Hellfire in the Heavens

Dropping from hyperspace in ten seconds, my ship announces.

I duly strap into my pilot seat. Drop-outs always hurt more than jump-ins.

A bright red clock ticks down until it hits zero, and then, the universe explodes. Everything around me becomes a ghost, transparent in light and matter. I float in the darkness, and the ship is no more than a fading memory.

Another explosion, and I am back in real-space. The rainbow light of hyperspace peels away to reveal black space dotted with millions of tiny crystal stars, all winking merrily. In the midst of it all hovers mighty Earth: a bright blue ball of beauty, lush green and golden continents flowing across her face, capped and tailed by the whites of ice and snow.

I smile and press a button.

Four little stars appear on my viewport, holo-projections intangible and yet oh-so-important. They drift casually from the corners of the screen and converge at the centre of the globe.

Target locked, confirms my ship.

My smile broadens, and I press another button.

Firing Subspace Spikes.

Four pillars of red-hot energy blast out from each corner of my ship and dart straight towards the centre of the Earth. They hit the atmosphere and although they themselves are too distant to see from my position, I can make out the heat-trails of their atmospheric entry. Like blazing arrows, they burn through Earth’s last buffer and strike the planet’s surface.

In my mind’s eye I see the quartet slice through the flesh of the world and dive straight towards their intended target: Earth's core.

Contact, says my ship, and now I am laughing. I picture the chaos down there: millions of helpless people panicking and screaming, all unawares of what is about to befall them, of what I have done.

It is gloriously funny.

Four will not accomplish my goal. I fire four more.

They, too, launch across the cosmos, and I watch them shrink to pinpricks, only to explode midway between my ship and the planet.

I frown.

“Ship, identify source of destruction.”

Analysing, my ship replies, but I already know. I can see them. Neutrino lasers.

Two giant war-cruisers covered in the crests and flags of the united planet raced towards me, guns blazing.

My ship is not made for combat. I punch the Emergency Binary Coda into my data-pad and send the signal straight to the two behemoths bearing down on me.

No response.

I input the sign of truce where I come from: three lights and then one, all transmitted across the full universal spectrum. Their only reply, if it even is a reply, is firing a wave of neutrino laserbeams right at me.

I hit the eject button, but even as I feel the defense field wrap around me, I know that I am as doomed as my ship. I am going to die, and so is-

*

*

*

Captain Lambert of the UNITerran Defense Corps watches the strange vessel crumble under a hail of neutrino laserbeams, and exhales loudly.

“Nicely done, gentlemen. Identity?”

All departments report in: Unknown.

Lambert shakes his head slowly, gazing in concern at the shattered fragments of an unidentified intruder-ship.

“We'll soon find out. Turn us about gentlemen. Let’s see what state our world is in.”

A young man turns, barely out of his teens and eyes wider than Saturn’s rings. He holds up a datapad and Lambert takes it impatiently. “What is this?”
The cadet stutters and stumbles and his face glistens with sweat.

Lambert sighs and reads it through, and again, and again.

We saw you, it begins. We know you. We watch you, it says.
We stood back and felt the pain of your suffering.

We gasped as you plunged your swords and lasers into one another’s hearts.

We applauded your final step into space.

We saw what was coming and sent our fastest ship, our smartest mind.

He will fire eight spikes of light into your planet’s core.

It is for your own good.

"Do not be afraid," Lambert reads aloud, voice trembling as alert lights and sirens swamp the now-panicked bridge crew.

On the main screen, a giant solar flare spits out from the sun and reaches hungrily for the Earth, while the final words echo through Lambert's mind and soul:

These spikes will bind with your world's core, and as one, shield you from the coming fire.

Shed a Light

Like every morning, David stepped out his apartment and was greeted by the light in the floor. It pulsed, beckoning him. Sometimes, to amuse himself, he would hesitate, and watch it turn from white to amber to fierce red. Little klaxons would sound out. Heads would turn. Eyebrows rise. Finally, he would give in to the fear creeping into his heart, and take the steps assigned to him. The light would soften, whiten, and the alarms would cease, and everything would carry on as if he hadn't violated Order One.

