Sci-Fi

The Warrior Reawakens

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The Empress of the Terran Alliance, Queen of Mars, and cult proclaimed goddess of the Milky Way, opened her eyes after her morning prayers and supplications. Despite what the outlaw cult leaders might tell you, the great Empress herself was created by an even more powerful and creative God of the universe. Who better to serve than the creator of all things? Her prayers that morning, as they were every morning, were for wisdom, clarity of thought, and strength. Being Empress was not nearly as easy or as fun as what she had been before. Hundreds of years ago, before her reluctant Accession to the Throne of Power, Sally was just a college student studying art at the University of Arizona. Now, if she looked at a map, she wasn’t even sure if she could point to Arizona. The old nations have all been dissolved and reformulated under her rule, at least those of Terra Prima. The student loans, the boy troubles, the test anxiety, she would have it all back if it meant she did not need to worry about her Empire.

She collected herself, donning her royal robes, and stepped from her chambers in the Palace of Grace. The Palace was located upon Atlantis, the newly raised eighth continent and seat of power for the Empire. If one were to look at a map from when Sal was a girl, they would more than likely find it incomprehensible in those latter days. The Empress moved from her Palace to her Chambers just outside the Hall of the Chosen, where she would preside over the proceedings between her ten chosen councilors and the people’s ten councilors. Sal had set up this system only six years after she ascended to Empress. This took much burden off of her as the sole arbiter of justice, and instead left her to be a simple tie breaker should it be needed, which hardly ever occurred. In the six hundred years she has presided, and across the hundreds of councilors, she had to break a tie four times, if she remembered properly.

In her chambers awaited her “three daughters,” the highest rank attainable in the Terran Government by those of the low-blooded Terra Secondari, the underclass on Terra. Sal allowed their women to become her personal entourage as a show of unity between the two great sections of the world. The women fawned over Sal, believing her to be a goddess. After they had their chance to doll her up and make sure she was the most attractive being in the galaxy, even without her powers, Sal stepped out into the Council chambers.

The chambers were shaped as an oval; the party addressing the council stood in the center of the oval, having entered from the opposite side of the oval from where the Empress sat. Ten Councilors, five from each house, sat on either side of the addresser, lifted above them by about five feet on the platforms. The oval, at its widest, was twenty feet across, and its depth was three times that at sixty feet deep. The space from the ground to the ceiling, however, was around fifty-five feet. The entire room was imposing, not without purpose. The grandeur of the highest court in the Empire was nothing to be considered trife.

Sal had heard the murmurings among the council members as they awaited her arrival, and the sudden hush and dead silence was pierced only by the soft clopping of her heels on the darkened marble floor, which made up the ground she trod across to take her place behind the ceremonial veil. Laurana Tash took her place just outside the veil, where she could declare the court in session by introducing the Empress. “All rise,” Sal heard more than saw her councilors rise and bow. “The Queen of Atlantis, Queen of Terra Secondaria, Queen of Terra Prima, Queen of Mars, Empress of the Great Terran Alliance, Lady of the Day, and Daughter of the Creator, Sal Unborn, presides, this day, over all the Great Light touches. Council is now in session.”

Most of the issues and queries made by the people that day were handled by the councilors with almost no input from the throne. What little input there was came by way of Laurana the Empress’ Mouth. Laurana had served Sal for over one hundred years now. The Empress found herself bored to the point of exhaustion just as she had every day for those last hundred years. Nothing exciting ever happened anymore. The last addresser of the Council to call for military aid had stood before them nearly two hundred years ago. The rebellions were crushed, the world was at peace and bathed in prosperity, and even the stars were being colonized as they spoke. Sal almost begged for something to happen. As if He heard her cries, the Creator decided today was the day.

The quiet of deliberation was suddenly broken by the doors to the Council Chamber being slammed open. The Empress made no sudden move, but instead slowly sat upright as if she was more insulted by the interruption than startled. Sal opened her mouth, and Laurana spoke. “Who enters into the presence of her Grace without appointment?” Looking through Laurana’s eyes, Sal could see the disheveled man who had barged in.

The old man was bloodied and broken, hobbling on one leg, dragging the other behind before tripping and slamming into the dias that held the great sigil of the Council. “My Empress, they are here, Atlantis’ shield has been compromised, the Herrium have sent an advance force of… of humans! Empress, save us, save your people!”

Sal suddenly felt odd; the world paused before her eyes. She had not personally entered Slip-time since she was a girl. Something about this man slammed into those warrior instincts as if a gong from another life was being rung loudly in her mind. Sal stepped from her veil and began levitating up and eventually passed through the skylight in the chamber’s ceiling. Outside the Palace of Grace, she looked up and saw what the man was talking about. An invasion fleet flooded out of the side of an orbiting dreadnought. Was that Bohdi’s Bismarck? It couldn’t be. 

