“Remarkable, isn’t it? That bag of tricks the Empire planted in your head is all you know now. Can’t function without it.” He smiled a smile that was all teeth. “Now us, we may not all be a hundred per cent original human,” he said, and raised his claw demonstratively. “But we know our limits. No bloody transgenetic trickery in here!” and he pounded his chest with a clang.
“Not gene therapy… just… training,” said Lament weakly. The old man laughed.
“That’s what they told you! You trust too easily, yellowjacket! Me, I keep my ear to the ground. I know all about those ‘training’ camps!”
Lament was breathing easier now, and the feeling was starting to return to some of her extremities. She flexed her fingers, imagining the old man’s scrawny neck between them.
“Ooh she’s feeling feisty, boys!” said the old man, chomping on the cigar with some amusement. He looked up at Ballis, the giant. “Hit her again,” he said calmly.
Action
“See You Around, Victrix Lament”: Chapter One
The first shot thumped through the space her head had been a second earlier, as she rolled into the room and pulled her force pistol from her belt. Black outfits. Armoured. No markings. Kill squad. She swept the legs out from under one of them and let fly with a shot at his buddy, who ducked behind Omar’s desk. Ugh. These things were never easy…
Message Intercept: Chapter Four
Where there’s water there’s plants too, and in some of the deeper caverns a kind of blind cave rat, so I haven’t starved. I’m getting ahead of myself. I knew that the fall into the pit was long enough to put an end to me instantly and I closed my eyes and prepared for the inevitable…
They Worship It: Chapter Four
The water was freezing cold when I smashed into it. I tasted salt and realised that this was more than just a tank. With my eyes closed tight I reached into the pocket of my overcoat and removed the object Apollo had planted there. I felt a mouthpiece, a mask. With every fibre of my being I had to fight the instinct to keep my mouth shut tight and forced the breather in there. I fumbled blindly, trying to find the vent to get the water out of my mouth. I depressed the little button and an explosion of bubbles came flooding out of the front of the mask. Now breathing normally, I steeled myself and opened my eyes…
They Worship It: Chapter Three
“Don’t just stand there, woman!” said the captain. “Get his suit off! I intend to do some reconnoitoirey before they notice he’s missing.”
“I don’t think so,” said Apollo, squeezing the trigger on the prod experimentally. It seemed to crackle louder the harder she squeezed. “For one thing, that suit is sealed tight. If I had to guess you’d need an acetylene torch to even make a start. For a second, with that faceplate they’d sniff you out in an instant.”
“How’d you figure that?”
“Don’t insult me. Suit sealed that tight, I doubt they can survive in an oxygen atmosphere. Look,” she said, pointing with the tip of the prod…
They Worship It: Chapter Two
The ship lurched as he wrenched the great wood-spoked wheel of the ship to the right. All of us on deck, for our part, wrapped ourselves securely to the rigging. Men and women swung out over naught but ocean on the ends of loose ropes as Hardman brought us round side-by-side with the great whale, facing the opposite way. With any luck we could now escape while the thing was still turning around. The maneuver had given us all quite an appreciation for the size of the thing. It was bigger than any living thing should be, plainly the result of some dire mutation indeed.
The collective sigh of relief that was breathed by all aboard was short-lived, however. Mere moments after we left the whale to ponderously wheel around – by which time we would be long gone – another cry pierced the air.
They Worship It: Chapter One
“Ship to starboard!” the cry pierced through the general noise. The lookout, who was a small man with a beakish sort of face, leaned over the edge of his perch up the mast, and added: “Aye, it looks like a rich one!”
The ship lurched, and the old bird near fell over the side onto the deck ten foot below him, but he held his purchase and repeated the cry from first principles, in case any of the crew had not yet heard him.
A Twisted Game of Cat and Cat: Chapter Four
Geist didn’t have a plan of his own to take down Hardin. He had the germ of an idea, maybe. The guy didn’t like to get his own hands dirty, clearly. It was a bad job to let some pack of amateurs do the hard part and just reap the rewards. Not against the rules, mind. Just frowned upon, unless you did it with exceptional style or hypnotism or something like that, although gimmicks were also generally considered gauche at best and a major risk of exposure at worst. He had once known an assassin who used as the basis of his contracts a series of stage magic old standards. All well and good, until you run out of the good ones. There’s only so many “saw-a-lady-in-half”s you can pull before you have to start resorting to embarrassing gags like “pulling a Black Mamba out of a hat,” which bring the whole tone of the profession down. The Astounding Malvolio hadn’t lasted long after that…
A Twisted Game of Cat and Cat: Chapter Three
Geist shrugged and continued setting up the rifle, a safe distance back from the window pane that the black protrusion of the barrel wouldn’t be noticed from below.
“Who-” he said, and then the window cracked and a bullet impacted in the wall beside his head. He was on the ground in an instant, diving to pull Ellie down as well and rolling out of view of the window.
“He’s seen us,” he gasped to her. He risked a peep out at the crowd. They were none the wiser. The sharp crack of the glass had obviously been buried under the noise of the crowd. Small caliber bullet, went through clean as a whistle. You had to admire the craftsmanship…
A Twisted Game of Cat and Cat: Chapter Two
The message came through the laptop with a bright sound like a bell: /IT’SREADY/. The plans. Geist never went through official channels for anything unless he had to, and this was no different. Luckily for him, he knew a guy in the records office. He slid the laptop into his bag, slipped his sunglasses onto his face, and left the hotel into the dullest weather he had ever seen in his life when it wasn’t actually raining. It was as if the sky had turned to asphalt. He folded up the sunglasses and stuffed them into his pocket, feeling naked without them…
The Write Stuff 