effect on the positive chi in one’s body) and the chairs had been arranged by a talented feng shui expert so that they were conducive to the highest degree of positive spiritual energy. Generally it was nothing but an office, but on certain Fridays Madame Kundalini’s regularly meeting chi discussion group arrived.

There were about ten of them, each an obsessive new-ager, but each in their own special way. They met every third – a lucky number – Friday at seven-thirty to discuss matters in their personal lives and have psychic inspections of various kinds. It was considered a bit hokey by outsiders who didn’t appreciate the minute subtleties needed to properly perform psychic rituals of this nature, but they were unenlightened, and that was their own problem.

They sat on feng shui-arranged chairs and absorbed the energies of the white quartz like sunbathing cats, while waiting for Madame Kundalini to enter. When she did, they all gave an appreciative sigh. She was dressed in a flowing, translucent shawl draped over an Americanized sarong wrapped around a long shapeless dress. Her face was smooth and wrinkle-less, as a result, she said, of an overwhelmingly positive karma complex, although her one-Botox-a-year policy may have had something to do with it.

She smiled as emotively as she could manage through all the karma – or artificial stiffening agents – in her face, and sat down, looking rather like a drenched peacock. Her lustrous black hair twinkled over the back of the chair.

“Welcome, welcome all of you. It’s wonderful to see you all back here, no doubt with a perfectly wonderful account of your last few weeks for me to deduce from my myriad readings,” she shimmered. The group smiled appreciatively.

“Let us commence with the tarot readings,” she murmured. “Miss Satva, why don’t you go first?”

Madame Kundalini produced a colorful deck of large, brittle-looking cards from somewhere in her voluminous shawl and proffered them to Sita Satva, who sat across from her. Miss Satva was effectively Kundalini’s apprentice – a twenty-year-old college cheerleader-turned-mystic who had lost most of her friends, as well as her original name, in the transition and now looked to Kundalini to decide her life for her.

She pulled a card from the deck.

“The Lovers,” she murmured, not entirely displeased. “Delightful.”

“Yes, yes, child. You are long overdue for such a fate. I have seen it in your aura for months now,” Kundalini purred.

The others looked at each other, puzzled. None of them could remember any such reading.

“You go next, Mister Smythe,” said Kundalini, shoving the fan of cards at a large, sweaty man who sat next to her, playing with an amulet on his shirt collar. He came to Kundalini’s sessions because the bar was bad for his migraine and his wife tended to screech when he crossed the threshold of his house.

“Thank you, Madame,” he said, sounding faintly disappointed.

He took a card and smiled happily. “The Emperor,” he said. “That’s stability and authority. Excellent.”

“Not to mention a large windfall of money,” Kundalini tapped her nose. Smythe grinned broadly.

“Next – oh, perfect. A newcomer. What is your name, child?” inquired Kundalini breathily.

“Theoris Garber,” the slim, pale man said calmly. The others were unfazed by his name; odd names were almost customary in the group.

“Excellent. Please take a card.”

Theoris reached out and deliberately chose a card. He barely seemed to touch it.

“The Tower,” he said, smiling vaguely.

Madame Kundalini clicked her tongue. “Pity, my dear,” she said with a sad smile. “That’s downfall, ruin, and chaos.”

“But also revelation, disillusionment, and truth, Madame,” replied Theoris calmly.

Kundalini did not let it show, but she was mildly unsettled. She hadn’t remember putting that card in when she stacked the deck. She usually added only the good ones.

“Yes, dear. Always hope for the best,” she intoned.

They sped through the rest of the deck – Mrs. Androzani drew the High Priestess and was pleased with herself, kissing the cross around her neck – and moved on to palm readings. In this segment, Madame Kundalini happily found a previously undiscovered upward slope on Smythe’s money-line, and poor Mister Burke, who had been exposed to a deadly strain of ebola recently, found that his life-line had grown reassuringly. However, Kundalini became unsettled again upon reaching Mr. Garber – his money- and love-lines ended abruptly at around present day, but his life-line appeared to slide off his palm. She had difficulty explaining this.

Finally, once it was time for aura readings, Kundalini felt she was in her element. She could handle whatever Mr. Garber inadvertently threw at her.

Miss Satva’s energy was directed backwards. Her aura was blue-purple, tinged with regret and a hint of obsession. Kundalini advised her not to look back at the days when she had friends, a life outside this office, and a purpose.

Mister Burke’s energy was directed above his head. It was black, but she chose to inform him that it was green, a sign of new growth and vitality. He grew hopeful again. She hoped his euology was short.

Mister Smythe’s aura had become yellow-orange and hazily directed before him. She congratulated him on his newfound optimism and force of will, but also told him he shouldn’t become too reliant on mortal pleasures. She did, after all, need him coming back if she wanted a proper success story, and he’d probably pay more if he did actually make money.

Then it came time for Mister Theoris Garber. She closed her eyes and felt her third one open.

She gasped and fell backwards out of her chair, her shawl ripping as it caught on the quartz. The others gasped, and Miss Satva quickly sprinted by to help her up.

“You- you…” she started breathlessly.

He smiled. His aura, pure, shining white, in a perfect halo around his body, shimmered happily.

“It’s funny,” he said. “I realized how much you people don’t take this seriously. You’re all into this new age thing for the money and the reassurance.”

Kundalini shivered, and the others looked around sheepishly.

“If you’d just take it seriously… well, look here. I read your books obsessively, practiced everything they all said to the letter, perfectly, modeled my life on it,” he said, still smiling calmly. “And look what I can do.”

He lifted a finger. Kundalini’s shawl mended and she drifted back into her position, along with her overturned chair. “Why don’t you inform your guests what my aura shows, Madame Kundalini?” asked Theoris.

“D-divinity,” she whispered.

“Yes,” he said. “I think I’ll take over the world now.”

And he did.

Here’s a map.

The world is called Phenardrea now.

Wonderful.

There are a few independent nations on the islands and the south coast, but that’s just because Pharysin is too busy to conquer them. Also, purple lines denote mountains, as is becoming customary.