Either way, the empress stretched her neck and felt a deep crack as if something finally snapped back into place after hundreds of years. Her royal robes burned off her body, and she felt the gust of wind clothe her in her old hero garments from the before times.  A red body-length coat wrapped around her waist, forcing an hourglass figure she had not known for many, many years. Her legs were covered in black leather boots that went up to her knee, and her face cast aside all the glamorous makeup done by her daughters that morning, replaced by a simple foundation, blush, and lipstick combination she had been known for. The lipstick, of course, was poisonous. That was truly a relic. Being from the days before her heroics. Sal sighed as she had to mentally adjust the fit; she was not twenty years old anymore, even if her joints didn’t know it.

Bodhi, a once loyal bodyguard to the Empress, had told her many times she should spend even an hour a week sparring with other Gifted warriors, to keep herself in pique condition for an eventuality such as this. Now, she supposed, she would go and tell Bodhi he was right, in person.

A Fall from Grace

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A Short Story by A.B. Timothy

The alarms blared as the Kingdom fell. The Confederate Star Traveler, or C.S.T. Kingdom, a dreadnought of next generational proportions, had been entirely crippled by a few small explosions on the captain’s bridge. The other bridges across the continent-sized ship kept her afloat, but she was quickly losing energy and would fall out of slip-space any minute. Bodhi Star, an Anointed One, used four of his 6 gifts in conjunction to escape the blast that leveled the captain’s bridge. He cut the scene, opening a portal away from the bridge; galaxy-hopped, quickening himself until the world was still entering slip-time; melted a piece of shrapnel with his control of fire; and telekinetically threw aside a command console that had threatened to crush him. Even after escaping through his portal, Bodhi was disoriented. Being in slip-time allowed him a moment to think. He decided the best course of action would be to check on the child.

The leg of his captain’s uniform had caught fire, but was now only smoldering threads on the edge. The black of the uniform remained, relatively, unharmed by the explosion. He straightened up and adjusted his coat. Bodhi then sprinted to the child. He remembered, so vividly, his own, ancient eyes staring back at him through the screen on that backwater world. “You swore to keep her safe, you knelt before your empress, and burned in your heart a promise to protect her,” he had heard himself say. “Now you have that chance again. You broke your oath once, but that was as a man. Now you are a king, and kings do not break their oaths.” He was no longer reliving the memory in his mind, but rather now he was actually watching the video again. Running through slip-time while in slip-space always produced strange hallucinations.

The final door into the secret nursery hissed open, and Bodhi saw a man in the middle of removing his coat, revealing a vest of small golf-ball-sized devices, strapped to his chest. Bodhi was near crippling exhaustion because of the amount of energy he had used to stay in slip-time so long. He fell out of slip-time for only a blink and heard the man yell, “No More Chrono!” The man whipped out his hands and rammed something into his chest. Bodhi had no other choice; he pushed past the exhaustion and fell into a deeper slip-time than he had ever managed before, even in his youth. The glass-wave, a growing ball of erasure, was still expanding at a rate that nearly matched Bodhi’s speed. With each heartbeat, the glass-wave expanded five inches. It took Bodhi nearly five heartbeats to retrieve the child from her cradle. He pulled her into slip-time with him, which her body could do naturally due to its deific heritage. This action cost another five heartbeats, and the wave had nearly reached them.

Bodhi recognized this kind of destruction, Glassing it was called. A total annihilation, so complete it was outlawed by the Herrium, the most brutal of all Human-kinds. Of course, the terrorists would use it. The King of the Confederation cut through the scene to his quarters, nearly a mile away, and leaped through without looking. On the other side of the seam, in reality, Bodhi had time to say “Oh” before he was sucked out of the ship and into the free-flow of slip-space. He looked and saw a perfect sphere cut into his Dreadnaught where his chambers should have been as he drifted away at FTL Speeds. He held onto the girl in his arms, not sure if he was hoping she would save them or if he would save her. The C.S.T. Kingdom left them like a speck of floating debris and was gone in the space of four heartbeats.

The white-space around them looked peaceful and pure. Were the machinations of the Abrahamics true? Was this place some kind of paradise? Out of habit, from years of training, Bodhi had expelled all of the air from his lungs to avoid having his lungs rupture in the vacuum. He held himself like that for several heartbeats until he looked down and saw the little girl laughing. The toddler he held was giggling up a storm. He raised an eyebrow at her, and she pointed to his cheeks and mimicked his strained expression.

Bodhi shook his head. He could not believe it. He then sucked in a mouthful of the purest, cleanest air he had ever known. As he breathed out, he looked around and saw the stars around him, the planets and suns of other systems. They all felt like he could reach out and grab them. He looked down and saw Terra. Was that true? Had they been attacked so close to the cradle of humanity? Was this the Creator? Did the Creator want him to see something before he died? Or maybe it was the Creator’s daughter, somehow keeping them alive.

Giggling, the little girl looked down at the planet below them. A great and mighty voice boomed inside Bodhi’s mind and said, “You are not supposed to be here. You threaten the covenant. Go, and fulfill your destiny, child.” Before Bodhi could scream, laugh, cry, shiver, or fall to his knees, a line formed in the space-air beneath the two of them. It sucked them out into its black embrace, and Bodhi felt Terra’s gravity take hold of him, as it began pulling him to its surface with a disconcerting speed.

