Damn, he was fast! If it even was a “he”. I was so busy grabbing a piece of ground I really didn’t get a good look. I almost missed seeing him disappear into the warehouse at the end of the avenue.

“Report!’ The Captain sounded pretty upset. Knowing how much he hates surprises; I imagine this really nuked his nuts. Good thing for us, the Captain isn’t surprised often.

It took a few seconds for the Lieutenant to check with the other Cohorts. “No injuries, Captain. It was one soldier. Humanoid. Cyber-enhanced.”

Figures the Lieutenant would be the only one on the bounce enough to spec out the marauder. Wouldn’t surprise me if he were the only one to get a shot off when that half-man-half-can came blasting up our backside. Luckily, the Lieutenant runs it by the book and had us advancing under cover since landing.

“Alright, First Lieutenant. He left us an open invitation. Let’s go to the party. Have the other three Cohorts converge on the warehouse. Watch for friendlies. Let’s not shoot our own men.”

All four Cohorts? Not counting the Captain and the Lieutenant, we’d be tossing 48 mercs at that man-can. Seemed a bit much, though I’m not about to argue with having a bit of help.

Approaching the warehouse was uneventful. “Four-Eyes, see what you can do about that lock on the cargo entrance.” It was just our luck the Captain decided to roll with our Cohort this time. We’d be getting fun little jobs like this all day. “Fan out and cover him.”

I glanced up as Four-Eyes trotted by and snickered at his bug-eyed appearance. He’d donned the macro lenses that got him tagged with his nickname but would also allow him to work some techie magic on the lock’s micro-circuitry.

“Blogger! Front and center.” Damn. The Captain couldn’t have heard me laughing. Could he? Bent over to make myself as small a target as possible, I maneuvered up to where he and the Lieutenant. were conferring. “Blogger, I need to know what is written on this road sign and the warehouse.”

“Don’t know, Captain. Haven’t got a handle on the local lingo yet.”

“Screw your wetware, Blogger. Use your translator. Quit the foreplay on that lock and get it open, Four-Eyes!” The Captain has a nice way of keeping everyone on the bounce.

And I knew he wasn’t going to like this. “Can’t Captain. The language chip you gave me isn’t translating.”

That earned me a nasty look from the Lieutenant. “And you wait till now to test it, Private?”

“No sir, what I meant was that it works fine. On Sirus-4. It’s mislabeled and I had no local language sources to test on before we landed.” Definitely not one of my better moments. I might have to leave this one out of my log.

The Captain stared at me for a few seconds and turned to the Lieutenant. “Got that tran-chip straight from the client, First.” They traded a meaningful glance before the Captain bellowed, “My mom can hack faster than that Four-Eyes!”

With a distracted air that said he was 99% occupied with his task, Four-Eyes muttered, “Unfortunately I hear she’s too busy running her own merc team to help here... Sir.” Damn Techs! They get away with everything, though from the annoyed look on the Lieutenant’s face, Four-Eyes might be taking a couple extra turns at polishing the engine housings during out next port of call. “Just about got it, Sir.”

“Dismissed soldier.” The Captain’s look of mild disappointment makes me feel an about an inch tall as I head back to my position. “Lieutenant. Assign a squad to take the door when it opens.”

“Aye sir.” Glancing back at us, he points. “Gimp, take lead. Prettyboy. Twitch.” His eyes passed over me. Damn it! Wasn’t my fault the chip was wrong. “Flip. And Jensen.”

The last addition to the squad caused a low groan from the vets. Jensen was so new he hadn’t even picked up a handle yet. Nobody liked an untested recruit covering his backside. But the kid took it well with only a slight stiffening of the back.

“Move it grunts!” Gimp took his squad the final twenty meters up the street to the warehouse entrance as Four-Eyes readied to trigger the big cargo door. As his squad took positions on each side of the door split, Gimp nodded to Four-Eyes and ordered, “Rho-fields on!” Being careful not get too close to one another, each squad member was quickly covered by their glimmering personal defense field. I gave a whistle of appreciation for Gimp’s excellent timing. Waiting until the last second to activate the energy shields would give his team the maximum 30 seconds of protection before their battery packs were drained.

As the door split and retracted to both sides, Jensen suddenly broke position and made to squeeze through the door as soon as it was wide enough. Not wanting the Rho-fields to cancel each other out, Gimp was powerless to pull Jensen back. “Jensen, get back!”

Being outlined in a doorway makes you an easy target from inside a dark building. A large particle beam caught Jensen squarely in the chest. There was a blinding flash as the Rho-field absorbed the energy and released some as visible light. Out of that flash, Jensen came hurtling back to land in the middle of the street, almost even with our position.

He lay there unmoving while the same thought ran through everyone’s head. Twenty-five seconds till Jensen’s defense shield died and there’s a big ion cannon in that warehouse waiting for someone stupid enough to try pulling him to safety.