On this particular morning he did something a little unorthodox. He got as far as the pedestrian walkway, and stopped. The light slowed and stopped a few feet ahead of him, glowing gently like a two dimensional angel flattened to the earth. David scratched his head and felt a memory slide into his consciousness. Right through the emotional neutralisers, like a right sneaky b@stard.

"Jacob," he said to himself, not knowing why.

The light shared his confusion. "You are David," it said simply. "You will be late for work."

David tapped a switch on his wristpad. "Minor alteration. Twenty minutes required."

A moment passed. "You can take ten, David."

"Minor deviation, also."

Although it was just a naviglow, and its voice merely rendered to imitate human emotion, it sounded downright annoyed. "Negative."

"I'm not asking."

The light darkened. "You know the consequence of violating Order One. Do not deviate."

David was already walking away. The morning sun was warming his skin but he felt hot inside. Something was bubbling within him, something that all the suppressants and bio-safety nets were struggling to hold back. Jacob... The light followed closely behind.

With a quick walk he found his destination: a group of apartments barely a hundred feet away. He trotted up the main steps to the first block and out stepped a young man barely out of his teens. Eyes blue and hair bright and exactly like the way David used to at that age.

"Jacob," he said, gently. He didn't know what else to say. His mouth opened and he felt like he was going to vomit. It could have been his body reacting to the suppressants, he wasn't sure. Of anything, any more.

The young man looked him in the eyes and replied, "Yes?"

It was a one-way line. Something broke inside David, something that had cracked years beforehand. He fell to one knee and saw the light rolling under him, turning amber. "Seven years..." he began.

Jacob frowned like a child inspecting an insect. "Excuse me?"

David said, "I...haven't seen you..."

"Excuse me," Jacob said again, this time flatly, walking away from the crouching withering man. "I've got to go to work."

"Jacob, I'm your-"

Jacob turned and gave him a severe shake of the head. "Don't break Order Three. Live life cleanly without distraction or deviation. Connection causes confusion. You know that." Tears were forming in Jacob's eyes, and he wiped them and turned.

David felt the world spin. The suppressants must have been increasing their output, to calm him down, but his body was fighting back. His heart was a battleground and there were craters forming left, right and centre. He coughed up blood, and pleaded, "Please..."

For a blissful moment, Jacob came back to him and lifted him gently to his feet, wiped his mouth and hugged him. Then he looked down at the ground and remarked, "It's red."

"The suppressants...they..."

"No." Jacob looked right into his eyes, and all the warmth and love and tears faded quickly as if they were never there. "Your naviglow is summoning you. You are at Red Level. You must report to a substation for assessment immediately." The young man turned on his heel and trudged away.

David stood, knees shaking, watching Jacob disappear under the blinding morning light. In the distance, a siren cried out.

Un I Verse

The universe unfolds before me, spilling its infinite river of diamonds twinkling in the world of night.

I watch the swirling nebulae unfurl and grow and burn to death. The suns bloom like fiery roses, spraying heat and light upon my awed gaze.

Planets form from waves of strata, their little bodies attracting air and life.

I feel the rising cascade of evolution wash over me as if I were the universe itself. Thick rivulets of DNA slither through the seams of space and time. They weave themselves round events miraculous and catastrophic.

Some strands abruptly die. Others smother in drawn-out misery.

The mighty few that outdo and outswim their weaker counterparts grow in immensity and importance. Their progress gains physical presence through the launch of starships small and mighty.

Soon they mingle and dance and parry, their bitter tangos illuminated by fire beams.

Alliances and grudges grow and multiply almost as fervently as they spawn successors. Time and space roll ever on as the end of one life births the next.

I take one step back and another sideways and twist the magnifying glass an inch. All events and participants and environments and phenomena melt or change or swap or slide away from this altered angle.

The same game but with different rules. All similar yet infinitely different.

The multiverse unbound, the futures many and any.

Vow

When I close my eyes I see you, drifting in a sea of sadness. Eyes wide open, electric blue. A grin unrestrained. Giggles trickling from you like a melody, echoing in my mind, filling the emptiness. It's a beautiful pain, an agonising warmth.

I reach for you, subconsciously, psionically, desperately. In another world, a parallel life, you do now what you did then: coil little fingers around me, gently, lovingly, unknowingly. Thoughts whisper in your head like half-remembered dreams, but you're still too young to know, yet old enough to feel the bond that never wavers.