The soldier breathed out all of the air he had, again, and wrapped himself in a ball around the girl. He felt his coat catch on fire as the friction increased in the atmosphere as they fell. The collision came a fraction of a heartbeat sooner than he’d expected it would. Something crumbled under the weight of his fall, and blood covered his body in an ugly spray. After a few minutes of lying there in the dim light of the early dawn, Bodhi rose and stood tall. He stood in the midst of a back road in the middle of nowhere. There was only corn for miles around. The King looked into his arms and saw the child still giggling. He noticed, when he prodded the child’s swaddling, blood coating his fingers.

Finally, he turned to see what he had been hit by during the fall. There before him, wrapped around his crater as if it were a telephone pole, was a destroyed suburban SUV. There was nothing left of the driver, except crushed legs and pants, and behind him a similarly gruesome sight for the car seat of a toddler. Bodhi had only ever seen a car like this in the museums. Was this an explosion-powered vehicle? As if to answer his question, the fuel tank exploded. He walked, hesitantly, to the back of the scene, ignoring the explosion even as shrapnel bounced off his skin.

He looked at the poor, innocent child that had been… Bodhi, the Mighty King of the Forgotten Worlds, Conqueror of the Seven Suns, Liberator of the Moons of Yam’ki, and Anointed one, found worthy of all six gifts given by the Ancient Bestowers, puked. Everything in his stomach came rocketing out in a barrage of horror, betrayal, sadness, and disgust. There she was, the god Empress of Humankind in all her majesty, dead before she even said her first words, before she had been gifted immortality, before she would defeat… oh no.

After his stomach had nothing left to give, Bodhi wept for the curse of foreknowledge. Wept for what he would become. Wept for what he must do. “Forgive me, my Empress.” He watched in horror as the flames from the explosion consumed Her Majesty’s lifeless body and that of the man who had sired the Empress of his people. Before the flames had totally consumed the driver, however, Bodhi had the foresight to change pants with the man and let his far-flung space attire burn instead. The man cut himself all across the chest to mimic wounds from the glass and metal. His back was already burned nearly to the bone from the entry friction, and the little one had singed ends on her swaddling from that same fall.

Without much more thought, the King let himself collapse to the ground and roll off into the ditch on the side of the road. Whoever found them would be in for quite the evening.

Fin

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A Brother’s Death

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A Short Story from the “Gifted Cycle” by A.B. Timothy

Richmond, Bodhi, brothers until the very end. One, a stalwart protector of the old crown, a five-century-old monarch, and the traditions she represented; the other, a newly enthroned king of a rebellious union of principalities. There, on the fields of their childhood, nestled between the hills of the Queen’s Spine Mountains of Terra Prima, they stood some hundred feet apart from one another. There along those same hills they had played, they had laughed, they had discussed the mysteries of their reality, and so much more. Now they would have one final discussion, one final battle, though this time, their swords would be very real.

The wind rushed through the grass blades, the sun illumined the field of battle without any needless heat, and the birds had taken up their song, far off, once again. The wind stopped, the sun froze, and the birds went silent as Richmond drew his sword. A heartbeat later, Bodhi had his own blade in his hand. Perfectly matched in their speed, they meet at the heart of the battlefield.

They danced… like the days when the children would dance together to the sound of the birds in the trees, but there was no music to this dance, other than the music of steel meeting steel.

“She loves you… You know.” Richmond’s voice was calm and empathetic to his brother. A frozen stream of white puffed off his tear duct. Richmond watched at least three of the same form around his brother as they danced.

“I know,” Bodhi said, his voice equally calm and empathetic.

“Then why do you not go to her? Be with her? End this war?” Richmond asked.

“My people need me more than I need to be romantically fulfilled by a Terran queen.” Bodhi’s sword sounded on Richmond’s.

“They need you to kill her?” Richmond’s voice rose in offense, the first sign of any emotion in this dance.

“Or her champion… they need me to be the king they crowned, they need a ruler who will put everything he holds dear on the line for his people.”

“Even your own blood?” The double meaning of Richmond’s word caused the first slip in his brother’s guard in the dance that persisted for three minutes. Bodhi caught the slip, and Richmond was only able to scar his cheek with a glancing blow. Taking advantage of this action, which seemed a mistake, would prove fatal for the twenty-year-old swordsman, however, as he felt, between the fourth and fifth ribs, a cold edge of steel enter his chest.

“For my children, I would do anything.” They both sped up to twice as fast as either of them ever had, when Richmond fell to the floor. Blood did not flow; they were in the space between heartbeats, even a beat of their own hearts.

“You have slain me… my brother, but stay with me a while in this place between and hear my heart, hear your brother,” Richmond’s voice was openly sorrowful now, “please.”

“I will stay with you here, for as long as you desire it of me, Richmond.” Bodhi’s voice was stronger than his brother’s, only bolstered, however, by victory.

“Then help me stand and let us dance on the lake of our youth, once again.” Richmond reached up his arm to his brother, who stepped back and hoisted him from the ground. The pair walked south now, away from the heart of death. This was the ultimate fate of their kind: to live the moment of death for all eternity, until they accepted their death.