Luscious green valleys nestled between majestic snow-capped mountains. The air was filled with the sound of birds chirping and children laughing. Trees covered with delicate pink and white blossoms dotted the valley, and a mountain brook babbled joyfully at her feet. Spring was her favorite season…

“Is there something wrong with your meal, Ambassador?”

The rasping voice of her host shattered Letitia’s pleasant vision. In honor of her visit, the Drazoks had prepared a magnificent feast. She had never considered herself a picky eater, and she only had two firm rules – her food had to be cooked, and it could not resemble its former self. This meal not only violated these rules, but prompted her to add another. From now on, her meals had to be dead before they reached the table. Turning to her host, she gave him her best Junior Ambassador smile.

“No, your Imperial Highness, I am awed by the rich abundance of your table. You honor me with your vast array of delicacies. Never have I seen such a meal.”

The last sentence, at least, was the truth. Letitia had never seen such food, and sincerely hoped she never would again. The current course consisted of cute little pink creatures, about six inches long, swimming in a lovely purple sauce. It wouldn’t have been so bad, if only they weren’t having so much fun. Right now, they were engaged in what appeared to be a game of tag. She could hear their giggles over the muffled noises of the other guests.

Taking a deep breath, she watched as the Imperial Highness plucked one of the creatures from the tureen. Tilting his head back, he dropped it down his throat. Letitia heard a faint cry of “Weeee!!!!” as his dinner disappeared.

Oh well, she thought. At least it went down happy.

Then it was her turn.

“Through the lips, over the tongue, watch out stomach, here it comes!” she muttered as she sent one of the little buggers on the ride of its life. Just like its buddy, it went down with a cry of glee.

“Well done!” the Drazok’s leader exclaimed, giving her a hard pat on the back. Letitia quickly swallowed to keep her dinner from rejoining his friends.

Four years of Junior Ambassador training, three years as Assistant to the Senior Junior Ambassador, and six months of intensive multi-cultural, cross-species, intergalactic sensitivity training hadn’t prepared her for this. If only she hadn’t changed her major from Astro Anthropology….

Now, due to a twist of fate helped along by a particularly nasty parasite picked up on Alpha Lora, the Senior Junior Ambassador was back on Mars soaking it off in a hot mud bath and sipping Cosmicpolitans. Not wanting to waste 60 years of effort, Letitia had been nominated to replace him at the First Meeting.

“You’ll do fine, Letitia,” the Senior Junior had assured her. “It is just a First Meeting, a chance for our species to get to know each other. Our research indicates that they are generally peaceful, and they’ve never been known to eat a guest.”

Letitia smiled as she thought back on that conversation. She sure hoped that her dinner hadn’t been other invited guests. How would she explain that to the Senior Junior? “In an effort to begin peaceful relations with the Drazoks, I enthusiastically ate the delegation from Kyllag 7. However, I believe it was an enjoyable experience for all involved.”

His Imperial Highness suddenly rose from his chair and motioned all the guests to silence. Letitia was struck again by the contrast of his snow-white hair against his dark gray skin. A rich emerald green fabric covered his powerful body, and his amber eyes drew – no, demanded – the attention of his listeners.

“We are pleased to welcome to our midst Letitia, Junior Ambassador of the Terra Republic. As you know, we have waited over 15 cycles for this to occur.” The room filled with a soft murmur of voices. He waited for silence to return.

“Long have we kept ourselves isolated, protecting our borders and our customs. Long has the Terra Republic sought our secrets. Today, through this alliance, we shall open a new era of cooperation between Drazok and Terra.” Turning to Letitia, he gestured for her to rise.

Letitia stood up, graciously smiling at the crowd. His eloquent words warmed her heart, reminding her of why she had become an ambassador. She waited for him to continue.

“Brothers and sisters, I thank you for joining me tonight for this solemn occasion. I would also like to thank the Senior Junior Ambassador for making this ceremony possible. Due to illness, he could not be with us tonight, but he sends his blessing upon this event.”

Letitia’s smile slipped a little at this pronouncement. The Senior Junior had communicated directly with the Drazoks? He “blesses” this event? She was fairly certain that she had never studied blessings during ambassador training.

“ Now, join with me in welcoming to your hearts my new wife Letitia, Queen of the Drazoks.”

Letitia wondered if it was too late to switch to a career in Astro Anthropology…

The ship lurched forward, its deck plates groaning under the strain, sending the crew careening into instruments, bulkheads, and doors. Regaining his footing, the captain barked, “What was that?”

From a nearby console, a young ensign quickly tapped out a sequence of commands until her monitors displayed the desired information. “We’ve been hit, sir. It’s a Grolian Warship!”

Sitting quickly in his command chair, the captain ordered, “Raise shields and bring us about, Ensign Reeves!” Slowly, the massive command cruiser turned, its glittering energy shields sparkling as they came on line.

“They’re firing again!” Lieutenant Greer noted, watching the large viewscreen at the front of the bridge. Seconds later, the ship rocked again, but the damage was minimal; the shields deflected much of the Grolian plasma fire.