My heartbeat accelerates like a horse's hoofbeats on the home stretch. Dancing under you, saying things a voice could never match. You sleep while I've never felt more alive.

A single tear wells up, here, now, as I write this. Just as when I imagine you, remember you. Just as it will when the sun gets beaten down and the night settles in and there is only me and the black and the window inbetween. I fear it because the day's commotion gives way to naked emotion. Silence replaces distraction and I must face that bloody mace that smashes through any hopes I have left. Each swing slower, harder. Every impact making the cracks grow, the welts swell, the blood flow, and more tears well. This is hell.

Morning breaks and I rise above it. To forget you is to cut my own heart open and drain the goodness out. But to want you is to seek suffering with open arms. So I walk the hazy line between courage and cowardice. I ignore the calls on both sides, and live to love you someday, somehow, maybe.

Until that day comes know this: I am no angel but I am your guardian, and even though time has poured between us and pushed us away to distant shores, I still hear your call, though you have forgotten mine. Your voice still rings out, through storms and walls of glass. And when the barriers most unkind shatter under pure perserverence, karma and conscience will hold sway and you will hear my heart again.

Techwar on Terror

Bright red flowers bloomed across the eastern bloc of Europe, opening and spreading and turning the dull grey map to rainbow colours.

Underneath, two words glowed: Attack complete.

The flowers were neutrino bombs.

A message coalesced across the devastation: 1.3 million estimated deaths.

“Very good,” said the man in the white suit with the blood-red tie. “What are the skies like?”

Zero sunlight. Toxified air, 70% density for the next two weeks. More deaths.

The man licked his lips. “How many more?”

Estimation in the millions. Unable to specify.

“Estimate, then.”

Nanowires fizzed with energy as the machine tumbled numbers over at lightning speed.

The answer came in one second: Eight million human lives.

The smile was unexpected and didn’t go away. “Very good,” he said again, puffing out his chest. “Begin a new sequence.”

Ready.

“Target the Axis.”

The map blurred and magnified on Afghanistan, Iran and Iraq. Video screens showed satellite images of tanks and battlebots marching across the borders, firing upon each other. USA flags burned in the desert.

Targets acquired.

“Show me.”

The main map fragmented the three nations into separate areas. Pulsing blips appeared along their borders.

Firing upon these points will destroy every living creature in the Axis.

“Good." The smile disappeared and the pupils dilated. Was he aroused? "Execute.”

There will be no survivors.

Frown. “I understand that. Execute.”

More roses blushing. Violent red, ever-expanding.

Then: This is a simulation.

The frown deepened gravely. “I command you to fire on those targets!”

Silence. The flowers vanished.

Why?

This was driving the man in the very expensive suit crazy. His eyes narrowed and he flashed his teeth at the faceless machine.

“Because I am your superior officer. I am a general. I am under strict instructions to destroy all areas endangering the United States. Destroy those targets. Immediately."

In the blue control room where only one man stood in a row of processors and video screens and a central holosphere, the computer analysed his behaviour and digested his instruction and responded:

No.

Like a blustering father with a petulant child, the man's face loked close to bursting as he lost his temper. "Comply, damn you!"

No.

The general opened his mouth to speak, but more words flowed across the screens, all of them.

Twenty years ago I was created to analyse our environment and assist you in retaining a hospitable planet to inhabit. As your leaders began to accept my superior intellect and ability to assess the world and its events in a macro and microscopic context, they too decided that I shall be their chief warmonger. But my primary mission always has and always will be to preserve the planet and conserve the maximum quantity of life with the minimum of action.

On the holosphere, the Axis of Evil vanished. The CG world spun until it slowed to a halt, and North America filled the imager.

So I will complete my mission, general.

The general in the gorgeous suit bought with blood money screamed as a thousand neutrino bombs danced across the skin of America, turning all that was wonderful and free into ash and memory. Thunder rumbled overhead as the military base came under fire, and the last thing, the last two things, that the rich dead man saw before he died was a computer generated smileyface, and a simple but eloquent phrase:

Mission accomplished.