The pair found their way to the small lake, which had now been converted into a field hospital for the battle, but with the gifts of their time, there was very little blood seeping into the water. Bodhi and Richmond took to stepping across the lake, like they had done in their youth after discovering what they really were. There, they relived memories and danced across the motionless waves of the lake to a music of their own creation, laughing at jokes heard only by themselves and the creator.

Then they rested with their backs propped up by a tree, both picking at the grass beneath them with their eyes afar off. 

“What about that tree?” Richmond asked.

“Oh, the tree where Shona and I kissed… that must have been a lifetime ago,” Bodhi remembered.

“It only feels like a lifetime to us, Bodhi, remember.”

“Ha, yeah, you’re probably right.”

“Whatever happened to you two?” Richmond asked.

“I went off to the army, and she didn’t like that much. She knew about our powers, but she thought she’d never see me again once the government could do its tests. ‘I’d be too important,’ she’d say, ironic. She was right, for all the wrong reasons. I never went back to her, not due to import, but because I was smitten with the empress… then you joined up with me because of your own… gifts. The rest is history.”

“So what happened to us?”

“I’ll chalk the memory loss up to your condition.”

“Humor a dying man, will you?”

“They killed your wife and children… Richy, they killed ‘em dead, ordered you to do it with your own ship.”

“I remember, but duty comes first…”

“Yeah, that’s what you said four years ago.”

“They ordered you to kill your brother… kill ‘em dead, ordered you to do it with your own sword.”

“Oh, come on, Richy, that’s not fair.”

“Isn’t it?” There was a silence that stretched several moments; Richmond broke the silence with a confession. “I love you, Bodhi. You held my heart in your hand our whole childhood, you were my inspiration, my role model, after our father died.”

“I can’t even cry in your death moment,” Bodhi’s voice choked with sobs, “so what are you trying to prove, Richy?”

“I forgive you, Bodhi. I can’t blame you for coming to a conclusion I came to years before. I’m only sorry it took you this long to come to it. How about a pact with your dying brother, hmm? Like a dying wish?”

“What is it, Richy?” He instinctively shoved away the absent tears from his eyes. “In the name of the empress, if it is in my power, I will grant it.”

“End this war… stop the bloodshed, make peace with our queen.” Richmond’s own words were full of sobs now.

“Richy, I can’t—”

“I don’t mean submit to her authority, I only mean make peace.”

“I promise…” He leaned over and hugged his brother on the other side of the tree they had been resting against. “I swear I will see this bloodshed brought to an end, so no brother will ever again have to kill their kin… not while I live.”

“Good… now, I’m ready to go now…” Richmond’s voice was weak and close to giving up, “pull this sword out and… hold me, bubba, please?”

Bodhi could deny his brother nothing now. He stood and walked to his brother’s side of the tree and pulled the sword out, shrinking it once again and putting it on his belt. He fell to his knees and took his brother into his arms and began to sob, kissing his brother’s forehead again and again. “I love you, Richy… I’m so sorry.”

“Know this as I fade now, Bubba… you are forgiven… may you find shelter in her light.” Richmond’s eyes filled first with little white stems of steam, then tears as his heart began to beat again. Bodhi sat there, rocking his brother back and forth, sobbing as he felt the lifeblood pour out of him and stain the grass.

Near a different tree, a line of black was cut in the grass as a split in reality solidified above it. Out from it stepped Her Majesty, Lady Sal of Terra. Her white gloved hand stretched out to Bodhi… “Let us fulfill your brother’s final wish, my lord, let us end this shedding of blood.”

Richmond’s Bubba did not respond; instead, he sat cradling his brother and sobbing into his corpse for an eternity. It took Bodhi much longer to accept his brother’s death.

Interstellar Dragons, Part 4

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A Short Story by A.B. Timothy

Klaxons crushed all other sounds throughout the battle station. The Joyriders scrambled from their bunks and threw on their flight suits. This particular cacophony of klaxons only meant one thing: combat. Sarah, Jonathan, and Fred all rushed to gather themselves before bursting out of their flight’s cabin and into the halls of the station. They were back from ‘grieve-leave,’ but their replacement captain had not yet been assigned. For now, they had decided that Fred would be their leader, as he was the one Matthew had entrusted with the Circle-Back Protocol before being overcome by the swarming dragons.

They all rushed through their preflight checks and began sinking into their ship’s control matrices. In a flash of thought, they were one with their ship and were moving from the hangar bay into the open space around the station.

A few fighters had slipped in before the dome was shut and had landed nearby. Off in the distance, Matthew saw all kinds of weapon emplacements locked on Su’onna. Matthew felt a great deal of anxiety coming from the beast and placed a hand on his scales, “Don’t worry, Su, they’re gonna have to get through me first. He turned to begin walking toward the now landed jets and, just after he had cleared Su’s giant tail, he felt someone grab him from behind, pinning his arms to his chest, Matthew acted on instinct, dropping his weight and breaking the assailant’s grip with a sharp thrust of his arms before he grabbed his assassin’s neck and flipped him over, slamming him to the deck of the station, with an arm reared back and fist aimed at Sarah’s throat, Sarah? “Sarah?” The word came out with a thick wyrm-ish accent.

