The wave of freezing cold air that hit her when she opened the hatch felt like being burned all over again. She screamed and shielded her eyes with her blistered, bleeding arms.
fiction
Mexican Wave: Chapter Two
“Have you ever heard the expression: ‘All you need to make a movie is a girl and a gun?’” said the woman behind the desk on the tv screen who was, yes, yet another of her. Jason shook her head. She was in what Cass had called “re-orientation”, a sort of untraining course where the only lesson was to sit still and listen. “Well. You are the girl, and I have the gun. Do I make myself clear?”
“See you around, Victrix Lament”: Chapter Two
The stinking air blasted past her face as the airbike swooped lower and lower, circling the enormous tower like a helter-skelter. Not for the first time, Lament was glad of her filter mask.
“The p-platform should be right here,” said the deputy in her ear. He was strapped into the bike just like she was, but still his arms were wrapped tightly around her waist.
“Nervous flyer?” Lament asked.
“More so the falling,” he said. “There it is!” he released one hand, pointing out straight ahead. Looming through the smog, a colossal structure: an abandoned mining platform, the sergeant had said…
“See you around, Victrix Lament”: Chapter Three
“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.
Message Intercept: Chapter Three
The wailing noise went on, and then pounding at the entrance of the building.
“We have to open it!” Sita said, darting towards the barred door. But the PhD student and I caught her.
“If you open that door we’ll never be able to close it. We’ll all go through that same horrible process. You’ve seen the pictures,” they said.
“Sita… I’m sorry,” I murmured, letting her go. She fell into the seat of one of the nearby benches and sobbed, her head in her hands.
We all stood still and silent, listening to the wailing until it stopped…
Message Intercept: Chapter Two
There was much shuffling of feet in the large group by the side of the pit. Nobody wanted to be the closest to the edge, even though that was still more than a meter away.
Because of the way the ground dropped away, and the fact that scans had established that the hole led down into a much larger chamber than had been thought, the only way to let the exploration team down was on a single long safety rope. They stood by the edge, a human daisy-chain, loaded up with handlamps, picto-cams and survey gear. The last one was a scrawny apprentice I had seen shadowing the filmmaker, and he carried strapped across his body a bulky film camera similar to the ones that were capturing the occasion from intervals around the edge of the pit.
The winch rumbled into life, and it was time. Both the survey team and the rest of us began waving for the cameras. First the five of them were hoisted into the air, as prelude to their long descent. I watched them swing back and forth, watched the pulley at the top of the rope shake. It was rated for this- hell, it was designed for this- but still I felt a gnawing horror that it would just snap and send the five spinning into the void…
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.
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