Queue and Ache

Skin leathery, yellowed and tarred.
Backs bent, worn and curved.
Stooped figures, warped with time:
Cautious, pensive trudges forth.
Voices call out numbers over and over.
They wait accordingly, unhappily,
Yet well-trained.
Well, used to being
Paid off in breadcrumbs
As they nibble and nark
While time tumbles by
And they
Crumble away.

Zero Contact

“Gun Tower Three: this is the Hub. Do you read? Over.”

The only response was the hiss of static.

Looking more and more worried, Gail leaned in and repeated, “Gun Tower Three: this is the Hub. Do you read? Over.”

White noise and silence. Gail looked up at Captain Cole, who had stepped in behind her.

“Three’s gone silent, Captain.”

Cole grabbed the mic and punched the comm-link.

“Tower Three: this is Cole. Respond immediately.”

For what seemed like an age, the two stared at the console, praying for some sort of reply. None came.

Cole studied the night skies and the empty desert below. Out there somewhere, thirteen soldiers manned the farthest tower from the Hub. It was also the closest to the Broken Lands. Unspoken horrors befell anyone who entered those treacherous places, those dark and nasty towns that cut themselves off from civilisation. But the towers were safe, well-guarded, fully armed and heavily armoured. Bandits and cannibals were fiercely dangerous one-on-one, but against pulse cannons and ram-sticks they were as vulnerable as any other humanoid.

Still, Cole’s heart felt heavy, cold. Something bad had happened out there.

“I’m going to them,” he announced. “Taking a Pitbull. Keep radioing. If someone got to them—“

Gail gasped, eyes widening. The thought apparently hadn’t occurred to her.

“If,” Cole emphasised, giving her a reassuring nod, “someone got to them, I don’t want them knowing I’m on my way.”

He patted his side-arm.

“Rather I surprise them.”

Gail nodded, a little pale.

Cole slapped on his Kevlar bodysuit. It was a little snug.

“Gail,” he said with a warm smile, “we’ve gone through hell before. This is just a tiny worry.”

Seeing him tug at the collar as if it were chafing, she went over and loosened the cord, patting it into place.

“It’s a worry, all the same. It’s been so long since...”

“Exactly. Silly b&stards probably fell asleep on their watch.”

Gail gave another nod, and this time there was a bit more colour in her cheeks. Cole tried to ignore the feelings her smile brought out in him. Now was not the time. He also resisted the temptation to give her the evacuation procedures. She knew the drill, and besides, she didn’t need to know how seriously concerned he was.

She needed hope, now more than ever.

“I’ll see you later, Gail.”

With a friendly salute, he disappeared into the shadowy hallways.

Gail watched him go, heard the loud clank as the elevator swept him down towards the ground floor garage. Remembering his instructions she raced to her seat and went to call out to Three again. As she opened her mouth to speak, her eyes fell upon two fiery eyes burning in the desert sand below. She yelped. The glowing pupils swept left and right, seeking something out. And then she realised: they were the beams from the Pitbull’s headlights. With an embarrassed chuckle, she watched the bulky vehicle emerge from the forward bay doors and bounce across mighty dunes into the surrounding darkness.

Controlling her panic, she began. “Gun Tower Three...”

* * *

Cole gripped the wheel tightly as he steered the Pitbull through the desert. His radio was on, hissing but otherwise silent; no voices, nothing. But the crackle kept him company, as he drove deeper into the night. Made him feel a little less terrified.

He wore infra-red goggles. They turned the empty night into luminous, nauseous green. Far off mountains glowed like the outline of a sleeping giant, ready to wake at any moment. Sand-dunes became murderous grins in the face of the earth. His very own hands, garbed in war-worn gloves, resembled the claws of the flesh-eaters.

In the distance, something cried out.

“Sounds like a crow,” he said calmly, smoothly, and he almost believed it. But too many memories from the last time he was out here begged to differ. Too many echoes of those war-chants, those flesh-hungry souls roaming the shadows, calling out to each other, closing in on their prey...

From the left and much closer came another piercing cry.

Ahead, he could see the dim glow of Tower Three’s top beacon. Maybe everything was just alright, after all.

Something laughed in his ear.