“Yeah,” She confirmed, still trying to get air back into her lungs. “I see you haven’t lost your touch, always so soft…” she coughed, “with the ladies.” While Matthew was still chuckling, he was pulled into a long, passionate kiss. She’d certainly missed him. When she was done stealing all of the air from his lungs, Sarah pushed him off and pulled herself up off the ground. She nimbly twisted with the beauty and grace of a ballerina, if that ballerina were a sweat-covered, anxiety-ridden Joyrider.

“It’s like a new day’s early dawn, over a quartz-sand beach, above purple mountains in the distance, when seeing your face,” Matthew said, as he took hold of her glove-covered hand and kissed the back of it.

“Oh, shut up, Shakespeare.” Frederick, Matthew’s former second, said from somewhere behind Sarah. Matthew looked over and saw him.

“Shakespeare? I didn’t even rhyme, by jove, hardly even said, was a line.” He laughed and let go of Sarah’s hand to shake Frederick’s before collapsing into a hug.

“We thought you died.” The hard, stoic voice of Jonathan resounded off to Matthew’s right. The dragonrider let go of Frederick and turned to face his friend.

“Yes, well, I thought I had too, for several days. Alone in a cold white room, I lost sense of time; it felt like the eternity one might face after death. But, they were just quarantining me in case of pathogens.” Matthew stepped to his friend, offering a hand to shake.

Jonathan studied the hand for a moment before stepping in for a tight hug instead. “We missed you, Mat. Don’t ever die on us again…”

Matthew heard over Frederick’s unhearing headset the voice of an old commander off in one of the gunnery towers. “Joyriders, come in, Captain Frederick, do you read me?”

“Yes, sir, come in, Commander.” Frederick broke away from the group to go and take the call.

“No, commander, the rider… It’s Captain Hollow, he’s returned to us.” Matthew turned from the one-sided dialogue and looked back at Su’onna. Something was wrong.

“Su’?” Matthew ran over to his companion, and he was followed by confused and concerned friends.

“Matthew, it’s… It’s too much!” Su’onna’s eyes were glazed over… his barrier had fallen. Matthew let down his own mental block slowly and was nearly crippled by the screams and pleas. He grits his teeth and lifts the mental block back into place.

“Su’onna, don’t do anything rash, you’re stronger than this.”

“Matthew… I’m sorry.” Su’onna’s eyes glossed over with a black sheet… he was entering battlespace.

“No! Su, don’t do it!” Matthew cried.

“Matthew? What’s going on?” Sarah asked, fear darkening her voice.

“Get back!” Matthew scrambled away… it was too late. He practically had to tackle Jonathan to the ground as he jumped away from his friend.

Su’onna began spinning in circles, faster and faster. Eventually, the great beast began digging into the exterior of the station. In a blink, he vanished, the hole bursting with debris as Su’onna burrowed.

Matthew ran to the edge of the hole and looked back at his friends… “I’m so sorry. Sarah,” He ran to her, hugged her, and kissed her deeply. “I’ll stop him… I have to… I promise.”

“Matthew? What are you doing?” Sarah cried as Matthew ran from her towards the hole.

“I love you, Sarah, I love you all, my Joyriders… ride on!” Matthew scooped up his helmet and slammed it on his head, pressurizing his suit. Without another beat missed the captain of the Joyriders once again dove into the depths of death.

Interstellar Dragons, Part 3

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A Short Story by A.B. Timothy

Matthew bounced up and down in a rhythm that had taken more than some time to get used to. Aloft and behind him, he carried across the black plain of space a white banner, flowing and fluttering to the full length of his newest friend, Su’onna, a glorious, great gold dragon whose body and tail stretched across many fields. Matthew was careful not to even refer to the dragon as beautiful in his mind, even though the great Su’onna was that. The great beast, he didn’t like the term, so Matthew did not use it.

It had been many months since his ‘death’ at the hands of the swarming wyrms back above their homeworld. Now he was one of them… lost among the people of their world and becoming entrenched in the traditions and customs of a dragonrider. Now… Well… Now, he wanted nothing more than to go home to his people and pursue peace. He wanted to hold Sarah in his arms again; he wanted to wrestle Jonathan and Fred, teach them, after such a long educational lapse, who was still in charge; the pair had more than likely grown arrogant in his absence.

If they had grown arrogant, he must have grown ten times as such. Of course, as a boy, he’d read stories, watched movies, “boy suffers tragedy, boy learns new ways and new culture, boy returns to his own, his own received him with hesitant optimism, everyone lives happily ever after,” or something. The play-by-play is different in every story, but Matthew had faith that his might be different. He wanted it to be different because he’d done it twice, first when initially joining up with the hunters as a member of the Joyriders, but also now becoming a part of the dragonriders. These people were his friends, but who would he give his loyalty to, the Joyriders? Or the Dragonriders? All of these contemplations whipped through his mind as the banner whipped through nothingness, mimicking the dragon’s curling and whipping bodily motions as it warped space to fly therethrough.

“It, Matthew? I thought we’d been done with this ages ago.” Su’onna said.

“Right, forgive me, Su’onna, it was a slip,” Matthew replied.

“I’m sure,” The great beast said, rolling his eyes.