The captain grimaced, “Take aim at their engines, Lucius. I want them for questioning.” The tactical officer nodded and aimed the cruiser’s massive laser cannons at the other ship’s glowing engines.

“FIRE!” The captain slammed his fist down into the arm of the chair, mimicking the same movement Lucius used to send twin bolts of bright blue energy sizzling through space toward the Grolian vessel.

The crew watched as the shots impacted on the heavily armored hull of the Grolian ship. The large warship buckled and pitched wildly as the massive engines went offline. “Direct hit, sir. The Grolians have been disabled.” Ensign Reeves smiled up at her commanding officer, but noticed he wasn’t smiling back.

“It was too easy.” Captain Blain Rogers stood up and strolled over to the front screen, as if a closer proximity to it might make the image and the mystery clearer. “We only took out their engines, why haven’t they fired back?”

Lucius Greer shrugged, “The Federal Consul of Stellar Worlds knows very little about Grolians…maybe it is that easy.” The withered look the captain shot him from across the bridge made Lucius wish he’d kept his mouth shut.

“Prepare a boarding party and go aboard.” The captain strode back to his seat with sheer determination. “I want to know what’s going on.” As his crew scurried to obey his orders, the commanding officer of the FCSW BRIGADOON looked across the emptiness of space to the opposing vessel. He shook his head in disbelief. He’d faced Grolian warships before. He’d fought them in the Great Battle of Xenathar. They were a mystery, but they weren’t pushovers either.

The shots they’d fired shouldn’t have totally killed the enemy ship. There was something more going on here, and Rogers didn’t like it. Something smelled like a…
TRAP! Blain watched the four shuttles as they made their way toward the crippled Grolian vessel, and even as he watched, his guts wrenched inside him as the powerful plasma weapon sent out a gleaming beam of searing death, destroying the four shuttles without any warning.

“Damn!” Blain swiveled around to the weapons console by his chair. He pushed the button that released a volley of torpedoes aimed at the dark heart of the clearly operational Grolian ship.

The torpedoes impacted on the armored hull of the black warship; shattering the hull and exploding deep in the innards of the grotesque vessel. Blain cursed again for having walked into such an obvious ploy, but there would be time to belittle himself later. Right now he had a fight on his hands.

[[RED ALERT…RED ALERT]] The computer’s voice intoned the warning with the same casualness that it used to announce the change of the watch. But the activity of the crew revealed the seriousness of the klaxon call. Crewmembers hurried to their posts, preparing for battle. Though most would never see the enemy they faced, they would each do their part to ensure that victory was on their side.

Captain Rogers knew his crew, and trusted them to do their jobs. And he knew they trusted him. He hoped he wouldn’t let them down. “Move us around behind her.” Blain stared at the viewscreen. He needed to wait and see what damage his torpedoes had done, but he wanted to get out of the range of that plasma cannon.

Ensign Reeves nodded, “Aye, sir.” She began to move the BRIGADOON to a safer vector to the Grolian ship, watching closely to make sure the enemy didn’t surprise them again. The BRIGADOON was smaller than the Grolian vessel, but only just slightly, and she was equal to the larger ship in every way that mattered…speed, maneuverability and firepower.

Reeves also noted that the design aesthetics of the two ships were polar opposites. The BRIGADOON was a smooth, polished, and visually sleek vessel, while the Grolians seemed to choose function over form. It made targeting certain systems rather easy since there was no attempt to hide their obvious functions.

She checked her readouts again, “Sir, I see something!” There on the monitor was a small port, venting plasma from the main weapon system. “If we target that vent, we can overheat their cannon and permanently disable it!”

Blain Rogers leaned forward, “Good eye, Ensign.” He grinned at the thought of a tactical advantage. “Target the cooling vent and prepare to fire on my mark.” He leaned back again into his chair. Now he felt better.

The viewscreen crackled and soon the image of the enemy vessel was replaced by the leathery visage of a Grolian warrior. [[Greetings, Commander.]] Blain raised an eyebrow in response. [[We wish to discuss terms of surrender.]]

Blain looked genuinely shocked. In all his dealings with the Grolians, they had never surrendered, nor had they ever asked for it from their opponents. They were a warrior race who believed death in battle was the highest honor. Blain blinked twice. “Yours or ours?”

Somewhere deep in the Rocky Mountains is a large bunker, heavily camouflaged. Inside the bunker is a room full of high-tech instruments. In it sits a 15-year-old boy, separated from a man dressed in prison drabs by a heavy mesh screen. Two heavily armed guards stand over the prisoner. He scowls at the boy, then lets out a short laugh, hollow, without humor.
Two men in suits stand over the boy. An intravenous catheter in his wrist loops up to a drip-bottle containing a transparent liquid. The boy is pleading with the two men. He is exhausted, he is frightened, but his pleading falls on deaf ears.