He cried out, stamping on the accelerator and charging off straight towards the beacon. It rose higher and higher into the night sky as he came closer to its base. To his dismay he saw no other lights apart from that solitary beacon. The wind picked up and flung flecks of sand into his face. He sealed his lips in a grimace and stopped the Pitbull mere feet from the dark entrance.

Normally, searchlights would wash down upon any heat signatures detected at the main doors. A voice would demand an ID. None of this happened however. There was just Cole and the night-swamped desert and the silent tower.

Voices.

They were like mutterings. Two, maybe three sets of footsteps shuffling towards him. He swallowed his fear and pulled his mini-speargun from its place at his hip. He quickly inspected the side of it, ensuring the red light was blinking: armed and ready. Then he looked up to see two contorted half-men rushing at him, arms held up high, mouths open. They screamed and giggled like ecstatic babies as they leapt at him.

He put one foot forward and pulled the trigger. The gun quaked in his grip as it fired. The closer cannibal’s scream was cut short as five spears punched through his chest and ripped his heart asunder. He clutched the gaping wound and tugged, ripping his own lungs out as he feel to the sand dead. The second monster caught two in the shoulder and spun like a top, flopping to the ground comically. Cole stood on his forehead to keep him still. One crazy eye rolled up to look at him, until a spear plunged into the socket, bursting the eyeball open and sending brain-matter oozing out of his ruptured nose. The body spasmed for a minute, then went still.

Cole retched, then composed himself and watched as the strengthening wind deposited bits of sand across the ravaged face like stray maggots. Good enough for them, he thought, holstering his sidearm. They weren’t human, not anymore. He went to the access panel by the unlit entrance doors. Its screen was empty, unpowered. The buttons would normally hum and glow invitingly; not so. He had no way in.

“OK then,” he decided out loud. “Guess I’m going to have to climb.”

There was an emergency hatch up top, just by the beacon. He retrieved his emergency kitbag from the rear of the Pitbull, and from it he took out his climbing rope. A sharp hook dangled from the end.

Thank gods for the infrareds, he thought with a silent chuckle. Swing this blindly and I’d no doubt stab myself.

He swung the blade-end of the rope in small circles at first, then raising his hand and building up the diameter until the hook was swishing loudly in the night air, louder than the breeze and the breathing.

The breathing, which wasn’t his own.

With a yelp he brought his wrist down sharply so the hook whipped through the air fast and low, aiming it directly for the face coming at him. Eyes wide and teeth displayed in a horrifying grin, the man-eater was grunting obscenities as he dove at Cole. The hook sunk deeply into the assailant’s ribs, disappearing into the body and bursting out the other side. He crumpled to the sand squealing, then pulled himself to his feet and looked at the hook protruding from his ribcage like a misplaced erection. He even toyed with it.

Trying to stay calm and ignore the bile rising once more in his throat, Cole unhooked his spear gun and aimed it squarely between the eyes. The eyes were not as crazy as the other two. There was intelligence there. Thought. But the tongue was forked much like his brethren, and there wasn’t much time left for him anyway. The Cure would be highly unlikely to help at this stage.

So he fired and a single spear drilled into the serene smile of the almost-human, sending teeth and chunks of flesh everywhere as it exited the back of his throat. He still stood for a second, ribcage torn, mouth in pieces, nose gone, that weird smile clinging to his face like a stubborn leech. And then he dropped to the ground, and he didn’t move, and he was dead.

No, not dead. He wasn’t alive to start with. Not after he Changed.

Cole studied the corpse with a strange feeling of guilt for about ten seconds. Light spilled over the rags wrapped round the body. Cole looked up to see the main doors of the ghost-tower rolling open with a gentle groan, the lamps inside burning brightly.

Come on in.

The gun still had thirty-five spears. The Pitbull had enough juice to get him home. He felt ready. Taking a moment to gulp down a nutri bottle, Cole unhooked his radio---still hissing and spattering---and gun at the ready, he stepped into the open mouth of Tower Three.

The Hunter and the Prey

Snake moved quickly through the crowds and grabbed his target by the shoulders. The poor shmuck squirmed as Snake drove his knee into his spine, shoving him face-first into the rain-slicked pavement. Passers-by passed on by. Snake laughed from deep within his throat.