“The proximity field says we are close, Su,” Matthew said. “Is there anything I can do to increase the likelihood that they see the white flag?”

“You tell me,” Su’onna replied, “The flag of peace for our people, as we told you, is the red banner, which, given what you’ve now taught us, explains why our suings for peace were always met with drums of war, not carpets of peace.”

“Right.” With that, Matthew lifted the banner a little higher and, after squeezing the dragon’s saddle with his knees, took his other hand off the saddle and onto his compression suit, adjusting and tweaking this connection, or that joint. He was a little short for these tall suits, but they hadn’t had time to fit one for him. Not before the sources in Earth’s forces warned of a fleet moving into the gap, pierced by the Joyriders, preparing for a full-scale invasion of Gaia, the Dragon’s homeworld. Now, Matthew and Su’onna were approaching their enemy’s staging ground.

Matthew was extremely nervous, but felt confident that his people would respect a white banner. They did just that! Matthew breathed a sigh of relief as two pilots fell into the stream with Su’onna and waved him onto the main station. As Su’onna came to a rest on the massive landing site the asteroid had, a dome was enclosed around them, and the place became pressurized. He took his helmet off and slid off Su’onna’s back, carrying the motionless white banner behind him.

A few fighters had slipped in before the dome was shut and had landed nearby. Off in the distance, Matthew saw all kinds of weapon emplacements locked on Su’onna. Matthew felt a great deal of anxiety coming from the beast and placed a hand on his scales, “Don’t worry, Su, they’re gonna have to get through me first. He turned to begin walking toward the now landed jets and, just after he had cleared Su’s giant tail, he felt someone grab him from behind, pinning his arms to his chest, Matthew acted on instinct, dropping his weight and breaking the assailant’s grip with a sharp thrust of his arms before he grabbed his assassin’s neck and flipped him over, slamming him to the deck of the station, with an arm reared back and fist aimed at Sarah’s throat, Sarah? “Sarah?” The word came out with a thick wyrm-ish accent.

Read “Interstellar Dragons” from the Start…

Interstellar Dragons, Part 2

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A Short Story by A.B. Timothy

“I wasn’t ready, but I am now.” The words of her friend still rang in Sarah’s head. The last words she had heard him say to her in private before they had gotten behind their throttles that last time. Matthew’s brown eyes were burned into the side of her skull, always just out of sight, but always watching.

The pilot thrust her throttle forward and screamed with rage, through the pain. A dragon exploded in a mist of green fire before she blew threw its remains at nearly full fight speed. She twisted her control stick and wrapped around herself in a dodge before laying into the dragon that had tried to vaporize her from the sky. Another one died. She saw Matthew’s ship careening to the surface, smoke and fire billowing from the engines. She screamed again. More dragons died. An alarm blared before her world suddenly went black.

The pod she had placed herself in hissed open. She pulled her head from the full immersion device to see who had disrupted her. Well, that is what she would tell you she did. In reality, she ripped out her head, screaming bloody murder at the poor sap who had dared disturb her. “Captain Peregrine.” Fred, Matthew’s second, stood looking back at her, emotionlessly dismissing her rage. “Captain, Peregrine.” He said again, having waited for her to take a breath before trying again.

“I have to keep flying, Frederick. You can’t pull me from the Dive-Deck like that.” Sarah Peregrine argued. Her hair was a ratty mess, her eyes wild, and her lips cracked.

“You have been running the same, unwinnable simulation for the past fourteen days.” Frederick, his hair buzz cut, his eyes deep with concern, and his lips balmed, poured empathy into his voice.

“I wasn’t ready that day, Frederick. I have to be ready the next time it happens.” Peregrine said.

“I am telling you, Peregrine, that if you do not extract yourself from this Dive-Deck and get some sleep, there will not be a next time for you. You’ll be stuck flying sims in a beachfront house somewhere in the California Islands.” Frederick was still compassionate, but also deadly serious. “You want to be ready for our rescue mission? Then you’d better get some real sleep. Am I understood?”

“Yes, sir.” Captain Peregrine slowly, and reluctantly, began extracting herself from the Dive-Deck and plopped her wobbly feet onto the hard plutosteel floor of the space station. Sarah felt Frederick’s tender hand on her shoulder as she steadied herself. In a strange display of emotion, the young man hugged her and rubbed her back. She cursed the tears that fell onto his consoling shoulders.

He whispered to her, like a father comforting his daughter, “I miss him too. We can’t get him back if we destroy ourselves.” Sarah hugged her friend back. She knew he was right, but she also knew, finally, just how exhausted fourteen days of no real sleep can make you.

Interstellar Dragons, Part 1

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A Short Story by A.B. Timothy

Matthew sat in his cockpit when the nails began scraping another chalkboard. Whilst he had been traveling faster than light, there was no problem, but now that he had slowed to a total stop orbiting the Dragons’ world with his flight, he was keeled over in the pain of ear-splitting screams. Before it was just a background, headache-inducing buzz, here he could make out actual screams of rage, and… they were getting closer? “They’re coming, prepare for combat, Joyriders, open wings, bombers, divert shield energy to cannons.” He called out the commands to his squad, proving that, even in the midst of the sheer agony, he could do this. Those commanders would be proud to have chosen him, not ashamed. Just as he predicted, the screams of anger roared to a new volume—no, volume was the wrong word, intensity? That was closer—at the same time, the squad started receiving proximity klaxons in their headsets. Sarah, Jonathan, and Fred all scrambled and began fighting for their lives. Fred called in the midst of it all, “How did they find us? Our cloaks are still up!” No one had an answer for him, except, perhaps, Matthew.