“Just go back in one more time, kid,” said Agent Rigby.
“No!” the boy shouted. “Please! You don’t know what it’s like in there, what this man has done. It makes me sick! I won’t.”
“Listen, boy,” said Agent Combs, “this is a matter of national security. Americans have to make sacrifices for their country.” Reaching forward, he turned a small tap on the drip-line.
“Leave the phenobarb on, please!” wailed the boy, anguished.
“You give us no choice, son,” said Combs. “We need to know what that man is thinking – and we need to know now.”

As soon as the phenobarb was cut, the noises began to sidle back into the boy’s mind again. Short-life phenobarb, that’s how the Meds had arranged it. As the phenobarb levels dropped, the noises grew louder. Voices clamored in his head; male, female, young, old, whispers, shouts, screams, speeches, pleadings.
The boy began to rock. He threw his head back and screamed, but though the scream reverberated throughout his being, there was no outward sound.
He started to bang his head on the mesh screen, and foam-flecked spittle blossomed at the corners of his mouth.
Concerned, Rigby glanced at Combs, who shrugged, saying: “We’ll leave it just a bit longer, make sure he gets the point.”
It was a bad decision.

Suddenly the scream broke free for the first time ever. It was horrific; an inhuman wail that tore through the room like a ragged saw. The two agents fell to the floor writhing in agony, hands over ears.

Every unattached object in the room began to fly through the air. Ashtrays, lights, filing cabinets, speakers, battered at the heads of the two terrified agents. Beneath it all was that relentless scream, like the howl of a vengeful hurricane.
A bank of instruments tore from the wall in an eruption of plaster and hurled through the air, knocking the two agents flat.
They sagged beneath its bulk, unconscious.

The boy ran.
Still screaming, he hurtled down a maze of brightly-lit corridors. Any guards he encountered fell to the floor in agony clutching their ears. On and on he flew until he reached the main entrance.
It was suddenly night; he was out in the open now. He ran past the checkpoint guards, who rolled on the ground in pain. He headed for a copse of trees. His scream still sawed raggedly through the darkness whilst inside he sobbed: “STOP IT, STOP IT!”

Suddenly, a voice said softly: “It’s stopped now.”
The boy, for the first time in his life, was overwhelmed by an inner silence. The scream was cut off in mid breath, and he crumpled into a heap on the wet grass. He began to cry at the realization; the noise had stopped.
As his breathing slowed he sat up, drinking in the clarity of sensation; sound, touch, smell and sight, free of those terrible noises.
“Come to us…now,” said the soft voice in his head.
“How?”
“I will show you.”

Half an hour later, he stood apprehensively outside a disused cabin. It was old, the porch was rotting and the roof was sagging. From beneath the door issued a faint smear of yellow light. Taking a deep breath, he pushed the door back, not knowing what to expect.

The room was empty except for two teenage girls and an odd-shaped crib in the middle. Blinking in the light from the lantern, the boy stared at the two girls. They were both very pretty, with long red hair, dressed most incongruously in short denim skirts and high-heels. They gazed at him askance with that odd, unfocussed luminosity that instantly bespeaks of blindness.

"Welcome home, Sebastian," said one of the girls. "I’m Tilly and this is Prue."
Sebastian started at the use of his own name, even more because the girl’s lips hadn’t moved.
"Ohh, he’s a pretty one, isn’t he?" giggled Prue.
“How can you say that?” stuttered Sebastian. "You can’t see."
"There are different ways of seeing, Sebastian," came that soft voice in his head, recognizable from his earlier encounter.
"Who is that?" said Sebastian perplexed.

"It’s Grandma," came Tilly’s voice, "look in the crib."
Sebastian peered into the crib to see the ugliest baby imaginable.
"Mmph, keep your thoughts to yourself," said the voice in his head, "I’m actually seventy-three."
"You’re Grandma!"
"Yep. I can help you."
A flood of relief washed over Sebastian. "I’m so glad you were near," he whispered, "I’m so lucky."
"What makes you think it was luck?" said Grandma. "We came here two days ago, just to get you."

Sebastian jerked back as he heard the ratchet of a chopper overhead. From the distance came the faint sound of barking dogs.
"Oh no, they’ve found me!" he cried.
"Do it, girls," said Grandma.
The two girls grabbed Sebastian and plonked him unceremoniously on the crib. He felt a strange, liquid tugging at his body, his head span and, suddenly, they were all somewhere else.

Zed could feel the beads of sweat slowly trickling down his shaved skull. The whirring of the air condition unit in the environmental protection suit increased in frequency once again, while a medical monitor complained consistently about his increased heart rate with a nagging level one alert.
Nervous? No, I’m not nervous, he thought. This is a piece of cake. Just keep on plodding, steady, slowly, one foot after the other. You’ve got all the time in the world, Zed.

Slowly he pulled his left foot upward until muscular force compensated the magnetic induction soles of his boots. Pressing forward, he placed it firmly onto the hull. The clanking sound of the magnetic soles engaging reverberated around the suit.
Easy, he thought. Just take your time. No need to hurry.