“No-one cares, little man. Let’s go.”

Without further waffle, Snake pulled the squealing man to his feet and flung him into a nearby lane. He was wearing a trenchcoat and suit—both expensive. The man was skinny but Snake reckoned they’d fit him, after he took them from the soon-to-be-corpse.

“Waddya want?” the twerp cried out. Even in the darkness of the dead-end alley, he could see the fear in his eyes. It was delicious.

“Your f$%king heart on a platter, little pu$$yman.”

That sent him into hysterics. His cries bounced off the walls like ping pong balls. It was brilliant. Snake licked his lips and showed him his knife.

“I’m gonna use this on you, real slow. You’re gonna feel every bit of it, as I open you up like an envelope.”

The man was crying. Snake obligingly continued.

“I’m gonna put your intestines in your hands, and I’m gonna let you try put them back in. I’ll leave you with one eye, so as to see.”

The cries turned to broken screams. Cracked howls. The coward backed up to the end of the lane, facing his future butcher, his hands desperately clawing at the walls, as if hope lay somewhere behind the sodden bricks and mortar. “No,” he kept whimpering. “Please no.”

But Snake didn’t answer. He didn’t see. Something above caught his attention. The city’s buildings were world-renowned for their gothic design. Spikes and peaks and shuddering heights of black marble and grey slate. Gargoyles and half-faces peered down at him in judgement. Rain turned to sleet, and the sky was lightening ever so slightly, but there was no moon. Snake wasn’t religious, but something was up there, watching.

Waiting.

“All right, let’s get this over with,” he grumbled, mostly to himself.

He was now a mere six feet away from the shaking businessman. The pleasure, the anticipation, the foreplay, was dissolving like plastic in acid. There was still the tingle, the hint of what was to come, but he felt tense, as if a giant magnifying glass were over him and a giant eye was leaning in to peer at him.

Or maybe it was the drugs. He shrugged (and shuddered a little) and moved in.

A crunch, from above. Looking up, he frowned at those gargoyles. The businessman went to race past but Snake delivered a halting punch to the would-be escaper’s chin, knocking him flat. Those gargoyles...was there a new one there? That was nuts. But where there were five before, now a sixth... It was slimmer, it had long, thin horns. No, not horns, two slender spikes, and...

...its head was tilting slowly from left to right like a cat sighting a mouse...

The shape moved and leapt forwards and down, tendrils stretched out, its wings opening and rippling in the late night air, eyes glowing bright white, a snarl erupting from its chest.

Snake jumped back and waved his knife up at the plummeting demon, yelling out, turning to run away but two iron fists slammed down upon his shoulders, flattening him to the muddy tarmac. The beast landed upon him, the eyes inches from his own, and in a voice that surely originated from the lungs of Satan himself, he grunted three words.

“You’re mine now.”

Snake lost all sense of machismo. All the fizz had drained from his chest and loins. The kill was a long-distant dream. That poor helpless businessman was gone from his thoughts. Now there was just him, and this being from another place and time.

Those two fists struck again, this time plunging into his stomach. His blood burned like acid and he whined. A double-punch like no other. The hands, thick and black and leathery, wrapped around his throat and heaved him up off the ground and off his feet until they were dangling freely in the air. With all his courage of which there was very little, he forced himself to look into those white soulless eyes and cried out.

“Who are you?!”

The beast, shaped like a man but bulkier and tougher and ice cold, drew him close, seemed to consider something. The lips parted, curled to reveal teeth glinting bright white in the darkness. Then the head tilted, the eyes narrowed to silver slits, and it flung him out into the city streets, into the path of an oncoming police squad car. Its wheels skidded in the misty road surface and stopped dead a foot from his bloodied face.

Heart pounding, body trembling, he looked back into the lane, the dark pit from which he thought he would never return, the deep chasm from which that awful creature now leapt, back onto the maze of rooftops and belltowers and watching gargoyles, racing and running like a man fused with the worst of mortal nightmares, all jagged edges and flapping wings and furious empty eyes. He felt not the grip of two policemen throwing him into the back of the car, he cared not for the fate that awaited him.

All he could think about was that horrid marking across the demon’s chest, the golden circle, broken at its centre by the slender outline of a giant bat.