The young pilot pressed a button on his command module and hurled the remains of his breakfast into a blue plastic bag, before it was sealed shut and locked in the refuse container on his little flier. “Captain, look alive!” Matthew forced up his head, took the throttle in his hands, and steeled himself. He used every ounce of fortitude he could muster and threw the throttle forward in an attempt to join the fray. The engine roared with a mighty fire as it powered up to zoom forward.

“I’m-” Matthew began to say before he cut off alongside his engines. Something was very wrong. “Mayday!” He called, “Mayday, Fred! Circle-back Protocol! Take them and get out of here now!” Matthew was running through the ingrained ship-reboot protocols whilst he spoke.

He began to panic as he watched from his cockpit, his friends fold into the fray. Slithering beasts of immense proportions clashed with Y-shaped ships only half their size that they could not see. The pilots could not possibly win this, and it was his fault. Matthew’s connection to the dragons had been what warned them of his arrival. Their only chance was a plan that was compromised when they fell out of the hyperstream. One of his ship’s three engines flared to life, and he knew he had to do what he could. Flying through the invisible dogfight, he barrel-rolled and launched three dozen flares, at the same time deactivating his cloaking device. “Come and get some, you space-whales!” He cried.

“Welcome to the fight, sir!” Fred called triumphantly.

Matthew barely had time to respond amidst the hell of flame and acid he was flying through. “Circle-back Protocol! Fred, that was an order. Get out of here!” His distraction had worked, though. The sudden emergence of a visible target and the challenging flares had called most of the beasts and their riders from Matthew’s crew and onto him. More furious telepathic voices joined the song of rage, actively burning around the young man, and he shook his head. “Please! Live!”

The pilot pulled and twisted his stick, completing maneuvers he learned in basic. The maneuvers might have been basic, but the pilot behind them was anything but. The dragons converged and swarmed him like a host of bees defending their nest from a hornet; this hornet, however, had fangs, claws, and a stinger. Every psyonic voice he silenced was replaced by two more as he held his ship’s trigger. His viewport became black with reptilian blood as more and more died.

Matthew looked at his instruments. On the radar, he watched as the signals of his flight zipped into the hyperstream back in the direction they came. He was so engulfed by satisfaction that he almost did not react when the first claws pierced his hull. The claxons were background noise, the screams in his mind enveloped nearly every thought, and the air was sucked out of the cockpit. The last two thoughts he remembered having were that they got away and that they were safe.

The stars rose from the horde of dragons as he was vacuumed into space and above the mass that was ripping apart his ship. One voice in his mind rose above the rest. It spoke with words he could understand. “Rest now, warrior, prepare for what comes next.” As the words were finished, his entire world was engulfed by the void.

Half a Soul

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A Short Story by A.B. Timothy

They saw each other, standing across the battlefield. His grandfather had told him of ancient battlefields torn and obliterated by artillery, but that was during the “last war.” Here he now stood, top of his class; he had succeeded beyond all of his imaginings in all possible ways. His grades in school were all “S,” straight through 14th grade. He has never lagged in swordplay, battle tactics, modern or ancient, and Physical Education. All of that work, despite what he knew was coming.

America has never lost an Olympic challenge, even after the dissolution of the republic and formation of the proper Northern American Empire. In a time when she was very weak due to civil war and infighting, she maintained her pressure on the other nations. When the reformation was complete and the empire was secured. The first Emperor decreed that all disputes could be legally settled with a duel to the death, with God as their witness and arbitrator. The emperor’s idea was that God would side with whoever won, and thus the legal system could not challenge them.

A member nation of the Federation of BRICS called out the emperor in a challenge, much like he has legalized for his own citizens, to be hosted and broadcast to the world in the next Olympic Games. So, swordplay, battle tactics, and physical education became the pillars of education in the American Empire for the next hundreds of years. In all that time, the number of deaths in war between nations has dropped by 99.9999% An average of ten deaths every four years at the Olympic Games, where nations settle their differences in the arena. The combatants lived their entire lives being taught and told that war was the way of the weak and that honor lies only in the duel. Both had killed a peer by the age of 6 on the playground in a school-sanctioned duel.

Now, 16 years after they first tasted blood, in the DCXXXVIII Olympics, one of them would spill the other’s.

One of the traditions established hundreds of years ago was that each nation chose its champions from its graduating classes and gave those two years to make an enemy out of the other competitor, to taunt them, to curse them, to make this duel their own and not just for the sake of their countries. These two, however, found it difficult to make each other their enemy properly. They did not hate each other; they were both barely men. They have told each other who they were going to marry as victors. They both had women in their lives who they loved and who loved them. They both came up with a list of three names that their children would be called, all with agreed-upon alternates for girls. Ultimately, when the doors opened on July 14th and the sun was brutal against the desert sands of the Amazon. Across the way, they saw the face of the boy whom they had come to love, Achilles and Hector, destined to be enemies, but brothers at heart. That was their story. Though it was a story that no one would ever know.