Steadily he plodded onward, taking care to always have one foot in solid contact with the ship’s outer hull. A brief glance at the medical monitor ensured him that his heart rate had reached normal levels again. But the adrenalin was still coursing through his veins, making him feel like he was toting around legs of lead.

When he’d suited up and left the airlock, the first thing he’d done was to attach the safety line to the designated fitting. The second action was to launch himself out into the black star field, depending on the line to curve him around into solid contact with the outside hull. Instead, there had been a small tug, leaving him drifting on a slow, merciless trajectory away from the ship, gently spinning end over end. It took him only nanoseconds to realize what had happened.
This is it, he had thought stoically. I’m dead… well, I will be as soon as my air runs out. Damn. What a way to go.
Spinning around and around, the field of stars was eclipsed every three seconds by the sight of the ship. Once around, twice, three times – bam! The air had been pushed out of his lungs as he had impacted with a primary heat dump panel, one of several sticking out from the hull to dump excess thermal energy from the ship. Instinctively he had hugged himself to the panel’s flexible alloy struts, squeezing his eyes shut and listening for the hissing of suit ruptures caused by the collision. After what seemed like half an eternity, he had opened his eyes and drew a deep breath, shuddering convulsively.
Inch by inch he had scooted down panel’s support structure until he was once again in contact with the hull.
Drawing a deep breath, he had clanked his foot down onto the metal plating and continued his journey across the outer skin of the ship. The frayed end of the safety tether floating behind him now served as a constant reminder that whoever wanted this mission to fail was not going to restrict himself to just one item of sabotage.

Clanking slowly across the outer hull, his eyes remained firmly fixed on the black obtrusion on hull plate 22-C.

He did a quick visual inspection of the bulky, matte-black attachment, then kicked in an object recognition program. The response was as he had expected.
Compact tactical fission device.
Zed sighed.
Mini-nuke. Splendid. Whoever had it in for him wasn’t just ruthless, but also had a staggering access to some extremely restricted, not to mention expensive military resources. And considering the amount of cruel cunning and planning that he had experienced in the past three hours, it would definitely insinuate that the nuke would be booby-trapped as well.
Zed warily pondered the situation. Radioing in for help was out of the question; the risk of unintentionally setting the nuke of was too high. Incidentally, even getting too close to it with the magnetic induction pads in his boots might also be a bad idea. He bent down gently to inspect the connection points of the device.
Probably welded on, he thought, or maybe even vacuum-glued. He felt the need to scratch his head in puzzlement. I wonder when they did that?
Nonetheless, it eliminated all possibilities of levering the thing off – something which was difficult under even the best of circumstances in zero gravity. Removing the entire hull plate it was attached to would be a task that would take more time then he had air reserves. And one look at the dinky torque-less screw driver fastened to his equipment belt convinced him that it was a definite no-go.
Which really only left one thing. Zed smiled and flipped the switch on his fusion blade.
Looks like I’ve got my job cut out for me.

A tall man with black hair and a neatly trimmed beard stood before a series of monitors with his hands clasped behind his back. The screens all showed video footage of events that had occurred the night before. The video had been taken from an apartment security system. It was a newer apartment building, so the video was of high quality and included sound.

Silently four men crept down the short hall leading to the apartment’s bedchamber. Each of them was covered from head to toe in the typical armored uniform of the city guard, and each carried a plasma rifle.

The figure in the lead checked a read-out on a device mounted on his rifle. They moved a little further down the hall and the lead man stopped. His sensors were beeping wildly. The men turned and went into a defensive stance.

With a crash, something erupted through the plaster of the ceiling and dropped down behind the rear guard. With a loud crack it tore through the titanium reinforced armor he wore, and crushed the soldier’s spine. The three remaining men turned and fired. Their attacker used the dead man's body to absorb the attack. Sizzling bolts of plasma slammed into the dead soldier’s body, cooking his flesh.

The creature dropped the smoking corpse, and lunged forward with incredible speed. It ducked a plasma bolt and its huge claws easily pierced the armor of the closest man. He dropped to the floor trying to hold his insides together. His screams almost drowned out the sounds of gunfire.

The last two soldiers hastily retreated into the bedroom. The screen flickered as the camera changed to show the inside of the new room. On the bed, a woman dressed in a thin nightgown was screaming hysterically. The rest of the room was furnished conservatively.

The two men took aim at the entrance and waited.

With all of their attention focused on the door, neither of them saw the creature squirm it’s way out of the ventilation duct behinds them. Their first indication that anything was wrong was the way the woman’s screaming changed octaves.

The creature attacked them from behind, striking one soldier across the back. He rolled forward and spun, bringing his weapon up. The last man took a tremendous blow to the head and his helmet disintegrated. He collapsed to the floor and twitched.

The creature and the only surviving soldier stared at each other from only a couple of feet away. It was humanoid in shape, but massively muscled. It had a flat, angular, face and a mouth filled with jagged teeth. Its skin was a mottled green color. Its hands were tipped with razor sharp claws and spurs of bone tipped its other joints.