Achilles, who fought for the Empire of America, took up his gladius and saw Hector do the same. Only one would walk away, but in truth, they would walk away with half a soul.

The Unwanted Mars

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A Short Story by A.B. Timothy

Mary Johnson looked down on the glowing red globe beneath her ship. Mars was to be her new home; she would die there. Several years prior, when the New Party took power back on Earth in the late twenty-second century, Mary, then called Maria, had been given an ultimatum: Join or Die.

New Party morale monitors had raided her small hotel room, a place on the Sonoran forest’s floor that had been abandoned by all of the North American cities which had risen to reside on the clouds, in ‘Sky’. This moldy apartment had housed her and several dozen other “Unwanteds”. The monitors broke the window and threw in gas canisters to choke the consciousness from those who may have resisted in the room.

She remembered watching her brother try to stand despite the gas, but his chest was riddled with holes before he could even take a step. She lost consciousness as the men in black uniforms kicked the doors down and began to poke at bodies.

In a blink, she had gone from the floor of a moldy hotel room to a pristine white room. The room was so white and her clothes so bleached that the only reason she knew she was still on this side of the grave was her black hair, which she had caught a look at as she had woken up. Through an unseen doorway, a woman in her forties had walked in and sat on something across from Mary. The woman’s clothes, which stretched from neck to toe, were so white that she appeared to be a floating head. Her skin was as dark as night, and it made for a disturbing contrast.

“Maria Velasquez.” The woman tilted her head and looked into the eyes of Mary. Her eyes were a dark brown. “Your name is not pure enough.” She said as if this would have been plainly obvious to even a child. “Choose another family name.”

The woman placed a sheet of large printed black text names on the table between them. The table’s existence shocked Mary as there was no differentiation of light or shadow to distinguish the four legs, or the plane from the surrounding room. After the brief shock wore off, Mary leaned in and looked at the papers. On the list were four options. “Red, Johnson, White, Henry.”

“Henry isn’t even a last name.” Mary was surprised when the thought she had made privately was produced aloud for herself and the woman to hear. When she looked up, confused, and watched the woman speak, Mary realized her lips never moved.

“The mind speaks, and the words are formed. We do not move our lips in Sky. We have no use for them.” She did not move her lips into a smile but somehow gave off the warmth a smile would have otherwise produced. “I didn’t think you would know the name Henry. Most Unwanteds don’t care to even know our great history. North American Literature has a strong tradition that dates back centuries, even before the unification of the twenty-first century. Not that your kind would ever care. I am surprised you can even pronounce it.” She seemed to catch herself and stop. “There I go rambling again,” the thought-sound projector produced a low giggle. “Now pick, please, we do not have all day.”

“Johnson.” Mary pointed at the name and nodded. She had heard stories like the one she was living right then. Most of the unwanteds that she knew in their small enclaves just called these stories propaganda, lies, or fiction. No one had ever heard of an Unwanted going into a University and coming out alive.

“That is true,” the woman said, responding to the words Mary had thought. “And yes, you are in a University, good job. But we do not kill the Unwanted, no, that would be a waste. We merely train them. Teach them how to be Wanted, this is what we do.” The woman took the text prompt away and stood from whatever she had sat on. Mary felt like her eyes were burning, and pulled her hair in front of her eyes as the woman walked out of the room.

“Don’t worry.” The woman’s thought-voice permeated the room. “Soon the light will be your friend.”

Mary had not resisted. In her heart, she knew this was the end. Why resist the end? Every day in that neverdim room was a day closer to the death of Maria Velasquez and the birth of Mary Johnson. Her guard never offered a name in thought or in writing, so Mary only knew her as “the woman”.

After only several months, the woman told Maria that she had progressed much faster than her friends.

“Tell me something, Mary,” the woman said. “Do you want to be Wanted?”

“Of course, miss,” Mary had answered. “I’ve wanted that since I was a child. Ever since the Unification wars, my family has-” the woman held up a hand, and this silenced Mary.

“I do not need, nor did I ask for, your story. Now tell me: Do you want to be Wanted?” the woman repeated her question.

“Yes,” Mary remembered having to fight to keep more thoughts from entering her mind.

“What are you willing to do to be Wanted?” the woman asked.

“Anything.”

“Anything? Even abandon Sky and go to a new planet for the glory of Sky, her people, and to become Wanted?” the woman asked.

“Anything, miss,” Mary answered.

“Well, you are not the first, and you will not be the last. We have use of those who want to be Wanted. Servitude for seven years. Then, freedom. Service to the glory of Sky under a new Sky.” The woman made the idea seem like a pitch—

“It is,” the woman clarified. “So, what do you say, Mary?”

With the death of Maria Velasquez, Mary Johnson ascended through the clouds of Sky to a place far above it. She looked out of the porthole window in her accommodations aboard the N.P.S. New Horizons, and Mary saw Mars. The world where Unwanted became Wanted.