The soldier's finger tightened on the trigger of his weapon and the monster leapt. As the creature pounced, there was a shattering sound off camera. Glass fragments exploded into the room. Two women swung through the opening on cables suspended from a troop carrier that hovered outside. Both were identical in appearance. Both were dressed in tight fitting uniforms of black and silver, and both were armed with long swords. The woman on the bed continued to scream.

The creature landed in front of the soldier and its claws snaked out. It grabbed him by the chest and spun smoothly. The man screamed as he was flung across the room. He slammed into the woman on the left. Both were hurled back out through the smashed window.

The creature crouched and the other swordswoman approached cautiously. The woman on the bed was now whimpering in terror. The woman with the sword tried a feint to the left. The creature read the move and lashed out with its hand. The woman jumped back with three shallow cuts running down her right side. The beast didn't wait for her to recover. It leapt to the side and bounded off the wall. The woman tried to bring her weapon between herself and the monster. It twisted gracefully in the air avoiding the edge and slammed its elbow into her upper back. The sharp bone spike tented the front of her uniform as it punched out through her breastbone.

As the woman dropped lifelessly to the floor the creature moved slowly over to the woman on the bed. She squealed in terror and tried to bury herself in her blankets. The creature looked at her and tilted its head to the side. It reached up and with a claw it scratched something into the plaster over her head. The video wasn’t clear enough to see what it said.

Outside more units were arriving and lights flooded the room. The creature slid off the bed and climbed up the far wall. Within seconds it had disappeared back into the ventilation system. Several soldiers burst into the room.

Having seen what he wanted, the bearded man switched off the display. Next to him a red haired woman in a dark business suit stared at him intently.

“Amazing.” Said the man in a deep voice. “He took out the squad of guards and two of our best assassins in under two minutes.”

“One of the guards and the second assassin survived.” Said the woman.

“Yes, but he removed them from action so simply. We have to get it back. What did it write on the wall? I couldn’t read it on the video.”

“He wrote his name.”

“That’s impossible! We wiped his memory before we started the procedures.”

“Obviously not. He returned to his wife’s home and he tried to tell her who he was. He obviously remembers something.”

The rank stench of dried blood on fabric never really bothered Jack’s nose like it bothered the noses of the deputies, but then again, Jack had been working homicide for nearly twenty years. The crimes changed very little in that stretch of time, but the means of solving those crimes grew by mechanical leaps and bounds; much to the dismay of Jack and his fellow detectives, well, what was left of them anyway.

Jack Demsy stalked through the thirtieth floor apartment of the now former detective, Lisa Nolls, looking for anything that would clue him in to the means or manner of her brutal murder. House cat sized robots combed the ground for microscopic clues, while Jack surveyed the murder scene. It was another “butcher shop,” as the guys down at the station had begun calling the scenes left by this particular serial killer. Blood was splattered over most of the carpet and Lisa’s body had been disfigured in the most gruesome manner. This killer quickly killed his victims then toyed with the body afterward.

It was eating at Jack to see his former colleague like this, but he had to stay calm. Jack nonchalantly bent down and dabbed the pin portion of his wrist watch into a puddle of blood. The small screen read the sample and confirmed that it was indeed Lisa’s blood, mixed with that of her family. Lisa’s family appeared to have suffered a quicker death, just a thirty story plummet off of the balcony. Jack took a moment to collect himself, this was affecting him more than he thought it would. Seeing pictures of Lisa and her family hung on the walls wasn’t helping the problem. God, her daughter was only seven years old. What person would do something like this?

The apartment was relatively quiet, except for the occasional beep and the low pitch humming being emitted by the precinct bots. The door suddenly opened to the apartment and startled Jack a bit. It was detective Smith, a female android detective, one of the same group of factory made “perfect” detectives threatening Jack’s job. There weren’t too many human detectives left, thanks to these androids and this serial killer.

“I’m sorry you had to see this,” Smith said. “We knew how close you were to detective Nolls, that’s why they sent me.” Her voice was very alluring and matched her unbelievable body. The way Jack and the other detectives figured, if these bots couldn’t outwit and out work the rest of the detectives on the force, then they’d nail them on sexual harassment charges, because some of these things were physical knockouts.

“No, it’s ok. I wanted to work this one,” Jack answered. “Besides, this killer is obviously targeting the precinct’s human detectives. I need to know what I’m up against.”

“I’m also here to tell you that I’ve been assigned as your new partner,” Smith said.

“Why you?”

“The precinct requests that each human detective be accompanied by a--“

“Yea, yea, I get the point.”

Jack and Smith made their way into the bedroom, where Lisa’s body was. Much of the room was covered in a crimson red, table and lamp pieces were scattered on the floor and the phone line had been ripped from the wall. The most obvious piece of evidence in the room was the message scrawled across the wall in blood. It read: JACK DEMSY, YOU’RE NEXT.

Not the most original death threat that Jack had ever seen, but being written in blood was a nice touch. Detective Smith stared long and hard at the message, probably scanning for DNA and other goodies.

“This was written with Detective Nolls’s blood,” Smith said.

“Yea, I kind of figured,” Jack snapped back. These androids were definitely top of the line and could do things Jack could never do, but that didn’t necessarily make them smarter. They couldn’t profile a killer or predict a killer’s next move like Jack could. They could never completely take human detectives out of the equation, could they?

Some parts of this murder just weren’t adding up with Jack. Something that bothered Jack was the lack of bullet holes in the house. Lisa hadn’t fired a single shot at her intruder. He had known Lisa ever since she started working down at the precinct ten years ago, and she always carried her piece on her. Always.

There were also the wounds on Lisa’s body. One entry wound directly dead center over her heart and the other right between the eyes. The shots seemed to have machine like precision, unless Lisa stood perfectly still for this killer, which didn’t seem likely. No, now Jack wasn’t thinking a person did this at all. This killer was a machine.

Jack snapped a few pictures with his camera and sent them to his home computer and not his office one.

“I’ve already taken video records of the crime scene, detective,” Smith said.

“I know. These are for...sentimental value.”

Jack grew uneasy as the android glared back at him. He could never tell if these things were scanning or scheming. Smith finally looked back down at the lamp shards and went back to her business. Jack knew one thing was certain. He wasn’t going to be partners with detective Smith for very long. One way or anther, this was going to be a quick partnership.

In the nuclear furnace at the center of the great star, readily available fuel was in short supply. The fusion engine had burned up its hydrogen and helium long ago, and even the tremendous gravity of the core was not enough to draw in sufficient replacement. As oxygen and carbon supplies dwindled, replaced by inert iron, the reaction slowed to a crawl. The massive heart of the star, no longer supported by the outward pressure of its reactor, collapsed in upon itself. The core shrank, almost instantly, from over 20,000 miles across to a mere fifty. Then, it exploded in a burst of energy greater than that produced by a thousand normal stars through their entire ten billion year lifespan. The violence of the outburst shredded the star’s outer layers and ejected an enormous cloud of radiation and matter. For days, the cloud was brighter than a billion suns. The light of that explosion traveled through the galaxy for thousands of years, unnoticed. For millennia, the death of the great star went unseen and unmourned.

---

A hush came over the room as President James Rollins walked to the podium. Very few of the senators and representatives assembled on the floor had any idea what he was about to say. Flanked by his chief science advisor and the Secretary of Homeland Security, he stepped to the dais and, without hesitation, delivered the worst news in the history of humanity.

“Eight thousand years ago, the star Eta Carinae went nova. We became aware of this event only two years ago, when defense satellites meant to detect nuclear weapons testing observed intense gamma ray activity. A normal nova, at such a distance, would not pose much of a threat. Eta Carinae, however, was not a normal star. It was roughly one hundred times the size of our star, the sun. Its destruction was what astronomers call a hypernova. The radiation we detected was only the forerunner of a much larger burst expected to impact Earth within six months. When it arrives, the ozone layer, our main source of protection from such cosmic radiation, will be destroyed within minutes. If any life survives, it will spend the next millennium in hell: nuclear winter, skies brown from nitric oxide smog, and acid rain.”

Rollins paused and the audience slipped from stunned silence into panic. As he waited for the noise to abate, he berated himself for not planning his address better. Eventually, after several rounds of gavel pounding, the assembly quieted.

“Ladies and Gentlemen, I’m sorry I didn’t start my speech with this, but all hope is not lost. We have not been idle these past two years. We have been building. In addition to the four international space stations you are aware of, there are six American bases. My predecessor, thanks to a miracle of foresight or pure blind luck, began construction over ten years ago. At each of these ports are docked four ships, each capable of carrying one hundred-thousand passengers, preserved in cold sleep until they should reach their destination and begin life anew on other worlds.

“We have also been working here on Earth. Several massive networks of caverns and tunnels have been constructed and stocked. Within these holds, is room enough for another million people and supplies to last them twenty years. Perhaps this remnant will someday bring about a new blossoming of life on this planet: a true renaissance.

As he spoke, he watched his audience. Many had already calculated the number to be saved and with it, the number of the doomed. Ninety-nine percent of the people in the United States would die horribly within a year. Billions across the globe would share that fate.

“I only wish there were time to do more. Other nations around the world have been making similar preparations.” Those that could be trusted not to incite a worldwide panic. “We expect that, in total, over four million souls will escape the planet. Perhaps as many as twenty million will have some shelter from the storm. Life will go on.

“Now the real work begins. We must identify those who will go and those who will stay. We must inform our countrymen and let them make their own preparations or at least make their peace.”

---

Three weeks later, the rest of us knew. Even though martial law had been declared, I expected more violence. People are funny. When faced with certain death we can act with either great courage or great cowardice. Yet, while there were a few notable instances of the latter, the vast majority did not resort to riots, murder, or mayhem. And on that cold November evening, we all sat in our homes, watching the lottery and waiting, hoping, praying that the phone would ring.

Among scientists working at the cutting edge of particle physics, disagreement is a given. Indeed, defending ideas against the criticism of one's peers is the heart of theoretical science; without the scrutiny of other experts, the challenge of ideas and assumptions to weed out weak ideas, science cannot advance.

Even so, among the brightest lights in the field of quantum mechanics, there are two points on which there is uniform agreement.

The first axiom is that faster-than-light communication is impossible. This was not, of course, always universally accepted. For many decades, the best minds at the finest universities and research laboratories labored over experiments both real and imaginary, employing techniques as diverse as quantum entanglement, gravity waves and tachyon radiation. All of them failed -- in two cases, with spectacularly lethal consequences. As failure followed failure, as the flow of new approaches dried up, the scientific community finally reached concensus. And so, at the end of the day, physicists everywhere go to sleep comfortable in the knowledge that Einstein was right, that energy, matter and information are all constrained by 'c', the speed of light. Truly instantaneous communication is simply impossible.

There is one more principle on which virtually all top-drawer theoreticians agree. Although individual scientists have expressed it in many ways, I choose to quote here the version voiced by Dr. Harlan Mishkin at last winter's Interstellar Broadcasting Symposium in Helsinki: "It is a very, very good thing that nobody ever explained what is possible and what is not possible to Mr. Schlaff's seventh-grade electronics shop class."

Preface

Encyclopaedia Cosmatica Article 19923: The History of the Galagosic Empire (part 1) -

The empire established by Galagos III had little impact on the galaxy as a whole until the time of the united Spun Revolt of 12185. It was not the revolution, or even the empire itself (for it was merely a five-planet simple autocracy) that warrants modern attention, rather it is that fact that it was at this time, in this distant corner of the galaxy, that the first Fessi warriors emerged. Although the acknowledged father of the cult, ‘Fess’, is believed to have originally been a native of Vaeso, it is known that the almost-legendary ‘Aven’ was born on the barren and ailing planet of Thoro – the smallest planet of the Galagosic Empire.

Chapter 1: The First Loss of Aven

The City of Feros had formidable defences. As the remotest major settlement of the Empire, its vulnerability to attack was obvious. Lying merely 15 miles north of the unofficial border with the Spun Lands, Feros’s history had been one of repeated occupations and periods of urban warfare. It was only in the last few decades that stability had come to the city, under the rule of Galagos III, Emperor of Bocos, Chexi, Bis, Eeth and the civilized territories of Thoro.

These days, few citizens of Feros give any thought to the bleak areas surrounding the city. For what need was there to think of such things? They lived in safety in their fortified city; should they need to travel elsewhere they could do so quickly and easily using the U-trans underground railway. Within the city they had everything they needed to sustain life. Purified water, recycled from the new sewerage system, was available all day long, and re-processed food was always available thanks to the same technological advances.

Feros was not without its problems, however, and it was because of one such problem that Aven Loi was sitting stride an antiquated petrol motorbike, and travelling at nearly 100 miles per hour over the slick asphalt of Feros’s ‘West Boulevard’. It was late at night; hours had passed since the hazy sky had receded from above the city, seemingly driven away by the garish neon lights of the many bars and clubs lining every major street.

She was barely aware of these lights as they streaked by. Her mind raced as she tried to stay focussed on the road ahead. “This is just another stupid mistake,” she thought desperately, as if pleading with herself, “Or another test, dammit. I’ll kill Fess if this is another test…”

The broken car should have shown up on the bike’s R-con. All road blockages should show up on police R-con warning systems. The traffic database was updated nearly every fifteen minutes, and the global tracking system should keep the user aware of any problems in the road ahead.

It was too late for Aven to reflect that this many ‘shoulds’ turned into a great big ‘maybe’. Especially on a stolen bike, using a stolen police R-con, and travelling at 95 mph towards a smashed – but still very solid – car.

She was fifty yards away when she saw it. A single car, lying on its side in the middle of an intersection. The streetlights were out, and neon glow from the street ahead had blinded her to the danger.

There was no time to think. Of course, she grabbed the brakes, hard, but all she felt was the strange feeling of her stomach lurching up into her throat, and a thump in her chest as her heart sent blood prickling with icy terror to her arms and legs. In that one heartbeat, she hit the car.

Later, much later, what Aven remembered the most was the flying. Time had stopped, and she had flown, above the dirty streets, away from the fear and oppression, and for those moments she’d been free. But all that she knew now was pain.

She lay where she had landed, on the top of a parked car, facing upwards. She tried to scream, but the didn’t seem to have any air in her lungs. Trying to breathe in was too painful. “God, the Spun invasion! They’ll kill us all” she thought, and tried to move. Bright pain flashed from her limbs and back. She watched, motionless, as bright stars appeared before her eyes. An odd sight indeed, in this polluted and bright city. She almost giggled at the strange stars as the background dimmed to black. Then time stopped, and the stars took on fantastic colours and flew in the sky just for her.